by Roz Nay
“No matter what,” he repeats.
I take his head in both of my hands, hold his face above mine for a second. “I did a bad thing when I was younger. I haven’t told you everything.”
“I don’t care about that.” His mouth is hungry, his hands full of desire.
“But if you talk to Ruth, she might—”
“I love you,” he says again. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
I pull him toward me and kiss him again, relaxing into the feeling of both of us washing away. I have everything I came for. Everything I need. And there’s nothing Ruth can do to change it.
RUTH
It takes me a long time to untangle Alex’s lies for Chase, all of our past, our history—Pim, her abortion, how she made my boyfriend the one to blame and how my parents believed every word she said. It’s dusky outside the window as we sit together on the couch, the clock ticking toward nine. Chase’s legs are splayed in front of him, his body slithered halfway down the cushions like how they show exhaustion in a cartoon.
“So what now?” he asks. “God, I can’t even separate anything in my head.”
“I have to meet with Eli.”
“You’re not really planning on doing that, are you?” He lolls his head toward me. “I read the ten a.m. rendezvous text, but you’d be nuts to go.”
“What else am I meant to do? I don’t know where the drugs are.” I sigh, exhausted, too. If ever I’ve needed a drink it’s now, and I have the feeling Chase would join me.
“So that’s your plan? You’re just going to show and tell him you’re sorry?” He runs a heavy hand over top of his head. “I’m not a master planner, Ruth, but even I know that’s a shitty one.”
“I think I have to do that. Or he’ll never go away.”
“What if—” Chase sits up a little. “What if the drugs are here? What if Alex has hidden them?”
“I don’t think she’d take that risk. Plus, where would she hide them?” I look around. “There aren’t many secret spots.”
“It’s worth a shot.” He heaves himself up and starts opening the kitchen cupboards, messing up the neatly ordered contents inside. It’s unlike him to be this chaotic, to allow such disorder.
“Chase. Stop. Hey, slow down for a minute.” I want to help him because he’s so clearly in pain. And all of this is pointless. I know Alex too well to really believe she’ll leave anything unguarded in the loft.
“Do you think she’s at Sully’s right now?” Chase asks as he kneels on the kitchen floor, ignoring me, continuing to dig into a cabinet.
“What do you think?” I stand slowly and move toward him, bending as far as I can to see what he’s doing. There’s nothing inside. When I straighten, a jab of pain hits my back. “They’re thick as thieves.”
He slams the cupboard door shut, strides to the bedroom, and begins rifling through the dresser. Apparently when the shit hits the fan, Chase is all about action. I follow and sit on the bed. After twenty minutes, the entire contents of their room are heaped all over the floor.
“Nothing’s here,” Chase says.
“Thank you for trying.” I smile sadly. “But she’s keeping secrets, just like she did before, when she was a kid. Maybe you should just have a glass of whiskey or something. You’ve had a bad night.”
“When she was a kid,” Chase echoes, then lifts his head. “When you lived on the farm in Horizon, would she ever hide things?”
The rock, I think suddenly. The basalt stone from school.
“She had a hidey-hole behind the vent in our bedroom,” I say.
Chase is already up, moving toward the wall across from us, to the grate there. It looks innocuous enough, but the screws unwind easily. I move closer. Chase loosens the last screw and lowers the front plate, and there—in horrible triumph—is the tin. The proof of my sister’s deception hits me hard, and I stagger. How many times has she denied the tin was real?
Chase peels off the lid.
“Holy cow,” he says, taking in the bags of coke, the rolls of money. “This is it, isn’t it?”
I nod. The contents look like they’ve been rifled through, so it’s hard to know if everything’s there. Has Alex helped herself to the cash? Or worse, used some of the drugs? It would explain her skittishness.
“Why would she hide it?” Chase asks finally.
“I don’t know.” I really don’t.
The one thing about Alex is that she always has a plan. She’s purposeful; she’s always about the finish line. What that is in this case, I’m not sure. Something doesn’t feel right. I reach for the tin. “I’m taking it back to Eli,” I say. “At ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I’m going to end this.”
