Still Mine

by Amy Stuart

  “Say sorry to Jared, Daniel,” Sara says, heavy with sarcasm. “Tell him you didn’t mean to throw the stick.”

  Jared collects the stick and bends it into an arch until it cracks. Then he tosses the pieces into the sickly looking bush that makes up his front garden.

  “Asshole,” Sara says under her breath.

  Though he stands a hundred feet away, Clare can feel Jared’s eyes bore through her.

  “Just ignore him,” Sara says. “He’ll go away.”

  And Jared does, stepping back through the screen door into the darkness of his house. Clare feels a stab in her gut. Always the husband, her mother said.

  “He was probably hoping for a casserole,” Sara says. “He’s as heartless as they come.”

  “Did his wife still live there?” Clare asks. “Before she disappeared?”

  “No. She left him around Christmas. She was living up at her folks’ place.”

  “Strange,” Clare says.

  The word seems to jar Sara. “It is strange,” she says. “The whole thing is strange.”

  By now the boy is back on his bike and over at the very end of the road. He weaves fearlessly close to the yellow guardrail, yanking his front wheel to draw tight circles. There appears to be a path marked next to the guardrail, another way down to the gorge. Clare lifts her hands and mimics the clicking of a camera. Did Jared know Shayna was leaving? Did he see it coming? It might have been Sara who piled Shayna’s suitcases into her car and drove her up the mountain road to the Cunningham house, playing the helpful friend in the face of a broken marriage. Was there screaming, words exchanged in the driveway? Or was it silence between them, an icy disregard?

  Every marriage suffers in its own way, Clare’s mother once said after witnessing a hostile moment between Clare and Jason. Some quietly, others not. But her mother knew nothing of the truth. Clare bears few scars from Jason on the pale of her skin. He had a way of inflicting injuries that faded before anyone could catch on, of using his charm to override any rage that seeped out in public. Surely Shayna had her reasons for leaving. For Clare it was the certainty that death was circling her, that death was the only other way out. It was a fleeing under the cloak of a winter evening, her husband none the wiser, a panicked flight behind the wheel of her junker car, the snow coming down hard out the window.

  The section of the hardware store reserved for groceries takes up half an aisle. At the back Clare finds a display table scattered with fruits and vegetables, and then a refrigerator and a freezer with groaning motors. With only the cash in her pocket to pay, Clare must keep tabs on what she buys. It takes all her willpower not to tear open a box of crackers and start on them right away.

  Clare wanders the aisles in search of a few other supplies, duct tape and matches, ointment for her gash, a can of lighter fluid for the fire pit. She finds a plastic poncho for a raincoat and some wool socks. Though it is July, the mountains do not seem to adhere to the seasons, moving through heat and rain and fog and sun and even a sharp snap of cold in the two days since she arrived. She lands at the cash register with a full basket.

  The young cashier stares dead ahead as she pulls Clare’s items along the beeping conveyor. This girl with the nose ring is the same one in the crop top from the other night at Ray’s, though now she wears a uniform, her eyes smudged with coal liner and her lips a blinding red. She can’t be older than eighteen, an age Clare best remembers because it was on her eighteenth birthday that her mother announced at the dinner table that a marble-sized tumor had been found on her esophagus. Announced it, with flair, a swilling glass of wine in one hand and a forkful of birthday cake in the other. Her father sat still and silent in his way, almost smiling. Clare remembers feeling injured by her mother’s showmanship. She’d felt ready for the world until that moment. But there was an instant loss of hope, her birthday bested by a proclamation of terminal cancer. Perhaps Clare knew what was coming, the stash of medications introduced to the house, her parents too preoccupied with their own troubles to take note of her transgressions, the hole dug in Clare’s heart by her mother’s cancer the perfect opening for Jason.

  The high sun nearly blinds Clare as she clears the sliding doors of the hardware store, so that the sight of Jared Fowles leaning against his truck, staring at her, stops her in her tracks. He half smiles, his elbow propped against the rearview mirror.

  “Clare,” he says.

