Still Mine

by Amy Stuart

Louise whimpers and shakes, sitting up, her eyes unfocused. Clare presses Louise’s arms to hold them to the bed. In the final weeks her mother had been restrained too, waking too often in her hospital bed and thrashing herself loose from the sheets, buckling in her efforts to stand. After a minute Louise’s arms relax, too tired to fight. Her head lolls to one side, her breathing slowed by sleep. Clare’s chest aches. She reaches into her bra and pulls out the homemade pill Charlie gave her, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger, the urge to swallow it making her mouth water. She tucks it back in. All this time Clare’s sights have been on Jared, on Charlie, relying on the imperfections of Louise’s memory to point her here and there. Derek. She needs to think clearly.

  Clare flops back into the chair and blinks to stem the tears. She can still picture the gown draped over her pregnant belly as she lay in her own hospital bed, the movement she’d felt for months entirely gone. For hours Clare lay unmoving on that bed, restrained by her own grief, by a self-loathing that felt worse than death. Grace gave her something to help her sleep, waddling in and out of the room, their babies due two weeks apart.

  There was a birth after all. They put tubes in Clare’s arms to prompt it, and then came the cramps, and then the pushing. Grace handed him to Clare, tiny and translucent as he was, cupped by the palm of her hand. Grace had told Jason to go home before they wheeled Clare into the delivery room. He’d obeyed. Grace knew. She knew Clare would not bear to let him hold their baby. But, if she could do it over again, Clare would have wanted him to stay. She wants to own the image of him holding his dead son in his hands. She should have witnessed his despair. In time Clare’s mind might skew the story to include it, revise the story so he suffers the depths of that moment too.

  The next morning they discharged Clare, and in the passenger seat of Grace’s car she steeled herself for the next few months.

  Please leave him, Grace said, her voice cracked. Please leave him.

  You don’t get it, Clare said.

  Her rage spared no one. Everyone was to blame. It was early September, the first shades of orange and red lacing through the branches of the maple trees. The fields out the car window were tall with corn and wheat bending in a breeze, ready for harvest. Clare would abstain. She would start running again to build up her stamina. By Christmas, these same fields would be blanketed with snow, and Clare’s stomach would be flat again. By Christmas, she would be gone.

  Clare allows the hot water to pour down her face and chest. When Eleanor left her in the hospital locker room Clare bolted the door and stripped down, the promise of a warm shower too good to pass up. The stall fills with steam. Clare kicks at the shower curtain to set some of it free. When the water runs cold she steps out, dripping, the gash throbbing, its red edges expanding outward on her shoulder. As she dries, the first beep beep beep bubbles up from the pile of clothes on the floor. Her phone. She crouches and fumbles. The beep beep beep. A message:

  Parking lot of old hardware store.

  Outside, the rain has started again. By the time Clare reaches the parking lot her hair is beaded with water, her camera tucked into her shirt, the effects of her hot shower erased. The lot is empty but for Malcolm’s car. She pauses at the perimeter to ensure no one is watching. This is what an affair must feel like, she thinks, clandestine and sort of silly. The passenger door flies open and Clare climbs in. Malcolm wears a different shirt, clean but wrinkled. He’s still unshaven. His duffel bag is zipped closed in the backseat.

  “Where’d you sleep last night?” Clare says.

  “I stayed close by. You didn’t reply to my message.”

  “I figured you wanted me to come straight here.”

  Malcolm’s face is unreadable.

  “I was angry last night,” he says. “I lost my composure.”

  “I had too much to drink,” Clare says.

  “I’ll say this. You definitely get your hands dirty.”

  “You said to eliminate the obvious possibilities first.”

  “We must define the concept of eliminate differently.”

  If this is sarcasm, Clare can’t quite detect it.

  “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you,” she says. “For all I knew you were going to ditch me here.”

  “Do you want to be ditched?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Clare says.

  “Do you think you’ll have trouble leaving when we’re done with this?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve made some friends.”

