The Devil You Know

by Trish Doller

  “Get in the canoe,” I tell him. “Let me do this part.”

  “No.”

  “You’re barely standing,” I say. “I don’t want to have to worry about you drowning yourself when we’ve come this far. Just get in.”

  Noah agrees, lying down in the bottom of the canoe to equalize his weight, and I swim the rest of the way, towing the boat behind me. When I reach the shore, I have to wake him up to help me drag the canoe up the ramp and strap it back onto the trailer. It’s still dark, but daybreak isn’t more than a couple of hours away.

  “So what now?” I ask.

  “I need to take the truck back to Arcadia.” Noah’s voice is faraway and tired. There’s no way he can drive a car. “And I left Molly with the lady who was in the bathroom at the landing. I need to get my dog.”

  “You need to go to the hospital.”

  “I can’t,” he says. “If I walk in there with a gunshot wound, they’ll report it to the police.”

  “But—”

  “Who am I going to say shot me, Cadie?” he says. “Matt’s gone, and until we figure out how to handle this, the fewer people who know, the better.”

  Noah hands me his own phone, and when the signal finally connects, I find at least a dozen missed calls from my dad. I dial him back, and he answers before it’s even stopped ringing.

  “Dad, it’s me.”

  I wait for him to yell at me for not staying in Gardner, but he doesn’t. I just hear the rush of pure relief as he asks if I’m okay.

  “I don’t know.” My adrenaline levels are crashing, and tears fill my eyes. “Where are you?”

  “Eddie, Duane, and I are about ten miles inside the Homestead entrance to the Everglades,” he says. “I didn’t get your voice mail until we were already in Arcadia, and then I got a phone call from a guy named Noah who said he was on his way to Flamingo to find you. I didn’t know whether we should trust him or not, but we—” His voice breaks, and I can tell he’s crying.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I say. “I was angry and—”

  “We don’t have to talk about this now.” Dad’s voice is so kind that I start crying in earnest. “Hang tight, Cadie, we’re almost there.”

  “Come as fast as you can,” I say. “We’re going to need Uncle Eddie.”

  I wake in the backseat of the Cougar half an hour later to the whoosh of Jake brakes, and I’ve never been so happy to see Duane Imler’s tow truck in my whole life. Beside me Noah’s face is death-pale and cool to the touch, and I have to place my hand on his chest to make sure he’s still alive. When I feel the soft rise and fall of his breath and the slow thump of his heart, I am awash with relief.

  “Noah, wake up.” I give him a gentle shake. “Help is here.”

  “No hospitals, Cadie.” His words are sludgy as his eyes flutter open and then shut. “No hospitals, okay?”

  I climb out of the car and step into Dad’s arms. His embrace is the kind of fierce love I’ve been needing for the past four years, and I hug him back with all the strength I have left. “Oh, my sweet girl,” he says. “I’m so sorry I’ve done such a terrible job taking care of you and Danny since your mom—I love you, Cadie.”

  “I love you, too, Dad, and we have a lot to talk about,” I say. “But right now Noah needs Uncle Eddie. His arm is broken.” I gesture into the car at the makeshift bandage knotted around Noah’s upper arm. It’s crusted with blood and stiff with dried salt water. “And there’s a bullet in there somewhere.”

  Uncle Eddie joined the Navy after high school and spent ten years as a corpsman with the Marines. He may not have any medical credentials now, but everyone back home knows Eddie Wells is the man to see when you’ve caught your own hand with a fishing hook or your friend shoots you in the ass with a BB gun. He’ll know how to dig out a bullet and stitch up Noah’s wound. I’m not so confident about his ability to set a broken arm, but he pats my shoulder. “I’ve got this, kiddo.”

  As he and Dad examine Noah’s wound, Duane loads the U-Haul pickup onto his flatbed. When he’s finished, he gathers me up in his arms.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I don’t even deserve you.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “Does everyone—does everyone back home hate me?”

  “The Bucks are confused right now, Cadie,” Duane says. “They’re not blaming you, but they don’t understand what happened to their daughter. They want answers.”

