Nothing. Her heart was faulty, an iron weight sitting heavy in her chest, and no amount of effort could make it flesh.
“Do you believe in God?” Rebecca hadn’t realized she was going to ask the question until it came out of her mouth.
She felt Cait’s eyes on her, watchful and worried. “What you’re doing isn’t wrong.”
“That’s not what I’m asking. Do you believe in God?”
Cait hesitated. “I went to church a lot as a kid. Texas, you know,” she added with a smirk. “I went to Bible study, Christian camp, the whole thing. I even wore one of those chastity promise rings in high school.” She caught Rebecca’s eye. “Only because all the cool kids were doing it, not because I actually thought I was married to Jesus.”
“Do you still go?”
Cait shook her head. “I stopped when I went to college. It was more a community thing than a faith thing for me, I guess. My parents aren’t too happy about it, but they’ve sort of accepted it. Anyway, they have my brothers and their families. They go to church still.”
“Do you see them a lot? Your family?”
Cait shook her head. “Not really. My hours at the bar make it tough, and I don’t have all that much in common with them anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I love the shit out of all of them. We’re just . . . different.”
Rebecca thought about Patrick kneeling by the bed every night to say his prayers. “I know what you mean,” she said. “You still haven’t answered my question, though. Do you believe in God?”
There was a long pause. “I think there’s something more than this,” Cait said eventually, nodding toward the desert road. “I don’t know if it’s God or whatever, but I don’t think we just evaporate after we die. I think we have souls that live on somehow.” She shot Rebecca a nervous glance. “Are you worried about your baby? I don’t believe any of that bullshit about limbo or whatever. I don’t think that God is out to punish children for not being baptized, or that babies are born unclean, or any of that. Don’t even let that thought cross your mind.”
Rebecca shook her head. She knew what would happen to her daughter after this was over. She’d made her peace with it. Still, there was a part of her that wanted someone to finally give her an answer that she could cling to, a rope tossed out to the middle of a very cold sea. “Where do you think we go when we die?” she asked, knowing before the words left her mouth that it was hopeless. She knew the truth; she was drowning in it.
“I don’t know. Somewhere better than this, I hope.” Cait looked at her. “What about you? Do you believe in God?”
Rebecca thought of her mother’s face lying in silk, the blank eyes of the fox lying by the side of the road, the soft, limp body of her pet bunny cradled in her small hands.
She reached into her purse and touched the soft fur of the polar bear hidden inside. She’d grabbed it out of the drawer just as Cait had pulled up to her house. She’d wanted her daughter to have it with her for a little while longer.
“No,” she said quietly. “But sometimes I wish I did.”
Eight Days Earlier
Rebecca went to the library to do the research, because it was the only place she could be sure no one she knew would see her. She sat on a too-hard plastic chair and typed out search terms on an ancient computer while the air conditioner whirred in the background. Her heart sank as she scanned the results. The closest clinic was a near-five-hour drive away, in Dallas, and she’d need to stay over for a couple nights to wait out the mandated twenty-four-hour “consideration period.” There was no way she could do it.
After Rich came by the house, she made the decision. Even though she hated him, she knew that Rich was right: if news got out that Patrick’s wife had terminated a pregnancy—regardless of the reason—his political career would be finished. She would go through with the abortion, but she would do it in secret. It was the only way she knew how to protect her baby from suffering and Patrick from a truth that had the power to destroy him. She would do this on her own, and she would keep that secret until she was dead and buried.
But as she stared at the map on the screen and the red pins signifying Texas clinics spread out so sparsely, she wasn’t sure she would be able to do it on her own. The logistics were too complicated, and she was being watched too closely. She had to find another way.
When she saw the flyer stuck to the community message board, it felt like a bolt of lightning coming from the sky.
trust women. trust us.
we are a nonprofit organization of women dedicated to helping women. no questions asked. anonymity guaranteed.
There was a phone number listed underneath. Rebecca didn’t know if they would be able to help her, but it felt like a lifeline. She pulled a tab off the flyer and shoved it in the back of her wallet.
She waited until Patrick went to work one morning and then drove herself to Walmart, where she bought one of those prepaid cell phones, the cheapest she could find. She went through the checkout with it and then circled back inside with a shopping cart and stocked up on cleaning supplies and Christmas decorations and whatever else she could think they needed. She wanted to make sure she had a valid receipt in case somebody started asking questions.
The woman she spoke to on the phone was kind, gentle, considerate. She told Rebecca that providing someone to drive her to the clinic in Albuquerque wouldn’t be a problem. There was a pause on the line when Rebecca told her the address, but it was so quick she almost didn’t notice. The woman made the appointment for her, too, and told her what to bring with her, and what to expect. When Rebecca got off the phone, she walked over to the liquor cabinet, poured herself a glass of whiskey, and winced it down.
There was a date set for just over a week. It was real now, and she knew there was no going back.