“I’m coming, too,” Chase says confidently. “We’ll go together, drop the damn thing off, get out of there as quickly as possible. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
He gets up then and heads into the kitchen, where he finds a half-empty bottle of Scotch and takes a swig, straight from the mouth.
* * *
It’s almost 10:00 a.m. and we’re on our way. All of Chase’s drunken confidence from last night seems to have faded. He’s nervous and twitchy on the drive over. His voice is high and squeaky. Chase parks the car at the bus depot but doesn’t switch off the engine. He sits bouncing his knee so that the coins in his pocket jangle.
“Are you sure about this?” he asks.
“We have no other choice.” I grip my bag, pressing its hard contents into the sponge of my belly. The whole front of my pelvis is heavy and aching today, like the sucking pull of a tide, a pain that’s new and unrecognizable. I shouldn’t have come here; I’m supposed to be on bed rest. But if I can just get through the next half hour, then go home and lie down, maybe every-thing will be okay. All I want to do is get to my due date and meet my little boy or girl. I feel a kick. My baby wants to meet me, too.
Chase turns to me. “So … you’ll stay in the car, like we said, and I’ll bring Eli to you. You figure out your business. Then we get the hell out of here.”
I nod. I’m actually grateful Chase is here with me. I check the bag, see the tin, the torn shreds of duct tape like a fringe around the lid. The digital clock on his dashboard is blinking toward ten. My pelvis tweaks and twinges. I stare at the bus depot windows that glint impenetrably, but the only people outside the building are two haggard-looking women smoking cigarettes, their inhalations the most luxury they know.
“He’s not here,” I say.
“What? He has to be.”
“He’s not, Chase.” I look around at the small-town slowness. “It’s not like Eli to be late, either.”
“Maybe he’s waiting inside. I should go in there and check, right?” He hesitates, one hand on the door lever. “I’ll bring him out to the car, and you’ll give him the tin. He’s skinny, blond hair, baggy clothes, right?”
“Maybe I should be the one to go in.”
“No.” He pushes his shoulders back. “You need to stay here. If this goes sideways, Ruth, I’m calling the police.” Chase opens his door and gets out, pats the side of his chino shorts to make sure he has his phone. Pungent, hard heat sweeps around his body into the car. “I don’t care whose side you think Sully is on.”
I watch him move unsteadily across the parking lot, his hair uncharacteristically flat on one side of his head. He couldn’t have slept well last night. Alex didn’t get in until long past midnight, and she was gone again by seven a.m. She hasn’t replied to a single text message. Chase pulls open the bus depot door and disappears inside. I wait, my hands shaking. Is Eli actually in there, or is he watching this car? Any minute now, will he yank open the passenger door and pull me out by my hair? I try to take a calming breath and stretch out my legs, but my belly is so heavy, it’s a sackful of sand on my lap. And there’s that spike of pain again, making me gasp, as if overnight my baby has grown sharp metallic edges inside me.
“It’s okay,” I mutter, rubbing one hand over my stomach, clutching
my bag with the tin in the other. “We’re going to be fine.”
Two achingly long minutes go by while I crane my neck and peer through the windshield at the front entrance. But when the doors open and Eli comes out, it’s not Chase he’s with. My heart drops. There’s Eli, fifty feet away, baggy jeans, white skateboard sneakers, his elbows sandwiched between two police officers who are escorting him to a parked cruiser at the far end of the lot.
“Oh my God,” I say out loud. Where the hell is Chase? The pain in my pelvis begins to drag now as if everything inside me is suctioning downward. But then the bus depot door flies open again, and Chase comes hurrying out, tripping a little on the front curve of his flip-flop. He’s ten steps across the asphalt, eyes big as dinner plates, when out of the building emerges Sully Mills.
Chase is coming my way. I open the door for him. “I walked right into him!” he hisses as he throws himself into the driver’s seat.
“Go!” I shout. “Just drive away!”
“Hide that.” Chase motions to my bag and I kick it to the floor as he fumbles with his seat belt. But Sully has arrived at the driver’s side window and is motioning for us to lower the window. Chase presses the button, and Sully bends and looks in.
