by Tim Weaver
How you doing today, Bek?
That was the other thing she’d started to do.
Imagine conversations with him.
Morning, Steve.
He was working under the hood, his sleeves rolled up, a New York Mets baseball cap on his head. He always wore the same cap; he wore it in the picture on the keyring too. He’d grown a beard since they’d last talked, and Rebekah thought how good it looked on him. He was handsome, like his picture, but sometimes – outside the stillness of the photograph – it was hard to see just how handsome because he could come across as tough, made you work for that smile of his, and a lot of people wouldn’t have had the patience.
But Rebekah did.
She’d put in the hard yards with Steve already and so, whenever she came back to the gas station, he would smile at her straight off the bat, and he would mean it, and when they talked, he was open and honest with her because, over time, she’d gained his trust.
A crow squawked.
Sometimes, like now, Rebekah would catch herself embedded in the fantasy. She’d become aware of how ridiculous it was for a grown woman to build an imaginary life for a man she’d never known. Other times, she ran away with it, mapping out every elaborate detail of Steve’s life, because the alternative was standing in a gas station, surrounded by nothing but corrosion and weeds.
I was thinking about something, she said.
Steve didn’t look up, just carried on with what he was doing. Thinking, huh? he replied, teeth pressed together in a grimace as he levered something out of the engine. That ain’t such a good idea.
Rebekah smiled.
I was thinking about that keyring of yours.
He looked at her now.
How come you never had any kids, Steve?
He paused for a moment, as if frozen in time, then slid out from under the hood. Well, he said, putting down a wrench, and letting out a long breath. There was sadness in his expression now, but Rebekah could tell he was trying to suppress it. He didn’t like becoming emotional: it was why he was always rubbing his face, using his hand to disguise his mouth and eyes.
You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.
No, it’s not that … He shrugged. I guess it’s just, it’s a sad story.
Rebekah nodded. She’d thought it would be.
Me and April – that’s my wife – we tried for a long time. Boy, did we ever try. That smile again, but marked with pain this time. We both came from big families, and kids – that was all we wanted. I mean, we started when we were just kids ourselves. I was twenty-three, April was twenty-one, and we never had any doubt that it would happen. We were young, healthy, we were at it all the time – it just seemed impossible that it wouldn’t happen. But a year went by, then two. In the third year, we finally went to see a doctor about it. He rubbed at his mouth again and pulled the peak of the cap down, so that the sun didn’t show his eyes. You ever heard of endometriosis?
Rebekah felt a twist in her guts. Yes.
That’s what April had. Makes it hard to get pregnant. Damn near impossible if you’ve got it bad, and April had it bad. She used to have these terrible monthlies. It would hurt when we were, you know … having sex. All the warning signs were there, but we knew nothing about it. Like I said, we were just stupid kids. Back then, the world was so simple. You had sex without protection, you got pregnant. Nine months later, you had a little one in your arms, this perfect little thing that was everything you ever wanted in life. He paused, swallowing down the break in his voice, trying to pretend it had never been there. They said we could do IVF. He shrugged again. They said that was a way around it, but where were we gonna come up with seventeen grand from? I was a mechanic, April was a school teacher. Our parents were dirt poor. We had nothing. We didn’t have no savings. When we got married, we knew we’d never be rich, but we didn’t care because we loved each other. You think love is all that matters at the start. I mean, April and me, we loved each other to the ends of the earth. You ain’t ever seen a love like ours, Bek. And our kids, we would have loved them even more. So much. I’d have been there at Little League with my boy and playing dress-up in the yard with my girl, and I would have breathed in every second of it. But then your whole life comes crashing down around you and you realize something. “Love conquers all”, that’s just a Hallmark card. It’s Santa Claus. It’s a thing people say when –’
The nozzle clunked.
Rebekah was back in the gas station. A gentle wind passed across the forecourt, rocking the abandoned Explorer on its axle, and she realized she had tears in her eyes. Feeling foolish, she wiped them away and looked at the readout on the pump: $61.44.
As she put the nozzle back, she wondered what her father would make of her stealing sixty bucks’ worth of gas in this way. There were two pumps and they both worked, but she was keeping to the same one for now, eking out what was left in it as best she could. She figured her dad would understand. He’d want her to survive, for her to have the meagre sense of freedom that the car had brought her. I’m more concerned about you talking to imaginary people, sweetheart.
Her gaze slowly drifted back to the Explorer and Steve was back under the hood.
I’m sorry, Bek, he said. I got a bit heavy there.
He wouldn’t look at her.
He was embarrassed.
It’s okay, Steve. I don’t blame you.
It got bad, that’s all. When we discovered we couldn’t have kids, April and me, we got a little crazy. We lost our minds there for a while. Like, we’d be really fucking nasty to people who had kids. We were even nastier to the ones we didn’t think deserved to have them. Sometimes … He paused, finally looking up at her, his cap and the hood of the Explorer keeping most of his face in shadow. But Rebekah could see enough. What was coming was bad. Shit, I can barely even admit to this, but sometimes we saw these babies, saw the moms and dads they’d been lumped with, and we thought, We could give them a better life. We could take them now and give them everything they deserve.
