“Sara?” Faith asked. “Will you please say something?”
Acid filled Sara’s mouth.
It wasn’t fair.
That’s what Sara wanted to say. To scream at the top of her lungs.
It just wasn’t fair.
Lena wasn’t strong. She would bend, not break. She would recover from this tragedy the same easy way she recovered from every other tragedy before.
Even if she lost Jared, Lena would always know what it felt like to have his child growing inside of her. She could always hold her baby’s hand and think of holding Jared’s. She could see her child laugh and learn and grow and play sports and do school projects and graduate from college and Lena would always, always remember her husband. She would see Jared in her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. On her deathbed, she would find peace in the knowledge that they had made something beautiful together. That even in death, they would both go on living.
“Sara,” Faith said. “What’s happening here?”
Sara wiped her eyes, angry that she was back in the same dark place she’d started at this morning. “Why does everything come so damn easy to her?” She struggled to speak. Her throat clenched around every word that wanted to come out of her mouth. “Everything just opens up, and she always walks through unscathed and—” Sara had to stop for breath. “It’s just so easy for her. She always has it so goddamn easy.”
Faith indicated the door. “Come on.”
Sara couldn’t move.
“Let’s go.” Faith took Sara by the arm and led her out of the room. Sara thought they were leaving the house, but Faith stopped at the kitchen table. She held up the envelope she’d opened before.
Sara didn’t take it. “I don’t care about her Pap smear.”
“Look who it’s from.”
Sara scanned the return address. Macon Medical Center.
Driscoll Benedict, OB-GYN. “So?”
Faith opened the envelope, unfolded the doctor’s invoice. She held it up for Sara to see. The treatment date was ten days ago. The amount was zeroed out with the advisory that the hospital would bill Lena separately for her emergency room visit.
Across the bottom, someone had written, “God bless you both. You are in our prayers.”
Sara took the invoice from Faith. Her knees felt weak. She sat down at the table. Even without the note of condolence, she recognized the medical billing code.
Lena had lost the baby.
9.
Will rode his motorcycle down a neglected state highway, his head rotating like a gun turret. While there was the occasional eighteen-wheeler on the back roads, it was the deer he was most worried about. Less than ten minutes ago, Will had seen a buck dart right out in front of him. The creature was magnificent. There was no other word for it. Muscles rippled along his chest and back. His spindly legs were like a ballerina’s. His antlers were branched like a tree. The animal hadn’t even bothered to look Will’s way, which was good because Will would’ve been humiliated if any living creature had seen the look of sheer terror on his face. He did not need a mathematician to calculate the odds of survival when a speeding motorcycle slammed into a speeding deer. The coroner would’ve spent the rest of his days picking pieces of Will out of the buck’s rib cage.
He supposed there were all sorts of wild animals living close to Atlanta, but the possibility seemed remote when you stood amidst the skyscrapers, watching buses and cars and trains zoom by.
One of the most startling things Will had found in Macon was not the wildlife, but the divide between rich and poor. In Atlanta, Will’s modest house was only a few blocks from Sara’s penthouse apartment, which in turn was not far from a methadone clinic.
Macon didn’t really have a literal wrong side of the tracks, but a meandering avenue skirting the city limits seemed to be the point at which the carpet ran out. Old mansions gave way to cottages, which gave onto clapboard houses and derelict trailer parks and, eventually, unpainted shacks. Working cases around the state, Will had seen his share of poverty, but there was something particularly depressing about fresh laundry hanging outside a structure that looked as if it didn’t even have running water.
Will slowed the bike. He squinted up the road, checking for loose deer. Closer proximity revealed a yellow Volkswagen Bug—not the new kind that looked like something George Jetson would drive, but the older model that emitted a sound like a child blowing a raspberry. There were bumper stickers all over the back. The blinkers were flashing in lieu of brake lights. Will downshifted another gear. The Bug swung into the oncoming traffic lane, doing a sharp U-turn toward a row of mailboxes on a strip of dirt. A hand went out, a mailbox was checked, then the Bug swung another heavy U-turn that would’ve provided a nice ramp for Will’s bike if he hadn’t been paying attention.