Rich
The polished brass bar gleamed as Rich swept his hand across it. “The way I see it, I’m half artist, half soldier. It takes a certain finesse to do what I do, but you’ve got to be willing to sacrifice the blood, sweat, and tears for it, too.” The music—piano-heavy innocuous jazz pumped from speakers embedded in the dark, wood-paneled walls—wasn’t so loud that he needed to raise his voice, but it was loud enough for him to know that he wouldn’t be overheard. It was one of the things he liked about the place. That and the fact that it reminded him vaguely of his club back in D.C., albeit a very poor imitation.
He nudged his empty rocks glass toward the bartender with a nod, and the bartender pulled a bottle of whiskey off the shelf and poured another double. “It’s long hours and sleepless nights and shitty hotel rooms in shitty towns, and at the end of the day, even if your guy wins, you’re not gonna be the one who’s up there on the stage in front of your adoring fans, if you see what I mean. What I mean is, you can’t do it if you’re looking for glory. Nobody’s ever gonna slap you on the back and tell you that you’re The Man, because The Man is the guy you’re trying to get elected. You can’t forget that. Not for a second.”
He picked up his glass, sniffed it, and frowned. “They call this top-shelf? This is rail shit,” he muttered, raising it to his lips and tipping it down his throat anyway.
“Some people say to me, they say, ‘Rich, why aren’t you the one up there on that stage? You could run for anything—you could run for a bus and win.’ And you know, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it. Back when I was in college—I went to school in New Haven—back in college, I was VP of the student council. I won the highest proportion of votes in the history of the YCC: it was an absolute landslide. So I could do it, you know. I had the secret sauce. But you know what I realized? The day-to-day business of government is a grind. It is! It’s goddamn boring!” He picked up his drink and finished it off. “Do you want another one?”
Rich raised his hand and signaled the bartender for a refresh without waiting for an answer. The bartender poured straight into his empty glass.
“The fun is all in the running. It’s all in the strategy, in the chas
e, in the kill. You know when the people love a politician the most? The night he gets elected. After that, it’s all downhill. You’re looking at me like I’m crazy right now, but I’m telling you, it’s true! They never love you more than they do the night they call your name.” He looked down at the glass, swirled the whiskey, smiled. “That night, for the guy who got him up on that stage, for the guy who won him that election? It’s the best feeling in the world. Better than sex, better than drugs, better than this shithouse whiskey. It’s like”—he opened his eyes wide—“BOOM! A shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. You feel invincible that night, you really do. And then your guy gets up on the stage to give his acceptance speech, and he opens his mouth, and you hear your words coming out. It’s like being a ventriloquist, only you don’t have to stick your hand up the guy’s ass.” He smirked. “I had one or two of them ask me to do that, but that’s another story. So yeah, it’s hard work and you’ll never sleep and you’ll never have a family and if you do you’ll lose them, but goddamn if it isn’t the best job in the world. At least that’s what I think.”
He took a sip of whiskey, thought for a minute.
“My guy, now—maybe our guy, we’ll see—he’s got everything. He’s got looks, he’s got brains, he can talk, he can do the crinkly-eyed bullshit that makes all the housewives love him, he can do the down-home-good-ol’-boy-cowboy shit that makes the men love him, he works hard, he goes to church, he doesn’t complain, and goddamn if he isn’t the most charming motherfucker I’ve ever met. I’m telling you, I’ve been doing this for ten years and I’ve never seen a candidate like him. He’s got what it takes to go all the way, and I mean that. I know it sounds crazy, me saying that to you while we’re sitting here in this shitty bar in this shitty hotel”—his eyes flicked to the bartender—“no offense. But I’m dead serious. The guy could make it to the top, and I plan on being the one to take him there.”
He shook his head as if weighing something up. “Only problem is the wife. She looks the part—pretty face, blond hair, straight white teeth, the whole package—but she’s not exactly the touchy-feely type, if you know what I mean. Got a little bit of Hillary in her. Worse, her heart’s not in it, you can tell. She’s done a couple of events and she just stands there, like”—he stretched his face into a rictus grin—“and I mean, you can see people just not buying it. They think she thinks she’s better than them, and that’s because she does think she’s better than them. Hell, you should see the way she looks at me: like something she scraped off the bottom of her shoe. She’s from California, you know. San Francisco. Has a master’s in basket weaving or something. She used to work as a teacher, which you’d think would work for us, but when she talks about it, she sounds like a hippie or something. It’s all ‘integrated classrooms’ and ‘emotional intelligence,’ all that kind of mumbo-jumbo shit that frankly does not fly with voters who are worried about their kids being stuffed into classrooms with a whole bunch of Mexicans who don’t speak any English. Comprende? No comprende!”
He chuckled to himself, sighed, grew serious.
“Anyway, I’ve got a real shitshow on my hands at the minute. We’re talking a class-A weapons-grade plutonium nightmare that has the potential to torpedo the whole election, and she’s smack bang in the middle of it. I told him when I came on board that she was a liability, but this.” He shook his head in disbelief. “This is something else.”
