And Now She's Gone

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  She faked a startle. “We’re supposed to be Airbnb-ing with you and Dre. We’re the Miyamis. Hi.” She stuck out her hand. “Sorry we got here late—traffic.”

  Big Man didn’t take her hand, just glared at her.

  “I know, we should’ve been here hours ago.” Nick chuckled, then moved forward to enter the cabin.

  “Where you think you going?” Big Man challenged.

  “My bad, Eric. We’re just a little tired—”

  “I’m not Eric,” Big Man growled, “and I’m not expecting no guests.”

  “There must be a misunderstanding,” Nick said.

  “Sir,” Gray said, now squeezing her knees together, “mind if I use the restroom? I’ve been holding it—I hate public restrooms. They scare me, actually, and—”

  “Let me check.” Nick rustled around in his knapsack. “The reservation’s in here—”

  “Who cares, babe?” Gray said, still pee dancing. To Big Man: “I really need to go.”

  “Yeah, whatever, go. Down the hall.” Big Man nodded behind him.

  “Oh, wait,” Nick said. “I have an email with the reservation.”

  As Nick fumbled around on his phone, Gray quickstepped past the ancient television set, which was displaying a scene with a bottle blonde spanking a cop handcuffed to the bumper of a squad car. She glanced at the faded green couch and the beaten bookshelves sagging beneath the weight of a trillion DVDs and videocassettes. A bag of Fritos, dead blunts, and a filled ashtray on the coffee table explained Big Man’s perfume—even with the pitched ceiling, she was getting a contact high simply by hurrying through the living room.

  No porno movie played in the bathroom. But the thought of putting any bare part of herself near any spot Big Man had placed his bare parts made Gray’s bladder shrivel, making the true need to relieve herself a distant memory.

  There was nothing remarkable in the green-tiled room. There was a framed, yellowing picture of the Palm Springs tram hanging above a snow-covered mountain. There was a pine-tree-shaped cake of soap that hadn’t melted and looked as new on this day as it had the day the Carpenters purchased it from J. J. Newberry after Jimmy Carter’s presidential inauguration.

  But there was …

  “That,” Gray whispered.

  That was a box of L’Oréal hair color. Black Sapphire, like the box in Isabel’s condo. Big Man had a lot of hair, but not on his head.

  She lifted the lid on the clothes hamper.

  A bloody towel. A bloody white shirt.

  She gasped.

  The hamper’s top dropped.

  She froze.

  Waited … Wondered … Whose blood—

  No pounding fist on the door.

  Gray flushed the toilet, ran the tap, then flicked water on the perfect bar of soap. She opened the window—just an inch, just enough to open later. Back in the hallway, she glanced at the ceiling in search of a door that led to an attic, an attic where a woman could hide—or be hidden.

  Nothing.

  She looked down at the hardwood floor, for a rug that bumped up or sat crooked and hid the entryway for a basement.

  There were no tumbled balls of hair. No chew toys. No dog smells. There were no random bits of kibble, nor was there an empty water bowl in a corner.

  Back at the front door, Big Man and Nick were still talking, going on now about the Dodgers’ chances of making it to the World Series.

  Gray peeked into the bedroom, hoping to spot the Mary Ann with the Vogue cheekbones in bed with a book of crossword puzzles on her lap. There was no Mary Ann—just a fuchsia and black Nike duffel bag in the corner of the room and a queen-size bed with linens so funky she could smell them from the doorway.

  Smiling, she strolled back to the living room. “Thank you so much, kind sir. I was three minutes away from drowning.”

  Big Man said, “No problem.”

  Nick grinned at her. “We figured it out. This is 3871, not 3811 Pine Cone Drive.”

  Gray gasped. “I am so sorry, sir.”

  Big Man flicked his big paw. “These roads get twisty as fuck up here, and there ain’t no lights nowhere.”

  Back in the Yukon, Nick took off his Buddy Holly glasses. “See anything?”

