Waiting for the Night Song

by Julie Carrick Dalton

  “You can barely walk. I’ll be right out.” Dolores looked at Cadie with the same conviction as she had that day in the woods. We will never speak of this again. Ever. Dolores ran around the side of the burning building.

  “Tía, no!” Cadie shouted, and hobbled after her, but Dolores disappeared inside. Cadie looked up and she locked eyes with Sal, still sitting on her haunches, coiled like a trap about to spring. Sal looked toward the door where her grandmother had disappeared and shot forward like a bullet out of a gun before Daniela could grab her.

  Sound blurred into a cloud around Cadie. Ryan dropped the garden hose, which twisted like an angry snake as water spewed in all directions. Raúl wrapped his arms around Daniela, holding her back as she thrashed to break free. Daniela’s lips moved, and her face contorted as she shouted for Sal.

  Cadie heard nothing but a roar that seemed to be coming from inside herself.

  It felt like hours, although only minutes passed before Dolores burst out of the side door carrying a fireproof document box under her arm. Cadie felt the whoosh of air as Maple Crest sucked in a collective, smoke-filled breath and watched the door.

  “Where’s Sal?” The words ripped themselves from Daniela’s throat as she fought to escape Raúl’s grip. “She followed you in the back door.”

  Dolores’s eyes widened as she looked back at the blazing building.

  “The back door’s blocked. The fire—” she yelled. The metal box clattered to the ground by Dolores’s feet. The tight coil of her hair had loosened into a precarious knot sagging above her collar, escaped strands flailing in hot currents of air. “There’s no way out through the back door.”

  A series of small explosions burst from the back of the store. Cadie imagined all the cans of spray paint lined up like soldiers exploding one after another as the heat became unbearable.

  Garrett’s eyes darted from Dolores to Daniela and Raúl, finally landing on Cadie. Fear moved between them the way it had when they were kids. Both of them children. Just children. Scared, making the best decisions they knew how to protect the people they loved. The muscles in Garrett’s face hardened, shifting from a look of fear to determination. He nodded at Cadie as if they shared a secret plan. She nodded back in agreement. Later, she would wonder if the slight tilt of her chin had given him permission, courage. Maybe hope.

  Garrett sprinted toward the side door Dolores had exited from and disappeared into the smoke. Cadie raised her arms to calm the flames, to tame the wind with the same conviction Garrett had summoned when they were kids.

  Heat warped her vision and seared her eyes as she squinted to see through the smoke. Two windows on the far side of the building exploded outward. A fire truck pulled up, casting fragments of red light against the curtains of smoke.

  Garrett pushed the porch door open, one arm looped around Sal’s waist. She appeared semi-conscious, overcome by smoke, but not visibly injured. Cheers rose up from onlookers as he stumbled forward. The support beam on the porch sagged and groaned threateningly. Garrett pushed Sal forward off the porch, just as a thick crossbeam dropped like a lit match, hitting Garrett’s lower back with a crack that split through the growl of fire.

  He seemed to hang suspended in midair as he lurched forward, the beam pushing him toward the ground. He looked at Cadie, his eyes clear blue, for what felt like an impossibly long moment before time sped up and he landed, motionless, a few feet from Sal.

  The roof of the hardware store collapsed in a riot of sparks. Embers floated in the purple air like fireflies.

  It could have been so beautiful.

  “Don’t move him!” Ryan threw off the sling supporting his burnt arm. He grimaced and heaved the smoldering beam off of Garrett with bare fingers. Cadie crawled forward, gagging on the singe of Ryan’s burning skin.

  Cadie touched Garrett’s face, hot from the fire, remembering the flush that rushed up her arm the first time he kissed her so many years ago. Wispy hair fell away from his sweaty neck, revealing the cigarette burns below his hairline. The thirty-year-old wounds looked raw in the flickering of the firelight.

  She placed her hand on Garrett’s back, waiting for the rise and fall of breath that did not come.

  EMTs pushed Cadie aside. They immobilized his neck and back, strapped him to a board, flipped him over, and dragged him clear of the fire. CPR, and a flurry of hands. Clear! Garrett’s body arched with an electric current that failed to restart his heart. Again. And once more.

