by Laura McHugh
I rushed Arleigh through the tangled mess of Juniors and Buddys who filled every branch of the family and rang up the tobacco. I had just shut the register when Daniel appeared, holding the door for Arleigh. He wore a fresh white T-shirt and faded jeans, and my pulse instinctively ratcheted up a few notches as he approached the counter.
“Hey,” I said, trying to sound normal. “If you’re looking for my uncle, he’s not here.”
“Nope,” he said. “Just need to pay for my gas.”
“Oh.” I rang him up and waited for him to leave, but his hands lingered on the counter.
“You seemed a bit off after lunch yesterday,” he said. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I forced a smile.
“Not trying to pry,” he said, leaning closer. His fresh-laundry scent was tempered with sweat. “It’s just … you had this look on your face.”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t feeling very well, I guess.”
“Doing better today?”
I nodded. “I better get back to work.”
He stared at me, hesitating. I wanted him to stare hard enough to see what was wrong without me having to say it. “Maybe we can talk more later,” he said, gesturing to the empty store. “When you’re not so busy.”
“Sure,” I said. Maybe later. It was one of those vague commitments you didn’t follow up on. The door closed behind him with a jingle of the bell, and I was alone again. I tidied up the counter and neatly stacked the day’s rental receipts. There was nothing else to do, so I thought I’d save Uncle Crete some time and file the paperwork for him. I used to help with the filing all the time when I was little, in exchange for an ice cream bar.
I walked into his office and tugged on one of the file drawers, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried the others; they were all locked. I stepped around his desk and rolled the chair out of the way, figuring I’d find the key in a drawer, but the desk was locked up, too. Apparently, filing would not be one of my duties. I dropped the papers in his in-box. Then, as I shoved the chair back into position, it caught on the edge of the rug, wrinkling it up under the desk. I knelt to straighten the rug and saw the outline of a safe built in to the floor. It wasn’t so unusual that he had a safe—most stores probably did—but I hadn’t known about it. For some reason, seeing it hidden there for the first time gave me the feeling of pins and needles, as though my whole body had been asleep and was just now waking up.
As I thought more about it, I knew I had to go back to the trailer. Maybe I’d missed something that would tell me for sure whether Cheri had been there. But I didn’t want to go alone. When I finally told Bess about everything I had seen in the trailer—the magazines, the stained floor, the necklace—she agreed to drive out with me and take a look. She told her mom she was spending the night with me, and Gabby let her take the car. I had to lie to Gabby, promising we’d be home before dark and lock the doors, which was impossible because our doors didn’t have working locks. I’d never worried about unlocked doors, and neither had Gabby before Cheri’s body was found. My dad believed shotguns worked better than deadbolts, so he kept our guns loaded on a rack in the hallway. I’d heard him and Birdie talking on the porch one evening, and Birdie, too, scoffed at locking doors. She gave the same warning she always gave when I was little, after reading “The Three Little Pigs”: If the wolf wants in, he’ll find a way.
“I feel like we should be wearing all black,” Bess said as we headed down Toad Holler Road with the headlights off. It was two in the morning, and we were fueled by nerves and Mountain Dew.
“It wouldn’t matter,” I said. “If anyone’s out there, they’ll see the car. But probably the only person out there’d be Uncle Crete.”
“We should at least think of something to say if we get caught.”
“We’ll say we were going to meet up with some boys. Crete won’t like it, but he’ll probably believe it.”
“Won’t he tell your dad?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Remember in sixth grade, when you talked me into skipping school to watch that stupid Days of Our Lives wedding episode with you, and then I was too chicken to forge a note?” I’d called my uncle, bawling, scared my dad would find out. Crete was way more open-minded than my dad when it came to following rules, and it didn’t hurt that he hated to see me cry. He had come right over and written the note, laughing as he expertly copied my dad’s signature. Dry those tears, sweetheart, he’d said, squeezing my hand. What Carl don’t know won’t hurt him.