  This story is not going to stay contained. The Bucks need closure. The family of Brian Patrick Clark needs to know what happened to him. Even Matt’s mother needs to know that the world is finally safe from her son. “I know.”

  Uncle Eddie comes over. “So the good news is that the bullet didn’t hit anything vital,” he says. “I’ve treated Noah for shock, but we really need to get somewhere I can take the bullet out and set the broken bone. It’s not something that should be done in the backseat of a car.”

  “The sun will be rising soon, too,” Dad says. “We don’t want to be explaining all this to park rangers before we have an explanation. We need to go.”

  To the outside observer, we’d probably seem like a weird procession driving out of Everglades National Park. Except at this hour, there’s no one around to see us. And if the desk clerk at the mom-and-pop motel just outside Homestead thinks it’s strange that my dad is renting a room at five in the morning, he doesn’t say so. It’s the kind of place that also rents by the week, so maybe the clerk’s seen his fair share of weird things.

  Uncle Eddie and Dad half carry, half walk Noah into the room and stretch him out on one of the beds.

  “You could sleep for a bit,” my dad says, and the other bed looks so inviting after days of sleeping on the ground. After … Matt. But it wouldn’t feel right sleeping while Noah is having a bullet dug out of his arm, and Dad and I need to talk.

  We go outside, to a pair of lawn chairs beside the door, and as the sun pushes its way up from the horizon—crowding out the darkness and leaving us in the light—I tell him everything.

  Chapter 19

  Freedom is ticking its way around the face of the old clock above the door—so close so close so close—when Jason Kendrick comes into the market. He gets a big dumb smile on his face as if he’s seeing me for the first time. I swear to God he’s a human goldfish.

  “Hello there, Sparkles.” He waggles his LEGO-block-man eyebrows in a way that’s probably always going to make me laugh. “What are the odds of me getting out of here with an illegal six-pack of beer?”

  “I guess it depends on how you feel about pretentious overpriced microbrews.” Since our grocery store was dying a slow death by Winn-Dixie, Dad decided to go green. He brought in prepackaged organic foods and locally grown meat and produce. He even put a couple of bistro-style tables on the sidewalk where weekend tourists like to sit and drink fair-trade coffee. Dad claims it’s business survival, but I think it’s just part of the evolution of Dan Wells.

  Jason, however, is not so evolved. He crinkles his nose. “If that’s all you’ve got.”

  “I’ll give you the family discount.”

  He grins, and even though he’s wearing his I-am-a-responsible-adult-with-a-job polo shirt and khakis that suggest he’s just come off his shift at Home Depot, there’s a chip in the corner of his front tooth that I’ve never seen before. I’m not even going to ask. “I always knew you wanted me.”

  “You figured me out,” I say, as he follows me over to the new beer cooler filled with brands I’d never known existed before we started stocking them. “I was only using your brother to get to you.”

  “Speaking of my brother, did you hear him and Gabrielle finally broke up?”

  In the space that follows I check my Justin barometer for signs of life, and there’s nothing more than a blip of sympathy. “I hadn’t. I’m sorry.”

  Jason shrugs as he picks up a six-pack of maple oat ale. “Do people actually drink this shit?”

  “Yep.”

  “Any
good?”

  “No idea.”

  “You think a girl might like it?”

  “Like, a girl who’s not a blow-up doll?”

  Jason fake-punches me on the shoulder but his ears have turned so pink that I resist the urge to continue teasing him. “A few of us are doing a campfire tonight at O’Leno,” he says. “Wanna join us?”

  It’s been a year since the last campfire party, but I haven’t been back to the state park. It’s still too fresh. My therapist says I shouldn’t see what happened that weekend as taking someone’s life but as saving my own. Except every single morning since that last campfire party, I wake up and have to rearrange the guilt to make room for happiness. Blame is lodged in my heart like grit in an oyster, and it feels like there’s nothing in the world that can turn it into a pearl.

