The Rest Will Come

by Christina Bergling

  Emma retrieved the spade of the shovel from the bag and reattached it to its handle. Then she began digging. She plunged the tip of the shovel into the dirt, shifted the pile aside, then repeated the action. Again. And again. And again. The hole grew deeper with each scoop, and the movement became tranquil and rhythmic. Emma disappeared into the steady sound of scrape and dump and the gentle rotation of her waist. Under the casual morning sun and a kind breeze, digging was decidedly relaxing.

  She retrieved her water bottle from the pack then deposited both bags beneath the earth, falling into the equally enthralling pattern of burying the evidence. She covered the bags with the displaced dirt and meticulously smoothed and stomped it, swirling pine needles and branches over it until it was indistinguishable.

  With the shovel blade in her waistband and water bottle in hand like any normal hiker, Emma hurried back to her car. She loaded her shoulders with another backpack and another repurposed tent bag, secretly hoping some homeless person had found all the tents she had deposited in the dumpster a few miles from the supercenter. If there were surveillance cameras everywhere, she wanted to create more dots to find and connect. Then she took a divergent branch of the trail and wandered off at a completely different point.

  By the time she cracked her trunk once more, hunger nibbled harshly at her stomach. Again, the physical exhaustion crept up beneath her purpose. She shoved some protein bars and a fresh water bottle into the outer pockets of the last backpack and loaded down with the remaining bags. The other vehicles joining hers in the parking lot pressed her motivation to finish her work.

  The sun climbed high in the clear sky above her, and Emma felt the weight of her last trip. Her legs whined at each step, reluctant to continue climbing up this mountain for a third time by a different route. She did not want to continue on. She wanted to go curl up on her couch and sleep until she did not remember any of the previous night had happened.

  The broader light made Emma edgy. More hikers would be joining her on the mountain as the day wiled on. She was honestly surprised she had not encountered anyone. All her posturing and preparation to appear innocuous had, so far, been unnecessary. Only the birds passing slowly above had been around to witness her careful disposal.

  “Emma?”

  The sound of her own name seized Emma in a startle. She had not seen a person, not heard a sound aside from her own on her trek through the long morning. She whirled around and let her mouth dangle wide in shock and fear.

  She noticed the dog first. Bruno had gotten bigger over the months, sprawling out into his own flesh and making gains on his once floppy paws. He recognized her, his tongue spilling out from his jowls in a doggy grin, tail whipping rapidly behind him.

  “It is you,” he said. “Rick. Remember?”

  Holy shit.

  “Yes!” Emma forced out, pushing a smile through her anxiety. “Rick, how are you?”

  “No complaints. Bruno and I are out here as usual. Still hiking every weekend and working on those 14ers. I see you followed through on hiking more.”

  “I did,” Emma almost laughed. “I’ve been recently…motivated.”

  “That’s awesome. It’s so nice to just be outside. I like to hike, just me and Bruno, so I can shake all the thoughts loose in my head. You look great, by the way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry I never messaged you again. I, uh…”

  “Don’t worry about it, Rick.”

  Don’t say you were awesome but. I don’t want to hear you’re awesome but. I don’t want to hear any of it. I don’t have any more backpacks to put you in.

  “Are you seeing anyone?”

  “Yeah, I am,” Emma lied. “Relatively new. I think it has a chance.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. I actually got engaged recently. To my yoga instructor.”

  You have got to be fucking kidding me.

  “Oh congratulations.” Emma’s voice fell flat despite her best efforts.

  Bruno circled around Emma enthusiastically, letting his nose find her backpack. Once he caught the scent of the contents, his tail went wild, and he buried his snout aggressively against the canvas, bumping so hard he rocked Emma.

  “Whoa,” Rick laughed. “What do you have in there?”

  Heat flushed her face and she was thankful for the direct sunlight and exertion of hiking to blame it on. She gritted her teeth and contorted her facial features into normalcy. “I packed a pretty intense lunch. Spoiling myself today. I am planning to bust it out when I get to the top. I should probably get going. I’m starving.”

