Before He Finds Her

by Michael Kardos

  When she was ten, they explained that a very dangerous man had ended her mother’s life and unfortunately had not yet been caught. He was still dangerous, which was why their lives had to be so private. Two years later, they explained that her father had been that man—something that by then Melanie had already suspected.

  She sat beside Phillip now on his neatly made bed, the air conditioner straining to cool the room, and told him the essence of what she’d learned over the years: how her name used to be Meg Miller, and how when she was a little girl her father had thrown a big party and then, later that night, strangled her mother and dumped her body into the backyard fire pit. She told him about how she herself was believed to be dead, too, and how Wayne and Kendra were able to get her away, and how the U.S. Marshals, working with local law enforcement in two states, had successfully hidden her but utterly failed to apprehend her father.

  “But he knows you’re alive,” Phillip finally said after several seconds of saying nothing.

  “Of course,” Melanie said.

  “Then why is it a secret?”

  “If everyone else thinks I’m already dead,” she explained, “then we never have to worry about reporters or TV people or anyone trying to find me. No one can ever help my father, even accidentally.” Phillip was rubbing her hand with his thumb. “Anyway, it wasn’t my decision, and it had to get made really fast. And no one ever thought it would take this long to find him.”

  “Are you still afraid of your father?” he asked.

  “I’m terrified of him,” she said. “He’s a madman.”

  “Can I ask why you’re telling me about it now?”

  She decided not to mention the fractals. But come on—had he not noticed her larger breasts, her clearer skin? Did he not find it strange that suddenly she was saying No, thanks whenever he offered her a glass of wine? Why was she telling him now? Because it isn’t just me anymore, she wanted to say. But she needed to know how he would take the news of her strange past before going further. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a while,” she said, “but I didn’t want to scare you away. Is this going to scare you away?”

  His arm was around her now. “Of course it won’t,” he said. “But... ” He frowned.

  “What?”

  “It’s just that all of this happened so long ago. And you have a new identity, and obviously look a lot different from when you were a little kid.” He shrugged. “What makes you think your father’s still looking for you, anyway?”

  She could have told him about the letters, hard evidence that Ramsey Miller was still out there causing trouble. She could have mentioned the feeling she would get sometimes that someone was out there watching her. She would catch something in her periphery, turn her head, and see nothing. But the chill would linger. Even out in her own yard, in bright daylight, sometimes she’d gaze into the hedges and swear she saw movement. But this was bogeyman stuff, more than likely, so she decided to answer Phillip’s question another way.

  “When my father dragged my mother into the fire, they think she was still alive. He choked her and left her to burn.” She watched his eyes, hoping he would understand. “What I mean is, I don’t get to be optimistic.”

  Phillip said nothing for a moment. Maybe he was imagining the murder scene, the charred flesh. “I wonder if it’s time for someone other than your aunt and uncle to look out for you,” he said. “They can’t do it forever—and I’m not afraid.”

  “You’re not, huh?”

  “Not really. Nope.” He chanced a smile. “Which is weird, because I’m actually afraid of a lot of stuff.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Oh, you name it. Flying. Heights.”

  “That’s the same thing.”

  “Not to me,” he said. “Also, tornadoes.”

  “You don’t live in a trailer,” she said. “We had a couple of close calls when I was a kid.”

  “And I’m afraid of having to use CPR on somebody at school and then doing it wrong. And being crushed in an avalanche.”

  “Is that everything?”

  She thought he might say yes. Instead: “Rabies.”

  “Like getting bitten by a bat?”

  “Sure—a raccoon, a bat...”

  “But you’re not afraid of a murderer?”

  “No—just everything else.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s because you mean more to me than bats or airplanes or whatever.” His smile was more confident. “You look very pretty right now.”

  He kissed her mouth, her throat. She placed a hand on his arm. “Seriously, Phillip—I have to know if this is all too much for you.”

  “Seriously, Melanie—it isn’t.”

  “Don’t answer so fast,” she said. “I want you to really think about it.”

  “It isn’t.” He looked into her eyes. “I can handle anything.”

  She bit her lip. “How about one more surprise. Can you handle that?”

  The box of condoms said 96% effective. But 96 percent effective, it turned out, was a world away from 100 percent, and now she was in her tenth week. Before telling Phillip, the only two people who knew were herself and the doctor at the college health center, who had confirmed those drug-store pregnancy tests with yet another test, then handed her several pamphlets (“Your Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy”; “Breastfeeding with Success”; “Labor, Delivery, and Postpartum Care”), all of which she skimmed late that first night before stowing them in the back of her closet behind a box of old clothes.

  She’d been careful and responsible, yet the result was no different from that girl in high school last year whom Melanie had actually overheard saying, We thought God would keep me from getting pregnant. And her options—either an abortion or the prospect of introducing a baby into her hidden, fearful home—were too awful to think about. So for a few weeks, she didn’t. She went to class. She went to work. She read her Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries. The pamphlets stayed stowed.