  “Yes?”

  He takes off his baseball cap, the dark of his hair falling across his forehead.

  “I thought you might want to introduce yourself.”

  “You seem to know who I am.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  The plastic bags cut into Clare’s hand so the tips of her fingers feel numb, her shoulder smarting. Jared’s scrutiny lays her bare. A bead of sweat rolls down the curl of her back. The articles about Shayna’s disappearance describe Jared as a landscaper, a former miner, a man twice arrested for drunk driving. He was at the gorge the night Shayna disappeared, but left early. Had the police interviewed him? Was he even bothered that his wife was gone?

  “I know who you are,” Clare says. “Sara told me.”

  “We don’t get a lot of visitors in Blackmore. Did she mention that?”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  “You’ve come to take pictures,” Jared says, his tone chiding.

  “I have.”

  “Or maybe you’re a fancy private detective. A fancy PI. Here to snoop.”

  “I’m not a private eye.”

  “A cop?”

  “Is this small talk in Blackmore? That’s all anyone asks me.”

  Jared laughs. “You a runaway, then?”

  One of the bag loops slips from Clare’s grip. What does Jared see when he looks at her? Clare adjusts her stance.

  “I’m not sure grown-ups can be runaways.”

  “Sure they can,” Jared says.

  “Then maybe that’s what I am.”

  The words surprise Clare as soon as she utters them, the frankness of what she’s just said. There was a time, before she was married, that Clare knew how to talk to a man like Jared, how to measure just the right amount of push-back, that mix of assertion and flirtation, a show of strength.

  “Hiding from someone?” Jared asks.

  “Not hiding. Moving. I don’t like to stay still.”

  Jared smiles fully now. Perhaps he sees the resemblance to Shayna, Clare same-aged and vaguely similar to his estranged wife, this arrogance a way to mask his true response. Clare nearly jumps when she feels the vibration of her phone in her pocket. It takes a concerted effort not to drop the grocery bags.

  “Did you follow me here?” Clare asks.

  “I did.”

  “Do you mind if I leave now?”

  “You’re staying up at Charlie’s.”

  “I am.”

  “You a fast runner?”

  At home, Clare had been a fast runner, even in the worst of times, three miles to the lake and back every morning, her body wiry because of it. She tried to keep it up after she left, find routes in whatever towns she passed through, but she could never shake the sensation of being chased.

  “Don’t try to scare me,” Clare says.

  “I’m just playing with you. A little game.”

  Jared points to her shoulder.

  “Looks like you’re bleeding,” he says.

  Clare glances down. Red spots have formed like ink stains on her T-shirt.

  “I took a spill yesterday,” she says. “Gashed myself on a stick.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you’re too careful.”

  “It was dark out. I tripped.”

  But Jared is looking past her now, suddenly bored. He puts his baseball cap back on.

  “Listen,” he says. “Blackmore’s a pretty small place. I’m sure I’ll see you around. Clare. What’s your last name?”

  “O’Dey.”

  “O’Dey,” he repeats. “You want to keep up th
is game, come by anytime.”

  The playfulness in Jared’s voice irks her. Where is your wife? Clare would like to yell to him. He gets in his truck and starts the engine, rolling down the window but saying nothing. Clare steps aside as he turns onto the street. She knows Jared will look for clues, type her name into a search engine. But he would be typing “Clare O’Dey,” and that is not her name. A name, according to her own digging, that means “of a servant,” “of a maid.” Perhaps Malcolm didn’t know that when he suggested it, or perhaps it is his way of being wry.

  Clare dumps her bags in the trunk, then sits in the driver’s seat to check her phone. It flashes red with a waiting text message.

  Moines River Picnic Area, Hwy 117 South, tomorrow Saturday 10h00. A two-hour drive from Blackmore in non-inclement weather. Be punctual.

  Malcolm. Clare reads the message three times. Like a telegram, curt and prompt. No questions. She would like to punch in a note about Shayna Fowles, about the people in this town, their doubts about Clare and her story, their questions always the same. But Malcolm is a stranger too. She must be careful what she gives away. Clare texts a two-letter response: OK.

