by Tom Leveen
I pulled out my cigarettes and lighter, my fingers grazing my pillbox during the procedure. I really felt like bleeding but couldn’t do that now. Smoking would have to do. I lit the Camel and rolled down my window about halfway. Pretty little snowflakes darted inside. David said nothing.
“He talked to me first,” I said.
David folded his arms, putting his hands under his armpits.
“I was watching Tara from behind a rack of skirts,” I said. “And someone came up behind me and said, ‘Excuse me, do you like dogs?’ I didn’t even turn around. I just waved my hand and said no. And he said . . . he said he just bought a cute little puppy from the mall pet store, but he’d jumped out of the car and was loose somewhere in the parking garage, and he needed help to find him. Well, I could see Tara looking for me. You know, all cautious? And I laughed. And I told the guy I couldn’t, because I was busy, I was hiding. Then Tara ran for another rack of clothes and I lost sight of her. The guy said, okay, well, thank you anyway, I hope you don’t get caught.”
“So, you think that’s the guy who took her.”
“I’m positive.”
“And you never got a look at him?”
I practically spat out a breath of smoke. “I was irritated,” I said. “I was focused on the game. I wasn’t thinking about stranger danger or anything like that. I was ten. I was a big girl. No. I never got a look. But it was him.”
“How do you know?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of that trick? The lost dog? Bad guys use it all the time. I guess it still works. Trust me, it was him. What I don’t know is . . . I don’t know why . . . Jesus, why wasn’t it me?”
I took another drag. David shifted in his seat to get a better look at my face. So I turned away. Let the snow freeze my cheeks.
“That’s what this was all about,” David said. It wasn’t a question. “You think it should’ve been you he took. Or you think you could’ve stopped him somehow.”
“If we hadn’t been playing that stupid game, or if I’d just turned around and looked at this guy, or—”
“No, no, Pelly,” David said. “God, no. You can’t do this. You can’t live like that. Tara is gone because some creeper asshole took her. And you want to know why? Because that’s what creeper assholes do. That is not your fault. Then, now, or ever.”
“It sure feels like it.”
“Pel, listen,” David said. “I’m going to say this because—well, I guess it doesn’t matter why, but I have to say it. You understand that it’s almost certain you imagined this whole thing, now, right? I mean, seeing Tara at the Hole?”
I inhaled smoke. Held it. Blew it out.
“I mean, the chances,” David went on. “Just the math of it. It’s virtually impossible. I mean, you get that, right?”
Inhale. Hold. Exhale. At least I had no intrusive thoughts. I had no thoughts at all.
After another minute, since I wasn’t responding to David, he pressed his lips together and started the truck. “We’re out of here,” he said. “We’re going home.”
I didn’t say anything. Just flicked my smoke out the window and rolled the window back up. I sat, and shook and hoped to someday be able to speak again.
David drove a little fast out of the neighborhood, and once, the truck skidded a bit on the wet street. I didn’t care, and David didn’t appear to either. But that minor fishtail did pull me back to the present, to the now, and right now I needed him to slow down.
“Easy,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Go easy,” I said. “Slow down some.”
Immediately the truck slowed. “Sorry.”
I shook my head. “S’okay.”
We said nothing more for at least a couple of minutes. Outside, snow fell and with it, silence, a cloud of it, draping the entire landscape. It never snowed at home.
“So, since you did go in,” David said at last, “what’d you find? Anything?”
“No,” I said. I pulled myself up, slowly, into a sitting position and pulled on my seat belt. My voice sounded monotone and splintered. “The garage was locked. The kitchen was normal. Living room was normal. He’s the blandest person on earth.”
“Hmm,” David grunted, but that was all.
I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t have anything else.”
And for the first time in a while, so long they were like foreign objects piercing my corneas, tears formed in my eyes and burned like acid.
David must’ve seen them even though they didn’t fall. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Pel,” he said. “You did more than any person would be expected to. You followed your gut—your heart—and you risked a lot to find out. Maybe too much, honestly. You shouldn’t have gone in there. I mean, I get it, I would’ve done it too. I’m just saying, you went above and beyond, Pelly. The cops’ll still look into it, like you said. There’s nothing else for us to do.”
I didn’t miss that he said “us.” And that almost made the sudden tears fall after all.
“I don’t check my phone,” I said, as if unable to stop myself, “because no one calls. I don’t have any friends. Just people online whose names I don’t know, and that girl who buys my fucking cigarettes . . . I don’t want to even hear the voice mails my dad leaves. That’s why I didn’t notice it was dead.”
That’s why my phone never seemed to have a charge. For as terrified as I was of not having it work, the truth was, knowing it wouldn’t ever ring felt worse.
“Okay,” David said softly.
“I was on medication for the last five years. I stopped taking it.”
David looked unperturbed. I guess after telling him about the hospital, meds weren’t exactly a shock. Maybe that’s why I was telling him. I had nothing left to hide.
“When?” he asked.
“A few weeks ago.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to be shut off.”
We came to a red light. David leaned over and kissed my forehead, then my lips.
“Okay,” he said firmly.