“Back to something more interesting,” Bess said, digging around in the console for a lighter. “Are you coming down to the river on Friday?” She’d been bugging me all night about a party I knew my dad wouldn’t want me to go to. A bunch of guys we barely knew from school would be there, some of them now graduated or dropped out.
“If I can,” I said.
“Tell your dad you’re staying the night with me.”
“And your mom’s letting you go?”
“Texas blackout bingo down in Mountain Home. She’ll be out late.”
“Fine,” I said. I didn’t have anything better to do. It might at least take my mind off Cheri.
“You’ll have fun, I swear,” Bess said. “So where do you think we should ditch the car?” We were on the dirt road approaching the turnoff to the homestead.
“Might as well drive right on up to the trailer,” I said. “It’s hidden from the road.”
The moon cast the ruins in silhouette, featureless shadows hunched on the sloping hill. We drove around the dark outline of the barn and parked. This was where the trailer had been. But it was gone. In its place was a rectangle of bare earth edged with weeds, like the imprint of a grave. My heart seized and I scrambled out of the car, Bess behind me. When I got closer, I could see tracks where the trailer had been hauled out. Uncle Crete hadn’t wasted any time.
“Well, where is it?” Bess asked, waving her flashlight in my face. “Let’s hurry it up. This place is creepy.”
“We’re too late,” I said, gesturing to the void. “It’s gone.” I took the flashlight and kicked through the weeds along the perimeter, looking for anything that might’ve been left behind. Barred owls called to each other in the trees, a conversation of unanswered questions. Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you-all?
“Sorry, Luce,” Bess said, catching up to me. “We better get out of here.”
She took my hand and pulled me back to the car, away from the trailer’s footprint. I wondered how long it would take before saplings and briars and weeds filled it in. Another piece of Cheri swallowed up and gone. Disappointment rooted in my stomach.
Bess peeled out and didn’t slow down until we were back on my road, creeping past Birdie’s house before turning on the headlights and lighting a cigarette. “Hey,” she said, glancing over at me. “You should look happier that nobody caught us. And you still have the necklace, right? That’s something.”
“It doesn’t prove anything,” I mumbled.
“Well, what exactly did you think we’d find? Some body part the killer left behind?”
“You think she was killed there?” I said.
Bess sucked so hard on her cigarette that I could hear it crackling in the dark. “I dunno, maybe. She had to get chopped up somewhere.” She shrugged and dropped her cigarette butt into an empty Mountain Dew can.
She was right. Cheri wasn’t killed where her body was found, and it had to have happened somewhere. I just didn’t want to think it had happened on my uncle’s land.
We slept in my bed with the fan blowing on us, Bess murmuring incomprehensible words whenever she changed position. I didn’t sleep well. My brain was churning. I was thinking about the stains on the floor of the empty bedroom, trying to remember exactly what they’d looked like. I wondered if Daniel had been there when the trailer was hauled away. Maybe he knew where it went.
I was ma
king breakfast when Bess came downstairs the next morning. “Can I just move in with you?” she asked, pulling a pitcher of apple juice out of the fridge. “I love waking up and not smelling cat piss.”
“I wish,” I said, grinning. “But I’m pretty sure our parents wouldn’t go for it.” I handed her a plate of pancakes.
“What the hell?” Bess laughed. I’d made the pancakes into shapes, like Birdie used to do when she watched me on the weekends. Birdie never made anything cutesy like a rabbit or a snowman; her pancake shapes were practical at best. A cross. A shovel.
“They’re baby possums,” I said, pointing with the spatula.
“Are those chocolate-chip eyes? That’s just creepy.” Bess flooded her plate with syrup. “So when should I pick you up Friday night?”
I sat down at the table to eat with her. “I dunno. I’ll call you after my dad gets back.” I’d forgotten about the party. I knew Dad would let me spend the night with Bess—unaware of our plan to sneak down to the river—but it was hardly worth the risk of getting caught, since I doubted that there would be anyone at the party I cared to see besides Bess.
