by Amy Stuart
“So it suits Charlie that Shayna might be dead.”
Sara cocks her eyebrow. “You’re a real cynic, you know. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No,” Clare says. “I’m not saying he killed her. But all men are angry about something.”
“His issue is with her father. I know Charlie. He’s not a savage.”
Just wait, Clare thinks. The savagery might come later.
“I’m just saying,” Clare says. “He’s probably not heartbroken that she’s gone.”
“Nobody’s heartbroken.” Sara stretches out her legs. “I was with him that night anyway. If he was going to strangle anyone, it would have been me.”
Timber barks. Below them a black truck pops out from behind one of the buildings, its windshield reflecting the stirring clouds. When Charlie emerges from the truck, Timber’s bark guides his gaze up to them. Charlie cups his hands around his mouth and hollers up.
“You two lost?”
“Looking for you,” Sara calls back.
The wall of rock behind them bounces their words in such a perfect echo that Clare actually looks over her shoulder. When Charlie sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles, Timber takes off, back and forth in a sprint down the jags of the mine road. Sara and Clare follow him.
“Did you tell him we were coming?” Clare asks.
“He wants to talk to you.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“You could have told me that,” Clare says.
“Then you wouldn’t have come.”
Up close Charlie’s face looks better than Wilfred’s, the swelling around his eyes all but gone. He opens his arms and welcomes Sara into a hug.
“You two friends now?” Charlie asks.
“She asks a lot of questions,” Sara says. “She likes to know other people’s business.”
This is why Clare was never one for girlfriends, aside from Grace, unable as she always was to grasp the intricacies of female friendship, its unruliness, how someone like Sara can act the confidante one minute, then throw Clare to the wolves the next.
The building beyond them is boxy and built from cinder blocks, its windows smashed. Behind it is another smaller building, fenced in. MINE SHAFT. Clare feels her whole body stiffen, the adrenaline coursing. Sara pouts and wraps her arms around Charlie’s waist.
“This place could still be put to some use,” Clare says, straightening up. “To someone with vision.”
Charlie smiles. “I had a dream about you. Pointing your gun at me.”
“I could say I had the same dream about you.”
“There’s just something in the timing,” Charlie says. “Has me thinking.”
“What timing?”
“You show up here right out of the blue.”
Clare opens her mouth to speak, but no words come.
“She says she’s on the run,” Sara says. “From a husband.”
“Is she?” Charlie says. He unhooks himself from Sara. “Should I be worried about you?”
“No,” Clare says.
“It occurred to me last night, with that shot of yours. Maybe you’re more than just a plain old cop or PI. Maybe you’re some kind of special ops.”
“Special ops!” Clare forces a quick laugh. “In Blackmore? I don’t think so.”
Charlie’s face darkens.
“We’ve had cops up here before,” Sara says. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
“Well, I assure you, I’m not a cop of any kind. My father taught me how to shoot. I grew up on a farm.”
“Right,” Charlie says. “Sniper farm girl. On the run. That’s some story.”
For a moment they stand in a stalemate. In the silence, Timber lets out a low growl.
“Two things,” Charlie says finally.
“Okay,” Clare says.
“Don’t come around here on your own. Ever. People have fallen down the shaft before. It happens.”
Clare feels the air catch in her lungs, her hands tighten into fists, the same sensation that came over her when Jason’s voice began to rise in their kitchen. Anticipation. She nods at Charlie.
“And don’t ever tell me you feel sorry for Wilfred Cunningham.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes you did. Yesterday. You don’t feel sorry for him. That man killed my family. Got it?”
Clare nods again, unwilling to break eye contact first.
Charlie looks up to the sky. “Rain.”
On cue, Clare feels a drop on her cheek, and then another. In an instant a torrent unleashes on them, straight and hard. Charlie tugs Clare and Sara by the arms over to his truck, opening the door to let the dog jump in first. In the cab Clare sits wedged between him and Sara, the dog panting at Sara’s feet. Clare tucks her camera under her arm to rub it dry. The windshield is opaque with water.