He shifted the gear down another notch and pulled over opposite the mailboxes. He checked the time on his cell phone. Will had given himself almost an hour to make what was supposed to be a twenty-minute journey. He wasn’t good with directions, and a phone that told you to go left or right was not exactly helpful to the average dyslexic. Also, he felt mired in a quicksand of guilt. Sara wasn’t happy with him being undercover. She sure as hell wouldn’t be happy with the prospect of Will going on a date. Not that he was technically dating Cayla Martin, but the fact that the nurse seemed to think so gave the exercise an air of uncomfortable legitimacy.
After talking with Faith, Will had decided that it was time to confront the Big Whitey of it all. He’d spent nearly an hour looking for Tony Dell. Cayla Martin seemed like a good fallback plan. The nurse was much easier—in more ways than one. Will was eating his lunch in the cafeteria when a furtive hand slid a note under his tray. The move was practiced. No one seemed to notice. Will wanted to believe he rose to the occasion, discreetly tucking the note into his pocket like Aldrich Ames. Though Will was pretty sure the master spy hadn’t read his missives while hiding in a toilet stall.
7 p.m.—Left off exit 12, right on dirt road. Only house with lights on. Don’t be late!!
Cayla had put a smiley face under the exclamation points, which served to heighten Will’s guilt. He left smiley faces for Sara sometimes. He texted them to her. She texted them back. Once, when they were fooling around, she kissed them all over his stomach.
Will let out a long, pained sigh as he got off the bike.
He pulled up the telephone keypad on his iPhone. He dialed in the twelve-digit code to access the secret apps. The screen flashed up quickly, so he had his finger ready to select the number-cloaking program. The app opened. He dialed in a ten-digit number.
The edge of the phone bumped his helmet. Will undid the strap and hooked it on the handlebars. Four unusually long rings passed before Sara answered. In the background, Will heard a piano playing and the soft murmur of conversation.
Instead of saying hello, Sara asked, “Brunswick?”
Will guessed the cloaking app had done its job. “Not exactly.” He tried to identify the background noise, which sounded more like a bar than a hospital. “Where are you?”
“Where am I?” Her drawl was more pronounced, which tended to happen when she got away from the city. “I am drinking a glass of scotch at the hotel bar of the Macon Days Inn.”
Will immediately thought of all the scumbugs who were probably trying to hit on her. He worked to keep his cool. “Yeah?”
“Yep.” She hit the p hard at the end. Will thought about the shape of her mouth. The bowtie of her lips. And then he imagined some idiot in a gold necklace sidling up to her and asking if she wanted a refill.
He said, “That’s not like you to be in a bar.”
“No,” Sara agreed. “But I’m doing a lot of things today that aren’t like me.”
Will couldn’t decipher her tone. She didn’t sound drunk, which was a relief. He’d never known Sara to be a drinker.
He offered, “I could probably get there around midnight, one at the latest.”
“No, sweetheart.
I don’t want you anywhere near here.”
Will felt a jolt of fear. Sara usually called him sweetheart when he was being dense. Had she figured out he was in Macon? Will ran through the possibilities, trying to find an area of weakness. Faith wouldn’t tell—at least not without giving Will a warning. Denise Branson knew better, and even if she didn’t, she had no idea who Sara was. Lena had promised to keep quiet, but what kind of idiot trusted a woman who killed a man with a hammer, then lied about what came next?
“Will?”
He swallowed back his paranoia. One thing he knew about Sara was that she didn’t play games. If his cover was blown, she’d be demanding an explanation, not listening to piano music in a bar.
He asked, “How’s Jared doing?”
