Slow Burn

by Roxie Noir

  It happens almost instantly. I get the driver’s side tire with my first shot, and the van jerks to the left, losing control. He bumps off a pickup truck parked in the street, careens over the curb as Steven and I move out of the way, but the minivan’s nose plows into a concrete planter and comes to a dead stop, steam pouring from under the hood, airbags deployed.

  Nothing moves inside it. Two police cars pull up, screeching to a stop, sirens howling, but I’m already sprinting for the driver’s side door of the minivan, Steven behind me, weapons out and at the ready.

  We look at each other. He nods, weapon trained on the driver’s door, police moving into position as I yank the door open.

  “Hands up!” someone shouts.

  I still can’t see his face, because he’s got long, stringy brown hair that’s flown forward and covered it. Slowly, shakily, he holds up his hands, both shaking so badly it almost looks like he’s waving.

  At the same time, we all pause, just for an instant. There’s something wrong here, wrong about the man behind the wheel, about the small, delicate hands he’s holding up.

  “Now get out slowly,” the voice says. “Nice and easy.”

  The figure unbuckles, still shaking, and turns slowly toward the door, and suddenly I can see a face.

  It’s a woman.

  For a split second, it throws me off. This entire time I had a mental image of the man who was stalking Ruby, the man who threatened to tie her up and rape her and keep her in a basement, the man who might be capable of overpowering her and taking her against her will.

  But it’s not. It’s a woman, small and delicate and terrified, shaking and crying hysterically. Worst of all, she looks familiar.

  I wonder if we got the wrong person, but then she steps out of the van and the spell’s broken, instantly.

  “Against the car!” someone shouts, and then the cops swarm her. They frisk her and cuff her while she sobs, her face red and her nose running, so utterly distraught that I almost feel bad for her.

  I’m at a loss. I have no idea what to think or how to feel. I don’t even know that we got Ruby’s stalker, and if we did, I can’t bring myself to think about punching this girl’s face in.

  A big, meaty hand claps my shoulder and I look down into a tanned, lined face.

  “You good?” it asks.

  It’s Captain Dodson, the guy currently in charge.

  “I’m good,” I confirm.

  “Great. You’re gonna need to give a statement down at the station. Nice shooting, by the way.”

  Steven stays at the hotel while the Captain drives me to the police station in a daze.

  All I can think is, what if that’s not him?

  “She didn’t deserve it,” the girl sobs, desperately. “The scriptures are very clear on that point. Matthew 19:6. ‘Let no man tear asunder,’ it says, and she tore their union right in half.”

  The officer in the room with her says something quietly, pushing a bottle of water toward her, but the girl doesn’t take it. I’m on the other side of the one-way mirror, and though I’m not exactly supposed to be there, no one’s raising any objection to my presence.

  Her name is Lilah, and she looks familiar because she’s the Senator’s aide’s fianceé, always around when we go to campaign events. I think she’s also Lucas’s sister, though that part is a little less clear since she won’t say his name out loud.

  She knew about the county fair because she was there with us the entire time, and she stole her parents’ car to drive to Atlanta late at night to mail the letters.

  This whole time, we were barking up the wrong tree. She was right here and we were so, so wrong.

  “And then Ruby got another chance,” she hisses, her voice quiet but hateful. “You know where she should be? She should be in a ditch somewhere, her head shaved because that’s what they used to do to shameful women—”

  I turn around and walk out, pushing open the door and heading back into the main room of the Charleston Police Department, paper cup half-full of stone-cold coffee in my hand. This feels a thousand times worse than I thought it would, and I find a bench along a wall and just sit on it because I just need a minute amidst all the chaos to think.

  Lilah’s not well. That much was dead obvious almost immediately, and that was before she spent about an hour telling a police officer how she talks to angels in long, detailed conversations every night.

  And how the angels tell her to do things. Specific things, and often things that aren’t very nice, and furthermore, the angels have warned her that she can never, ever tell anyone about their conversations.

  It took about thirty seconds for all my anger toward her to fade into awful, gut-wrenching pity, because it’s dead clear that this girl needs a kind of help that she might never get.

  On the bright side, even though she’s told everyone about Ruby and me and our fornication, sinful in the eyes of God, no one believes her.

  It’s five-thirty in the morning. I’m supposed to be escorting Ruby to breakfast in an hour and a half, and though I’m sure that the schedule is non-existent now, I’m still hanging onto that. Because right now, that’s what I want to think about: knocking on her door, her face when she opens it, the way she might sneak me a smile as we get on the elevator.

  I don’t want to think about her father quizzing me about whether Ruby and I have been fornicating. I don’t want to think about whether I’ll even be employed with them past today, or how it’s going to be harder for Ruby to run away with me if I’m not.

  All those things are coming, but I’m tired and the end to this story has been almost nauseatingly unsatisfying. Instead of a bad guy, there’s just a girl deep in the throes of untreated mental illness. So I think about Ruby in the morning, her smile, the possibility that our fingers might touch when she passes the salt.