  Sizzling embers rose up and turned to ash above their heads.

  Cadie felt as if her own chest had been cracked open, exposing her most guarded feelings. Her rage at Garrett’s deception felt bigger, more volatile, like it might consume her. He had lied. Over and over he had allowed her to believe that Clyde had killed Juan. Cadie tried to hold on to the anger. Rage, with its unpredictable writhing, gave her cover against the wave she felt coming.

  Sal sat up a few feet away from the EMTs working on Garrett, her eyes wild like a confused animal’s. Her mouth hung wide open as if she were screaming, but no sound emerged.

  Cadie’s tongue felt thick. Her eyes stung. The bitter taste of charcoal filled her mouth. The heat on her cheeks and arms made her skin feel tight as if it might burst and peel away so she could wriggle out of it, toss her molted form into the fire, and slither back to the woods.

  The more she tried to focus on physical sensations, the harder it became to breathe. It wasn’t the smoke that choked her, but her own muscles, which felt too short, too tight to pull enough air into her lungs. The weight of granite blocks piled on her chest, one stone at a time, pressing the air out of her.

  “He was a good man,” Dolores whispered in Cadie’s ear as EMTs carried Garrett toward an ambulance without any pretense of urgency.

  “No he wasn’t.” Cadie gulped in air and tried to calm the spasms of coughing. She would not cry for Garrett. “You know that better than anyone.”

  “One moment doesn’t define a person’s life. It’s what you choose to do after that determines who you are.” Dolores’s red-rimmed eyes looked calm as she clutched the box of documents to her chest.

  Heat from the fire burned on Cadie’s neck. She swatted away the tenderness of Garrett’s lips on her skin. She wanted to chase the ambulance and beat her fists on his quiet chest and howl at him, curse him.

  She wanted to hold him.

  Her breath burned like fire in her mouth.

  Daniela and Raúl huddled around Sal as an EMT held an oxygen mask to the girl’s face and another checked her vitals. Daniela stroked her daughter’s hair.

  Despite the heat of the fire, a chill gripped Cadie and she began to tremble. First her hands, then her arms, legs, and entire body. She stood up on wobbly legs to inch toward the heat of the blaze, but the only heat she felt came from Clyde’s eyes as he watched her. She tried not to look at him, but couldn’t help herself. He stood alone under an unlit streetlight, his cheeks wet in the moonlight. An uninvited solidarity pulled her toward him.

  She curled her shaking fists tight. Her leg throbbed with every step. How could he have allowed two children and a young mother to bury Juan? His mistreatment of that small, helpless boy, his inability to take responsibility for his actions had set it all in motion.

  Clyde held her stare as she limped toward him. His body shook and he swallowed down the sobs that erupted in wet gasps. He plowed his fingers through his hair. She wanted to channel all her fear and anger into him. But her loathing slid off him no matter how deep she dug for the familiar repulsion.

  He looked like he wanted her to yell at him, to curse him, to hit him. The slump of his shoulders seemed to beg her to cast blame so he wouldn’t have to look at his nephew’s dead body being loaded into the ambulance. She didn’t want to acknowledge the weight of Clyde’s loss, but it stood in front of her, raw and aching.

  Cadie had always felt the gravity of that moment in the woods as the center point of her life. All of her experiences and memories were either bef
ore or after the gunshot. The moment that challenged her to make better decisions, to be a worthy person. The guilt she carried became a constant reminder to make choices she could live with, to hold stories that didn’t add to the weight she already carried.

  But Garrett had snatched that coarse touchstone from her, robbing her of her one steady guiding principle.

  Cadie felt unmoored without her fear of Clyde or her hatred of him.

  She sped up the last few steps toward him, ignoring the pain in her leg. She lunged at Clyde. He stiffened as she threw her arms around his thick chest and refused to let go. She held him fiercely, forcing him to sob in her arms as she allowed herself to unravel.

  Clyde knew nothing about Raúl’s past in El Salvador. Dolores did not know Clyde had threatened Cadie all those years ago. Sal did not know about Clyde’s role in the first shooting in the convenience store. Daniela did not know Sal had fired a gun at Garrett. Raúl did not know Garrett had killed Juan or that his wife had buried him.

