Still Mine

by Amy Stuart

  “There,” he says. “Was that so hard?”

  “I need to go,” Clare says. She stuffs the rock into the pocket of her jeans.

  “No one goes to the gorge alone,” Charlie says. “That’s the rule.”

  He crosses his arms, still smiling. Something catches his eye over her shoulder. Clare spins around.

  “Hey!”

  Jared stands at the main road, his hands cupped over his mouth.

  “Hey!” he hollers again. “They found her!”

  “Is she dead?” Charlie hollers back.

  “Shut up, Merritt,” Jared says, jogging toward them. “They found her up the road. She ran in front of the mine float. Got knocked over.”

  “Is she okay?” Clare asks.

  “Banged up. I’m not sure.”

  Clare turns back to Charlie. He makes a gun with his hand and points it at her pocket.

  “I’ll expect a full report,” he says.

  “Full report on what?” Jared asks.

  “Ask her,” Charlie says. “My guinea pig.”

  Charlie hugs himself as if suddenly beset by a chill, then wanders back to Sara’s walkway, patting Clare on her sore shoulder as she passes. She flinches. How can someone as malicious as Charlie seem almost a child in his actions? Though Jared faces Clare, his gaze has turned down the road. She raises her camera and snaps his picture, the sun replaced in only minutes by swooping clouds. Louise has been found. It should be a relief, but instead Clare feels only a sense of impending doom, Louise slipped from her grasp and hurt, the rock Charlie gave her sharp in her pocket, digging into her thigh. Jared takes hold of her arm. The rain begins, setting them to a run, the torrent soaking them anyway.

  At the hospital the nurse gives Clare a towel and a set of scrubs to put on. Jared sits next to her in the waiting room, soaked and shivering, the nurse offering him nothing but a sharp glare. Clare hands him her towel when she’s done with it. Louise had wandered off, the nurse said, and spotted one of the missing-person posters on a boarded-up window. She tore it down and rushed out onto the road, hysterical. The truck pulling the float was able to brake just in time.

  After a while Derek Meyer comes in, the nurse behind him. Jared stands but Clare stays in her seat, demure and defiant at the same time.

  “She okay?” Jared asks.

  “You should have left by now,” Derek says.

  “She’s my mother-in-law.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “What’s your problem?”

  “Is she okay?” Clare interjects.

  “You’re the worst possible person to be here,” Derek says, ignoring Clare. “Louise hasn’t processed that Shayna is gone. Then you show up and she sees the poster.”

  “Right,” Jared says. “Because I handed it to her.”

  “Of all the people who make things worse for Louise, you are number one,” Derek says. “I had to sedate her. She’s suffering.”

  “You love it when people suffer,” Jared says, stepping closer. “It’s the only time they need you.”

  “Shayna was done with you, Fowles. She hated you.”

  The nurse wedges herself between the two men.

  “Calm down,” she says. “You’re embarrassing yourselves.”

  “You think she wanted you to save her?” Jared says. “All she wanted was her pills and her junk, and money for her pills and her junk. Whatever concoction Charlie had lying around. You’re the only guy in town she wouldn’t touch.” Jared jabs Derek’s shoulder. “Where’d you hide her?”

  “Jared,” Clare says, pulling him back by the shirt. He tugs free from her grasp.

  “Call security,” Derek says to the nurse.

  “Security?” Jared laughs. “You’re going to sic the last of the town geriatrics on me? You’re really something, you know that?”

  “You’re a murderer,” Derek says.

  Jared spits at Derek’s feet. “Wouldn’t you love it if I was.”

  “Jared Fowles,” the nurse says, a tremble in her voice. “You need to leave.”

  Jared snatches up his jacket and bumps Derek’s shoulder on his way out. Clare wonders if he expects her to follow, but he turns the corner out the doors without a word or a glance. It takes a moment for the tension to leave the room.

  “I’ve called Wilfred,” the nurse says. “You’re Clare?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eleanor. You’ll need to be here when he comes. He’ll want an explanation.”

  “I don’t work for him,” Clare says.