  “You said they weren’t my friends,” Clare says. “I’m just doing what you told me to do. I’ve found a way to get people to talk to me.”

  Clare waits for a response.

  “What else can I say?” she continues, reaching to touch the dream catcher that dangles from the rearview mirror. “They’re different from you, these people.”

  “I’m not sure you know enough about me to say that.”

  “I know you wouldn’t fit in. Just based on your shirts. No one in Blackmore plays golf.”

  For the first time since she met him, Malcolm smiles. Clare turns away, this small show of warmth unwelcome. She does not want him to be congenial with her. She is unwilling to trust even a smile.

  “You certainly fit in,” Malcolm says.

  “You must have figured I would.”

  The car is damp. Malcolm unzips the duffel bag and pulls out a folder.

  “You asked about Charlie Merritt,” he says. “I’ve done some research. Four arrests in the past five years. All drug related. Most recently for trafficking. He’s out on bail. The trial is in a month. If he’s convicted, he’s looking at ten years or more.”

  “Who put up the bail?”

  “Sara Gorman.”

  “Of course she did,” Clare says. “Stupid girl.”

  “I wrangled a copy of the prosecution’s list. Shayna’s on it. She was with him the last time he was arrested. She’s been subpoenaed to testify.”

  “He’s not bold enough to kill off a witness,” Clare says. “This isn’t the mafia.”

  “Maybe not, but this goes deeper than him. He could choose to plead. Name everyone higher up on the chain. Without Shayna, the case against him is much thinner.”

  “Wouldn’t the cops piece this together? Show Shayna a little more concern?”

  “You never know,” Malcolm says. “These towns are connected. They’re small. If money lines the right pockets . . .”

  Clare reaches into her shirt and retrieves the small white rock.

  “What’s that?” Malcolm says.

  “Charlie’s. He isn’t just dealing drugs. He’s cooking them too.”

  “He gave it to you?”

  “He’s on to me,” Clare says. “He’s calling my bluff. If I don’t play along, I’m in trouble.”

  When Malcolm reaches for it, Clare closes her fist and pulls her hand away.

  “I can dispose of it,” Malcolm says.

  “So can I.”

  “You won’t take it,” Malcolm says.

  “Won’t I?”

  “Clare. Please.”

  By the look on his face, Clare can guess that Malcolm knows enough of her history to warn her from repeating it. It irks her, how little she can glean of him, how he rebuffs any talk of personal things, the imbalance this creates between them. Clare pulls the lever so that her seat angles back.

  “Did you go to college?” she asks.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “What did you study?”

  “Sciences.”

  Sciences. Vague and specific at the same time, an answer that tells Clare what she would have already guessed: Malcolm Boon is well versed in the objective. It might be something in the way he speaks, the thoughtfulness of his pauses. Clare spent three weeks at school before Jason showed up to whisk her away. She can still call up dreamlike images of a cloistered downtown campus, cafés and parks and younger versions of Malcolm sitting next to her in airy lecture halls. Funny, Clare thinks, how we like t
o fiddle with our past, to debate how a single choice made differently might have altered our entire course. If she had known what was to come, she never would have left school with Jason. She would have stayed and finished her degree. And then her trajectory would have been so unimaginably different that she would not be here in this sticky car, in the mountains with Malcolm Boon.

  “I have a question for you,” Malcolm says. “Let’s say Shayna Fowles is dead, and not by misadventure.”

  “Her name is Shayna Cunningham. They’re not married anymore.”

  “Either way. She’s dead. Not by accident or overdose or anything like that. Let’s say someone killed her. Let’s say I had the name of the person who killed her written on a piece of paper.”

  “That would make things easy.”

  “Tell me,” he says. “Whose name would you expect to see written down? From your gut. Tell me.”

  “My gut has a bad track record.”

  “Just think about it. Hazard a guess.”