“Open it,” Charlie says, pointing.
Sara yanks open the glove compartment and extracts a small baggie of pills. Clare recognizes them at once, the round blue of them matching those taken so often from her mother’s stash. Sara pinches the bag open and lifts two pills out, swallowing one and handing the other to Clare.
“No,” Clare says, a deep pull within her countering her refusal.
“Think of it as a hazing ritual,” Charlie says. “Welcome to Blackmore.”
The drone of rain fills the truck. Clare knows what will come, that gentle euphoria, where everything feels light, easy, beautiful. Months of restraint undone in a single swallow. She can’t read the expression on Sara’s face, whether it is worry or anger, jealousy. Do you want to see me undone? she would like to say to Sara, the pill rolling between her forefinger and thumb. Clare tilts her head back and drops the pill in. It tastes bitter on her tongue.
“See now? That wasn’t so hard.” Charlie jabs Clare lightly with his elbow. “Now you’re one of us.”
“Aren’t you going to take one?”
Charlie just laughs. “You coming to Ray’s tonight?”
“Of course she is,” Sara says, eyes closed.
“Good,” Charlie says. “Come to the house at seven. I’ll drive you down. Keep you in my sights.”
Charlie eases the truck over to the switchbacks and begins the climb. Clare watches him through the windshield as he uncoils the chain and pries the gate open with a key he takes from his pocket, the way the gate gouges the wet gravel as it drags. Already the light seems different. Brighter. If she squints until he is fuzzy, she can see Jason in Charlie’s place, the young Jason from their courtship, the man who incited nothing but desire in Clare. Sara’s breathing has calmed from the earlier staccato, some color returned to her complexion. Charlie drives the truck through the gate, then gets out to repeat the task in reverse. Clare tilts the rearview mirror so she can see him drawing the gate closed, mesmerized by the scowl that sets on his face when he thinks no one is watching.
The warmth. It comes first to the fingers and toes, then up the arms and legs, into the core. Clare can feel the flush in her cheeks. She lies starfish on the bed and lets it wash over her, her fingers uncurling, her jaw released from tension she hadn’t even known was there. The kicking in. There is a patter of rain on the roof of the trailer, the black of the tall pines out the rounded window. Clare reaches for the photograph atop the folder, Shayna’s eyes two dots in the poor pixilation.
You left a hole in Blackmore, Clare thinks, her finger tracing Shayna’s outline. A vacancy.
It is almost seven. Clare strips out of her clothes and wets a towel in the kitchen to run over her body. She scrubs at her skin until it is red and goose-bumped, then stands naked in front of the mirror. The sight of her own body still surprises her, the curves that have come since she left, since she stopped running. The gash on her shoulder looks inflamed. Underneath her belly button snakes a light scar. Clare rests her palm on it, this small dent of stretched skin all that remains of her pregnancy.
Clare rummages through her duffel bag for something decent, a black top and
jean skirt. She walks downhill to the Merritt house. Every light is on. Through the screen door she can see Charlie seated at the kitchen table, eyes forward to an empty kitchen. She watches him for a minute from the shadows, his slow mannerisms, the way he rubs his brow, then strokes his beard in silence. Some distant part of her understands that she should be fearful of him; that part washes away for now, replaced by a strange sense of solidarity, two people having faced the loss of so much. Before she can knock on the door, Charlie swivels on his chair and spots her.
“You coming or going?” he asks.
“Coming,” Clare says. “I mean, going. With you.”
He motions to her skirt. “You’ll be cold.”
“I feel warm right now.”
Charlie smiles, studying her. “You look different with your hair down.”
In the trailer Clare had combed out her hair, the dark curls halfway down her back, holding up the photograph of Shayna to test the resemblance. Now she squirms under his long gaze, unsure whether it holds sadness or lust or anger. She follows Charlie to the truck, waiting at the passenger door as he returns to the house to let Timber out and tie him to the porch.