  Which was why she felt glad, in a way, that her instructor had shown the class those fractals this afternoon. They made her see that she didn’t want to stay hidden at every scale any longer, and didn’t want her child to be hidden at all. And those two desires intertwined. If not for the child, there’d be no reason to stop being who she’d always been—the fearful, hidden girl.

  When she actually said the words “I’m pregnant” to Phillip, at first the color drained from his face, his own version of morning sickness. “I intend to have the baby and raise it,” she said. “Just so you know.”

  He said all the right things. He’d be there for her. He’d support her. He went so far as to say that he was “excited about this,” which she didn’t believe but appreciated hearing. Before long, his face regained its color. And gradually the two conversations—her past, their present—melded into one.

  She knew he found their relationship odd. How could he not? They almost never went out in public other than for coffee or soda at the gas station or, a couple of times, for a very early dinner at the McDonald’s on the highway. She let him assume it was their age difference that made them reclusive, the fact that he was a teacher at the high school where she’d just graduated.

  As she’d become more comfortable around him, she began to imply that there was more to the story. She’d wanted to tell him about it but saw Phillip’s invitation for her to reveal herself, to trust him, as coming from an earnest young man who viewed the universe as fundamentally benign. It wasn’t him she distrusted but rather his optimism.

  But things were different now, and he had a right to know every-thing. So everything is what she told him. And as she shared her secrets with this person of her choosing, each disclosure lightened her, made her feel less alone. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before. Phillip held her long after she was done talking.

  By then it was early evening. She knew she should call her aunt and uncle. She didn’t want them to worry. But there would be no reasoning with them. She imagined telling them the truth: I’m at my bo
yfriend’s house. He’s twenty-three. They’d demand she come home right away. And she could actually see herself obeying them, allowing herself to be yanked right back to the house on Notress Pass.

  So maybe she did want them to worry, a little. Maybe that’s what they needed to finally begin to understand that she wasn’t a kid anymore. All she knew for sure was that she needed to prolong this moment with Phillip through dinner and beyond, and whether that was despite the potential repercussions with her aunt and uncle or because she wanted there to be repercussions, she wasn’t sure.

  She stayed. She didn’t call home, and she slept in Phillip’s warm bed, and early Saturday morning, with the birds noisy outside but the room still dark, she awoke beside him feeling a little surprised that he wasn’t already long gone, having driven his Mazda as far as it would go or thumbed a ride back to Connecticut. Content, she fell back to sleep. When she woke up again it was to the sound of Phillip in the kitchen putting away last night’s dishes, whistling a few notes of something soft and tuneless—and these ordinary sounds filled her with gratitude and wonder. This was the permanent rupture, she could feel it, separating every day in her past from every day in her future.

  The air conditioner blocked her view through the window, but she didn’t hear rain. No rain meant that their plan for today was on—a plan, made hastily before falling asleep last night, that to Melanie had seemed monumentally reckless. Yet she’d agreed to it.

  The carnival at the Baptist church opened at eleven. There would be games and rides and food sold out of carts. The two of them would go there and spend the afternoon together like regular people.

  So many bodies, and she was moving toward them. The excitement she felt last night at the thought of going to the carnival with Phillip had faded over breakfast, faded more on the walk over. She’d been able to compress her fear into the smallest nugget. But stepping onto the church grounds, her body stiffened. It would be easy to release his hand, turn around, walk away. Rush home and apologize to Kendra and Wayne for being an ungrateful niece.

  She willed herself on.

  As they walked toward the center of the grounds, stepping around muddy patches, Melanie kept an eye out for anyone she might recognize. What if someone spoke to her? She walked head down, avoiding eye contact and talking only in quiet, clipped sentences that were lost among the carnival sounds. “Pardon me?” Phillip kept asking. Finally, he stopped walking and put his hands on her shoulders. “Melanie—no one cares that we’re here.”

  She chose to believe him and tried to enjoy herself, taking in the scene: kids riding the Zipper and shrieking; clusters of people huddled at the game booths; smoke from the food carts rising into the sky; couples everywhere strolling arm in arm or hand in hand. She took Phillip’s hand again and let herself be guided through the grounds.

  When she first smelled the smoked meat, corn dogs, caramel popcorn, she awaited the nausea, but it was just the opposite—she found herself wanting all of it, right now. And the creaking of the rides’ moving parts, the shouting coming from the game booths, the hum of generators beneath a curtain of calliope music, it hit her all at once, a sharp hunger. Look at what I’ve missed, she thought. Then she shook it off. She hadn’t missed everything. She was here, right now, living this.

  She stopped walking on the trampled grass and looked around, slapping one finger into her palm, then two fingers, then three.

  “What are you counting?” Phillip asked.

  “I’m making a mental list of the things I’ve never done before.”

  “What’ve you got so far?”

  “Funnel cake,” she said.

  He whistled. “What else?”

  “Ferris wheel.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  “How do you mean?” When he placed his hand gently on her belly, she said, “Oh, look how slowly it’s turning.” They watched until the ride stopped, and a couple of young children—seven or eight years old—stepped out of a car. At its highest point, the cars swayed gently in the breeze. “I can definitely do that,” she said.

  “Well, count me out.”