“Hi,” Sully says.
“Yep,” says Chase.
“Mr. Kennedy, I’m Officer—”
“I know exactly who you are,” Chase says.
Sully bends lower. “Ms. Van Ness. How are you?”
“Fine, thank you.” I try to ease the bag closed by my foot, without looking down, but the fabric is floppy, and I don’t know if I’ve managed it. Inside my chest, my heartbeat is frantic.
Sully’s eyes are steady on me. He’s flooding heat into the car through the window. “Eli Beck is in police custody. I thought you’d want that information. My colleagues are taking him back to the station now.”
A fresh spear of pain cuts into my midriff, and I press my fingers to my hip. Alex has even told Sully about Eli.
“I need to ask you something.” Sully rests an elbow on the window frame.
Chase and I glance sideways at each other.
“Beck’s given a statement. And, to be frank, some of it’s … concerning.”
“In what way?” Chase asks.
Sully pauses, then says, “He claims there was an incident in your apartment, Mr. Kennedy, last Monday morning. That he was physically attacked there around noon. He has a knife wound that corroborates.”
Alex.
Chase exhales as if all the air is leaving his body.
“We weren’t there,” I say.
“I know,” Sully says. There’s hurt in his eyes. “Alex was.” He studies our faces for a few seconds. “I realize there are drugs in play. Ruth, if you hand them over to me right now, I’ll try to keep you out of trouble.”
“Eli is lying!” Chase says, his voice so bubbled that he has to cough to clear it. “There aren’t any drugs. She doesn’t have them.”
“Alex told me Ruth hid them.”
Every synapse inside of my head is snapping. Alex knew about the drugs, hid them from Chase and me, but told Sully about them? All while denying their existence to Chase?
“Ruth, you’re harboring drugs for a dangerous felon. You’re having a baby with him. And she caught you red-handed with the drugs in a tin.”
“Jesus,” Chase says, as the realization stings us both like a slap. She’s trying to destroy both of us. More pain gathers inside of me and it’s so hot.
“Is that true?” Sully asks. “I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. Because there are some things about this that … don’t add up.”
He’s staring into my eyes, but I hold his gaze. “I brought the drugs home. But Alex found them and hid them for weeks, not me. They were in a vent in her bedroom. And Chase and I found them. That’s the truth.” The words come out as a gasp. My view is blurring.
“It’s true, it’s true!” Chase adds in a nervous flurry.
“Where are the drugs now?” Sully is asking. “And why did you come to this bus depot today?”
The pain in my middle explodes, and then there’s a viscous, briny liquid that’s flooding my thighs, spreading into a warm pool on the car seat.
“We were going to return the drugs and money to Eli,” I say. A shocking pain sears through me, and I slump toward the gear stick.
Chase is on me immediately. “Are you okay? Ruth? Take a deep breath. There you go. And another,” he says, his calmness fake.
Pain submerges me as a fresh aching pull surges, so much stronger than the last, creating sound in me I’ve never heard myself make before. It’s primal and bewildered, like the bellow of cows Dad helped butcher on the neighboring farm. I scramble for the strap of the bag and pull it up to my lap, dig for the clothespin in there—Pim’s pin—the one I hold when I’m the most afraid of anything. Finally I grasp it. The wood of the clothespin is worn and smooth.
They are talking now, but it’s as though they’re so far away. Chase tells me to breathe. I hear Sully’s voice saying he’ll follow us.
“No, I don’t want him to,” I pant, but Chase is already taking off, driving out of the parking lot and fast through backstreets. Trees streak by in hard lines of green, and I can’t think anymore, I can’t think.
ALEX
I’m so close to the finish line now that my fingers are trembling on the keyboard of my computer. The office is quiet. That’s good. Keep going, I tell myself. It’s all for the best. I read over what I have so far.