They drive to town in silence. At Sara’s house Charlie stays in the car while Clare fetches her, the door opening before Clare can knock. Sara stands at the hall mirror, applying the last of her makeup. Her outfit takes Clare aback, a tight red tank top and miniskirt, towering heels, her legs thin as sticks. Next to her Clare feels like a schoolmarm, plain and prim. Across the street the lights are on through the drawn curtains of Jared’s house. Clare feels an urge to go over and knock, her inhibitions muted by that pill, but follows Sara instead, the two of them sliding into the cab next to Charlie.
“Gorman,” Charlie says. “That’s some outfit.”
“Thank you,” Sara says. “I picked it just for you.”
The drive takes two minutes, the parking lot across from Ray’s lined with cars.
“Whole town’s here,” Charlie says.
Sara rolls her eyes. “All fifty of us.”
As they cross the street, Sara links arms with Clare and walks in a near strut, laughing at nothing, so that Clare can’t be certain who between them is commanding the sidewalk stares. Ray’s is busy, a scattering of people on the makeshift dance floor. From her vantage at the door Clare can see everyone in the place. Donna the waitress mans some kind of coin-toss game. A band plays on a plywood riser in the corner, the lead singer a fiftysomething man who looks dressed for a family dinner, and though they look sort of ridiculous in their belted jeans and flannel shirts, three grandfatherly types who bob their heads to their own music, Clare thinks the band isn’t half bad.
Sara drags her to a table, then leaves as soon as Clare sits, crossing the dance floor to hug someone on its far side, abuzz and happy. Charlie dips into the chair across from Clare.
“I’m buying the drinks,” he says.
“Aren’t you driving?”
Charlie sets his car keys on the table and pulls a quarter from his pocket.
“Winner drinks, loser drives. Call it.”
“Heads,” Clare says.
With a flourish Charlie launches the coin high upward and snatches it midair. Heads.
“What’d you call again?” Charlie asks.
“Heads. You know I did.”
“Bah. Screw you,” Charlie says, retreating to the bar.
It has been years since Clare was at a party like this, clusters of bodies on the dance floor, the lights dimmed just so, the floor sticky with spilled drinks. Perhaps even since her own wedding five years ago. Clare wore her mother’s dress taken in at the bust and hips. After the meal and the slapdash speeches, when the bar was nearly dry, her brand-new husband ripped off his tie and hurled it across the room, messy drunk and wild with dance-floor abandon. From her perch at the head table, Clare watched Jason, red-faced and ignoring her, and she was filled with an aching sense of wonderment at how she ended up at her own wedding.
The music stops. Down the bar, looking right at Clare, is Jared Fowles. His collar is undone, and though he wears a smile, he still manages to look bored, disinterested, the same air about him that riled Clare so easily yesterday. The doctor Derek Meyer is at the bar too, his face in a frown. Charlie returns and sets an open beer in front of her.
“You go ahead and get hammered.”
The beer is so cold it stings Clare’s throat. Charlie tilts his own bottle and takes a long drink.
“Good party,” Clare says.
“This?” Charlie says. “This is nothing. Thousands used to be at homecoming. Everyone came back. Kids, cousins, whatever. They’d hold the dance up at the old arena and there’d still be a line at the door. You’d have to show up at six to make sure you got in.”
“It’s not a bad crowd tonight.”
“The room’s barely full.”
“The music’s good.”
Charlie shrugs. “You like that treat I gave you earlier?”
Clare can still feel the fuzz of it around her, the haze.
“Doesn’t hurt to dabble,” Charlie says.
“Some people are incapable of dabbling,” Clare says. “Like Sara, I’m guessing. Or Shayna Fowles.”
“See?” Charlie says. “That kind of talk makes you sound like a cop.”
“And you sound like someone with something to hide.”
Behind them the lead singer banters into the microphone as he tunes his guitar.
“Speaking of something to hide,” Charlie says. “Tell me about this husband of yours.”
