Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake)

by Rachel Caine

  Please stay my baby. Just a little while longer. Please.

  Connor, oblivious, calls shotgun, which leaves Sam to slide into the back next to Lanny. When Connor and I get in the front, I check my daughter in the rearview mirror. Sam’s leaning over and asking her something in a calm, quiet voice; I see her lose a little of her stiffness as she answers. He puts his arm around her in a half hug.

  And just like that, she’s okay. It breaks my heart that I don’t know how to do that anymore with her, make it all . . . fine. We sometimes clash like mismatched gears, my daughter and me. I know that’s normal, but it feels like failure, and it makes me want desperately to make it right.

  Vee’s waiting at the curb when I pull the SUV in, and Sam gets out to let her in to sit between him and Lanny. She climbs in encumbered with a battered old black satchel, and she seems wired, as usual. “Cool, cool, cool,” she says, and wiggles in the seat as she gets comfortable. “This is going to be fun! Hey, Lantagirl.”

  “Hey,” Lanny says. She’s relaxed a little in Vee’s presence, at least. “What’s in the bag?”

  Vee reaches in and pulls out a far-too-large-for-her semiautomatic. I feel a kick start of urgent, wild adrenaline. A nightmare lurches into motion in my brain. I imagine Vee’s finger tightening on that trigger, a bullet firing through the seat, my son bleeding.

  “Drop it!” Sam’s shout is sudden and shocking in the confines of the SUV, and she puts the gun down on top of the satchel and raises her hands high. “Jesus, Vee. Never do that.” He takes the gun, carefully pointing it toward the SUV’s floor, and checks it over. “Loaded,” he says. “One in the chamber. Vera—” His tone is grim and angry. He methodically ejects the cartridge that’s under the hammer, then takes out the magazine.

  “What? It’s in case that asshole letter guy comes creepin’ up!” We’re all staring at her, even Lanny. Vee hunches in on herself, and grabs the made-safe gun back from Sam when he offers it. She shoves it into the satchel along with the magazine and loose bullet. “I’m just tryin’ to protect myself is all.” Her rural Tennessee accent has come back thick. “Wouldn’ta shot y’all or nothin’.”

  “Accidents happen,” I say. “And you need trigger discipline. We’ll go over all that once we get to the range.” My heart’s still hammering, my hands unsteady, but I take a couple of deep breaths and glance over at Connor before I put the vehicle in gear. “We’re going to get you a gun case.”

  She mutters something under her breath, and I doubt it’s complimentary, but I’m focused on my son. He’s staring straight ahead, and I see the hard shine of his eyes. “Connor,” I say gently. “You all right?”

  “Sure,” he says, in a voice utterly devoid of emotion. “Fine, Mom.” He isn’t, but I see him taking slow, regular breaths, and he blinks and smiles. It isn’t totally convincing, but it’s better. “I’ll be fine.”

  It hurts. I want to wrap him in cotton and tuck him in bed and never, never let anything hurt him again. But that’s my screaming instincts, not my rational brain. My son has overcome a lot in his young life; he copes with what he can’t control far better than I have. I have to trust him, and trust his therapy process. He chose it. I have to respect that, even if it makes me weep inside.

  So we go to the gun range.

  It isn’t the comfortable, familiar place Javier operates back at Stillhouse Lake; that one is small and extremely well run, even though it’s a backwoods haven. Former military like Javi don’t tolerate sloppiness.

  I don’t love this one nearly as much. It’s large, it’s loud, and in my opinion it’s slipshod on safety processes. But it’s close to us, and if the instructors aren’t the best, Sam and I can teach the kids properly ourselves. After we kit Vee out with the right things to have—a transport case, a small quick-access safe for home, a holster—we go back to the car and get all the weapons we’re going to use: my Sig 9mm, Vee’s gun, Sam’s revolver. All packed into cases the way they should be.

  We’re just locking the car when Vee says, “Do you know that guy?” There’s something odd about the way she says it, and I turn to glance over my shoulder at her. She’s staring off to the right, and I follow her gaze.