  Clare should be better practiced at this, the art of listening to her own intuition. In hindsight she sees it was there all along, the churning dread about Jason that rose up well before they were married. But she’s always questioned this inner voice, her own intuition. Jared is the obvious choice. She should suspect him. She does. Yet she has seen Charlie angry, the menace he stirs up, and he has motive, Shayna privy to his dealings. Even Sara seems to hold Shayna in dangerously low regard.

  “And?” Malcolm says.

  “Derek Meyer.”

  “The doctor?”

  “There’s something off about him. I think he’s hiding something.”

  “Derek Meyer,” Malcolm says, shaking his head. “I did not see that one coming.”

  “You think I’m way off?”

  “Your gut is telling you something.”

  “It’s a stab in the dark,” Clare says. “I don’t think Derek Meyer murdered her. I don’t think she was murdered at all. I just think . . . he’s weird. He’s hiding something.”

  “I don’t like that word,” Malcolm says. “Weird. It means nothing.”

  The rain has stopped, the car windows fogged. Clare won’t tell Malcolm that she wonders if Derek might be hiding Shayna, stashing her away for himself, shackling and drugging her mother to avoid getting caught. That of all those in Blackmore, it is the doctor who feels most off to Clare. There is a small thrill in keeping these thoughts from Malcolm, in asserting herself as the one doing the actual work.

  “Shayna’s mother has been wandering,” Clare says. “I think she’s looking for her daughter.”

  “She has dementia. You said so yourself.”

  “She does. She’s confused, but then, out of nowhere, she can seem so clear. It’s like she’s wandering with purpose.”

  “That’s an oxymoron.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “Listen,” Malcolm says. “You’ve got three more days. Follow your leads. And your gut. Without getting reckless about it.”

  “And then what?”

  “We move on.”

  “Just move on? Forget about Shayna? That’s it?”

  “Like I said at the start, Clare. You have a week. After that, the trail will dry up.”

  “Don’t you ever feel invested?”

  “It can’t get personal.”

  “Why do you know so much about missing people?”

  Malcolm ignores her question. “Our only responsibility is to the person who hired us.”

  “And I don’t know who that is,” Clare says. “Because you won’t tell me.”

  Malcolm rolls down his window and lets a rush of cool air into the car. Clare reaches to roll down her own, flinching with the movement.

  “What’s wrong?” Malcolm asks.

  “Nothing.”

  “You winced. Are you hurt?”

  “No.” Clare plucks at her shirt to pull it away from her shoulder. Malcolm will surely notice if dabs of blood soak through. “I’m just stiff. The trailer bed is lumpy.”

  Clare keeps her eyes straight ahead, Malcolm’s gaze heavy upon her.

  “It’s about to rain again,” he says finally. “You should go. Where’s your car?”

  “It broke down. I think the alternator’s dead. I can walk from here.”

  “It’s two miles at least. It’ll be dark soon.”

  “I need the air,” Clare says. “I need to clear my head.”

  Clare pries her camera out and turns it on him. All Malcolm does is lift his hand to his face, but Clare has already clicked. He lowers his hand close to where hers rests.

  “Clare,” he says. “You’re on the edge.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Without looking his way, Clare opens the door and jogs from his sedan. Malcolm is obscured by the fogged windshield, but Clare knows he is watching her. Back on the road she takes the rock from her pocket, holding it tight until Malcolm’s car pulls out of the lot and disappears down the main road. No one else is here.

  The edge. Clare can feel herself hovering over it. She flicks the rock into the trees.

  The day Malcolm Boon found her, Clare bolted from the café and headed north. It was two days before she saw him again. She didn’t then know his name, but she knew that he would track her, that anyone smart enough to find her, six months later, was smart enough to follow her. On the highway, she weighed her options. Drive fast, take a lot of turns, try to shake him. Kill him. She had a gun. Or turn herself over to him, wager on his humanity.