  I’m still thinking about that when footsteps approach, and I look over to see Ray standing there, hands shoved deep in his pockets. His expression is almost aggressively unreadable, so perfectly blank that I know something is wrong instantly.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  His face doesn’t change.

  “Could you please come with me?”

  “Is it Ruby?” I ask, heart seizing in my chest.

  “Just come with me, son.”

  “Is she okay?”

  Ray just starts walking away, giving me no real choice but to follow after him.

  “Ray,” I say, trying to keep my voice low even though I want to shout. “Ray, what’s going on?”

  He just walks out of the main room and into the reception area at the front, empty because it’s too early for the receptionist.

  “She’s fine,” he says, holding up one hand to stave me off. “But the Senator wants to talk to you.”

  I exhale.

  “Of course,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “I’m sorry, it’s been a night, and with everything that happened—”

  “Son, he wants to talk to you about Ruby’s whereabouts last night,” Ray interrupts.

  I stop short, mid-sentence. I don’t even shut my mouth, I just stare at Ray.

  I’m not even surprised. It was too inevitable for me to be surprised, too many things that had to go exactly, perfectly right for me to be surprised.

  But I know, in that instant, that the charade is over. I’m done seeing her every day and pretending that I’m not desperately in love with her. I’m done spending time with her family and acting like I’m not thinking about her lips on mine and her bare skin under my fingers.

  He knows. I feel like I’m staring at a bridge that just got wrecked, and I have no clue which way I’ll go now, but I know it’s somewhere. I’m unmoored, in freefall, but I know exactly one goddamn thing and it’s that somehow, I’m getting out of this with Ruby.

  I toss my half-full coffee cup into a trash can, cold coffee splashing up the side.

  “I know where she was,” I tell him, my voice finding its lowest, most serious register. “She was with me.
”

  Ray nods grimly.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Ruby

  And unto the Reubenites and unto the Gadites I gave from Gilead even unto the river Arnon half the valley, and the border even unto the river Jabbok, which is the border of the children of Ammon;

  The plain also, and Jordan, and the coast thereof, from Chinnereth even unto the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, under Ashdothpisgah eastward.

  I’m so bored I’m reading Deuteronomy. The Bible is the only book I’m allowed to have right now, and if I don’t do something, I might go out of my mind. And I know that virtually everything that’s not Deuteronomy, which is mostly lists of who begat whom, is more applicable to my current situation.

  But I’m in no mood to look to the Bible for help at the moment, given that my father’s supposed obedience to its very letter is what got me where I am right now. So, in my boredom, I’m reading the least helpful part I can find, which is about which parts of Israel various tribes are supposed to own.

  I flip the whisper-thin page and start a new section when there’s a polite, hesitant knock on my door. That means it’s not Pearl or Joy, whose room I’ve been moved into.

  “Come in,” I call, not looking up from the Bible.

  The door opens about a foot and one of my new guards sticks his head in.

  “Your father’s asked to see you,” he says, sounding a little nervous.

  I’ve got three new guards, and I make them all nervous because they’re all members of my father’s church, and I don’t think they like being around the harlot.

  That’s me, by the way. Obviously.

  “What does he want?” I ask, not bothering to stand or be polite.

  “He didn’t say.”

  I smile, half-sweet and half-sarcastic.

  “Any chance it seemed like he’s going to let me go?” I ask, cocking my head to one side.

  The poor guy looks simultaneously horrified and baffled, his mouth opening and then closing once without answering. It’s okay, because I know the answer. The answer’s no, but I guess my father wants to fight about it some more.

  I scoot off my bed, my ugly skirt bunching around my knees as I do. I still hate the things, but it’s not like I’ve got many other clothes.

  The guard sees me down the hallway, up the stairs, and then opens the door to my father’s office, letting me through. My heart’s beating wildly, thumping through my veins so loud I’m afraid he can hear it, but I steel myself and walk through.

  “Ruby,” he says, still sitting behind his massive desk.

  The door behind me shuts, and now we’re alone. It’s not the first time that we’ve been alone in his office during the past few days, and if he thinks this meeting is going to go any differently than the others, he’s sorely mistaken.

  “Father,” I say.

  I don’t move. I don’t step forward, and I don’t give any indication that he’s in control here, even though we both know he is. After all, I learned all this from a consummate politician, even if he wasn’t trying to teach me.

  “I summoned you here to offer a truce,” he says, clasping his hands in front of himself on the desk.

  For just a second, my heart skips a beat, and I think that maybe, just maybe, my father’s going to be reasonable.

  “What are the terms?” I ask, keeping my voice steady and trying not to bely my excitement.

  He stands, his leather chair groaning, and walks to the window, hands clasped behind his back. I can just feel a lecture coming on, and I know this stance is the one he does when he wants to seem official and important, like he’s getting his presidential portrait painted.

  “Ruby, do you remember making Easter cupcakes in Sunday school when you were five years old?”

  Jesus, he’s bringing this up again. I take a deep breath, forcing myself not to roll my eyes.

  “Of course,” I say.

  You won’t let me forget it.

