Cadie climbed the bank and stood beside her. She ached to hug her friend, to apologize, and tell her the whole truth. That she had been there. That she had dug up the soil Daniela now held in her fist. Instead, Cadie put a hand on the bare skin of Daniela’s shoulder. She wanted to say something to comfort her, but her mouth felt too dry to speak. Daniela looked up with eyes so wide with fear that Cadie’s knees buckled and she dropped down beside her friend. The mud sucked both girls down until their knees all but disappeared into the earth.
“We should say something. Like a funeral or a prayer.” Daniela straightened her back and jutted her chin forward. “Juan made me laugh. He could do these stupid faces. And he could lift anything. My dad always waited for Juan to help carry heavy stuff. He liked my mom’s cooking a lot. She used to bring him leftovers all the time. But mostly, Juan was my friend. I don’t know anything else about him.” Daniela looked at Cadie with desperation in her eyes. “No one knows what happened. No one’s going to be sad.”
“Juan was brave,” Cadie said. “He stuck up for you when those guys teased you at Angie’s. And he wanted Clyde to go to the police and confess about robbing that store, so he was honest, right? And he left Angie a tip after she gave them free pie. He didn’t have to do that.” The wound on her thumb from where she had sliced her skin days earlier throbbed like a drumbeat, pulsing in her hand, pounding in her chest.
“That’s not enough,” Daniela said. “Even if someone finds him someday, no one will even remember his name or be sad.”
“We’ll remember,” Cadie said. “We will be sad.”
Daniela scooped up a handful of dirt from the mound and let it fall between her fingers. She wiped her mud-smeared face. Her eyelids hung heavy as if she hadn’t slept in days.
Cadie’s shirt clung to her skin, her wet denim shorts hung heavy and chafed her legs when she moved. Sand in her wet sneakers had rubbed blisters on her heels. Cadie felt certain she would never smile again, never feel happy again.
Daniela stared at a mosquito on her arm, but didn’t swat it away. She didn’t flinch as it bit her and sucked her blood. Cadie plucked a stone out of the mud and added it to the bottom of the cross Dolores had formed. She slipped another small stone into her pocket.
She couldn’t look at Daniela as they trudged back through the creek. They shimmied silently under the barbed fence. Daniela walked several paces in front of her until they got to the path splitting off to their respective homes.
“See ya,” Cadie said.
“Maybe.” Daniela walked into the forest toward her house without looking back.
Cadie felt as if her insides had turned to cardboard. She couldn’t feel anything. Not hunger, although she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She didn’t feel cold anymore, although her clothes were drenched. She stood motionless in the woods listening to Daniela’s footsteps until she couldn’t hear them anymore.
From the lake she heard the flapping wings and slapping feet of a loon running across the lake’s surface as it tried to lift off into the air. It failed and tried again, but never got into the air. She wondered where the loon had been planning to go, and if any of the other loons would notice if it didn’t show up.
* * *
Daniela sat on the steps of the hardware store the Saturday before school started. Cadie’s mother dragged her into Angie’s for breakfast. Daniela leaned up against the wooden railing and picked at her cuticles.
“We should invite Daniela to eat with us,” Cadie’s mom said as she stopped to wave.
Daniela looked up through stormy eyes.
“Let’s eat by ourselves.” Cadie pulled on her mother’s elbow.
“Is everything okay with you girls?”
“God, Mom. We’re fine. I just want to have breakfast with you.”
Cadie had called three times the day after she and Daniela had gone to the grave. And twice the following day. But Daniela never called back.
The hollow space in Cadie’s gut echoed with shared loneliness as she watched Daniela’s shoulders slump. Daniela tapped a foot in a muddy puddle below the bottom step, not caring—maybe not noticing—as the brown spray splattered up her calf.
Cadie wanted to run across the street and throw her arms around Daniela so they could squeeze each other until they had wrung all the ugly memories out. She took a hesitant step toward Daniela.
“Go ahead.” Her mother rubbed her shoulder.