Chapter 6
Lila
Carl started coming to the restaurant earlier in the evening and sticking around until closing. Sometimes Crete showed up to eat with him, but usually he was alone, and every time I came by to refill his tea, he’d try to start a conversation. He gave up pretty quickly on asking personal questions when I repeated the same vague answers, and instead he started telling me about everybody who came in. Darrell, the crippled guy with the comb-over, supposedly was left as a baby on the steps of the old rooming house and taken in by the owner, but everyone knew he was really the owner’s illegitimate son. Jacob Deary, the redhead with the pockmarked skin, had been caught screwing his neighbor’s horse. Apparently, no one in Henbane could keep a secret. Their dirty laundry flapped around out in the open for all to see.
It was nice to have one familiar face at the counter every night, especially since the rest of the customers continued to whisper and stare. One guy started muttering prayers whenever I came near him. There were a couple of greasy-haired ladies who didn’t want me touching their trays, and Gabby had to serve them. She apologized like crazy, but there was nothing she could do about it. I considered spitting in their burgers, but every time I had a thought like that, I reminded myself that I couldn’t afford to get fired. I had nowhere else to go.
Crete arranged for Carl to drive me home when he couldn’t do it himself. “Seems like you’re working a lot of hours,” Carl said one evening as we pulled up to the garage. “Days at the farm, nights at Dane’s? You getting along all right?”
“It’ll even out,” I said. Crete had promised the winter was slow as molasses and I’d have more time off, but I didn’t really mind working. I had nothing else to do, and it kept me too busy to think about other things. I slept so hard I didn’t remember my dreams, and I liked it that way.
“I’ve noticed some folks at the restaurant not treating you right,” he said.
“They’re not quite as friendly as I expected small-town people to be.”
“It just takes folks around here a while to warm up to strangers,” he said. “Don’t let it get to you.”
“It didn’t take you long,” I said.
He glanced at me sideways and looked away. “You never felt like a stranger to me.”
Ransome treated me well enough, though she didn’t seem to have any interest in getting to know me better. She never asked any questions about my past, and that was fine by me. Crete came out to see us in the field some mornings before work, and Ransome always had a worried look when he showed up. I got the feeling he wasn’t normally so hands-on at the farm, at least not before I started working there. He took pains to make sure I was getting settled in. He stocked my fridge one night while I was at Dane’s, and set up a little oscillating fan. He hadn’t come through with the air conditioner he’d promised, though, and it was getting hotter by the day. Nights weren’t much better; the air was so humid, it felt stifling even when the temperature dropped.
One night after work, when I’d been in Henbane about a month, I got in Crete’s truck, turned the air on high, and stuck my face right in the vent. Crete laughed at me. “Still ain’t used to the weather?”
“Tell me you’re not hot, too,” I said. “It’s like walking around inside a sponge.”
He rubbed his hand over his stubble. I liked how he always looked like he needed a shave but never actually had a beard. “Well,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “There’s one way to fix that. Wanna go for a swim?”
“In the river?” I asked. I’d been eyeing it every day when I left Dane’s, though I hadn’t taken a dip. The rivers I’d swum in back in Iowa were brown and murky, but the North Fork was perfectly clear, and you could see all the way to the bottom. “I’d love to. But I don’t have a suit.”
“Hell,” he said, grinning, “you don’t need one. It’s hot enough to jump in in our clothes.”
“Let’s do it,” I said. It would be the first truly impulsive thing I’d done since I got to Henbane, and I considered that pretty good.
He drove us out to a quiet spot on the river not far from his house and opened up a cooler on the tailgate. He cracked open a can of Budweiser and dug a second one out of the ice. “I know you’re not twenty-one,” he said, weighing the can in his hand. “But you’re old enough to vote, so I figure you can handle a beer.”