  Gray took out a bottle of hand sanitizer and squeezed a pool in the middle of her palm. “A box of hair coloring—Black Sapphire, like the box back at Isabel’s. There was a woman’s gym bag in the bedroom, and … there’s a bloody towel and shirt in the laundry hamper.”

  Nick lifted his eyebrows. “Shaving accident?”

  “He’d have no head if he’d done that. What about you?”

  “His name’s Bobby and he has a dog paw tat right here.” Nick pointed to his shoulder.

  “A dog lover?”

  “He’s a Blood. You should be brushing up on your gang lore.”

  “One thing at a time.” She paused, then added, “Why the hell is church-girl Tea keeping company with a Blood?”

  “Guess you need to find that out. Shall we stay and see what he does?” Nick was already adjusting his seat to “Sleep.”

  As Nick slept, that television light in the cabin never dimmed and Bobby’s shadow didn’t move again. She thought about Sunday’s threatening text messages and her life with Sean Dixon. She thought of her succulent garden and her red Jaguar, her subscriptions to Vanity Fair and Glamour. Had Sean stacked them on the coffee table for her eventual return? Had he sold her car? Before she’d thrown away her iPhone, he’d left pleading voice mail messages begging her to come back home. He’d forgiven her, he’d said, and he chalked it up to both of them being exhausted and taking out their anger and stress in different ways.

  Sean’s way of dealing with stress and anger usually left her bleeding.

  Like the time he’d pushed her down on the second-story deck off their bedroom.

  Or the time he’d punched her in the head with one hand while he kept his other hand tight around the steering wheel.

  Gray would never forget the time he shoved her so hard that she crashed through the kitchen glass door. That had been a barn burner.

  She had come out of their relationship with scars, chipped bones, a spooked spirit, and hearing that sometimes dimmed. More than that, she’d had to forsake her hard-earned name, given to her by a wonderful, infertile couple who’d loved her enough to adopt her.

  And now the laparoscopic wound closest to her belly button felt like a fish tugging on a baited line—the Percocet was wearing off. She thought of waking Nick so that she could pop a pill and take a quick nap. And that need—to take something to dull the pain—was slinking back into her life. It was smiling at her, showing its teeth and tail, both edged with the softest, gunpowder-colored razor blades. She had ibuprofen and Tylenol with codeine in her bag. But nothing dulled pain, real or imagined, like Percocet. Full of good intentions with give-no-fucks results. She was on the clock, though, and she needed to care, and the pain wasn’t even pain yet. Just a fish tugging on a line.

  And she battled like this—there’s pain, no pain, there’s pain, no—until she glimpsed frost on the evergreens. Soon, those branches came alive with redheaded birds and chubby squirrels. God gave her the colors of the forest to wonder at from her foxhole, and sunlight beat against the windshield as it beamed purple-gold across the forest.

  38

  It was 6:20 in the morning when Bobby shuffled out of the house. Now wearing red jeans, a white sweatshirt, and a red L.A. Clippers baseball cap, he tromped over to the black truck with its gigantic tires, metal bar, and loud engine that went bup-bup-bup.

  Just like Mrs. Tompkins had described.

  This was the truck!

  Gray elbowed her sleeping beauty. “He’s leaving.”

  Nick sat up like a spark, and his eyes immediately found their target.

  The brake lights on the truck brightened and that engine growled as the truck backed out of the driveway and then zoomed down the road.

  Gray and Nick hopped out of the Yukon and rushe
d to the bathroom window she’d cracked. Nick easily lifted the sash, and she climbed through with the grace of a penguin on land. She landed on the wet sink top and grimaced at the slick wetness on her palms before knocking over a can of shave cream.

  Nick shushed her, then slipped through the same window as gracefully as every graceful creature, land and sea.

  She pointed to the hamper, and then to the box of hair dye on the sink counter.

  Nick lifted the hamper lid, frowned, then motioned that they move on.

  Golden light danced around the living room, and more dignified viewing now played on the television—an infomercial for a handheld pet hair vacuum. The bedroom was still dark, and that funk still hung in the air, and the comforter and sheets looked as rumpled as they had before.