  Only Cadie knew all the pieces. She carried all their stories, the combined weight a burden and a privilege.

  One moment doesn’t define a person’s life.

  If each of them could be released of that one moment. If only they could wipe the slate clean.

  It’s what you choose to do after that determines who you are.

  But there had to be consequences. If they continued burying each other’s truths the chain would never end. Someone in that crowd had set the hardware store on fire. And someone else knew who did it. How far would they go to hide that truth? How many people would this new secret tear apart?

  Cadie wanted to know everything, to tell everything, and start again. She waited until Clyde’s breathing calmed, until the spastic gasps, both hers and his, subsided, and she let him go.

  A wave moved through the gathering crowd, like a low-frequency signal, as news of Garrett’s death spread. A group of middle school boys stood in a cluster with Tino, their bodies limp with grief over the loss of a friend, a mentor. Cadie recognized the boys from the basketball court the day she had stopped to talk to Garrett.

  “No way. He’s not dead. This is fucked up.” Fernando’s words rose above the smoke. His mouth twisted and the muscles alongside his jaw tightened.

  Sal stood with her head buried in the shoulder of a girl her age. Sal looked up and trapped Cadie in a dense stare. Cadie recognized the shadow that would follow Sal down dark alleys for the rest of her life, no matter how many times Cadie and Daniela told her it was not her fault. Sal would always wonder. What if she had not taken the gun? What if she had not gone into the woods to put it back? What if she had never aimed it at Garrett? What if she hadn’t run into the burning building after Dolores?

  For a moment Cadie felt like that little girl with the long red braids surrounded by neighbors taking care of each other. In the morning, those who still had homes would start making casseroles to feed their displaced neighbors. That was how Maple Crest handled disaster.

  Sal stepped back from the circle of grieving teens.

  Cadie tightened both hands into fists, pressing the tender cuts on her palms. It would be different for Sal. Daniela, Raúl, Dolores, and Cadie would be there for her. She wouldn’t have to bury her secrets. She wouldn’t have to cry alone.

  The lines in Sal’s forehead deepened as she furrowed her brow, just like Dolores, and curled her shoulders forward.

  Cadie dug her fingernails into her palms, reopening a gash cut by the barbed wire. Blood trickled down her hand, but she didn’t wipe it away. No matter how closely they circled around Sal, no one would be able to chase the inevitable nightmares or the anguish she would feel as she lay in bed wondering what if?

  Cadie willed the ache in Sal’s chest to come to her.

  She already had a home for it.

  38

  PRESENT DAY

  Cadie’s body reacted to the sight of Clyde before her mind had a chance to calm herself. Sweat dripped down her neck as he walked across the police station parking lot toward her. She wiped her damp palms on her jeans.

  Three days had passed since the fire, but the town still smoldered with grief and disbelief. No matter how many times she had washed her hair, Cadie couldn’t rinse away the smell of smoke.

  She swallowed down her fear as Clyde came closer. How could she make peace with the monster who had tormented her dreams her whole life? Although, it hadn’t really been Clyde, but a beast she had created in her mind, formed out of lies and fears and secrets. She knew she should meet him halfway, but she couldn’t make her body move.

  He stopped a couple feet away from Cadie and extended his hand without looking her in the eye. He looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept in days. His messy hair gathered in greasy clumps. A food stain that looked days old marred his wrinkled shirt.

  Cadie stared at his calloused palm, hesitant to touch him as she remembered his weight pressing her against the maple tree, the smell of his breath. Clyde let his hand hang in the air a few seconds too long before finally letting it drop to his side.

  “You’re sure you’re ready to do this?” Cadie said, trying to sound in control of her emotions.

  “You can’t outrun consequences forever,” Clyde said.

  “I know why you did it. You were sticking up for Juan when no one else would. I know there was three hundred dollars in the drawer, but you only took fifty because that’s exactly how much that guy stole from Juan. You could have taken all three hundred, but you didn’t. I’m not absolving you. It was a stupid plan, but in a warped way, you meant well.”