Somehow that made everything . . . well, okay.
The light turned green, and David hit the gas. We passed the church where Rebane worked, hit a yellow light, and then things quickly became decidedly not okay as David tried to stop for the red.
The truck spun out, fishtailing this way and that. I screamed. David grunted and fought for control.
He lost.
FOURTEEN
We bounced off the freeway, through snow-covered dirt and gravel, and smashed headlong into a telephone pole.
“Oh my God,” I said, and proceeded to repeat this about eight trillion times in the span of a minute or two. I did not want to look at the driver’s seat, where I was sure I would find David either ejected out the windshield or simply a bloody remnant impaled on the steering wheel.
I knew neither was true. It didn’t prevent the specter from haunting me.
“Are you all right?” David asked right away. He sounded fine.
“Yeah, I—yeah. Are you?”
“Yeah. Pretty sure . . . yeah.”
“Pretty sure isn’t gonna do it for me these days, David.”
“I’m fine,” he stated. He peered through the windshield, which wasn’t so much as cracked. “So, ah . . . not used to driving in the snow, I guess.”
“I guess,” I agreed as I began to accept that we were both alive and whole. “You’re sure—”
“Totally. Sit tight, I’ll take a look.”
He unsnapped his belt and got out of the car. The peel out had taken us completely off the road, which was good; we were probably twenty or more feet from passing cars, although traffic was light, probably due to the snow. David lifted the hood up and tinkered for a minute before walking quickly to his door, hands shoved deep in his jeans pockets and arms held tight to his b
ody. I would’ve laughed at the way his face pinched in the falling snow if I was in a psychological place where I could laugh at anything.
David climbed inside and tried the ignition. Nothing.
“That’s kinda what I thought,” he said. “We’re gonna need a tow.”
“Awesome,” I said. “I hope your phone is charged.”
David smirked at me just as the truck got lit up by headlights pulling up behind us. My heart twisted for a second, thinking we were about to be hit. But I watched in the mirror, then turned in my seat, as a man driving a full-size pickup truck stopped behind David’s and got out to approach David’s window. He knocked on it, and David rolled it down.
“You okay in there?” the man asked. He was older, his skin weather-worn.
“We’re fine, thank you,” David said. “The truck’s busted up pretty good, though.”
The old man nodded. “Need a tow, then, do ya?”
“I was about to call, yeah.”
“We’ll wait here till ya get it sorted out. Hit your hazards if they’re working.”
“Right, thanks,” David said, and turned on his blinkers. The old man walked back to the big pickup and climbed in. “Nice guy,” David said, taking out his phone.
“Uh-huh,” I said. I leaned back in the seat and shut my eyes. Now that the worst of the panic had passed, I was both hungry and nauseated. Saltines sounded awesome.
David called the police and then AAA. When he was done, he held the phone toward me. “Need to call your mom?”
Yikes. I probably did. I should at least let her know where I was.
It took a few minutes for me to remember the number, during which the cops arrived, asked a few questions and took a report, laughed a bit at our inability to drive a car in the snow, and left once the tow truck showed up.
Mom didn’t answer the phone. It made sense; she wouldn’t have David’s number on her cell, and probably figured if it was someone important, they’d leave a voice mail.
“Mom, it’s me,” I said. “I’m, uh . . .”
So. How to explain this little situation?
I decided I couldn’t. Not now, anyway. I was safe, she knew I was with David, and she’d lose her mind if I told her exactly what I’d been up to today. They’d probably take out a second mortgage to pay for me to go right back into the hospital.
“I’m working late at the café,” I went on. “There’s this huge art group or something coming through, and Eli needs me to stay all night, so I won’t be home till late. Don’t stay up. Um, my cell is out, so you can reach me at this number, it’s my . . . friend . . . David. You know, from work. Okay. Bye.”
I ended the call and went out to stand beside David and the tow-truck driver.
The driver agreed right away with David’s assessment of I can’t start my freaking car. Genius.
“We’re gonna hafta take it in,” the driver said. “You wanna take it to my shop, or somewhere else?”
“How long will it take to fix?” David asked, teeth chattering a bit.
The driver shook his head. “Tomorrow. Late tomorrow. If even then. You really whacked her.”
“Wow,” David said.
“I could call my mom back, get us a ride back to Phoenix,” I said, shivering.
David put an arm around me. “Will you get in trouble?”
“I haven’t been in trouble in six years,” I said as my body warmed up just a bit beneath his arm.
“Whatcha wanna do?” the driver asked impatiently.
“Sorry, yes, take it in,” David said. “Thanks.”
The driver gave him a business card and began hooking the red truck up to the tow.
“I can call a friend or two,” David said as we watched the Toyota getting jacked up. “Or we could try to find a place here, go back home tomorrow.”
“Here?” I repeated. “Like, a hotel?”
In different rooms? I wondered. Wouldn’t that be expensive? Or the same room? And if the same room, then would we share the same—
The burly, older man climbed out of the big truck behind ours and came over while I was still stuttering internally.
“Why don’t you two hop on in here,” the good Samaritan said, gesturing back to the pickup. “You’re going to be Popsicles.”