Daniela stood up and turned her back. From across the street Cadie felt the creak of each bowed wooden step as Daniela climbed the stairs and disappeared inside the store. The door slammed shut.
26
PRESENT DAY
How many times had Cadie sworn to herself that she would never become one of those locals who hung out at the Deer Park shooting pool? Yet, there she stood, with a beer in one hand and a cue stick in the other. Peanut shells crunched under her feet as she lined up a shot. She closed one eye and wrinkled her nose at the stale beer infused in the felt of the grungy pool table. The white ball glanced off the closest ball and ricocheted into a corner.
“I guess you don’t get much practice living in a hut in the mountains.” Daniela set up her shot after Cadie’s failed break.
“I don’t live in a hut.” Cadie looked over toward the door for the third time.
“So where was this fire Prince Charming ditched you for?” Daniela said.
“Over near Talbot’s. But he said it’s under control.” Cadie wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. “He should be here soon.”
Music blared on the speaker above Cadie’s head. She adjusted the low braid that hung down her back and looked at the door again.
Cadie ached to tell Daniela the whole story.
I buried him, Cadie wanted to scream. The weight that had been pressing on her for twenty-seven years contorted and twisted. I was there. I dragged his body through the woods. I dug his grave and shoveled the dirt over his body, his eyes still open a sliver. It was me. And your mother.
“I know you don’t trust Garrett, but—”
“But what?” Daniela ground a peanut shell into the cement floor with the heel of her boot. “He has dreamy eyes?”
“He’s got your family’s best interests in mind. We both do.”
“Are you kidding me? The only thing he cares about is protecting himself and his uncle.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then tell me. I feel like you two are conspiring behind my back, gambling with my family’s safety.” Daniela slid the pool cue back and forth over her fist as she lined up a shot. She squinted at the ball so fiercely it looked like she was trying to make it explode with the heat from her eyes.
The crack of colliding balls exploded in Cadie’s chest. Her pulse leapt. She squeezed her pool stick until her hand hurt and her fingers felt numb. Don’t let go. She imagined herself clinging to the vine on the stone wall at Garrett’s house, the reek of gunpowder burning her nose as she locked her eyes on the arcing white vein that bent through the granite.
“Cadie? Hey, you okay?”
“I’m fine, why?” Cadie said. The gunpowder faded into the smell of beer-soaked peanut shells.
“It’s your shot.” Daniela tapped Cadie’s pool stick with hers. “You’re solid.”
“Right.”
Cadie squeezed the stick to hide her trembling fingers and lined up an easy shot, which she missed. The cue ball dropped into the corner pocket.
“Where were you just now? You ghosted on me for a minute.” Daniela bounced her cue stick on its rubber heel.
“I remembered this thing I forgot to finish at work.” Cadie retrieved the white ball and held it in her palm for Daniela to take.
We will never speak of this day. Ever. Cadie heard Dolores’s voice in her mind.
The air in the room felt hotter than it had a few minutes earlier. Firefighters from a nearby town took a table behind them.
“You ask me, that Hobson fire looked a little too neat.�
�� A firefighter in his fifties waved his hand toward a waitress who didn’t notice him. “They’re blaming it on a campfire. But I don’t know.”
Cadie took a step backward toward the firefighters so she could hear better.
“So now you’re a fire investigator?” his friend laughed.
“Maybe I should be. Something felt off.”
Cadie wanted to grab the man by his collar and yell, It’s the fucking beetles, you imbecile! They shouldn’t be here. They aren’t supposed to be here.
A man with worn construction boots leaned over the pool table, about to rack up the balls Cadie and Daniela were playing. He reeked of cement dust and sweat.
“Excuse me?” Daniela grabbed the rack from his hand. “Do you need something?”
“You done here? We’re waiting for a table,” the man said.
“We’re going to be here awhile.” Daniela moved to the other end of the table and sank the ten ball.
The guy looked like he was trying to think of something clever to say to Daniela, but Daniela flicked her wrist at him like a pest. “You’re blocking my shot.”