He opened it for me, and I licked the foam that bubbled out. We sat together on the tailgate, sipping our drinks. The river was calm and flat on our side and made a shushing noise on the far side where it slid over the rocks. Trees crowded the opposite bank, thick with fireflies and the unceasing insect songs, which I was starting to get used to. Crete set down his beer and pulled his shirt off over his head, and I couldn’t help admiring his chest, the bands of muscle tapering to his waist. He caught me looking at him and gave me a crooked smile. “Okay with you if I get down to my skivvies?”
I blushed in the darkness and nodded, remembering how I’d felt that first day when he called me beautiful. He hadn’t said anything like that since, though I did notice him watching me at times. He was charming and friendly, but for the most part, he kept things businesslike. He was my boss, after all. He stripped to his boxers and stepped to the water’s edge. “You coming?” he asked.
I hopped down from the tailgate and unzipped my shorts, stepping out of them as they fell. I left my T-shirt on and tentatively stuck one foot in the water. “Yikes!” I said. “That’s cold.”
He laughed. “That’s the point, right?” He walked out toward the current and sank underwater, then popped back up and shook himself like a dog. “Whoo!” he hollered. “Come on in.”
I tiptoed into the water, squealing as it inched up my body. When I was waist-deep, I dove under and came up with a gasp. We bobbed around in the water for a few minutes, and then I had to get out.
“Not hot anymore?” he asked.
“N-no,” I stuttered, my teeth on the verge of chattering.
“Hey,” he said, sloshing out after me. “I’ve got something that’ll warm you right back up.” He rummaged around inside the cab and came back with a sleeping bag, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and two plastic cups. “Can you spread this out?” he asked, handing me the sleeping bag. I unzipped it and laid it out in the truck bed. Crete climbed up to sit next to me and handed me a cup, tapping it against his. “Cheers.”
I choked down several gulps as quickly as I could to get it over with. It tasted awful. I’d never had whiskey straight before, only once with Coke, in a much smaller glass. The sound of the river was soothing, and we leaned back to watch the stars for a while. My shirt stuck to me like papier-mâché, and the breeze made me shiver. I folded the bottom of the sleeping bag up over my feet.
“Still chilly? Do you mind?” He carefully s
lid his arm around me, and my body tensed involuntarily. I was suddenly aware of several things at once: the warmth that spread through my belly as the whiskey worked its magic, a heaviness fogging my head, the intense brightness of stars against the dark, the unexpected arousal at his touch. “Beautiful night,” Crete said, and I leaned in to him, allowed myself to relax against his bare chest. I tried to remind myself that he was my boss, that I should not be so close to him, but my head filled with static. I was increasingly distracted by the sensation of his skin against mine, the heat where our bodies met. I swallowed the rest of my drink and felt it burn all the way down. I dropped my empty cup and noticed that his was mostly full.
“Here,” he said. “Do you want to take this off? It’s just making you colder.” He helped me remove my wet shirt, and there we were in our underwear, eye to eye. There was an unspoken agreement in the way we looked at each other. He wanted to cross the line, and I wanted him to cross it. I wasn’t sure in that moment if it was Crete I wanted or just the physical release, and I didn’t care. He pulled me gently onto his lap and I wrapped my legs around him, felt him pressing against my damp underwear. Our lips touched and heat flowed through me. He wasn’t a good kisser, unfortunately, shoving his tongue in my mouth like he wanted to choke me. I started to feel dizzy, and as he unhooked my bra, I thought I might be sick. I pulled away from him.
“I don’t feel good,” I said. “Maybe I drank too fast.” We sat quietly for a few minutes, his hand resting on my knee. My head was spinning.
“Let’s get you home,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, fumbling to clasp my bra and feeling around for my shirt.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have given you so much.” He helped me into the cab and rolled down the window in case I got sick. The bumpy road made me feel worse, and I closed my eyes, resting my cheek on the door and letting my hair drift out the window in the night air. Crete squeezed my hand as we drove.