  “Yeah, us too. We’re headed back down.” Rick paused. “Emma, it was really good to see you. Good luck with your new relationship. I’m so glad to hear you found someone.”

  “You too, Rick. Bye, Bruno.”

  Emma spun on her heels quickly to distance herself from Bruno’s incessant sniffing. Her heart throbbed so hard she could scarcely see past it. She took long, exaggerated strides without looking back to hide the terror that must have been painted over her entire face. Her pace infused with panic as she marched up once more.

  The last hole took longer to dig, a seeming eternity measured by the metronome pattern of scooping and piling.

  When she tapped the blade on the closed hole, gauged it from a distance, it was done.

  Mark was gone.

  Emma dropped to the dirt over the final two bags in a heap, finally collapsing. She found some strange comfort in knowing part of her victim was packed into the earth below her. It felt appropriate to lay Mark to rest this way.

  How much do you like hiking now, Mark?

  She took a deep breath in, sucking in the thin, piney flavor of the mountain air, then leisurely ate her snack perched atop her potential success.

  She came back to the trail with the shovel head once again stowed beneath her shirt, carrying the light weight of only her walking stick and her nearly drained water bottle. Her relief also lightened her. Unencumbered by incriminating bags, she felt like she could float back down the trail and fly home.

  The day came full circle. The light waning from the sky, Emma returned to the city, parked in the driveway, and shuffled into her house, hoping to steal a nap before Ronnie would be beating down her door to check on her again. She had earned a nap.

  ***

  “She lives!” Ronnie cried as she opened the door for Emma. “She doesn’t answer her damn phone for half the day, but she lives.”

  “I told you I’m sorry. I went for a hike. A long hike.”

  “You told me you were going for a run. You haven’t hiked in years.”

  “Yeah, I changed my mind. I needed something different.”

  “Fine. Come in. Terrence is almost done cooking.”

  “Thank God. If it was up to you, we would be ordering pizza again.”

  “Hey, you’ve known what this was for years. I don’t cook.”

  “Hey, Eminem!” Terrence called from the kitchen. “I’m so glad you’re here. Ronnie has been driving me crazy worrying about you since last night. Don Juan killer this, dead Emma that.”

  “I’m sure,” Emma giggled. “Where’s Josiah?”

  “Napping,” Ronnie answered. “He needed it. That boy is nonstop.”

  “That’s my little man!” Terrence called. “Food’s up!”

  The three filled their plates and brought them to the table to dine.

  “This has been more than enough suspense,” Ronnie said between bites. “Tell us about this nightmare date.”

  Emma set down her fork and took a deep breath. “He lives down in Colorado Springs, so we decided to meet in the middle. He picked this awful dive bar right by the highway. I mean it is horrible, worse than the place we used to go when we were kids. So he gets there, and we decide the place is awful and pick a new place to go. I go to the bathroom, then we head to the parking lot to go to the new restaurant. All of a sudden, he up and tells
me his heart is not in it, and that’s it. That’s the end of the date. He went home. He fucking went home.”

  Then I punched my keys through his eye and bashed his head in in my garage.

  “Seriously?” Ronnie gaped. “His heart was not in it? What does that even mean?”

  “Right? I have no idea.”

  “Baby, what does that mean?” Ronnie asked Terrence.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never said some bullshit like that.”

  “How did you not kill this guy?” Ronnie asked.

  Emma wanted to laugh out loud. She wanted to slam her hands down on the table, shaking the plates, and chuckle until her sides split.

  “I came home,” Emma said, adopting a familiar and depressive tone. “I didn’t even know what to do, how to feel. I think I was in shock maybe? I came home and went into the garage. It probably made it worse. It just felt right. It felt full circle to be reminded of where all this started. With Justin. So I stayed in there and cried, then I went to bed and got up and went for a hike this morning.”