His gaze stayed on her.
What? Rebekah said.
Nothing.
No, what? Tell me. Please.
It’s nothing, Steve said, just a dumb idea. He stopped again, and then pulled up the peak on his cap so Rebekah could see his eyes. There were tears in them. I’m just worried about you, Bek, that’s all. Cos maybe the way me and April were thinking – y’know, these crazy thoughts about snatching a kid, about creating a new life for them away from parents who didn’t deserve them and couldn’t handle them – maybe that’s what Noella thinks about your girls.
She snapped back to the forecourt.
‘No,’ she said quietly, and then again more forcefully. She screwed the cap back on and checked the plastic wrap was still secure over the passenger door and window frame, then slid in at the wheel of the Jeep. Her eyes strayed back to the Ford Explorer. It was empty. Dusty. Forgotten. It was just a dumb fantasy. Steve wasn’t real. None of it was real.
Except you made it real.
He only thinks what you feel.
But she didn’t really believe Noella was trying to steal her kids from her, did she? She thought about Gareth again, about both of them, about the fact that there had been no rescue, not even a hint of one, in five weeks, and then her thoughts snared on something else.
An image of her and Johnny in the forest on that last day.
What they’d found as they’d searched for Roxie.
And the last call she’d ever made to Noella.
Before
Rebekah called Roxie, more in hope than expectation, and Johnny joined in, the dense, unyielding forest gathering around them. ‘Roxie!’ they shouted, but it felt as if their voices were instantly lost.
Half a mile in, the ground started to drop away. It was full of broken, stunted trees. They looked like melted bodies.
‘This place gives me the creeps,’ Rebekah said.
The further Johnny led them into the forest, the less
comfortable she felt: the hairs on her arms were on end and she could hear her pulse in her ears. They moved off in different directions – not so far that they couldn’t see each other, but far enough to cover more ground. After five or six minutes, they returned to each other, breathing harder.
‘So what do you want to do?’ Johnny asked.
‘I’ve had enough. I just want to go home.’
‘What about Stelzik?’
‘We’ll go and see what medicine there is at that hostel, but he’ll need some tests, maybe a shot, so that means he’ll have to come back on the ferry.’
Johnny nodded. ‘Okay.’
Suddenly, his phone was buzzing in the pocket of his pants. Clearly surprised he had any reception at all so deep in the forest, he held it up for Rebekah to see. ‘It’s Noe.’
Rebekah felt a wave of excitement, of relief.
‘Noe?’ she said, grabbing the cell from Johnny.
‘Hey, Bek. You okay, honey?’
The line was lousy.
‘You sounded panicked in your message.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ Rebekah rubbed an eye, then looked out to the forest, the trees, the frozen ground. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when we get home but, basically, it hasn’t been the relaxing day trip I was hoping for. We should have gone to a spa.’ It sounded like a joke, but it wasn’t. She thought of how she’d felt as she’d waited for Johnny outside Stelzik’s hostel, in the seconds before she and Johnny had come into the forest looking for the dog – it was as if, in being so far away, the tether binding her to her daughters had spiralled loose.
‘Bek?’
‘I think I realized today that I’m not ready to be this far from the girls yet. I know it sounds nuts. They’re exhausting. But it’s true. It’s got nothing to do with you, Noe, I promise. I trust you with their lives. I just … I …’
Rebekah faded out. I can’t function without them.
‘I get it, honey.’
But was there something in Noe’s voice? A flicker of disappointment? Had Rebekah upset her? She didn’t want to hurt Noe. She’d been a rock.
‘The girls are fine with me, Bek,’ Noe said.
‘I know they are.’
‘They’ll always be fine with me.’
Rebekah glanced at Johnny. He was just looking at her, waiting.
‘Do you want to talk to Kyra?’ Noella asked.
Yes, Rebekah thought immediately. Yes, I desperately want to talk to her. But she hesitated in her reply. Noe needs to believe that I trust her. She needs to know. ‘No, that’s fine. I don’t want to disturb her.’ And then, as she swallowed the disappointment of not speaking to her daughter, a thought came to her. ‘Wait, I keep forgetting to tell you where we are. You know, just in case …’
Just in case what?
But Noella didn’t reply.
‘Noe?’
No response.
‘Noe, are you there?’
There was just silence on the line now.
‘Noe, can you hear me? We’ve come to a place called Crow Island. It’s about a hundred miles from Montauk. Johnny wanted to –’
The line went dead.
Rebekah looked at the phone and then at Johnny.
Had Noella just hung up on her?
‘You all right?’ Johnny asked.
No, it must have been the reception in here.
‘Yeah,’ she said, although as she handed him back his cell, even to her own ears she didn’t sound convinced. She sighed. ‘Whatever. Let’s go. I just want to go home to –’
A dog barked.