  Clare climbs the porch of the Merritt house and cups her hands to peek through the picture window. Through the sheer curtains she can see the sparse living room, worn furniture scattered on old hardwood, the wallpaper peeling in every corner. Clare’s finger traces the length of the windowsill, gathering cobwebs and dust. Charlie has probably lived alone in this house since his father and brothers died in the mine accident, since his mother swallowed a rifle a week later, the waitress at Ray’s said. For years Charlie has probably subsisted on canned food and beer, never bothering to run a rag over anything. She knows she will hear Charlie’s truck before she sees it, time enough to scramble away.

  Clare sits on the old porch swing and peels back her shirt. The gash is bright and moist with the ointment she’d picked up earlier, the skin around it flaring red. She will have to find a way to bandage it. This time there will be a scar.

  A hammering in the distance startles her. Clare scans the yard. Never alone. She stands and peers over the railing to the field behind the house, but the barn blocks her sight line. The last bits of daylight linger over the trees. Clare descends from the porch and walks around to the back of the house. Through the gaps in the barn’s weathered boards she spots Wilfred Cunningham in the field, lifting a sledgehammer high and slamming it down on a rounded post. Next to him is a wheelbarrow full of more posts, and Clare can see a trail of them spaced in the tall grass fifteen or so feet apart, the first makings of a fence.

  Clare gnaws on her fingernails as she watches Wilfred. She has questions for him. About neighbors, about his daughter, about the bad blood between him and Charlie. But in half an hour it will be dark, and Wilfred’s face is devoid of expression, a lack of emotion more daunting to Clare than anger. Before she can retreat he catches sight of her. With a deep breath Clare waves and walks over.

  “I don’t mean to bother you, Mr. Cunningham. I heard the hammering.”

  Wilfred ignores her, tapping the post into place.

  “Building a fence? It’ll be dark soon.”

  Nothing.

  “It was nice to meet your wife yesterday.”

  Wilfred drops the sledgehammer. “You need to leave.”

  “I don’t mean to bother you,” Clare says again.

  “You are bothering me,” Wilfred says. “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face.”

  “I couldn’t just leave her, Mr. Cunningham. She was clearly lost.”

  The fence posts line up at an angle to the birch trees, cutting a pie slice out of Charlie’s back field.

  “I could help you,” Clare says.

  Silence.

  “You could use some help. Does Charlie Merritt know you’re building this fence?”

  “Go ahead and tell him.”

  When the post is in place, Wilfred takes the wheelbarrow and walks it ten paces through the grass. Clare follows. She will have to be more direct.

  “I know about your daughter,” she says. “Shayna. Maybe I can help.”

  Wilfred collects another post from the pile.

  “You must be worried sick,” Clare continues.

  Beams of light dance along the side of Charlie’s house, then through the barn. Headlights. Charlie is home.

  “Mr. Cunningham—”

  “I know your type,” Wilfred says, hoisting the post into place. He grabs hold of the sledgehammer again and bangs with renewed purpose. Charlie will soon follow the sound of hammering, as she did. She jogs back to the barn and as she rounds its corner, they nearly collide.

  “Hey!” she says.

  “What’s the hammering?” Charlie looks over her shoulder.

  “Wilfred Cunningham is building a fence.”

  Charlie’s face is stone, eyes fixed in the distance. “Is he?”

  “It’s just a fence,” Clare says. “You can pull the posts out tomorrow.”

  “Or I can set Timber on him right now.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Does he have a gun?”

  “I don’t think so,” Clare says.

  Charlie goes into the barn and emerges a minute later, holding a rifle.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Clare asks.

  “I’ve got a trespasser.”

  “Stop it.” She blocks his path.