“Not good.” She paused to take a drink. Will heard the glass hit the bar when she finished. “One of his surgical incisions turned septic. He went into shock. They’ve got a guy from the CDC running the case. He knows what he’s doing, but—” She stopped. “Lena was pregnant. She lost the baby ten days ago.”
He still couldn’t decipher the edge in her tone. Sara couldn’t have children, but that didn’t have anything to do with Lena. Will asked, “Does Faith know?”
“She was there. I basically lost my shit in front of her.”
Will looked at his bike. He should turn around right now and go see her. The Days Inn was just off the interstate, less than half an hour away.
Sara said, “Faith was very nice about it. I guess if you’re going to lose your shit, she’s a good person to do it around.”
“Yeah.” Will heard a semi barreling down the road, the lights slicing through the dusk. The noise of the engine vibrated the air, cut out whatever Sara was saying.
He asked, “What?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He heard the tinkle of ice cubes, her throat work as she swallowed. “Are you sitting on the side of the road?”
“I wanted to check on you. You were pretty upset this morning.”
“Well, I’m pretty upset tonight,” she quipped. “You know, my daddy told me a long time ago that wanting revenge is like sipping poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“I don’t know.” She paused again. “I feel like I’ve trespassed. Like I’ve stolen something from Lena. Something private that didn’t belong to me.” She gave a harsh laugh. “My pound of flesh isn’t nearly as filling as I thought it’d be.”
Will stared at the mailboxes. Numbers had been spray-painted on the doors in various colors by different hands. Someone had drawn a daisy on one box. Another had the Georgia Bulldogs logo.
Sara said, “I miss you.”
Will had seen her less than twelve hours ago, but hearing the words made him realize that he ached for her. He tried to think of a way out of this mess. He should tell her that he was sorry for keeping secrets. That he was sorry he wasn’t there right now. That he was a coward and a liar and he didn’t deserve Sara but he was pretty sure he would fade away to nothing without her.
“Anyway.” Abruptly, her tone changed. “Since one scotch is clearly my limit, I should go back to the hospital and sit with Nell. I told her that Lena lost the baby. She already knew. I guess Lena told her. I don’t know. She’s not talking much. Of course, neither am I—at least not to Nell.” Sara gave a stilted laugh. “I’m sorry I’m rambling. I’m just tired. I’ve been up since this time yesterday. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t.”
“Are you going home tonight?” Will started to make plans. He’d finish with Cayla, then jump on his bike and head straight to Atlanta.
Sara quashed the idea. “I already booked a room for the night. The dogs will be fine, and I shouldn’t be driving long distances right now.”
“I could come get you.” He tried not to beg. “Let me come get you.”
“No.” There was no equivocation in her voice. “I don’t want you here, Will. I want you separate from this.”
He felt trapped by his own lies. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry.” She paused again as if she needed to catch her breath. “I want you to keep doing whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re doing it, and then when it’s over I want you to come back home to me and for us to have dinner and talk and laugh and then I want you to take me into the bedroom and—”
Another truck roared by, but Will heard every single pornographic detail she whispered into the phone. Sara asked, “Can you do that?”
Will’s tongue felt too thick for his mouth. He cleared his throat. “I can do all of that.”
“Good, because that’s what I need, Will. I need you to make me feel like I’m firmly planted in my life again. The life I have with you.”
The piano music had stopped. Ice hit a glass.
Someone laughed. She said, “What we have is good, right?”
“Yes.” At least on that point, he could give her a straight answer. “It’s really good.”
“That’s what I think, too.”
“Sara—” Will heard the desperation in his voice, but he couldn’t think of anything to say but her name.
“I need to go.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Just think about later, all right? Us at home, and what you want to eat for dinner, or maybe we’ll go to a movie, or walk the dogs. Just live our lives. That’s what I’m thinking about right now. That’s what’s getting me through this.”
“We’ll do it. We’ll do all of it.” He waited for her to say something else, but she ended the call.