‘Come on,’ Johnny said, and hurried towards the sound, following it even further into the forest. Rebekah tried to keep up. But after a couple of minutes they came to a halt again. The barking had stopped.
They couldn’t see Roxie anywhere.
‘This is so dumb,’ she said. ‘We’ve got no idea where the dog is.’
Johnny said nothing, his back to her, looking off into the trees. She followed his eyeline and noticed a gully to their left, ten or twelve feet down, its slope half hidden from view behind a row of grey, emaciated trees.
‘What are you looking at?’ she asked. She couldn’t see anything in the gully. ‘Did you see the dog?’
‘No,’ Johnny said.
She rubbed her eye again, feeling bone-tired. Then her gaze was drawn back to the gully, this time to its right-hand edge: a tangle of exposed roots was surfacing out of the sloped bank on that side. Directly above them, the canopy of leaves and branches was much thinner so frost had been able to settle on the forest floor. There wasn’t much, just a lone circle.
White, thick as spilled flour.
‘Do you want to go, then?’ Johnny said.
‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘Yeah, let’s get out of here.’
But she didn’t move.
She just kept looking at the same circle of frost.
Because now she could see something else.
It was right on the edge of the circle, completely out of place there, so jarring, so discordant, it took her a while to even rationalize it.
‘Bek?’
Finally, she dragged her eyes away and looked at her brother.
‘John, I think there might be a body down there.’
35
Behind the wheel of the Cherokee, the gas station silent around her, Rebekah thought of what she and Johnny had found in the forest, and then of that last call with Noella. She’d tried to tell Noe where they were – had actually told her where they were – but Noe hadn’t responded. Until now, Rebekah had convinced herself that it was because the signal had dropped out.
But maybe it wasn’t.
Maybe Noella heard just fine. Maybe she –
Click click click.
Rebekah froze.
She stopped thinking about Noella and looked out through the windshield. On the opposite side of the road, the derelict houses were still.
But she’d heard it. She’d definitely heard it.
The same noise as before.
She swivelled around, her door still open, and slid back out of the Jeep, looking across the hood. The noise had come from the direction of the houses, she was certain. She listened hard, trying to ignore the faint hum of the wind coming off the ocean.
Click click click.
It was the same noise she’d heard before, weeks ago, except then it had been pitch black, her sense of direction off.
She walked around the front of the car, keeping her eyes on the houses, her hand tracing the arc of the hood, like a part of her was trying to hold on for safety. Beneath her fingers, she felt sand and grime gather. But there wasn’t anything here. Or anyone. So what was she hearing?
Click click click.
Nerves fired under her skin as she heard it for a third time.
Then: movement.
Out of the corner of her eye.
She whipped around in time to see a shadow dart behind the house on the end. What the hell was that? Her heart felt like it was in her throat.
She wanted to get back into the car and drive away, but she knew she couldn’t do that. Not now. If she wasn’t alone, she needed to know.
But how can there be someone else here?
Rushing around to the trunk, she grabbed a hammer from a toolkit she’d cobbled together as she’d driven around the island, and then – gripping it so hard her fingers blanched – crossed the road towards the houses.
‘Hello?’ she said.
Her voice carried away in the wind. She passed through a broken fence into the long grass at the front of one of the houses.
‘Hello?’
She looked along the narrow gap between two of the houses, into their backyards. Around her, grass swayed and warped.
‘I saw you, so you can come out.’
She sounded small, pathetic.
Taking a breath, she moved slowly along the gap, pushing her way through a tangle of weeds and webs that had fused themselves to the flanks of the houses
. When she reached the backyards, she stopped and looked out at the sea of grass, every branch of every tree laden with the gold of fall. Garden furniture littered the place: tables were tipped over, broken chairs, old rusted fire pits. A torn hammock was in the next yard along, only attached at one end so it hung there limply.
‘Hello?’
She moved further in, along the back porches, past a white picket fence that had once separated the properties but was now on its side, chewed up in one of the storms. In places, the grass came all the way up to her waist, opaque and impossible to see through. The further she went, the harder it got to judge her surroundings. The wind was picking up: grass leaned and bowed, leaves snapped, loose doors juddered against their frames, windows rattled.
‘Stop hiding,’ Rebekah said quietly.
She sounded like she was begging now.
She went to one of the porches, perched herself on the edge, and waited. After forty minutes, the colour was gone from the sky and rain clouds were moving in. She’d started to understand the weather on the island in a way she’d never bothered to in the city – had never needed to – and she could tell this was the start of another storm. She could feel it, like a current in the earth.
Was I mistaken? she thought. Am I seeing things? Hearing things? She thought of her conversation with Steve. What if I’m losing my mind?
She looked around her again, but there was no clicking now, nothing except the wind, the muted roar of the ocean, and the slow dance of the grass. Defeated, she headed back to the car.