“I’m not married.”
“It’s not hard to dig things up,” Charlie says. “Should I become more curious.”
“I could say the same thing to you.”
With a one-two-three-four from the singer and a straight pounding of the drums, the band starts up again. When Clare goes to speak, she can barely hear her own voice. Charlie appears only bemused, as though the tension between them is more playful than hostile. He leans back with his arms crossed, staring her down, the legs of his chair tilted so that Clare is certain he will tip over. Finally he breaks his gaze and leaves for the bar to summon another drink, their coin toss nullified.
The dance floor is populated mostly with older couples like Donna and a man who must be her husband, and next to them a handful of teenagers dancing in an awkward pack. Across the room, Sara swills a glass of white wine and lines up to spin the large prize wheel. She makes such a fuss of it, reaching up on the tips of her toes for the top spoke and then yanking down, nearly pulling the wheel off the axle. As it spins Sara jumps up and down and pumps her skinny arms, and a few people gather gamely around to watch. When the wheels stops on THREE FREE DRINKS!!! Sara’s yelp pierces the room despite the loud music, and then she hugs everyone within reach.
Her beer empty, Clare tucks her bag under the table and walks along the edge of the dance floor to the bar. Derek Meyer wedges over to make room for her. Even in a T-shirt and jeans and with a drink in hand, he looks stiff, the only man in Blackmore who might resemble Malcolm Boon.
“You fit in well here,” Derek says.
“I’m not so sure.”
“Taking lots of pictures?” he says, his tone not quite sarcastic.
“A few.” Clare pulls back the collar of her shirt. “I fell down the other day. Gashed myself.”
Derek leans in. “It looks infected.”
“It doesn’t even hurt.”
“It probably should have been stitched. You might need antibiotics.”
“I have ointment.”
“That won’t help,” Derek says. “The cut’s too deep. Are you taking something for the pain? Your eyes seem a little . . . unfixed.”
Clare looks down. She knows this feeling well, her brother or Grace so often scrutinizing her as Derek does now. The questions, the steady doubt.
“I’m fine,” she says.
“Do you know how things work around here?”
“It’s a dance,” C
lare says. “Aren’t we here to have fun?”
“I don’t find this fun.”
“So why do you come?”
No answer.
“The doctor!” Clare says playfully, swirling her finger through a spill on the bar. “Out to save everyone. Or so I hear.”
Derek angles away from her, repulsed or angry, and signals to the bartender.
“I’d be careful,” he says. “The infection could spread. Enter your bloodstream.”
The bartender has come over. Derek orders a soda. Charlie stands at the far end of the bar, his finger jabbed in another man’s face. Clare knows Jared Fowles is watching her from the corner. Why does she save her venom for this doctor, the one man who might actually be trying to help people in this town? Clare thinks of Christopher shuffling his terrified son to her front door as she screamed at him from the kitchen, enraged that he’d taken control of their mother’s prescriptions, cutting off her easy supply. Her fury at his good intentions.
Clare takes a deep breath in an effort to compose herself. What would Malcolm do if he were here in her place? Surely he would order a soda too, say something about faculties, about keeping your wits. But the circle is closing around Clare at the bar, all of Shayna’s people absorbing her into this fold. Clare orders a beer. Before she can dig a folded bill from her pocket, Derek offers the bartender a twenty.
“Thank you,” Clare says.
“Let me know if that gets any worse,” he says, touching her shoulder above the gash. “If you get desperate.”
Soon Derek has moved away and Charlie and Sara are there, then Jared too, others she doesn’t recognize. All these bodies pressed together bring a heat to the room. Someone orders shots. One after the next Clare touches the little glass to her lips and jerks her head back, the booze burning down her throat. She slams each shot glass down a split second before anyone else, again the winner. How long has it been?
The band is back and they play hard rock, no more smiles on their faces, their shirts untucked. Sara takes Clare by both hands and drags her to the center of the dance floor. Together they throw their arms overhead and spin.