  Charlie pumps the rifle and fires up at the sky. Clare crouches and crawls up against the barn. She should run, find her phone, chase a signal, call the police. What police? By the time anyone arrives the damage will already be done, Clare knows that well enough. She phoned the police three times in her marriage. Three times, cowering in her bedroom, waiting, waiting. But the local detachment was small, and the officers arrived each time with their sirens off, greeting Jason by first name, the friend of a friend. Just another stormy marital spat, they’d all agree, so that even Clare questioned her version as she gave her statement. Do you really want us to take him away? they’d asked her. No, Clare would say. I guess not.

  Clare scrambles up and plants her hand flat on Charlie’s chest, the warm thud of his heartbeat against her palm.

  “You can’t shoot him,” she says.

  “I should. I should shoot the old man right through the heart.”

  “I’m begging you,” Clare says. “Please just let it go. Please—”

  But the hammer pounds again and Charlie is running. Clare chases him across the field, everything in grays now, the light almost gone. If Wilfred sees them coming, he doesn’t budge. He doesn’t even set the hammer down to brace himself.

  “Old man!” Charlie yells. “Old man, you’d better stop that hammering.”

  “It’s my field,” Wilfred says.

  “Not anymore. You know that.”

  “You think you Merritts won?” Wilfred says. “I’ll end the last of you.”

  “We’re down to the last of you too, Cunningham. You’ve got no one left either.”

  Charlie lifts the rifle and takes aim. “One more strike and I shoot.”

  Wilfred lifts the sledgehammer over the post, pounding it down. Charlie curls his finger around the trigger and fires. The shot rings out and Wilfred lets go of the hammer and staggers backwards.

  “Feel that?” Charlie says. “The next one rips right through you.”

  The post has toppled over with the force of the shot. Wilfred inspects it, pressing his finger into the splintered divot where the bullet went through. Then he finds the hammer on the ground and wiggles the post back to standing. Charlie looks at Clare, eyes burning. No, she mouths to him, pleading, but his face is deadpan. He fires again. This time Wilfred reels in a full circle and falls, and Clare is certain she is deaf because she hears nothing, not even her own scream, not the thump of Wilfred Cunningham as he is swallowed up by the grass. Charlie Merritt is a silhouette. Gunpowder wafts over to Clare, acrid in her nose and eyes.

  The sounds retur
n to Clare. She can hear Wilfred cursing and groaning. She finds him deep in the grass, flat on his back and clutching his right arm. Clare rolls him so his injured arm is resting on her lap. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of blood. Wilfred tears away from her and spreads open the rip on his flannel shirt. His bicep is streaked red.

  “It’s just a graze,” Clare says. “Took off a bit of flesh.”

  “I aimed it that way.” Charlie looms over them, rifle in hand. “You wouldn’t drop the damn hammer.”

  “You missed is what you did,” Wilfred says. “Your aim is for crap. You’re just like your goddamn father.”

  “You want me to shoot you where it hurts, old man? Let you bleed out?”

  “You don’t have the guts.”

  Charlie raises the gun again, and this time Clare can see straight down the barrel.

  “Don’t point that at me!” Clare says.

  “Then move away from him. Now.”

  “You want to rot in jail over a fence?”

  “He’s trespassing. You tell her, Wilfred. Whose land is this?”

  “If your mother could see you now,” Wilfred says.

  “And if your daughter could see you.”

  Wilfred snarls and takes a run at Charlie, catching him by the waist so that they tumble with a thud to the ground right in front of Clare, the rifle falling from Charlie’s grip.

  “Stop it!” Clare says, circling them.

  Wilfred straddles Charlie and punches him hard with his good arm. Then Charlie is on top, the one landing the punches. Clare feels her way through the grass until her hand grips the familiar steel of the gun. From her knees she pumps the rifle and fires toward the setting moon, the blast like a camera flash lighting them up. The fumbling stops at once, both men turning wide-eyed to her. She nudges the rifle’s aim back and forth between them.

  “Get up,” Clare says, standing herself up and stepping back. “Both of you.”

  Charlie is on his feet first. And then, with greater effort, Wilfred.

  “You wouldn’t shoot,” Charlie says, his tone almost playful.

  “How do you know that?” Clare says.

  “You ever held a loaded rifle before?”