  Gray turned on her phone’s flashlight and shined it around the room. The pink and black Nike bag no longer sat in the corner. It was gone.

  Nick pulled open the dresser drawers.

  Empty.

  Gray searched the closet and found a box marked “Ornaments.” She opened the flaps and found Christmas bulbs the colors of hard candy. She pawed through the bulbs until she reached the bottom.

  A thick manila envelope.

  “Found something,” she whispered.

  Tires crunched the gravel driveway.

  Gray and Nick stopped moving.

  Bobby?

  Nick reached to his waistband and kept his fingers close to the Beretta.

  Those tires kept crunching gravel, and then those tires skipped and screeched against the asphalt and that car’s engine rumbled and the sound grew fainter … fainter …

  Not Bobby.

  Gray pulled out the manila envelope from the ornaments box.

  Nick stood guard at the door. “Hurry up, yeah?”

  Gray pulled out a Social Security card for Elyse Lorraine Miller. A birth certificate. A diploma from the public College of Southern Nevada, conferred to Elyse Lorraine Miller. College transcripts—from English Composition to Accounting Practices. As and Bs and a C in Statistics. The final document was a résumé—Elyse had worked at the U.S. Postal Service for five years. Nothing after that.

  “Maybe she married rich and stopped working,” Nick said.

  “Or maybe she got married and wasn’t allowed to work,” Gray countered.

  “I knew a woman in that situation. That it?”

  Gray peered into the envelope. “Yep.” Then she took pictures of each document.

  Tires crunched against the gravel again.

  Gray and Nick froze again.

  This time the tires didn’t crunch back to the road. This time the engine idled, and that idle sounded familiar. Bup-bup-bup-bup-bup.

  Gray and Nick gawked at each other.

  She shoved the papers back into the envelope and the envelope back into the box. After setting the box back into the closet, she followed Nick to the bathroom. She repeated her penguin-on-land routine and clambered out the window just as Bobby opened the front door. She flung herself to the thick carpet of cedar needles, ignoring the sting from landing on pinecones.

  Nick slipped through the window and quietly brought down the sash. “You okay?”

  She gave a thumbs-up.

  They took the long way back to the Yukon and kept their eyes on the ground, in search of newly dug piles of dirt and needles. They hiked through swarms of early morning gnats and towering pines, passing the backyards of other cabins, now alive with the aromas of bacon, toast, and laundry soap. Nick took Gray’s hand and they walked longer than they needed, and their pulses matched, if only for two beats or three. Normal. Alone. Adam and Eve on the sixth day.

  At a pine tree, Nick stopped in his step.

  Gray looked back at him.

  They inched toward each other until they stood together with her head at his chin. Being this close to him and being this high up in the mountains made her dizzy.

  There was peace here.

  Nick’s gray eyes sparkled and caught glints of sunlight, and that light danced in her chest. His hands cupped her cheeks and he whispered, “Happy Hump Day.”

  “Happy Hump Day.”

  He bent toward her.

  She lifted her head.

  But then he dropped his head and turned away from her.

  Her heart dipped.

  He whispered, “I’m … We’re … I want to, but…”

  Her love for him moved through her body like butterflies dancing in new sunlight.

  He wasn’t ready.

  Was she?

  39

  Three hours later, after gobbling Grand Slams and chasing her antibiotic with slurps of coffee at an Indian casino Denny’s, Gray led Nick into Isabel Lincoln’s dark condo. The air was still and hot and the lights no longer worked. The hum of the refrigerator was no longer a sound to envy, since it no longer hummed.

  Gray wandered the living room. “Ian probably called the power company.”

  Nick opened the fridge. “Still cold. So it probably just happened.”

  Gray returned to the kitchen and to the breakfast counter. She pointed to that name—Elyse Miller—on the Coach sale postcard.

  Nick asked, “But who the hell is she?”

  “Don’t know,” Gray said, “but she was married or not married to this Omar guy, who was found dead in the desert, and—shit.”

  She pointed to the front door. “Mrs. Tompkins told me that the cops came knocking on her door back in June. They asked her about someone named Lisa.”