  There’s a man in a car parked across the street, but even as I see him, he puts the car in gear and drives away. I don’t get more than a glance at him, but I can see he’s white and is wearing a dark-colored ball cap. That’s the extent of my impression. The car’s a completely anonymous dark-blue sedan, a Toyota, and I see the rental car sticker in the window. It’s too late, and the angle’s too bad, to get a license plate. He turns the corner and is gone.

  “Why?” I ask Vee. She’s still staring after the car, but she shifts her attention back to me. I see something odd in her gaze, something I’ve rarely seen in her. Vee’s all steel and smoked-glass strong until she breaks. She rarely shows weakness.

  Right now, she looks afraid. And that wakes something deeply primal in me. We’re exposed out here. Far, far too exposed. My mouth goes dry. My pulse speeds up. And I find myself watching the street, waiting for something to happen.

  Hypervigilance. It’s dangerous. I back it down, breathe deep. Panic is contagious.

  “It’s okay, Vee,” I tell her. “We’re fine. Right?”

  “If you say so,” she mutters, and grabs the case that holds her gun from me. “This one’s mine, right?” There’s no mistaking it. She chose a shiny paisley-patterned case in neon colors. Before I can ask her anything else, she’s moving for the gun range door, as if she doesn’t want to spend another moment out in the open.

  I desperately, desperately want to be inside, in a windowless concrete room. Safe.

  But I stay. I feel the cool wind on my face. I watch the traffic on the street, a river of metal and lights. I’m facing it down, the beast that comes for me out of the back of my mind. And it always, always has Melvin’s face.

  Behind me, Sam says, “Gwen? You coming?” He says it gently, as if he understands, though I don’t know how he could.

  “Yes,” I say, and I turn my back on my instincts and go to teach my kids—even Vee—how to properly handle a weapon that I pray they never need.

  Connor does better than I could have imagined. He barely flinches at the sound of the shots. He’s steady and deliberate when I teach him proper arm position and stance. When he finally fires his first shot, he hits the target. Not dead center, of course, but in the ballpark. Most kids would celebrate that, but not my son. He looks at the target critically, makes the gun safe, and puts it down as if he’s been doing this his whole life. “I missed,” he says.

  “You didn’t. It’s on the outline.”

  “It wouldn’t stop him,” Connor says. Just that, and it tells me everything about my son and what his attitude will be toward guns. He’s not in this for sport, or fun, or excitement like the teens who are squealing and clapping in other lanes as they even come close to a good shot. Like it is for me, this is survival for him. Pure, simple survival.

  I hate it. I mourn for what it says about how bleak his world seems to him. How inevitable it is that he’s going to need this skill, a thing he doesn’t want but will not flinch at learning.

  My son is so brave it steals my breath.

  I put my hand on his shoulder, and while he doesn’t pull away, I still feel the muscles tighten. Guarding. That’s another heartbreak for me as his mom, the knowledge that my touch can’t soothe away the pain anymore. That it might, in fact, add to it. I have to let that strike me and fade before I can master my voice to something like normal. “You’ll get better,” I tell him. “But let’s stop there for tonight, okay?” I check my watch; it’s been an hour and a half. Lanny looks incandescent with victory over her accuracy, and she and Vee share a high five while Sam looks on, shaking his head. I show Connor how to stow the gun properly in the case, then have him sit with the girls on a bench in the back as Sam and I take a quick turn in adjoining lanes.

  Shooting feels like freedom to me. The world goes qu
iet inside my head—even the constant racket that soundproofing ear protection can’t quell. Everything narrows to me, the target, the weight of the gun in my hand. There’s a certainty to it that I don’t find anywhere else.

  I brace, aim, and quick-fire, alternating shots between head and heart. Next to me, Sam does the same. We put our guns down and glide the targets. I step back with him to compare.

  Evenly matched. His is just a hair closer on one of the head shots. Damn. I need to get in here more often.

  I don’t realize that the kids have joined us until Lanny, at my elbow, says, “Jesus, Mom.” She sounds shaken and impressed. I put my arm around her, and all the arguments are washed away.

  “Don’t fuck with the fam,” Vee says.

  “Vee!” I chide.

  “What?”

  I just shake my head. After all . . . she’s not wrong.

