by Anna Bailey
“I don’t…” Noah sinks his teeth into his lip. “Are you even gay?”
“What?”
“Maybe you want to hang around teenage girls so it’s easier for you if… if nobody suspects you because they think you’re gay. Was I just a convenient alibi?”
“Blake.” Rat sounds calm, but in that way people do when they’ve run out of anything else to say. “I would like you to leave.”
Noah just stares at him, and Rat crosses his arms and cocks his head to one side.
“Am I speaking Romanian? I said get out of here, go on. Before I say something that really hurts your feelings.”
THEN
Is it true, Dolly? What that boy told me, is it true? You good-for-nothing little slut—
Jude looks at his mother, who is asleep now, dried patches of blood matting her hair, and he remembers his father shouting that at her, the last night in March, when there was still snow on the ground. He probably wasn’t supposed to hear it, since it was after lights out, and their parents tended to forget about their children then. There had been a muffled thud, the sound of many small things clattering to the floor, the slap of leather against bare skin, followed by a dull groan that he recognized as his mother’s, because this was not the first time he’d heard it.
“You stupid, dumb bitch, Dolly. You really thought you could keep that from me?”
His father sounded like a big wolf panting, and Jude imagined froth and bloody spit swinging from his lips.
“Sam, I never, I swear—”
“For Christ’s sake, don’t look at me like that! You make me feel like shit when you look at me like that. Get up! You only ever make me feel like shit, Dolly.”
There was a creak on the floorboard just outside Jude’s door and he sat up. The door opened and a thin strip of light filtered in from the landing, followed closely by Abigail.
“Jude? Jude, are you awake?”
He didn’t dare switch on the lamp in case his father saw, but he felt Abigail’s weight on the end of his mattress.
“I’m awake.”
“He’s belting her. Can you hear it?”
Jude wondered why she’d come—surely not just to tell him that. It occurs to him now that maybe she felt guilty. Perhaps she knew it was about her.
“Are you scared?”
“No,” he lied.
“I’m scared,” she said, and he believed her. “I keep thinking it’s going to happen again. Like, he’s just going to lose it again, you know?”
Jude felt his leg twitch under the covers. Yes, he said, he did know.
In the morning, their mother sat stiffly at the table. There was a big yellow-gray bruise on her jaw, and she poured orange juice over her cereal instead of milk. The Blake children looked at one another and knew—in the unspoken way that siblings simply know sometimes—that each of them felt this was the logical conclusion to their mother’s life: that their father would finally drive her crazy. Jude knew, too, that he was probably the only one who cared if this happened or not.
Later, however, after Noah and Samuel had left for work, and Jude was waiting for his sister in the hallway, trying not to look at the big gemstone cross sparkling in the spring sunlight, he heard Abigail with their mother in the kitchen.
“Mom, I really need to talk to you about something.”
“Not now, sweetheart.”
He heard the clink of cutlery as the breakfast things were cleared away.
“I know, Mom, but…”
They spoke too low for him to make out the rest, but then he heard his mother cry out, and something smashed on the floor. A moment later, Abigail came striding into the hallway, her cheek smarting red.
“She smacked you?”
His sister slung her school backpack onto her shoulder and wrenched the front door open.
“Why did she do that? What did you want to talk to her about?”
“Let’s just go.” Abigail wiped her face on her sleeve. “I’ll figure it out myself.”
37
NOW
Jerry Maddox has his head in his hands when the phone on the desk rings. Lord, what a night. Hunter and that stupid girl sneaking in here, like this was all just some game and they were playing detective. What is it going to take, Jerry thinks, for his son to realize what’s at stake? It’s not often that he raises his hand to the boy. You kick a dog too often and one day it’ll turn around and bite you, that’s what Jerry’s father used to say, but last night, when he saw Hunter standing by the open drawer, he’d panicked.
Abigail Blake’s ChapStick is still there. He’s checked. It should never have been there in the first place, he knows that now. He should have thrown it away.
The phone is still ringing, and he’s half tempted to rip the cord out and throw the damn thing down the stairs. But then what? All the guys in the saw room would see, and how would that look? Jerry’s lost it, they’d say, and he needs to appear in control, now more than ever.
“Maddox Lumber,” he answers, kneading his eyes. “Jerry Maddox speaking.”
“Jerry, glad I caught you,” says Pastor Lewis, with far too much energy for a Monday morning. “You all right? You sound a little tired there.”
“It’s nothing. Everything going okay?”
“Well, that’s just it, Jerry. We have a situation on our hands.”
He listens to the pastor reel off details about security alarms, the price of deep cleaning a carpet, and something to do with an earring they found on the floor. Jerry leans on his elbow and tries not to zone out. What it all boils down to, eventually, is that there will be a special service tonight at the church. Why Ed Lewis couldn’t have just come out and said that first is beyond him, but then the man does seem to enjoy the sound of his own voice.
“We are about the Lord’s work, Jerry. This is going to be a big one. I need to know I can count on your support.”
Jerry sighs without meaning to. “You’ve got it, Ed.”