  “You were supposed to be watching her. That’s what he said.” She points to the scrubs on the chair. “Go change. I’ll throw your clothes in the dryer. There’s a locker room at the very end of the hall.” She looks to Derek. “You go to your office. Calm yourself down.”

  “I am calm,” Derek says.

  “Jesus, no you are not. Your neck is covered in blotches. I’ll move Louise into a proper room and come get you both when Mr. Cunningham arrives.”

  Eleanor may be a small woman, nearly sixty, but Clare admires her efficiency. Clare takes the scrubs and wanders down the darkened hall. She feels numb, tired. She pulls the rock Charlie gave her from her pocket and tucks it into her bra. Derek’s office door is closed, but along the hall she’s able to peer into the few rooms still in use. On her shifts at work Clare made a habit of looking into every room she passed, of gleaning the details, the machinery, the presence or absence of visitors, the touches of home, the cups of medication on their trays, each patient’s story like a painted scene through the door to their hospital room. By the time Grace moved home Clare had been married for three years, her husband’s cycle of rage and remorse constant but unpredictable. She figured it was a matter of time before she ended up in the hospital too, her best friend tending to a broken jaw or a cracked skull or too many pills swallowed. But it was her mother who ended up there first, skeletal and depleted from a survival effort that went years longer than doctors predicted it would. Her mother’s impending death brought a new resolve.

  I’m going to clean right up, Clare said in that hospital room, her mother unresponsive, comatose from the morphine. I’m going to leave him.

  When it looked like only hours remained, the length of a day or two, Grace took a turn at the bedside so that Clare’s family could go home to shower. She found Jason at the table, eating oatmeal for breakfast, hugging his bowl as a child would. Clare sat down across from him.

  I don’t think this is working anymore, she said.

  It took a minute for his expression to change, for the life to spring to his eyes.

  You leaving me? he asked.

  What Clare felt in that moment was stillness. She’d witnessed the coming of death, the peace in it. This could be no worse than that.

  I need help, she said. You need help.

  The way Jason curled his fingers around the edge of the table, Clare was certain he thought to overturn it and crush her with it. Instead, he stood and came around to her. He brushed the hair from her forehead and kissed her, a touch so light that Clare could feel the texture of his fingertips against her cheek. I’ll do better, he said. And then he led her up the stairs to their bedroom, and Clare had allowed it, some body memory taking hold, the heat of his skin against hers. Why had she allowed it? When it was over he even managed to summon tears. I’ll do better, he said again, propped on one elbow and facing her. We’ll both get better. She fell asleep next to him, a deep slumber. Only when she woke and showered and dressed did the timing occur to her, the lack of protection. She set her hand against her belly and counted back through the days of the month.

  At her mother’s funeral, Jason held her hand firmly and deferred to her in conversation, standing in the background while she greeted the long line of neighbors and friends. When she alluded to the possibility of a baby, to the waves of nausea, he’d offer her the small smile of someone in on your deepest secret. He’s changed, Clare said to Grace. She even showed Jason some photographs she’d taken and
talked about signing up for a class or two, working part-time toward a degree, taking his silence as permission. For weeks, she stayed clean.

  Then, shortly after Clare buried her mother, she came home from a trip to the city with Grace, a bag full of darkroom supplies tucked under her arm. Jason was at the table, drinking, his face already a deep red. The positive pregnancy test was in Clare’s purse, and she set down the bag to dig for it, meaning to rest it on the table in front of him, a silly riddle, a moment she’d planned the entire drive home. But before she could find it Jason was already against her, her darkroom supplies crushed underfoot, pressing her into the refrigerator, his forearm into her neck, lifting her right off her feet. If you leave me, he said, I’ll come for you. She’d almost forgotten the sensation. The perfect fear. Though she gagged and struggled and he only hissed, she could hear him clearly, the exact words he said, repeated under his breath after he’d released her and sat down again to finish his drink. Wherever you run, I’ll be right behind you.