  As we’re packing up, the alarm sounds, and everyone steps back from their lanes, guns down and made safe—or, at least, most people obey the protocol. I see the range master coming down the row, making note of those who were sloppy about it, but he’s heading straight for us.

  I feel my shoulders brace as he comes to a halt facing us, and I see Sam look up as well. Neither of us is aggressive, but both of us are on guard. The kids don’t seem to get it, but I see it in the man’s light-blue eyes before he says, “Look, I’m sorry to do this, but I’ve had a complaint.”

  “About us,” Sam says.

  “No. About her.” His gaze is squarely on me. “I’m going to have to ask you to come up front. I’ll refund your membership fee.”

  “You’re kicking my mom out? What for? She obeys all the rules!” Lanny gets it fast, and as I might have predicted, she isn’t about to stand for it. She thrusts herself forward, chin out. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes flashing, and I’m glad Connor puts a hand on her shoulder to hold her back. I’m too wrong-footed to intervene, too taken by surprise. And yes, too exposed, too humiliated; I hate the people watching me, whispering. One or two have taken out their phones to film it. I know this all too well. Just another recurring nightmare. I feel a sick, weightless darkness forming in the pit of my stomach.

  “Simmer down, kid,” the range master tells Lanny, and of all the things he could have picked to say, that’s the worst. I see Lanny’s volcano building up to blow. Connor’s hand tightens on her shoulder, but she shrugs him off. “Okay, all of y’all, follow me.” He doesn’t want a scene any more than I do.

  My daughter opens her mouth to say something none of us can take back, and I quickly say, in as even a tone as I can, “Of course. I’m happy to comply. But just me, please. Sam will stay with the kids.” I’m not calm. I feel like everything’s turned to quicksand under my feet, but getting out of here, away from the watchers . . . that’s the only thing I can control about this moment. More than that, I need Lanny to cool down. She needs to learn control if she wants to survive long-term in a world that will happily push her right over the edge. If nothing else, I have to show her that.

  But I see the disappointment and disbelief in my daughter’s expression before I turn away, and it hurts like a slap. Sam moves to stand close to her. Good. I need him to be a calming influence right now. I’m trying, but I can feel the jitter under my skin, the churn in my guts. I know what’s coming; I’ve faced it often enough. I’d just hoped that in a town as large and diverse as this one, it would take longer to manifest.

  Once we’re in his office, the range master doesn’t look comfortable having this conversation. So I save him the trouble. “Let me guess. Someone—you don’t need to tell me who, it doesn’t matter—identified me as Gina Royal, ex-wife of a serial killer. And they don’t like having me around. Bad press.”

  “Ma’am, you’ve been arrested in connection with not just one major case, but three.”

  “Never convicted,” I say. It sounds flippant, but he has to know I have no actual criminal convictions. I was arrested originally and put on trial as Melvin’s accomplice; the fact that I was judged not guilty will never be proof of innocence. “Look. I have a dark past. Lots of folks do. But I need a place to practice.”

  “That place can’t be here, ma’am,” he says. “I got investors who don’t like bad press.” He hesitates a second, then reaches down to open a drawer in the plain military-surplus desk that sits in the center of the office. He takes out a piece of paper and slides it across to me.

  I know what it is before I touch it. I recognize the style, the layout, everything. It’s a wanted poster, and it’s got my picture on it. In smaller pictures, my two kids. I don’t bother to read it; it’ll spread the lies about how I helped Melvin Royal get away with murders, and how my kids are just as sick. I not only know what it says; I know who designed it.

  Sam made it, originally, years ago. Part of a long harassment campaign by the Lost Angels online group he was part of, and helped found, for the families of Melvin Royal’s victims. It’s our shared horrible past, yes, and we’ve put that behind us . . . but this still hurts. I feel wounds coming open and dripping fresh pain.

  The flyer used my mug shot from my arrest on the day Melvin’s crimes were discovered. I look like that woman, still, though I barely recognize her at the same time. The flat look in her eyes that I recall as shock . . . it comes across as hard and emotionless. Gina Royal was a different person, and I never want to be her again. And I hate the echoes this wakes in me, the earthquake it unleashes.

  I realize I haven’t said anything. I look up at the man and say, “Where did you get it?”