“I hope you’re taking this seriously. Something has to be done, just like with Miguel Alvarez. Every breach of trust shall come before God.” The pastor is using his church voice, loud and righteous and just a bit manic. “I helped you out with Alvarez, Jerry. It’s a simple case of tit for tat.”
Jerry drags a hand down his face. Alvarez is the last thing he wants to think about now. First Miguel’s snooping little daughter and now Ed Lewis—why can’t people just leave things in the past where they belong?
“There is something unholy among us,” the pastor continues. “It’s time to put an end to this whole mess. People in this town are frightened, as they should be. But they look up to you as much as me, Jerry. You’re their boss, their landlord, you’ve got influence, and that’s what I’m going to need tonight… Say, Jerry, are you still there? What’s the matter with you today?”
Jerry’s eyes travel to the desk drawer once again. It would probably be wise if Ed didn’t find out about the ChapStick just yet. Better do as he says for now. After all, he thinks, you’ll want him on your side if all this comes out.
* * *
Emma rolls down her sleeve to cover the bruising on her wrist. It’s only faint, but she doesn’t want anyone to catch sight of it as she walks through town. A part of her hopes that if she covers it up she can forget it’s there: the finger marks from where Hunter’s father squeezed like he wanted to snap her. She’d never been touched by a man like that before. A gesture with so much violence in it, the implication that he could do worse, if he felt so inclined. Even now it makes her hands unsteady as she reaches for the door of the Aurora diner.
“Emma.” Chrissy Dukes smiles at her, as the bell over the door chimes. “Still off school, huh? Lucky you.”
Emma makes a noncommittal sound, glancing about, but it’s a Monday morning and so far she is the only customer. “Is Noah here?”
“Actually, he called in sick. He does that sometimes, you know, when he doesn’t want us to see…” Chrissy taps the side of her face where, ju
st the other day, Noah had been badly grazed. “I don’t like to bug him about it.”
Emma thinks she looks genuinely sad, and she wonders if Noah has any idea that there is somebody here who cares about him.
The bell over the door chimes again, and this time it’s Hunter. He nods at Chrissy.
“Don’t any of you go to school anymore?” she says.
“Got more important stuff to do, haven’t I?” Hunter winks, and she rolls her eyes.
Emma does not invite him to sit at her usual table—the one by the window, in full view of her mother at the clinic across the street—but slides into a booth near the back, its tall seats concealing them from the counter.
“She has a point, though,” Emma says. “How come you’re not in class?”
Hunter shrugs. “I was, but then your text said you needed to talk.”
“Yeah, but I meant later. You didn’t have to come now.”
“Maybe I was worried about you. You know, after last night.”
Emma rubs her wrist through her sweater. “I’m fine.”
“It was my fault. We shouldn’t have gone there. I just figured my dad was always so secretive about his office, maybe you’d find something there.”
“You found something.”
Hunter gives a weak laugh. “Yeah, don’t I know it.”
“Were you okay? I just ran—I didn’t know if you were following or…” She notices for the first time that he isn’t sitting at quite the right angle. “Did he hurt you?”
Hunter grunts and lifts up the hem of his varsity basketball hoodie to reveal a smattering of red that will likely bruise. Jerry Maddox is no Samuel Blake—this isn’t something that’s going to put him in the hospital—but Emma winces all the same.
“Jeez, Hunter, I’m so sorry.”
“Whatever. Better he does it to me than you, right?”
Better he does it to no one. She wants to reach across the table and place her hands on him. Abigail said that’s what they used to do at church sometimes, when somebody needed to imbibe the strength of the whole congregation. I want to put my bruises on your bruises, she thinks. She imagines his skin would feel warm.
“So, what was it you needed to talk about?”
“Oh, I…” She wasn’t expecting him to show up with these battle wounds, this vivid reminder that he’d put himself in harm’s way for her. “It’s nothing.”
“Come on, what’s up?”
She won’t mention the gun, she decides. Not yet. It wouldn’t be fair to accuse him of something right after he’s taken a beating for her. Besides, even if he did steal Rat’s gun, that doesn’t mean he fired it. He wouldn’t be helping me if he had. Right?
“Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way,” she says instead. “Like, maybe we should be focusing on what Abi did, rather than what somebody else did to her.”
“Meaning what? Why would my dad have her ChapStick if he hadn’t taken it from her? It’s all messed up, man.”
“I agree, but that probably won’t be enough for the sheriff. I mean, she might just have dropped it, and he might have picked it up. We need something more convincing.” She rubs at her wrist. “We should stick to Abi, figure out what her last movements were. Maybe that’ll help. What happened with you two after you went into the woods? You gave her some coke, and then what?”
Hunter scratches the back of his hand with one finger. “I don’t know, I was pretty high. At some point I guess we split up. I went home and watched the end of the Buffaloes game.”
“So you have no idea where she might have gone afterward?”
“She always liked being up at the Tall Bones. Maybe she just stayed there. She used to say it was the skeleton of some big old creature, that before there were ever people in the forest, it was full of—”
“Giant animals. Yeah.” Emma smiles. “She used to say that to me too. Gains said they’ve combed that whole area, but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to look again. I mean, if we know we’re looking for something to do with your dad, it puts us ahead of the police, at least.”