  Wilfred is in the corner, his fists in angry balls. At the foot of Louise’s bed Clare stands next to Derek, the scrubs Eleanor gave her loose on her frame. Eleanor hovers close to Wilfred, caging him in. In the bed Louise looks frail and bewildered.

  “Louise?” Eleanor says. “You’re in the hospital. You took a spill at the parade.”

  “I was looking for Shayna. She was supposed to be there. Is she here?”

  Derek coughs.

  “You saw a poster, Louise,” Eleanor says. “It upset you. She’s not here.”

  Louise shifts her smiling gaze to Clare. “Yes she is,” she says.

  “I’m not Shayna, Louise. I’m Clare. We went for a walk today. Remember?”

  “Don’t ask her if she remembers,” Eleanor says under her breath. “It’s not helpful.”

  “We should discuss restraints,” Derek says. “Until we can calibrate her medication. See if that helps.”

  “So she needs a leash,” Wilfred says.

  “Well, no,” Derek says. “She needs reliable, constant supervision. We’ll make a plan. She may need to go into a home for a while. There are devices you could wear, Louise. Beepers, sort of, but with GPS.”

  “You mean a collar?” Wilfred says, no lilt to his voice.

  “Mr. Cunningham,” Eleanor says. “Please keep in mind that your wife is very much able to understand you.”

  “At this rate I could just stick her in the cellar and lock the door. Would damn well be cheaper.”

  “Watch your tongue, Wilfred,” Eleanor says. “For God’s sake. She hears you.”

  “Does she?” Wilfred waves his hand in Louise’s face. “Hey, Lou! Hey! You there?”

  “Stop it, Wilfred,” Eleanor says.

  Louise smiles at her husband, blinking as he waves, reaching to take hold of his hand.

  “Hello,” she says.

  “See? She has no goddamn clue who I am.”

  “She knew who you were this morning,” Clare says. “She talked about you today. You and Shayna.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Wilfred says to Clare. “I know Charlie sent you here. He wants her dead.”

  “What?” Clare says. “That’s not true at all.”

  “Mr. Cunningham,” Derek says, “I know you’re angry. I think you know that anyone could lose track of Louise at this point. She appears very determined to get away.”

  “I know who you are,” Louise says to Derek. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten. Shayna will be here any minute to get me.”

  Wilfred throws up his arms. Derek opens the drawer next to Louise’s bed and pulls out a folded piece of paper.

  “Louise was trying to show me this earlier,” he says. “She kept trying to fish it out of her purse.”

  The paper is a poem written in the large cursive of a child’s writing. Derek hands it to Louise. She stretches it taut and holds it to her face.

  “She won a poetry contest at school,” Louise says.

  “Who did?” Eleanor says.

  “Wilf and I took her out for lunch the day of the ceremony. She got a certificate and everything.” Louise laughs. “They even published her poem in the newspaper. She made the front page, if you can believe it.”

  “When was that, Louise?” Derek says.

  Louise considers the question. “I’m not sure. Last month?” She shakes her head. “You’d have to ask Wilf.”

  “Where is Wilf?” Eleanor says.

  Louise scans the four of them standing in a semicircle at the foot of her bed.

  “What day is it today?” she says.

  “Sunday.”

  “Sunday? He’d be at the mine. He’s working weekends this month.”

  Wilfred yanks the paper from Louise and tears it in two. Louise shrieks.

  “That was twenty years ago. Twenty years ago, Lou!” Wilfred hurls the pieces to the floor.

  “Stop it right now, Mr. Cunningham,” Derek says, yanking at Wilfred’s arm.

  “Some damn poetry. You’re nuts. Your daughter’s no writer, Lou. She’s a junkie. Remember? The booze and those pills? Those little crappy pills and that garbage she’d snort? She even started shooting up.” Wilfred tugs himself free from Derek’s grasp and sits on the bed, leaning close to his wife, squeezing her arm. “Remember the time we found her on the kitchen floor? Foaming at the mouth? Remember forking over our life savings to pay for rehab? Remember when we found her in the barn sniffing at the gasoline can? You don’t remember any of that. You spoiled her! You always let her off the hook. Everything’s perfect and sunny in your world. Then you come begging to me to fix it!”