  “Your entire class baked cupcakes to celebrate the Resurrection,” he goes on, the pace of his voice slow and steady, no matter how impatient I am. “When they were finished, there was to be one cupcake per child. Each of you selected your cupcake, and then waited your turns to adorn your cupcake with sprinkles.”

  They were blue sprinkles. My favorite color, at least at the time.

  “And when it came your turn to adorn the cupcake, you wanted more sprinkles than Miss Nicole allotted you, because she needed to save enough sprinkles for the rest of the Sunday school class. She tried to take them away from you, but because you thought you didn’t have enough sprinkles, you grabbed the container back from her and proceeded to pour every last sprinkle onto your own cupcake.”

  I almost tell him that I didn’t mean to. I meant to get more sprinkles, but not all of them. I was five years old and clumsy. It was an accident.

  “Your actions deprived the rest of the students of sprinkles,” he goes on, now turning away from the window and toward me. “And I’ve thought of that story again and again over the past few years, each time that your selfishness has outweighed your loyalty and love for this family. In some ways, you’re still that five-year-old, pouring sprinkles onto a cupcake.”

  I literally bite my tongue. I wonder if he brings this story up again and again because it’s the only one he even remembers from my childhood. It’s not like he took an active hand in raising me, preferring to be a distant figure while my mother did all the hard work.

  “Here we are, once more, the metaphorical sprinkles all over the floor,” he says, and I wonder if he realizes how dumb that sounds. “Your actions have called my reputation into question, as a father and as a politician. Your actions call into question whether I can effectively represent this great state of South Carolina when I can’t even govern my own home. They call into question my abilities as a father, if I can’t even teach my own daughter the difference between right and wrong.”

  There’s a long pause, like he’s expecting me to apologize, but I’ve got no intention of doing such a thing.

  “What’s the truce?” I finally ask.

  He sighs and walks across the office, gazing up at the huge, ugly, backlit cross on one wall. I’m acutely aware that this is all theatrics, all for the sake of appearance, even if it’s mostly wasted on me.

  “Thankfully, not everyone is so focused on their own selfish pleasures to the exclusion of all else,” he says. “Despite your insistence on sullying yourself, Kyle Pickett has offered yet again to marry you.”

  “No,” I say, the word coming out of my mouth a knee-jerk reaction.

  “I told him that you would consider carefully, over the course of several days,” he goes on, like I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m not marrying him.”

  He can’t force me to marry Kyle, that much I’m sure of. He can do a lot of things, but forcing me to say I do isn’t one of them.

  “Ruby, I’m not sure you’ll have another chance,” he says, his voice the epitome of patience.

  “I don’t want another chance to marry someone who frequents prostitutes and has never had a two-way conversation in his life,” I say.

  “You of all people should understand that someone can change and make amends,” he says.

  “I’m not marrying him,” I say quietly, taking a deep breath. My heart’s racing again, but I force myself to sound calm. “I’m not taking a truce. The only thing I’m interested in is walking out of this house, through that gate, and into the world.”

  We look at each other for a long, long time, neither one moving or budging. I’ve got a feeling that he’s got a cupcake story, too, that a long time ago as a child he wanted something and took it through whatever means he could.

  But instead of being someone’s daughter, he was someone’s son, and what he wanted mattered.

  “Someday, you’ll thank me,” he says softly. That means I’m not letting you go.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “It’s my job to have your be
st interests at heart,” he says, and smiles his politician’s smile at me.

  He thinks I have no options left, that after trying to escape unsuccessfully and after arguing with him, after a little while, I’ll come around to his bidding.

  But I’ve still got one thing left. I don’t know whether he doesn’t think I’m smart enough to think of it, or if he just thinks I won’t dare, but he’s wrong on both counts.

  “Thank you, Father,” I say steadily. “It’s been a pleasure.”

  He just nods. I turn, open the heavy door, and walk back to my room, trailed by a slightly nervous guard. Inside, I sit on my bed and turn once more to the tedium of Deuteronomy, but I’m not paying any attention to the words.

  Instead I’m mulling over the last, biggest thing I’ve got. It’s going to take some doing. I don’t even want to do it, I want him to call off my guards and let me walk away, but that’s not going to happen.

  I’ve run out of options.

  It’s time to go nuclear.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Gabriel

  I sit in my car, outside Starbucks, and watch Ruby’s brother Zeke walk into the store. He does it a little furtively, glancing around, and I smile to myself, because I’m sure coffee is the devil’s liquid, or something.

  I’ve been following him the past two days, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know. I feel creepy as hell following a twenty-year-old kid around town, but as a male member of Ruby’s family, he’s got the most latitude by far. He’s allowed to go places alone, with no guard. The kid’s even got a job, something totally off-limits to Ruby and her sisters.

  Plus, I think he’ll help me. I’ve never exactly talked to him, but I know that Ruby likes him, and he’s got something like that same spark that she does.

  And he’s here, at Starbucks, drinking Satan juice.

  I get out of my car and wait for him, right where he’ll see me when he comes out of the store, and sure enough, he does. He stops for a moment, then looks around. He takes a sip of his coffee, still holding the door open, like he’s pretending to be casual.