P.P.S. I’M PREGNANT.
Chapter 21
Neither Woodward nor Martin knew exactly what they were looking for. But all they were seeing was swamp.
And swamp.
And more swamp.
“Fucking hell, who knew there was this much swamp only two hours from Batesburg?” Martin grumbled.
Against his better judgment, they had taken Woodward’s cruiser for the drive north. Martin thought that it might send warning bells to someone if they were, for reasons he didn’t want to consider, hiding information about Arielle. But Woodward had insisted for pretty much the exact same reason.
‘If they aren’t scared yet, they will be when they see the cruiser. Especially if they are the Deliverance types.’
Yeah, that was probably the last thing Martin wanted to see today—some cross-eyed hillbilly strumming a banjo.
“Are we sure that the mud came from here?” Martin asked, if for nothing else but to change the subject of the thoughts in his head.
The road—if you could call it that—was so narrow and poorly defined that Woodward had to keep his eyes trained on it at all times to avoid getting the cruiser’s wide tires stuck.
“Nope,” he replied out of the corner of his mouth. “They could only tell me that the mud that Arielle tracked through the house was from up north. Just figured that Stumphole would be the best place to start, given that it’s the largest swamp in the hood. Besides, I used to camp here as a kid, so I know the area a little.”
Martin made a face.
“You camped here?”
Woodward chuckled.
“Yup. Dad was a sadist, what can I say?”
“People camp here?”
“Nope. Not people; just me and my dad—that’s it. Was really the only time we did anything together. I think it was more about him getting away from my Ma than any sort of bonding experience with me. But every year for four days in the summer, we would drive up to Stumphole and set up camp in the mud.”
Martin stared out the window.
Who in their right mind would camp here?
“Yup,” Woodward said as if he were reading Martin’s mind. “Just me and Pa.”
Then he went on to hum a few bars of the Deliverance song.
Martin smirked and turned back to the window.
Mud—why didn’t I notice that Arielle was covered in mud when she stormed in that night? Am I such a simple man that the only thing I cared about was getting my rocks off?
But that wasn’t fair, and he knew it. After all, she had basically thrown herself at him.
You could have said no. You could have asked her where she’d been, and that it didn’t matter that she had run her mouth at you and the Woodwards. You could have told her that she was forgiven.
That thought struck a chord with him, and it resonated in his mind.
Did I make her do this? Did she feel so badly about what happened that she needed me to console her? Was her throwing herself at me just a test? A test that I failed miserably?
“Marty? You all right?”
Could she have—could she have felt so badly that she… that she hurt herself?
Martin shook his head.
“Marty?”
“Huh?”
“I asked if you were all right. You looked… spooked.”
“Fine—as fine as I can be.” He cleared his throat, and was about to leave it at that when a thought popped into his head. “Hey, question for you: can you track Arielle’s credit cards? Bank cards? Find out where she’s been spending money?”
Woodward’s face twisted and he shifted his considerable girth in his seat. It looked like he was either constipated or trying to hold in a fart. Martin didn’t let him off the hook; he continued to stare at his friend, whose own gaze was locked on the road.
“Ah, Marty, I dunno, man. I don’t think I can do that.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Martin pressed.
Woodward squirmed again. Now he looked as comfortable as a first-time drug mule crossing the border… in one of those countries that had a severe penalty for drug trafficking. Like beheading severe.
“You want me to be honest?”
Martin nodded cautiously. It was clear that Woodward had had something like this—an answer like this—prepared and had just been waiting for an opportunity to use it. And apparently the opportunity had arisen. No one said, ‘want me to be honest’ without needing to get something off their chest.
“Shoot.”
“Truth is, I can probably get someone to check Arielle’s credit cards. But I’d be breaking federal law, man. That wouldn’t be like calling in a favor to the lab to check out some mud… that would be breaking federal law. And”—he tapped the gold star on his chest—“even this wouldn’t protect me from going to prison. Remember what happened with, ugh, with the other thing, too. Maybe it’s a can of worms we don’t want to open, my friend.”
The ‘other thing’ that Woodward was referring to was what he had found on Arielle. About how his digging at Martin’s behest had revealed a police record and a hospital report from about a month before Arielle started living with her ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle.’ A report about a twelve-year-old girl wandering nude through the streets of nearby Creston.
A girl with blood running down the insides of her legs.
A girl with no home, no memory, and no parents.
Martin shuddered.
Woodward was right; that had been a mistake. One that he had refused to share with Arielle.
Some things were just better left unknown.
Martin made a sound that was halfway between a grunt and an affirmation.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he grumbled.
I shouldn’t have put him in that spot. He—he shouldn’t even be here with me. This is my thing. It’s my Arielle.
But his tongue had uncharacteristically loosened of late, with him saying things that normally would have remained locked up tight. And when he did say things, what were once playful jokes had turned mean-spirited.