  Hearing the depressive narrative that used to be her reality made Emma sick. How could she have sadly gone through it all before? How could she have done nothing but cried and felt sorry for herself? A smack of disgust at her former self filled her mouth, her self of two whole days ago.

  “So what now?” Ronnie asked.

  “Maybe you should change teams,” Terrence chimed in.

  Ronnie giggled and nudged him. “Shut up.”

  “You two should experiment together. I would be there as, you know, the control group.”

  “Silence, you,” Ronnie laughed again. “Seriously, now what?”

  “I’m done. I am so done.”

  “Like done done?”

  “Yes. No more of this online dating, no more trying. I am going to focus on myself and try not to be miserable. The price is just too high for all this.”

  “I think that’s a good idea, Em,” Terrence said, chewing. “The rest will come, right?”

  Chapter 17

  Emma dissolved in the throbbing crowd of other runners, the seething mass of bodies shuttled into the start chute like cattle. She bounced between her running shoes, hopping her weight back and forth in an attempt to maintain a smoldering heat and steady blood flow against the cold edge on the air.

  The pre-race excitement rolled through her in waves. Her heart pressed up against her ribs, her muscles itching frantically in anticipation. Although she tried to force the energy out through the soles of her shoes as she bounced, it continued to well under her face. Trapped in the cluster of bodies, the last minutes before the start sound dragged endlessly.

  Then eternity crazed into the present and the loud beep rippled through the air. The crowd took a collective gasp and leaped toward the start line. The road became a steady stream of bobbing heads, the thunder of rubber on asphalt echoing through the morning.

  Emma grounded her breathing into a rhythm timed to her footfalls.

  Stride, stride, breath. Stride, stride, breath.

  Months had passed since Mark. Emma had obsessively followed the news for weeks, glued to inane local TV coverage, scrolling through anything on the internet. She even frequented Mark’s MyBook page, knowing in the back of her mind that her visits could be tracked online. If quizzes could tell you how many people viewed your profile, the cops could ascertain the same.

  Nothing. Not even a post from a friend asking to hang out or a stupid meme with a cat on it. No news on his disappearance, only the occasional speculation about the Don Juan killer. Emma had existed in suspended animation, poised in panic as she went through the motions each day, waiting for blue-clad officers to take her away.

  The ground beneath her disappeared from her perception when the second mile marker slid past her. Her body harmonized to the rhythm of her run, comforting in its monotony. After two miles, her body accepted that she was not going to stop and ceased throwing up flares of burning muscles or lungs to dissuade her. She disconnected from her flesh and existed behind it, tucked somewhere her mind could wander and trapped thoughts wriggled free.

  Mark was always on her mind, the way a new and torrid lover would be. She would feel the impact of her barbed fist impaling his face reverberate up her arm; hear the wet flop of a body part falling away from the whole and onto the plastic; taste the mountain air palpable with relief after the final fraction of evidence was buried.

  Her mind always circled back to that day. Each detail was branded deep into her brain, burned beyond her memory into her personality, infusing every experience after. She could not move on, and every day after felt like a hollow echo or lackluster chorus.

  Stride, stride, breath. Stride, stride, breath.

  The pack had thinned and spread over the route, clumping into groups of similar pace. As the fifth and sixth mile fell behind them, the sprinters began to slow, the hares walking in intervals among the steady march of the tortoises. Emma committed to her pace, devoted to a level speed, unaffected by grade or distance. Running became mindless in its consistency, liberating in its steady detachment.

  The float crept up out of her warm and cycling muscles, climbing the nerves in her limbs, bumping up each rib, levitating into her consciousness to separate her perception from flesh. Her legs pumped, her lungs breathed at their measured inhales, her brain no longer required to cue or monitor them. Her body jogged on like an automatic machine, her mind released into the wild beyond her skin.

  The sound of her breathing overlay the rhythmic clomp of her shoes and those of her fellow runners striking the pavement, embodying the scene with its own sense of life, as if her breath belonged to the day and the footfalls were its heartbeat.