The guy, in his thirties with a work shirt from a construction company Cadie did not recognize, walked back to a group of men with similar logo shirts and hovered near a different table.
Cadie fingered the folded note in her pocket. Go Home. Or someone will get hurt. She had been planning on showing the note to Daniela, but this wasn’t the place. The bar was getting too crowded. The crowd had doubled in size since they arrived. She looked at the Budweiser clock on the wall. Garrett should have been there by now. Maybe the fire was more involved than he had expected. She checked her phone, but, again, couldn’t get a signal.
“Do you really like him?” Daniela said.
“I don’t know. We have history.” Cadie dropped the eight ball into the corner pocket. “Shit.”
“Bad history.”
“I need another drink,” Cadie said. “Rack ’em up and I’ll get us another round.”
“Keep an eye out for my dad. He’s finishing up inventory and said he might meet us for a beer.”
Cadie pushed through the crowd toward the bar and ordered two more drinks.
Daniela stood next to the pool table, guarding it from interlopers. She swayed to David Bowie’s voice as if in a trance. Her knees, hips, and shoulders moved in a subtle, continuous wave as she tilted her head back. Daniela looked lost in herself as she stepped around her cue stick like a dance partner. Cadie longed for Daniela’s lack of inhibition. Even the cue looked graceful as it moved with her.
Ryan approached Daniela. His long, narrow face looked pinched, as it always had. In elementary school Cadie once told him he reminded her of Beaker from the Muppets, which made him cry, although she hadn’t meant it as an insult. Cadie willed him to walk past Daniela, let her dance, let her drift away from all that weighed on her.
Wearing a Maple Crest Fire Department work shirt, Ryan leaned in too close to Daniela and whispered in her ear. Daniela pulled back when she saw Ryan so close to her face.
A hand moved across the small of Cadie’s back and settled on her hip. Garrett pressed his lips against her ear. Not a kiss, but a breathy hello. She spun around and he kept his hand on her waist. He wore a plaid button-down shirt, jeans, and untied sneakers. He smelled like cinnamon gum. His lips were bright red like those of a child who had been running in the cold.
“Everything okay?” she said.
“They got it under control pretty easily.”
“We have a table in the back.” Cadie tried to sound casual. She walked slowly so his hand wouldn’t break contact with her hip as they made their way through the crowd.
Still talking to Daniela, Ryan’s eye went straight to Garrett’s hand on Cadie. He slapped Garrett on the shoulder, sloshing his beer. “You and Cadie Kessler? Damn, Tierney.”
“You know each other?” Daniela said to Ryan.
“Everybody knows Garrett.” Ryan extended his hand, staring Garrett in the eyes, as if daring him not to accept.
Garrett lifted his chin and nodded in Ryan’s direction, patted him on the shoulder, and walked past him.
“What was that?” Daniela said after Ryan walked away.
“We’ve had our moments,” Garrett said. “He’s a nasty drunk.”
Raised voices at a pool table behind them morphed into shouting. The men from the construction crew were trying to take over a table where Tino and a friend were playing.
“This isn’t the best place to be tonight.” Garrett scanned the room. “The bank foreclosed on the Welker farm this morning. A bunch of folks got laid off, people who’ll be drunk and angry tonight. And those assholes working on the condo site are here dumping salt into an open wound. They won’t even hire local crews; brought these hacks in from Massachusetts instead.”
Daniela turned to Garrett. “So, did you figure out your magic plan to protect my father?” She leaned her cue stick against the wall and put one hand on her hip.
“I met with the chief today.” Garrett walked toward the corner, away from the gathering clusters of people. Cadie and Daniela followed. “He knows Raúl didn’t have anything to do with it. He’s just checking all the boxes.”
Garrett paused, waiting for Daniela to acknowledge his update, but she appeared unimpressed. “Look, you should know, they ID’d the body earlier than expected. We got confirmation this afternoon.”
“You said we had more time,” Daniela said.
“I thought we did. I convinced the chief to hold off on releasing the name until after the dust from the foreclosure settles.”