  Clyde huffed a wheezy laugh and shook his head. “I didn’t end up helping Juan at all. I killed him.”

  “No, you didn’t. Garrett did.” Garrett’s name felt clumsy in her mouth, the way a word repeated over and over loses its meaning. Garrett. Garrett. The Summer Kid. Garrett. Maybe if she allowed herself to revisit all the prickly memories, she could dull the edge of anguish his name conjured. Her anger toward him battled with the ache he left behind. Let the anger win, she pleaded. The sharpness of fear had consumed her for so long, but the dull beat of sorrow weighed so much more than fear. Let the anger win, she pleaded.

  Clyde bristled at Garrett’s name too. He sniffed and looked up at the treetops surrounding the police station.

  “I’m an accessory no matter what. It was my gun. I covered it up. It’s not like I’m taking blame that doesn’t belong to me. No point in bringing the Garcias down with me. By convincing me to go in to work and not attract attention, then helping Garrett, you know, in the woods, Dolores made it possible for me to raise him instead of sending him to foster care. I didn’t deserve that kindness, neither did Garrett. I know that. But I tried to do better after that. Not that it makes anything okay.”

  Clyde plowed a hand through his scraggly hair and Cadie flinched at the familiar gesture.

  “Dolores was afraid for her family and I put her in that position by dragging her into my mess. I never should have called the Garcias for help. I panicked. Raúl was the only person I knew I could trust. Dolores intercepted the phone call. I don’t even know how she knew to come over, though. I was crying and blabbering on about finding Raúl. But I never told her what happened. She just showed up.”

  “I was with Dolores when you called,” Cadie said. “Even though we swore we wouldn’t tell anyone what happened, I lost it. Dolores could tell something was wrong and I told her someone got shot. I mentioned a boy named Garrett. Daniela tried to shut me up. God, she was so mad at me.”

  “Dolores knew I had custody of a nephew named Garrett.” Clyde nodded as the missing pieces of the story fell into place. “Sometimes when I got off work at the hardware store, when Raúl wasn’t looking, she’d toss me a pack of KitKat bars to take home for him. I used to eat them myself most of the time. He would’ve been so much better off if I let the state take him.”

  Clyde blinked hard several times and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Once Dolores showed up and saw the bo
dy, she was trapped. If she reported me, she’d get called as a witness in a murder, potentially exposing her family. And if it was discovered later that she had been there, she would have been an accessory after the fact.”

  “We all made bad choices that day,” Cadie said.

  “But Jesus, I never should have allowed Dolores to bury him. I let a twelve-year-old boy and an old lady bury a body to protect me.” Clyde’s eyes widened as if the magnitude of what he did was only now crystalizing. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

  “I helped them, you know,” Cadie said.

  “Helped who?”

  “Dolores and Garrett. I helped them drag Juan through the woods, dig the grave, and bury him. I’m not blameless in this.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Clyde clutched at his hair again. “I’m so goddamn sorry. She told me to go to work, act normal so no one would question me about where I’d been that day. Just go to work and act normal. I should have argued with her. None of this will fall on the Garcias, or you, or anyone else.”

  This was Clyde. An imperfect uncle. A reckless but loyal friend. A man willing to face the consequences of his actions.

  “I’ll testify I threatened to hurt you if you told anyone,” he said. “I mean, it’s true.”

  A ghost of that fear spiked in her chest, as she remembered the terrors, the nightmares she suffered her entire life reliving Clyde’s threat.

  “I swear, scaring you, saying I’d turn the Garcias in if you talked, that’s haunted me my whole life. I never would have done any of that. Never. As soon as I said it, I felt sick. That’s why I ran off so quickly. I ran into the woods and vomited until there was nothing left of me. I don’t even know how long I sat there on that rock cursing myself.”

  Clyde wiped his eyes.

  Cadie remembered the swirl of dust and leaves that had swooped across the parking lot. She had imagined Garrett conjuring the wind to scare Clyde and save her. But Clyde hadn’t been choking on dust from a conjured specter. He had been gagging on his own guilt and fear.