It had started with encouraging several of his smaller clients—new couples, mostly—to take shitty deals for their homes when he knew they could haggle for at least an extra ten or fifteen grand. Not big money in the grand scheme of things, but big for Batesburg. And fifteen grand was fifteen grand—who couldn’t use extra cash? Then there was him smoking cigar after cigar inside his house… cigars that he couldn’t even taste anymore, and whose enjoyment had long since dissolved.
And then there was the mall deal. He could have been diplomatic about it and asked a favor of one of his partners to take the deal, even though it was his—they probably would’ve understood, considering the shit he was going through. Or he could have lied and told them he wasn’t feeling well.
They would’ve understood.
Shit, he would have understood.
But he hadn’t done any of that.
Instead, he had made up some lame excuse that he couldn’t even remember in order to yell at his partners and then leave in a huff, muttering something about taking a few days off and hoping that they would pick up the slack.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair to ask Woodward to break the law.
It wasn’t fair that he and Arielle couldn’t have a kid.
It wasn’t fair that she had run away.
Martin closed his eyes and forced his thumb and forefinger into them.
He was getting desperate, which meant that this was likely one of the final steps before he gave up and moved on.
But he didn’t want to move on, not just yet.
Fuck, why did you have to take off, Air? Why couldn’t you just be content with all of the things we have? With each other?
“Weird…” Woodward muttered.
Martin pulled his fingers out of his eyes.
“What?”
Woodward extended a pudgy finger over the wheel.
“There. You see that?”
Martin saw nothing�
�just more of the mud road and miles of moss-covered swamp. Exactly the same thing they had been staring at for the better part of five hours.
“No,” he answered.
“There. The tire marks. At the side of the road.” Woodward brought the cruiser to a stop. “See how they are deeper and then shallow, then deeper again? Look, see there?”
There were indeed fresh-er tire marks in softer, wetter areas of the mud that hadn’t been packed by whatever few cars had passed over the past week—or month, or year.
“That pattern—the deep indentations, then shallower ones, then deeper ones—that only happens when someone pushes or pulls a car and then takes a break every few meters. The car settles with the rest, making it even more difficult to get it going again.”
Martin shrugged; he now saw what Woodward was referring to, but he didn’t know what it meant. Could someone have taken Arielle’s car? But if they had her car, wouldn’t they have her keys, too? Why didn’t they just drive the car? Someone had run out of gas? But then why push the car?
Woodward took his foot off the brake and the car crept forward at a snail’s pace. His eyes were fixed on the side of the road, but Martin, for the life of him, couldn’t tell what the hell he was looking at now.
“There!” Woodward suddenly shouted excitedly.
“What?”
“There!” he repeated, bringing the cruiser to a stop.
Martin squinted hard. He raised his eyes from the tire marks and stared at the trunks at a half dozen emaciated trees.
Birch trees? Do birch trees grow in swamps?
“You see it?”
Martin shook his head.
“See what?”
Woodward grunted as he shifted his body and leaned over into the passenger seat. This time when he flicked his chubby index finger, it passed within a few inches of Martin’s nose.
“There.”
And this time Martin did see it.
There was a mailbox lying by the side of the road, one that someone had obviously tried to cover with heaps of rotting moss. They had done a shitty job, and Martin could see the familiar shape clearly now that it had been pointed out to him.
“Yeah,” Martin said, nodding vigorously, “I see it.”
He pressed the trigger on the door and the window rolled down, affording him a better look.
“I think…” He squinted hard in the fading light. “I think it says eighteen on the side of it—can’t really tell because of the moss.”
Woodward shook his head.
“No, not eighteen. Eighteen eighteen.”
Martin shrugged.
Could be, but what does it matter?
“Why would someone cover it up?” he said, thinking out loud.
Woodward jammed the car into park, causing the vehicle to lurch in the mud.
“Don’t know, but I’d say that it’s just cause to check it out. What do you think?”
There was a twinkle in his eye when he said this, and Martin wasn’t sure if he liked what that meant.
Chapter 22
Martin Reigns
298 O’Brien Lane
Batesburg, South Carolina
29006
September ?, 2016
Martin,
I still haven’t heard from you… you can’t still be mad at me, can you? I mean, I—we—finally did it! I’m pregnant… for sure I’m pregnant now. I’m putting on more weight. Mother says I’m 8 weeks now. 8 weeks! Can you believe it? We don’t have calendars here, and since I broke my phone (no phones allowed anyway, bad for the baby, Mother says), I really don’t know what day it is. What I do know is that the sun is setting earlier and it’s getting cooler every day. So much so that I had to borrow a light jacket for the evening walks. I think it was Melissa’s… it’s still quite large (she was a big woman), but I think I can grow into it. I know I will grow into it.