  “Maybe they asked her about ‘Elyse.’”

  Gray started to respond, but her phone rang. “Oh, look,” she said, with fake cheer. “Tea Christopher, also known as Grifter Number One, is calling.” Gray answered. “Tea, how are you?”

  “Okay.” Just in that one word. The young woman sounded winded. Winded and hurried. Winded, hurried, and harried. “Are you around to talk?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “Now.”

  “I’m about to go into a meeting. How about later this afternoon? Say … three thirty?” Gray suggested Post & Beam, a soul food restaurant down the hill from Isabel’s condo, then ended the call. “I need to change. I stink.”

  Nick glanced at his watch. “You have time for that?”

  She groaned. “No. But I can’t stand myself.”

  “You can…” He blushed, then chewed his bottom lip.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “I can what?”

  “Shower at my place. I don’t … You can … I…”

  She laughed. “I would take you up on that, but I don’t have a change of—”

  “You do. Still. In your drawer.”

  Her drawer—third one on the left side of the dresser at his house in Playa del Rey. There, the bare walls were painted white and the teakwood floors were bare. Nick had bought a red suede couch and an armchair since her last visit, and it was the only living room furniture he’d owned in the ten years he’d lived there. But he had a custom bed with high-thread-count sheets and a view of the Pacific Ocean. He’d let her sleep there on her first nights while he had bunked in the guest room.

  Gray now stared at that bed—so comfortable that she had sweated while sleeping.

  Dressed and fresh in her left-behind pair of jeans and gray T-shirt, she joined Nick out on the deck. She wrapped her arm through his as he sipped from a heavy glass of bourbon. Together, they stared out at the ocean, at foamy waves breaking against the shore. The mist felt good. His arm felt better.

  “Why…” Nick sighed, then said, “Why are you here?”

  She tilted her head to look at him, then found the ocean again. “Uhh … cuz I’m meeting Tea and needed a shower since I smelled like old Cheetos and—”

  “No. I mean … I could’ve relocated you to Paris or Hawaii, but you chose L.A. Why?”

  Because you’re here. But she couldn’t say that … could she?

  “Well…” She took a deep breath, then slowly released it. “You’re the only family I have, you know? The o
nly person who knows who I was, who my parents were, and … I know that … you care about me, and you still would care if I were in Paris but…” She almost smiled. “I can grow safely here. Don’t go and get a big head. Well, a bigger head.”

  Nick didn’t speak.

  Her cheer died. Had she said too much?

  “I need to head back,” she said, her face suddenly warm.

  He drained his glass, straightened and stretched. “Drive one of the trucks.”

  “‘kay,” Her skin tingled as she remembered their walk in the forest. She thought about standing on tippy toes now to kiss him, about leading him past that barren living room and to the best bed in the world.

  But she waited a second too long, and he turned on his heel and went back inside, where he plunked the empty whiskey glass on the fireplace mantel.

  In silence, he drove her back to Rader Consulting and pulled behind her silver Camry. “Get your stuff out of the Toyota. I may disappear the car for a while.”

  “You know I’m gonna get this bitch, right?”

  He brushed her cheek with his knuckle. “She has no idea that somebody just as fucked up is chasing her down.”

  “Just as?”

  “More fucked up.”

  “I always try to be number one in everything.”

  He walked with her to a parked company Yukon and tossed her the key. “You should switch up cars more regularly. People know the woman in the silver Camry.”

  “Got it.” She held up her bag of Hawaiian souvenirs. “Mahalo.”

  “Bring me a biscuit,” he said, “but none of that butter, though. That shit’s weird.”

  “You could come over later and retrieve them.”

  “I could.” Nick squinted at the sun, which was starting its color descent to late afternoon dandelion. In that light, he looked tired, creased, the middle-aged man who had never stopped moving, who kept his brain filled with tasks and changes, plans and escape routes—not for him but for his clients who needed guides from this world to the next. Darkness that could never be navigated—by Gray or anyone—spilled from him, and she would bring him biscuits and the weird honey butter just to make him smile, just to prick a hole in him and see light, even for a second.