  She drove overnight and into the next day, due north all the way to the oil fields. From the window of her roadside motel room she could see the wells pumping, transport trucks in convoy on the highway. She would not sleep. When the sun was gone, Clare pulled the notebook from her duffel bag and sat down to write to him. It took her eight drafts to get it right. She folded the note and stuffed it into a plastic bag. Then she sat at the window and waited, fighting sleep. It wasn’t until the sky lit up with morning that she saw his blue sedan pull into the lot. She watched him from a tiny slit in the curtain. He walked to the motel office, and as soon as the door closed behind him she darted out and placed the note under his wiper, noting the dream catcher through the windshield.

  Sir,

  I used to be Clare O’Callaghan. But you already know that. Let me tell you about my husband, Jason. In the second year of our marriage, he swung a hammer at my head and fractured my skull. Last September he pushed me down the cellar stairs and I lost our unborn baby. You don’t know what he’s capable of. If you tell him where I am, someone is liable to end up dead. Either me or him. Or, possibly, you. Meet me at the motel restaurant at 10 a.m.

  C

  Back in her room Clare yanked the curtains closed until they overlapped. From the bottom of her duffel bag she dug out the towel and unwrapped the gun. She’d bought it on sale the week after Christmas, less than a month after she left. A handgun and a few boxes of bullets. When she checked a few minutes later, the note she’d left on the windshield was gone. And so, that morning in the oil fields, Clare rested her hand on the gun and waited. Three bullets in the chamber. Then came the knock, a gentle rap an hour before the meeting time. She’d braced for it, gun in hand, but when she unlatched the door he shoved his way in and kicked the door shut behind him. Please, Clare said. Please. After the struggle, after the gun was knocked from Clare’s grasp and he retrieved it, Malcolm used the ties from the curtains to bind her to the chair. He paced her motel room, her gun in his hand.

  You’d better shoot me, Clare said. Because I’m not going back.

  You were going to shoot me, Malcolm said.

  He’ll kill me, she said. I might as well die here instead.

  Clare did not know what this man knew, why Jason had hired him. This man before her, the clean-cut stranger from the café, she knew nothing of him. He could shoot her between the eyes, let the force of the shot tip her back in her chair, leave her to die on the musty carpet of this mote
l room. Perhaps Jason had charmed him. He could be very charismatic when he needed to be. He might have told Malcolm that Clare took off on him, took his money and his heart, an addict wife who left him bereft. I only want closure, Jason might have said. I only want to know she’s okay. Or, he might have said, I want her dead. He might have hired this man to kill her.

  An hour passed before Malcolm stopped pacing. Then, he sat on the bed across from Clare and made his offer.

  There’s a job in the mountains, he said. I might consider hiring you.

  What are you talking about?

  I look for people, he said. People like you. People who disappear. If I don’t turn you in, you must agree to help me. That’s the deal.

  I don’t even know your name.

  Malcolm Boon.

  He untied her, taking her gun and leaving her to meet him in an hour at the restaurant. Clare sat still in the chair, rubbing at her wrists, unable to process the choice she’d just been given. It seemed a ridiculous proposition to trust this stranger, but what were her options? Go forward, her mother used to say. Take whatever option moves you forward. Never go back. Before noon Clare crossed the parking lot to the restaurant and slid into the booth across from him.

  Tell me more, she said.

  I look for people. The ones who disappear.

  Why should I trust you?

  Because if I was going to turn you in, I would have done it already.

  Why don’t you just let me go?

  You need work, don’t you? This is work. It will keep you moving.

  For a long moment Clare stared at him, the echo of her mother’s words in her mind.

  How do I know you won’t hurt me?

  You were tied up, Malcolm said. I had your gun. If I was going to kill you, you’d already be dead.

  And if I say no?

  Then I’ll have a choice to make, Malcolm said.

  A minute might have passed, Clare searching this stranger’s face for a hint, a sign of what might come, Malcolm breaking the impasse by turning to watch the passing trucks out the window. He’d framed it as an offer, an out, but Clare saw little choice in it.

  So what do I do? she asked. What’s the actual job?

  You go to this town, Malcolm said, sliding the folder across to her. And in that town, you try to find this woman.