Mother says I can get letters, but I can’t have visitors. Not yet. She says I am sensitive—sorry, the baby is sensitive—to outside interference now. I know, I know. I don’t believe half of this shit… ha, not even close to half. But fuck, who knows. It’s working. Mother says in a few weeks I might be able to feel the baby move. Says it’ll feel like tiny little bubbles in my stomach. I’m so excited!
Also, about Mother. She looks like she’s actually packing on weight too. Weird. There are two new women here, both pregnant, Joan and Jamie. JJ, I call them, although not to their faces. They’re always together. JJ are older than even Melissa, and I don’t talk to them much. They are strange… I think Joan (or is it Jamie?) talks to herself at night. Oh, and they talk to each other a lot, but usually only after milk time (yeah, it’s a thing—like, ‘you know what time it is kiddies? It’s milk time!’). Anyway, JJ whisper back and forth, and occasionally I pick up some words here and there. Most of it is about not having a husband, and their fears about whether or not they can raise a child alone. I think they might dyke it out and raise the babies together (between you and me). Their collective age must be pushing a century, but, like me, they’re pregnant. I had my doubts (their fleshy stomachs aside), but hey, Mother says this is a non-judgmental space. You can bet that I’m fitting in just peachy.
Aside from our walks, there really isn’t much to do. Most days I just sit in my room, or in what I now call the ‘lunch room,’ and read books. Been digging into some of the classics (not my first choice, but that’s all Mother has) like Twain and Dostoyevsky (sp?). I tried Tolstoy, but War and Peace is impossible. Seriously. There are about a billion characters, and every one of them has a name that is some derivation of Peter… Piotr, Petra, Peetie, etc…
I miss you, Martin. I miss your stupid jokes and everything about you. I miss spending time with you, just hanging out. Please, I need a letter or something to let me know you care. The last thing I want is to be stuck in a threesome with J and J. Our celebrity name would be JAJ… sounds like some sort of Japanese manga character. See? I suck at jokes. I need you to keep telling them.
Write me.
Please.
I love you.
XOXO
Arielle
Chapter 23
“Well? You ready?”
“For what?”
“To go up to the house.”
Martin furrowed his brow. They were standing on the side of the mud-packed road staring into a line of thin tree trunks.
“House? What are you talking about, house?”
Woodward sighed and extended his finger.
“Jesus, Marty, what’s wrong with you? You blind? There’s a house right there.”
Martin tried to follow the man’s finger like he had with the mailbox, but this time he saw nothing.
Except for the trees. There were those. And they were everywhere, dotting the muddy landscape like ill-placed spears.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Fuck, Marty, there’s a fucking house right there! Forty feet up the walk.”
Martin blinked rapidly three times, trying not only to clear his vision but also his mind. It had fogged over even before they had exited the car, and now that they were exposed to the sheer funk of the swamp, his confusion had only gotten worse. And so had his headache.
“Woods, I don’t—”
Tony Woodward made his way over to him with surprising speed despite his size and the suctioning mud and grabbed him around the shoulders. He stunk like sweat, but even this was a relief compared to the sulfurous swamp. Martin went slack and allowed Woodward to turn his body. Then, staring down the man’s finger like the sight of a gun, he saw it.
“There, you—”
Martin pushed the other man’s hand down.
“I see it,” he replied softly.
In the distance—more like sixty feet than the forty Woodward claimed—there was a washed-out gray Victorian house. Martin guessed it had been built in the late 1800s, or maybe even before that. It was tough to tell because, like the mailbox, it blended into the trees with amazing precision. A
nd, like the mailbox, it too was covered in moss.
“Yeah,” Martin said, his heart fluttering for some reason. “Let’s go check out the house.”
Chapter 24
Martin Reigns
298 O’Brien Lane
Batesburg, SC
29006
October
Martin,
Marty. I never call you that anymore; I wonder why that is. I’m feeling strange a bit these days. I’m growing fast; you should see my belly. Everything is big—ha, so much for training. It’s gonna take forever to get this off. It’s all worth it, though.
It’s getting cold here. And my room is not so nice anymore. There is some cold air coming through the walls at night, and last night I think I heard a mouse. A mouse! Mother says I’m paranoid, but I dunno. Why would there be a mouse in here? Mother says that you can’t visit because that’s bad for the baby—the stress is bad—but I can be up all night freaking out because I’m cold and I think a mouse is gonna shit on my face? Like, c’mon.
At this point, I don’t even know if you would come if she would let you. Are you still mad? Why are you still mad?
JJ are mocking me, I think. Talking behind my back. I think they are going to ask me into their lesbian triangle. They think I can’t raise a kid alone, but I know I can.
I just don’t want to.
Please Marty, write me back.
Please.
I’m begging you.
XOXO
Arielle
Chapter 25
“All right, so you know those Deliverance jokes?”
Woodward nodded.
“Well, don’t make any more of them. Too real. Too close for comfort, know what I mean?”
Woodward pulled his foot out of a wad of mud that suctioned to his police shoe. He swore.
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