  “You shut your mouth right now, Wilfred Cunningham,” Eleanor says.

  The fight is gone from Wilfred all at once. He stands and straightens the blankets over Louise. From her vantage Clare can see his pained look, the scowl of suppressed rage. He sidles to the door and withdraws down the hall followed by Eleanor. The room is quiet but for Louise’s whimpering cry.

  “He’s gone,” Clare says. “It’s okay.”

  “Shayna,” Louise says, her eyes wild with fear. “Is Shayna here? Is she dead?”

  “Shayna isn’t dead.” Derek hesitates. “She’s just . . . not here right now.”

  “That’s right,” Clare says. “We hope she’ll be back.”

  Derek bristles at Clare’s words, frowning at her. He opens a drawer in search of surgical gloves, a stethoscope, the blood pressure cuff, then eases Louise over on the bed so that he can sit next to her. Louise soon cries in gulping sobs. After a minute Eleanor returns with a syringe. Derek Meyer means business now. Clare watches him, the way he tends to Louise, as he would his own mother, the way he’d raged at Jared in the waiting room, the way he’d chastised Wilfred. She’s just not here right now, he’d said, as if there were more to that answer. Clare steps to the door so she is out of Eleanor’s way.

  “Horrible,” Eleanor says. “Just horrible, all of it. What a thing to say to your own wife.”

  “He’s struggling,” Derek says.

  “We all are,” Eleanor says, flicking at the syringe to prepare it. “That’s no excuse.”

  The needle goes in and Clare watches as Louise falls limp for the second time in only a few days. Sedated, released from her pain and her questions, Clare knows, in a way Wilfred will never be.

  The chocolate bar has melted on her fingertips. Clare licks them one by one. She sits on a bench in the hospital garden, Blackmore’s main street stretched out below her. Beyond the town Clare can see the road to the mine cut out of the mountainside. Somewhere along that ridge is the trailer, the Merritt and Cunningham homes. Whatever it was that Charlie gave her now presses into her bra against the flesh of her breast. She lifts her hand to it, jagged on her skin, a tiny bomb. The gash on her shoulder is redder than it was yesterday. It stretches taut with jabs of pain if she moves her arm too quickly.

  The next town might be fifty miles away as the crow flies, but by road it would take three or four hours. Clare considers what she would
pack to make such a journey on foot. Good shoes. A tarp of some kind. Matches. Her gun. A coat. She wouldn’t weigh herself down with food or water. She could drink from the creek. Clare and her brother used to play this game as kids. Runaway. Survival. He’d show her which berries she could eat and how to huddle into a ball if hypothermia was setting in. Just try not to die, Christopher would say, as if not dying were the only goal a runaway could realistically set.

  Her chocolate bar finished, Clare jams the wrapper between the slats of the bench. The rush of sugar sets in right away, dulling the ache in Clare’s head. How strangely normal it feels to be here, to be absorbed into this town and its secrets. The camera sits on the bench next to her, her cell phone stuffed into the pocket of the scrubs. No message from Malcolm. No word since he left her in darkness on the road. I have things to tell you, Clare would say to Malcolm now. I have leads, I have suspects, I know their motives.

  How long will he make her wait?

  The scrubs are baby blue, an exact match for those Grace used to wear. In the days and weeks after Clare left, as she picked her way along the backcountry roads, driving ever west, she would narrate speeches to Grace, all the truths finally told.

  I hated you, she would say aloud in the car. I hated that you had it so easy.

  Of course Grace knew. She must have felt Clare’s wrath. When Clare showed up at Grace’s office last April, the pregnancy test in her purse, Grace had hugged her tight, then pulled her own positive test from the drawer of her desk. Talk about perfect timing, Grace said. Clare had wanted to slap her, as if their pregnancies meant the same thing, Grace married to a well-established doctor and settled in their renovated farmhouse with a nursery already in place. As she took Clare’s blood pressure during her first prenatal exam, Grace braced Clare by the shoulders.

  You can stay clean, she said. You can leave. I could help you.