Will stared down at the phone as if he could make Sara get back on the line. Not that he had any words of great comfort. If anything, Will had been too quiet on the call. He realized that now. He’d forced Sara to do most of the talking when it was obvious that she was waiting for Will to say something—anything—that would somehow bring her some peace.
He mumbled, “Idiot.”
Will dialed the twelve-digit code again to access the app. He wasn’t fast enough when the screen popped up. Will dialed the code again, but he stopped shy of the last two numbers.
He didn’t know what to say to her. He wanted to go to her. He could be there in ten minutes if he blew through all the red lights. He would do everything she wanted him to and more.
And then she would ask him how he’d gotten there so fast.
Will had ten minutes to figure out how to tell her. Fifteen if traffic near the Days Inn was bad. He unhooked his helmet from the handlebars. A chunk of paint had been scraped off. He strapped the shorty on his head. Once he was on the bike, he turned the front wheel back the way he’d come.
He didn’t have a choice anymore. The only thing to do after that call was go straight to the hotel, or the hospital, and sit down with Sara and tell her exactly what was going on. Faith was right—this was too close to the bone. What had started out as a small lie of omission had built up into a giant deceit that could take out their entire relationship.
Will wasn’t going to have Sara drinking poison for him one day.
He gunned the bike as he headed back toward the interstate. He looked up at the darkening sky. The hotel was near an airport, so he could use the planes to make sure he was heading in the right direction. At least Will assumed that was the Days Inn Sara was talking about. The chain was big. There was probably more than one location in Macon.
He just happened to glance back down in time to notice a black pickup truck parked in the middle of the road. The oncoming lane was blocked by a white Honda. Will slowed the bike, wishing he had a horn. There was no way to pass on either side of the road—at least not without risking a slide down an embankment. Will let his boots scrape the ground as he stopped the bike.
“Hey!” Will shouted. “Get out of the way!”
“Hold your horses!” The pickup driver craned half his body out of the cab. Will recognized Tony’s voice before he saw his face. “Damn, Bud, what’re you doin’ comin’ from that way? Cayl
a’s is down there.”
He was pointing to a dirt road shooting off at a steep angle. Tall trees obscured the entrance. There was no sign, no marker to indicate that this was anything but a dirt track. Will would’ve never been able to find it, and Cayla had played this game well enough to know she was better off giving a man an address he had to locate rather than a phone number he could use to cancel.
“Come on.” Tony waved for Will to follow him.
Will revved the bike, pretending he wasn’t checking out the driver in the white Honda. He saw the top of a head, dark wavy hair and a high forehead, as the window snicked up.
Tony turned onto the dirt road. His radio was loud enough for the melody to make its way back to Will. Lynyrd Skynyrd. “Free Bird.” Not much of a surprise.
Will hung back from the truck, which kicked up enough red dust to suffocate an elephant. There was no way to get out of this now. Will would spend two hours at Cayla’s, tops, then find Sara and do what he should’ve done in the first place.
She was probably on her way to the hospital. Will couldn’t very well ambush her in front of her friends, and besides, what he needed to say to her should be said when they were alone. He would tell her at the hotel. They’d never been in a real fight before. He couldn’t guess what Sara would do. Maybe she would throw things or cuss him like a dog. Then again, he’d never seen her throw anything out of anger and she seldom cursed, a by-product of working around children all day.
Maybe she would get really quiet, which she did when she was worried. Will hated when she got quiet. Though that might be better than the alternative. All he knew for certain was that he’d pretty much lie down in front of a speeding train to keep her from leaving him.
The back wheels of Tony’s truck spun as he dipped into a rut. Will steered the bike away from the pothole, which was filled with muddy water. The dirt road thinned to a single lane. Will tried to take in his surroundings, but he could only see the outlines of a few houses. Day was completely giving over to night. Tony was too far ahead for his headlights to do Will any good. The man drove with his foot on the brake. The taillights turned the red road an icy black.
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