  Her eyes rolled back and forth behind her sunglasses. The vivid Colorado sun poured over the course and beckoned the heat already brewing in her belly. The colors around her amplified in her throbbing euphoria, the blue of the sky bleeding down on her, the red of the towering rocks humming.

  She rode the float with practiced experience, savoring every second when running did not feel like work, knowing her wall awaited her. Her mind harmonized with the run; her endorphin level spiked, and the lightening sensation of bliss tingled over her.

  And she thought of plunging her keys into Mark’s eye.

  The dumb look of shock on his face.

  The hammer cracking his skull.

  And she thought of eating a granola bar sweaty and relieved on top of his buried remains.

  The flashes amplified her tranquility. She rode that justified freedom in giving him what he deserved, until her anxiety forced itself up around the peace and her heart stiffened in her chest.

  No, her voice of reason called. It was a mistake. It was not the best decision of your life. It was not a great moment. It was a huge mistake that could still land you in prison or on the lethal injection table. You don’t get to smile about it. You don’t get to remember it fondly. You did a horrible thing. You murdered an innocent man.

  Was he innocent? her own mind countered. Was he innocent when he told me his heart wasn’t in it to go have sex with some ex or tell his friends what a stupid bitch he had met at a dive bar? He had it coming. He deserved it. They all do. They all lie or cheat or leave.

  While the thoughts rang true against her bones, Emma’s breathing had quickened and she had leaned into a harder pace without noticing. Auto pilot became angry, and the heat rose out of her chest to bloom in her face.

  She’s just a fat dumb slut, and nobody will ever want her again, she heard him again.

  She’s going to die alone. Just like you! That small voice echoing against her skull. The sound of it inside her head made her cringe and shake it aside.

  He deserved it.

  The idea pounded like a mantra in her brain as the miles vanished behind her.

  And I liked it.

  The last forbidden thought slipped across her brain right before she sprinted to her brink across the finish line. She forgot she had felt it at all
as she dry heaved past the red, blinking clock and flagged banner.

  ***

  After a long shower of muddled, conflicting thoughts, Emma composed herself to meet Gladys for lunch.

  “Eminem!” Gladys shouted across the restaurant when she spotted Emma.

  The smile on Gladys’s face threatened to crack her cheeks. Emma was warmed and relaxed by the genuine reception. She hurried to the table and dove into Gladys’s warm, soft, firm hug. She clung to her even an extra second after Gladys released her clutch.

  “You look amazing, darling,” Gladys said, her fingertips lingering on Emma’s shoulders as she looked her over. “Have you still been running yourself to death?”

  “Of course. I just did a half marathon this morning. I also did some rigorous hiking recently.”

  “It shows, honey. You look much happier and more rested than at Happy Beans too. How is the new job treating you?”

  “I like it. It’s boring, actually, which is nice. I go in, put in my hours, and go home. I actually have time to sleep and maybe think about having a life.”

  “That’s great to hear. We miss you though. Those twins are about lost without you.”

  “Those twins were lost with me.”

  “Fair enough. Well, I miss you. My mornings are not the same without your face.”

  “I’m sure they replaced me.”

  “Yes. With two largely worthless little twits.”

  “Aww, thanks, Gladys.”

  “How’s Ronnie?”

  “She’s good, the same as she always is.”

  “Been keeping that little baby alive?”

  “Yeah, she bitches a lot, but she does well. Josiah is adorable.”

  “How about the dating quest? It’s been a while since I got an update on the saga.”

  Emma’s face fell.

  “That’s not good,” Gladys said. “Tell me. Vent to me, honey.”

  Emma rubbed her thumbs over her brow and took a deep breath. “Yeah, not good.” The words felt heavy in her mouth, pressing down on her teeth. “I went all in and did the whole eCompatible thing, which meant hours of personality tests then hours of matches and hours of questions and hours of messaging. It would seriously take weeks to get to emailing a guy to set up a date. I went on some dates. Most were awful, including a guy who was a complete dick to the waitress.”