  I don’t tell Jason any of this. I just tuck the memories back into the dark, tender part of my heart and give him the most authentic smile I can manage. “I wish I could.” That part is a lie and maybe he even knows it, but the next part is true. “We’re leaving tonight.”

  “Where you headed?”

  “Dad borrowed an old Airstream from a friend down in Tarpon Springs,” I tell him. “We’re going to spend the summer camping.”

  Jason’s face goes thoughtful. “Ready to get back on the horse, huh?”

  The therapist suggested we reclaim camping as a family. Replace some of the bad memories with good ones. Dad and I actually talk to each other these days, and Danny’s not calling himself Daniel Boone anymore. I kind of miss that. It was cute. But it’s nice to have a family that’s functioning again. “Yeah,” I say. “I think it’s going to be fun.”

  Dad is taking the next three months off work—leaving the shop in Rhea Chung’s capable hands while we’re away—so we can travel the whole United States. The plan is to start up the East Coast first. Visit Washington, DC, and New York City, and then follow I-90 across the country, stopping to see places like Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park. Maybe go to Disneyland to see how different it is from Disney World. Take the southern route home so we can ride mules in the Grand Canyon and spend a day or two in New Orleans. For weeks now Danny has been packing his suitcase—Wonder Woman is ready to go—and asking at bedtime if tomorrow is the day we go camping.

  Tonight is the tomorrow he’s been waiting for.

  “Have a good trip.” Jason shoulder-bumps me. “Send me a couple of postcards and don’t get knocked up.”

  I laugh and kiss his cheek. “I hope your girlfriend likes your fancy beer. Now get the hell out of here.”

  The bells on the front door jingle as he leaves, and I’m tucking my own ten-dollar bill into the register to pay for the beer when the bells go off again. “I told you to get the hell—”

  It’s not Jason.

  The tattoos still cover his arms—stars and mermaids and sailing ships—but his hair is longer now. Dark and curling out from beneath a tan-colored ball cap so battered the fabric is peeling away from the brim. If I didn’t recognize him, if I wasn’t completely sure, he could easily be mistaken for … someone else.

  But it is him. It’s Noah.

  Noah is here.

  I haven’t seen him since the Homestead police department, where FBI agents questioned us separately—the way they do on television—to see if our stories matched. Leaving Flamingo before calling the police, as it turns out, was a bad decision. It made us look suspicious, especially since Noah and I had the murder weapon, a cell phone filled with pictures of dead people, and Lindsey’s phone. So I had to tell the story again and again and again, always starting with Duane dropping me off at O’Leno and always ending in a seedy motel in Homestead. Every time answering questions designed to confuse me, make me change my story.

  They quizzed me on everything we did, every choice we made. And when they asked me if Noah and I had sexual intercourse, they made it sound shameful and wrong, when it was neither. I never wanted my first time to be a big deal, and now it’s forever part of a federal murder investigation. Every law enforcement agency in South Florida—and my dad—knows I lost my virginity in a Cassadaga cemetery.

  Finally, they let us go.

  I found out later it was because Susan MacNeal—Matt’s mother—told investigators that ever since Matt set the neighbor’s cat on fire when he was ten, she feared he was capable of murder. She shared her suspicion that Matt had a hand in his sister’s death and that she’d kept his disorder a secret because she feared for her own life. That she trusted her nephew more than she’d trusted her own son.

  Two days after, a team of divers found Matt’s body wedged between the roots of the mangroves—stashed for later in the crocodile’s hidey-hole—near the entrance to the marina at Flamingo. The size of his hands matched the strangulation marks around Noah’s neck, and the bullet wounds proved consistent with my story of self-defense.

  Seeing Noah now—standing just inside the door of the shop as if he’s scared to come any closer—dredges up the memories. Maybe that’s why I haven’t tried to contact him. And why I haven’t heard from him, either. Except Noah is here. I think it might be completely messed-up to feel this way after everything that happened, but I am so damn glad to see him.

  “Hey,” he says in that honey-and-gravel voice of his. It still has the ability to curl my toes. He offers me a tentative grin, and it’s like I have no control over my own mouth. I smile big. Hard. Happy.