“So what? That buys time. It’s not a solution,” Daniela said.
A construction worker stumbled backward and bumped into their table, sloshing beer on the felt.
“Let’s go somewhere else. We can’t talk here.” Cadie walked toward the door, expecting Garrett and Daniela to follow. But when she turned to talk to Daniela, she found a drunk construction worker behind her. Still standing by the pool table, Daniela spoke with wild gestures at Garrett, who sank his hands deeper into his pockets.
Cadie needed to get outside. The packed bar was sloppy with tension. The hum of a baseball game and the wail of music competed from opposite ends of the bar. A body sat on every bar stool, two rows of people behind them jockeying to get the bartender’s attention.
At the far end of the bar, hunched over the counter, Clyde stared at Cadie.
She gasped out loud, although no one could hear her over the noise. She felt eleven years old again. Scared and small. The memory of Clyde’s hand on her shoulder, pushing her up against the tree, burned on her skin. The taste of dust and dried leaves filled her mouth and she coughed. Had he been there on that bar stool watching her all night? She had imagined him in dark corners and under rocks, not in plain sight doing the things that normal people do. But now Clyde, the monster in her dreams, sat comfortably on a bar stool less than twenty feet away, drinking the same brand of beer she held in her hand.
His lack of surprise when she saw him told her he had been watching her for a while. Clyde did not avert his glassy eyes, did not acknowledge her.
Someone bumped Cadie from behind and she jumped. When she turned back to Clyde, he looked down at the half-empty beer he drank alone.
The music grew louder but could not drown out the thrum of discontent rising up from the crushed peanut shells. The colors in the room seemed off, as if someone had altered the filter on a camera lens.
Ryan yelled at two men who were angling for his pool table. “I said, I’m not done. Comprende?” Ryan’s voice rose over the noise. He stumbled backward and bumped into Daniela, knocking her on the ground, spilling beer down the front of her shirt.
Tino reached down to give Daniela a hand up, but Ryan shoved Tino away from Daniela. Cadie swam through the crowd toward them.
“Ryan, you need to walk away.” Garrett switched into police mode. His posture straighter, his shoulders broader.
“We d
on’t need you here,” Ryan yelled over Garrett’s shoulder at Tino. “I know one of you people buried that body in the woods. It’s only a matter of time before we find out who.”
“What the fuck, Ryan. I’m standing right here.” Daniela backed away from him. “You know you’re saying that to me too, right?”
“I’m not talking about you, Daniela.” Ryan slurred his words as he tried to push past Garrett. “You’re one of us.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Daniela said.
Garrett took Ryan by the elbow and forcibly maneuvered him toward the door.
Cadie and Daniela tried to follow them toward the exit, but a crowd pushed back, hungry for something or someone to snap and break the tension choking the bar.
“Sal’s right,” Daniela said. “This town is full of hicks.”
“It’s not you. It’s the goddamn illegals,” Ryan shouted over his shoulder to Daniela, as Garrett pushed him through the exit.
A group of farm workers got up from a table in the corner and gathered behind Tino. The room seemed to shrink around them. The smell of bodies and beer stewed in the tight space. The bass from the sound system thumped in Cadie’s chest, although the melody and words dissolved into the chaos. Everyone moved either toward her or away, in opposing currents.
A crowd followed Garrett and Ryan out onto the street.
Beneath the undulating hum of angry voices, tension rose off the cracked pavement. Strobe lights from two approaching police cars distorted faces to melted wax.
Raúl marched toward them from the direction of the hardware store. His long stride, his arms swinging at his sides, gave Raúl the appearance of a soldier headed into battle. Cadie turned to tell Daniela that Raúl was coming, but Daniela was already making her way toward her father.
“Time to move on,” Garrett yelled as two uniformed officers joined him.
But no one moved on.
Raúl now stood across the street, his feet set wide apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He stared forward over the heads of the crowd.
“Go the fuck home,” a voice yelled at a group of farm workers, walking away from the mob.
Waiting for the Night Song Page 21