Hunter scratches his hand a little harder. “You want me to come with you? More likely to find something if there’s two of us looking.”
“You really want to do that?”
For a moment she thinks of Rat, how he’d smashed a whiskey bottle and said, Stay out of the woods, drăgută, just so he could keep his own secrets. But Hunter wants to help—hell, he’s actually offering, even though it would be just as easy for him to turn his nose up at her the way the other boys in town do. It seems strange now that she once thought he was just the same.
“Sure,” he says. “We’re a team.” He leans his elbows on the table and smiles at her.
The gun. You need to ask him about the gun. But she likes the way they’re pressing their bruises together—the same shared bruise of Abigail’s absence. Emma is only seventeen, after all, and she has never known a boy to smile at her the way Hunter Maddox is smiling at her now.
THEN
“Mom, I really need to talk to you about something.”
Dolly remembers her daughter standing in the kitchen, that first morning in April, and she thought Abigail was wearing more makeup than usual. It didn’t occur to her then that she might have been trying to mask something.
“Not now, sweetheart.” The imprint of Samuel’s belt on Dolly’s back still stung, and the bruise on her jaw was making her whole face ache. Everything, from the morning light to the clink of the breakfast crockery, only made it worse.
“I know, Mom, but…” Abigail lowered her voice, casting a wary glance toward the hallway as she leaned across the table. “Mom, can you take me to the clinic?”
Dolly paused, a stack of dirty bowls in her hands, a clump of soggy cereal nudging up against her thumb. “The clinic? What do you need to go there for?”
“I need…” Abigail wouldn’t look her in the eye. “I think I have to…”
“Abi, what’s the matter?”
She remembers how she could actually see the color leaving her daughter’s face. The morning-after pill, she’d said. And Dolly had smacked her.
She thinks now that it was the aftermath of her husband’s rage that made her do it. The morning-after what? While Dolly was being beaten, her little girl was sneaking out and getting herself into trouble. Is that what this was? Dolly couldn’t take it. Stupid, stupid child. Samuel would never forgive her if he found out: he was weird about sex, which meant that God was weird about sex, which made it everyone’s problem. Samuel wouldn’t beat Abigail, not his precious Abi, but Dolly on the other hand… He would say the child was her responsibility, and he would be right. But how could Abigail have been so thoughtless? Did she really care so little about what happened to her mother?
Dolly had watched her daughter hurry out into the hallway where Jude was waiting. She didn’t hear what they said to one another, could barely concentrate on anything except the way her hand was smarting suddenly. It would take two cigarettes for her to forget about the pain, and another to soothe her anger at her daughter, and while she was smoking, Dolly thought, This must be how Samuel feels all the time.
Months later, she couldn’t tell the police that she’d hit her own daughter. Couldn’t stomach the idea of people knowing she was in any way like her husband, so Sheriff Gains never knew about the pill either.
That will be the thing that stays with her down the years. The terrible thing. If Dolly had only said something, if she had asked Abigail instead of wallowing in her own self-pity, everything might have been different.
38
THEN
By the end of April, it is warm enough for the students of Whistling Ridge High School to sit outside during their lunch period. It is on one of these afternoons, with her legs swinging over the edge of the bleachers, a notebook in her lap, that Hunter finds Abigail.
“You writing something?” he says, and she knows it’s him before he’s even spoken—knows him by the looming breadth of his shadow and
the locker-room stink of him.
Emma says it’s best just to ignore boys like him, but Emma is home sick today, and Abigail has two too many brothers to be afraid of boys, so she raises her hand and flips him off.
Hunter clicks his tongue and laughs. “That wasn’t very friendly. I thought you were a nice little church girl.”
Don’t try and be cool with me, she thinks. We go to the same church. Everybody round here does. But she is suddenly very aware of the dewy red patches on her knees, and she tries to reposition her notebook to cover them. The movement must catch Hunter’s eye, and he leans over and swipes the book out of her hands.
“Hey!”
“What are you writing here? A goddamn novel? Let’s have a read of this Pulitzer Prize shit.”
He starts flipping through the pages, and Abigail feels like she’s trying to scream in a dream, but instead of a shriek that conveys the full depth of her terror, she’s waking up to find herself rasping alone in the dark. “Give it back. Give it back now.”
But he has found the page. She knows he has because she can hear his breathing, and his eyes dart back and forth as though he’s rereading those lines over and over, just as she does.
Give it back, she begs silently, but she knows it’s no good. He’s already seen it. He already knows. The realization of what that means makes her eyes hot and wet. He’s going to tell everyone what I wrote, she thinks, and then he’s going to tell them I cried.
It’s been hard, this whole business of lying. She’s been carrying it around with her like a weight, a heaviness hanging between her hips, or else a chain dragging behind her foot. A lie like this is nothing but a burden, and she doesn’t want to give it to anyone else, least of all someone she loves. But she knows she won’t be able to hide it forever. She wants to cry because, in its own way, it is a relief that now someone else knows. Even if that someone is Hunter Maddox.