  “Hi.”

  “I, um—I wasn’t sure if I should come, but—”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  Since the first time I met him, Noah makes me want to place my truths at his doorstep, instead of keeping them to myself. I’ve never believed in love at first sight, but I know that feeling this way about someone is pretty rare. It might be that our shared trauma is the only thing holding us together. Maybe my imagination has spent the past year spinning him up into someone he’s not. But there’s always the possibility that his doorstep is exactly where my truths belong.

  “Yeah?” he asks.

  I nod. “Where’s Molly?”

  “I told her she should probably wait in the truck.”

  “Let her in.”

  He pushes the door open and gives a whistle. Molly’s nails click on the wood floor as she runs into the shop. She leaps right up off the ground and licks the underside of my chin.

  “You know, I’ve had so many things I’ve wanted to talk about with you over the past year,” Noah says. “But I wouldn’t have predicted the first thing would be the dog.”

  After Flamingo, Duane dropped the U-Haul pickup in Arcadia. But when he called the lady who was keeping Molly, she said Noah had already arranged to come get her. I hoped he might stop in High Springs on his way home, but he never came. My therapist suggested Noah’s method of dealing might be to box up everything associated with the traumatic event and put it away. I got that. I did. But it still hurt that he never said good-bye. I push that aside to ask, “What would you have predicted?”

  “I don’t know.” Noah closes the distance from the door to where I’m standing, but doesn’t come as close as we’ve been. “I left Florida feeling pretty beat up. The physical aside, I was embarrassed that I didn’t see Matt clearly when my own father is exactly like him. I was useless to you in Flamingo. Helpless. You saved my life, and afterward I just felt completely … unworthy.”

  “If you’re going to feel embarrassed about anything, it should probably be for all the words that just came out of your mouth,” I say, and the corner of his mouth hitches up in a grin. “I saved you because it never occurred to me that there was any other choice. But here’s the thing … I would do it again if it meant keeping you in the same world as me, so spare me this unworthy crap. I care about you.”

  Noah reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. It’s back to blond now, my hair, and I wonder what he thinks about it. As his fingertips graze my skin, a shiver skims down my back. After all this time, he still has that effect. �
�It’s fucked-up that I’ve missed you, isn’t it?”

  “Absolutely,” I say, and he laughs in that low Noah way that’s been burned into my brain since the first time I heard it. “But I’ve missed you, too.”

  We are standing so close that a breeze could barely fit between us—and I have reason to believe I’m about to kiss him—when the bells go off once more and Rhea comes into the shop for her afternoon shift. “Sorry I’m late,” she says. “Traffic was crazy.”

  I step away from Noah, laughing, because there’s hardly ever traffic in High Springs. “I’m going to have to take that fifteen cents from your next paycheck,” I say, as she pulls me into a good-bye hug. “I’m sorry.”

  “Go home, silly girl,” she says. “And have a happy summer.”

  “You, too.”

  Noah and Molly follow me out of the shop onto the sidewalk outside. “Do you have time for a walk?”

  I still have to finish packing, cook dinner, and give Danny a bath, but I am officially on vacation so I guess there’s no rush. “Yep.” We head up Main Street toward the railroad tracks and the dueling hardware stores that sit across the street from each other. Beyond the tracks, the water tower declares this the City of High Springs. After spending so many years wanting to leave, I’ve finally made peace with this place. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stay, but I’m okay with it being where I’m from and where I can always come home.

  “How, um—you doing okay?” Noah’s question is casual, but I know what he’s really asking.

  “I don’t know.” I shrug. “I have nightmares every once in a while, and I’m seeing a therapist who has to remind me weekly that I am not the monster. And I know that, but it’s easy to forget.”

  Noah nods. “I understand.”

  “I knew you would.”

  “Lindsey’s parents say they don’t blame me,” I continue. “But sometimes I catch Mrs. Buck staring at me in church on Sunday, and I wonder if she’s thinking how unfair it is that her daughter is dead and I’m not. She probably is thinking that. I do all the time.”