  “They went up today on telephone poles in the neighborhood. Word’s getting out, Ms. Proctor. Ain’t no escaping it.”

  “You’ve got surveillance in the parking lot. You could tell me who put them up.”

  “I can’t do that, ma’am.”

  Won’t, more like. I don’t push him. There’s no point. I pick up the flyer and ask if I can keep it; when he nods, I fold it and put it in my pocket. Then I let him write me out a refund check for the whole family’s fees, and I put it in my pocket too. I don’t say anything else, not even when he apologizes and offers to shake my hand. He’s trying to ease his own feeling of injustice, and I don’t want any part of that. I just nod and leave.

  I can’t speak because if I do, I’ll scream.

  Leaving the office, I walk right past Sam and the kids. I ignore his questioning look. I finally swallow and manage to say, “Let’s go,” and head toward the building’s exit.

  Outside, the monster attacks. Not the physical kind of assault; this is far worse. I feel the panic of being outside, vulnerable, watched, hunted. My brain is reacting to a threat by dumping survival adrenaline into my blood at near-toxic levels, and there’s nothing for me to fight. Nothing but myself.

  I can’t breathe. I try, but it feels like my diaphragm has frozen solid, like my lungs have filled with heavy ice. My pulse is pounding so hard I can’t hear anything else. I know I should control it, can control it, but nothing works. Nausea slides over me like grease, but I don’t even have the ability to vomit it out.

  I collapse against the wall, gasping for air, and see Sam rushing to me. I read his lips as he crouches beside me. Breathe. Try to breathe. He turns his head, and I think he’s shouting at Lanny, who’s hovering a step behind, hands clenched into fists. She takes her phone out of her pocket and drops it, picks it up, finally makes the call. I want to say I’m okay, I need to, because I know I’m not having a heart attack, even though that’s how it feels.

  I’m having a full-on panic attack. Haven’t had one in years.

  I hear Melvin’s cold voice, clear as hail on the roof: I always knew you were weak. Look at you, you sniveling little wreck. You can’t protect our kids. You can’t even stand up.

  I shut my eyes and search for peace in the storm. And this time, I hear different voices.

  My daughter saying, “Mom? Mom, it’s okay, the ambulance is coming. Mom? It’s going to be okay.”

  And my son�
��s unsteady, soft voice near my ear saying, “It’s okay, Mom. I understand.”

  I know that he does most of all of us.

  Feeling comes next. Sam’s arms around me. Lanny’s hand fever-warm against my face. Connor holding my hand.

  The storm fades. Silence sets in.

  I gasp in a sudden, convulsive breath. My head is spinning and aching, but I’m here. I’m with the people who love me. My circle of protection. It blindsides me that I’ve been so busy trying to protect all of them that I’ve utterly failed to protect myself.

  I burst into tears and hug them close, all three of them. Vee’s hovering on the edges of this, part of it but separate, and I wish she’d come in, I wish I could be better, I wish this sudden, melting peace could last.

  But I hear the siren of the ambulance coming, and I know it’s already starting to disappear.

  The paramedics don’t find anything wrong with me, other than elevated blood pressure and low oxygen saturation, but they advise me to see my doctor about it. I thank them and wince at what this will cost us, but at the same time, Lanny did exactly the right thing. Better a bill than a funeral.

  Sam’s standing with me as the ambulance pulls away. People in the parking lot and across the street are watching us, and I feel their eyes on me like groping hands. I suddenly, desperately want to be out of here. “We should go,” I say. “You drive.” I hand him the keys. He kisses me gently on the forehead, pulls back, and gives me a long and searching look. “What?”

  “You’re all right,” he says, and I feel the quirk of his smile tug at something deep inside me. “And you’ll be all right.”

  Lanny and Vee are standing near the SUV, shoulder to shoulder, and they turn as one as we walk toward them. “You scared the shit out of me,” Vee says. Her surveying look is not kind. “What the hell was that?”

  “Panic attack,” I tell her crisply, as if I’m not ashamed of it. I shouldn’t be, but it’s hard, hard for me to admit weakness, especially to her. Vee’s got a predator’s unerring instincts, and though she’s not cruel, when she goes in for an emotional kill, she’s efficient about it. “Come on, let’s get you home.”