  “Why? I thought we could...” She grinned. “Oh, right. Heights. I forgot.”

  “It’s a common fear,” he pointed out.

  She patted his hand. “You’re a delicate flower. Oh, and I’ve never played one of those games where you try to win stuff.”

  So they tried to win stuff: ring-toss, then a booth where Phillip’s plastic racehorse, moved forward with a squirt gun, finished a close second. The winner, a boy of eleven or twelve who himself looked like a horse, with a broad nose and hair down to his neck, pumped his fist into the air and reached out to the game attendant for his prize, a stuffed-animal horse, which the boy looked proud to receive until it occurred to him that he was a twelve-year-old boy holding a stuffed animal. He handed the horse to a smaller girl beside him, who hugged it to her chest.

  Melanie was watching the girl pet her new horse, combing back its mane, when she heard: “Mr. Connor! Miss Denison!”

  Melanie dropped Phillip’s hand and spun around. Her twelfth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Henderson, beamed at them. “Why, just look at you!” She was flanked by her two daughters.

  “Hello, ma’am,” Melanie said.

  “You know, Bethany was just asking me if I’d run into any of my students here, and I said to her, well, we’ll just have to wait and see. Isn’t that what I said?”

  “Yes,” said her older daughter, who was six.

  “No, I said it,” said her three-year-old sister.

  “You didn’t,” Bethany said.

  “And now here you are,” Mrs. Henderson said, “looking beautiful as always. So what have you been doing with yourself?”

  “I’m taking classes at Mountain Community,” Melanie said. Saying it made her realize how proud she was of this small achievement.

  “Oh, I’m glad to hear that,” Mrs. Henderson said. “I thought you’d decided against college.”

  “My parents and I talked it over.” She always referred to Kendra and Wayne as her parents. “Aunt” and “Uncle” would invite questions.

  “Parents do know best sometimes,” she said, and raised an eyebrow. “Now on to more pressing matters: Phillip, why didn’t you tell me that you and Melanie were an item?”

  “We like keeping our business to ourselves,” he said.

  It wasn’t particularly scandalous, the two of them. He was never her teacher. Their age difference was only six years—five, come December. He’d graduated from the University of Connecticut and come down here as part of the Teach for America program. Had she seen him in the high school hallways? Sure. But they didn’t formally meet until after she’d already graduated, and she was working in the office supply store and he’d come in one day as a customer.

  “Oh, how silly!” Mrs. Henderson said. “Secrets don’t stay secrets for long in Fredonia. Well, you picked yourself a good one. Melanie didn’t have much to say in class, but she’s as smart as—Caitlin, please don’t do that. Caitlin. You’ll get muddy.” She took her younger daughter’s hand and helped her to stand up again before refocusing her attention on Melanie and Phillip. “Young love is a wonderful thing!” she announced, and then fake--whispered to Melanie: “You watch out for his big city ways.”

  Melanie forced a smile.

  “We were about to head over to the Ferris wheel,” Phillip said.

  “Of course. You two have yourself a good time.” She winked at Phillip. “See you bright and early on Monday, young man.”

  He smiled back. When they’d walked away, he said, “That woman is an idiot.”

  “She was always nice to me.”

  “Let me ask you something—did you learn anything from her?”

  A good point. Melanie was better educated in the progression of Caitlin’s toilet training than in Hamlet or To Kill a Mockingbird. “Well...”

  “And she treats me like a child. You know she’s only twenty-six?”

  Th
at seemed impossible. “So tell me,” she said, “what exactly are those big city ways I’ve been warned about?”

  He stopped walking. “Come over again tonight, and I’ll show you.”

  Her face got warm. “I’m going to ride the Ferris wheel now.”

  It was almost 1 p.m., cooler than yesterday, a lovely day to be out. As she waited in line, she plucked a dandelion out of the grass and tucked it behind her ear. The ride attendant put her alone in a pale-green car, lowered the lap bar until it was snug, and said, “Bon voyage.” A few seconds later, she was rising into the air and swaying softly. The ride didn’t go very high, but at the top was a view of the streets of her town, the houses and lawns and cars. Below were the fairgrounds, clumps of people waiting for rides and food. She went up and around, down, up again. The car moved slowly, and the sensation in her belly wasn’t unpleasant. She lost sight of Phillip. Scanning the ground for him, she noticed a group of young kids waving at whichever car was at the top of the loop. Next time she reached the top, she waved back, and then, scanning the crowd again for Phillip she noticed an older man watching her. His gaze stayed on her as she came down to the bottom of the ride, and as she climbed again he raised a large camera to his face and held it there.

  “Hey!” she shouted, but he was already walking quickly away, melting into the crowd.

  When her car descended again—how many loops would this ride make?—she shouted to the ride attendant, “I need to get off the ride!” but he either didn’t hear or didn’t care, and there she went up again, and down again. “Please!” she shouted the next time, her eyes filling with tears. She considered leaping off, but this was a crazy thought, and anyway she was stuck underneath the lap bar. When the attendant had lowered the bar, his fingers had grazed her thighs. Was it an accident? A cheap feel? In the span of seconds, the whole place had turned sinister.