He finished his drink, checked his wristwatch. “I gotta get going. I’m meeting the boss in twenty to go over strategy for next week’s event. The polls have him up by seven points. Look, I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now, but I didn’t invite you here just so you could watch me drink subpar whiskey and shoot the shit. This situation I’m talking about, in the hands of lesser men, it would ruin a candidate’s political career. But in my hands”—he stretched his fingers out wide and grinned—“I’m about to spin this shit into gold, and I want you to be in on it. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cement your name in history.”
He signaled the bartender for the bill, slapped his credit card on top.
“What I’m about to propose is going to sound like political suicide, and sure, the wife will be collateral damage, but trust me: if we play this right, he’s going to be in the Senate next year, and after that it’s straight on to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And you know what that means for you? I’m not just talking about the circuits. I’m talking all the way to the top. So, what do you say: can I count on you to help make history?”
Outskirts of Santa Rosa, New Mexico—83 Miles to Albuquerque
Cait felt the nerves starting to build again, thrumming in her chest, making her fingers and toes itch. They’d just passed another sign for Albuquerque: eighty-three miles. Just a little over an hour at this rate.
They passed a single house at the end of a long dirt track. She squinted into the dark. There was a light on above the front door and a beat-up old Cadillac parked up out front. Someone was home.
She waited for the sweep of headlights, the growl of the pickup’s engine, but there was just darkness and silence and the endless stretch of road.
He was close, though. She could sense it. She knew that Rebecca did, too.
One Week Earlier
Cait kept an eye on the door, half expecting to see someone stride into the bar and blow her away with a single shot. She’d slept like shit the night before, getting up every ten minutes to check the locks, peering out into the dark for a pair of eyes to appear on the other side of the glass, convinced that the guy who’d followed her in his Durango was out there waiting for her. Every creak and groan that the old apartment gave out sent her skittering off the bed, knife clutched in both hands. Like she would actually know what to do with it if someone did break in. Like she wouldn’t already be dead.
She finally drifted off when the sun came up, only to be woken up by her alarm a couple of hours later. She was on a double shift at the Dark Horse. The new manager had changed the usual schedule “to mix things up,” as he’d said during the introductory meeting he’d called at nine a.m. on a Monday, but they all knew that he was really doing a little dick-waving to show he’d arrived. She’d managed to hold on to her Saturday-night shift, but the rest of her schedule was dogshit. Normally, she would have thrown a fit—she was one of their longest-serving bartenders and definitely one of the best—but she was happy to have the quiet, even if it meant eating ramen noodles for the next month. If the bar was empty, she’d be able to see whoever was coming through the door. Maybe in time to hide or at least duck.
The door swung open, and her heart clenched in her throat, but it was just Ken. He gave her a wave, but instead of making a beeline for his usual seat at the bar, he slid into a booth at the back and signaled one of the waitresses for a menu. Cait had already started pouring his drink, but now she cut off the tap and left the glass half full on the drip mat.
It was a slow shift, deep in the midweek doldrums, so there was a small part of her that was sad to lose the company (and the tip), but mainly, she was grateful she wouldn’t have to make small talk about UT’s football prospects or smile through jokes she’d already heard a thousand times. Still, she kept an eye on Ken as he placed his order with the waitress, and she felt a little sag of relief when the drink ticket came in and she was proved right about his drink order after all. The new manager had made a big deal about wastage. She filled the rest of his glass and placed it on the service station for the waitress to collect.
The door opened again. She didn’t recognize the guy: middle-aged, dark hair, chinos and a green polo shirt with an embroidered logo she couldn’t make out. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses and had his hands buried deep in his pockets. Did Adam say if the man who’d turned up at her apartment had dark hair? She should have asked him what he looked like, made him sketch it out. She hadn’t been able to see who was driving the Durango yesterday. Was this him?
He stared straight at her, his mouth curling up in a sneer. He pu
lled his hands out of his pockets. She saw the glint of something metal and felt her legs go weak. She gripped the side of the bar. Her eyes darted toward the back entrance. Could she make it in time?
He looked down at the cell phone in his hand before sliding it back in his pocket. He turned and saw Ken sitting in the back booth, waved, and slid in at the same table. She watched as Ken pushed a menu toward him.
He wasn’t coming for her.
She was so relieved she barely had time to register the fact that Ken was drinking with someone other than Nick. Three years and she’d never seen him in the bar with anyone else. It was clear they knew each other, though: as soon as the guy had ordered his drink from the waitress, their heads were bent together, deep in conversation.
Cait spent the rest of the shift trying to control her nerves. The bar stayed quiet. A couple in their sixties came in, nursed two glasses of house white with their dinner, complained about the music being too loud, and left her two bucks on a thirty-dollar tab. A group of red-faced Englishmen stumbled in wearing matching soccer jerseys, sank three beers each in under an hour, and stumbled back out into the night. A woman in a business suit ordered a double Scotch straight up, drank it in two swallows, and left without saying a word. By the end of the night, Cait had made eleven dollars in tips, and Ken and his mystery friend were the only ones left in the place. The waitress chucked their bill on the table unceremoniously and stalked out back for a cigarette. They hadn’t drunk much—just a couple of beers each—and they hadn’t eaten, either, so the tab wasn’t worth the waitress’s effort. She knew, same as Cait, that the night was a bust.
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