Morris,
I’m worried about my sister, Ruth. I haven’t spoken to you about her before, but she’s about eight and a half months pregnant and has been living with me since June. The man she’s having a child with is Eli Beck. There’s a criminal history there—violence, abuse, and drug use—and he’s here in Moses River to be with Ruth. My sister has been in jail, a fact that I learned just recently, and I have reason to believe she has an ongoing issue with drugs—and maybe some other concerns as well. I’m worried for her child, Morris. Can we chat later this morning when you’re in? I don’t want to be alarmist.
Alex
I pause, bite the fingernail of my thumb. Every move I make has to be perfect. There’s so much to do today. I didn’t sleep well last night—thoughts rattling in my head—although nobody was awake by the time I got back to the loft, and Chase didn’t stir as I slid under the covers. But today is crucial. It’s when everything comes together. I crack my knuckles and press Send on the email. It swoops away from me, a gentle bird in flight.
I grab my satchel, hook the strap across the front of me, and glance up at the clock on the wall. It’s just past nine o’clock. Right on time. The Floyd decision will be well underway.
Morris suggested that I avoid the hearing today; Minerva, newly returned from her trip, outright forbid it. As far as I’m aware—huge pause for her nostrils to flare—you’re still not the lead on this case. But I’m invested in it. I rescued Buster—I stuck my neck out, not her—and I have every right to be there for the verdict.
I walk through the tunnel that connects our building to the courthouse and climb the stairs to the main level, where everything smells fusty and sour like the wood of old church pews. Court is in session. I slip in at the back and take a seat. At the front of the room are Morris and Minerva, and then up high is the judge—it’s Vickers, a no-nonsense woman in her sixties. That bodes well. I couldn’t have picked a better judge myself. To the left, I can see the bulk of Frank Floyd’s shoulders and the bony little rack of Evelyn. Janeen must have stayed home with Buster.
Judge Vickers is midflow in her monologue. “Overnight I’ve again reviewed the minutiae of this case, including the testimonials given yesterday and all the various reports. It is a case full of conflicted opinion, riddled with struggle, overshadowed by doubt. The finding of drugs in the home is, however, quite certain. It is a fact, and it is troubling. With that in mind, it is my decision that the child will be best served by rem
aining in the care of the maternal grandmother until such time as Family Services can find him a forever home. The court is thus awarding continuing custody of Buster Kevin Floyd to Family Services.”
At the back of the room, I close my eyes and smile. There are families all over the state hoping and praying for a low-needs child like Buster. Fresh parents—healthy ones—who will give him a clean and safe home, who will take him to speech therapy, buy him fresh diapers, give him more than one toy in his room. By the time he’s five, he’ll barely remember that he lived any differently. I did it. I saved that little boy.
Suddenly, I hear Frank roar from the front of the court. “This is bullshit! People change! We’re clean!” His fist thumps the top of the table.
“I would ask you to improve your language, Mr. Floyd. If you are unable to control yourself in my court, you will be forcibly removed—”
“You’re all in it together!” he bellows, his shoulders clenched high near his ears. “This is a conspiracy!”
Judge Vickers motions toward the security guard, and he leads Frank from the court. I slip through the back door of the courtroom and wait in the foyer. When Morris emerges a few minutes later, I step out and wave. He heads straight my way.
“What are you doing here?” He looks sweaty, and his tie’s off-center.
“I just came to hear the verdict. Great result,” I say. “Buster will be much better off now.”
Morris bites his lip. “I hope so. But it’s a strange case. And Mr. Floyd, he’s an angry individual for sure, but I’ll tell you what, he wasn’t high. Through the whole thing, he and his wife aren’t what we usually see. I found them surprisingly likable.”
“The Floyds? Likable?” I ask, swallowing. “Don’t be so easily fooled.”
He looks up sharply, goes to say something more, but just then, Minerva approaches. Her corduroy blazer is about to burst its buttons. “The judge ruled,” she says. “In your favor.” She glares at me, but I let it roll off me.
“I did my job, Minerva.” I did what nobody else would.
The three of us walk back in silence, and as soon as we reach our floor, Morris swerves right toward the kitchen and pours himself a coffee. He takes a long, wretched sip. Any minute now he’ll check his phone and read the email I sent him. I head for my office to give him a little space, while I pull out my own phone and text Sully.