David and I looked at each other. I tried to signal “no” with my eyes; I didn’t exactly cherish the idea of getting into a stranger’s car after everything that had happened. But whether David didn’t catch my look, or just chose to countermand it, he said, “Sure, thanks,” and the next thing I knew, we were climbing into the rear of the man’s double cab.
A knit blanket lay folded on the bench seat. David opened the blanket and passed it over to me. I gratefully laid it across my lap. If we were going to get ax-murdered by this old guy, I at least wanted to be warm.
Then I couldn’t help but gasp when a little elderly woman in the passenger seat turned to face us.
“The Lord sure works in mysterious ways, hmm?” she said. It was the secretary from Canyon City Community Church.
“Fancy seeing you out here,” she went on. “I’m Mrs. Wallis, and this is Kirk.”
“Hey-o,” Kirk Wallis said with a nod as he shut his door.
David and I were both speechless for a second, contemplating this bizarre twist of fate. He recovered first, and introduced us.
“I can’t tell you how much we appreciate this,” David added as the ice in my body began to melt.
“Me too,” I added, feeling inadequate. But I also felt my skin stop crawling; these were two ordinary old folks, one of whom worked at a church. They couldn’t possibly be dangerous.
Just like Franklin Rebane, my inner voice sassed me. I snapped my rubber band to shut it up.
“We’re just sorry about your car,” Mrs. Wallis said.
“It’ll be ready late tomorrow,” David said. “Can you recommend a cheap place we could stay for the night, by chance?”
“Why, you’ll stay with us, of course,” Mrs. Wallis said.
“Oh no,” I said, too quickly to be polite, and I didn’t care. “We couldn’t—”
“Sweetheart,” Mrs. Wallis said, “I’ve been a mother, a third-grade teacher, and a police dispatcher, and I teach junior high Sunday School. Which is to say, you can’t change my mind once it’s made up.”
I shot David a look. He shrugged and tried hard not to smile too big. “Can’t argue with that,” he said.
“Exactly,” Mrs. Wallis said. “I’m just too darn stubborn.”
“And humble,” her husband said, and laughed.
She joined him, and so did David, and for the briefest of moments . . . I hated them. Envy and bitterness and misplaced resentment combined in my guts to make a fermented bile that almost sickened me. I’d never have this again, this family thing, this laughing at dumb jokes and doing things together.
But then I suppose neither would Tara.
Tara. I tried, I really did. I thought for sure . . .
In my bitterness I said, “Oh, no, thank you so much, but it’s fine, really, we’ll get a motel or something.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Wallis said, raising her eyebrows innocently. “So you’re married, are you?”
Great. I guess there were one or two drawbacks to Christian hospitality.
“Not exactly,” I said. “I mean, no, we’re not, I mean, this was just supposed to be a day trip, you know, it wasn’t like we were planning on . . . anything. You know.”
“Well then, we insist,” Mrs. Wallis said. “It’s far too late and too cold for you to be running around out there anyway, and I won’t let Kirk drive you anywhere but our home. You’re both more than welcome.”
I glanced again at David. He seemed totally and utterly amused by the entire situation.
“Sounds great,” David said. “Thank yo
u so much.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
It took another fifteen minutes or so for the tow-truck driver to finish getting the little red truck hooked up and taken away. Under any other circumstance, I wouldn’t be caught in a stranger’s car going to God knows where in a city that wasn’t even mine. But I had David, and I was exhausted by the night’s events. And we held hands under the blanket the entire way. He seemed at ease, which worked wonders on my own state of mind.
Right up until we made a turn onto a street I was already familiar with.
David didn’t miss it either. We both sat up a bit. The road we’d turned onto lay only a few blocks from Rebane’s neighborhood. Just as I thought for sure it would end up they were neighbors, and maybe even had plans to turn me and David over to him, Mr. Wallis made another turn and, just like that, we were moving away from Rebane’s house.
I sighed inwardly, grateful as we pulled up to the driveway of the Wallises’ house. It was the same basic design as Rebane’s, which is to say the same as most of the houses in the area, as far as I could tell. Mr. Wallis parked beside the house, not in the back, which was nice; much less spooky for me. On a pleasant day I guessed it would be maybe a twenty-minute walk, at most, from here to Rebane’s house.
“Here we are,” Mr. Wallis announced.
We bundled out of the truck and followed them to the front door. A warm burst of air greeted us first thing, followed by an aromatic hint of balsam and cedar.
“I’ll get started on some hot chocolate,” Mrs. Wallis said as she hung her coat on a rack beside the door.
“And I’ll see who won the game,” Mr. Wallis said, and thumped David on the back.
“We have a spare room upstairs for you, Penelope,” Mrs. Wallis said, bustling through the living room and into the kitchen. The layout was identical to Rebane’s house and made me jumpy. I felt like I was breaking and entering all over again.
“Right,” I said. “Sure, yes. Thank you.”
“And I’ll make up the futon in the basement for David,” she went on, calling now from the kitchen. “It’s right this way.”
“Sounds great,” David said, walking toward the kitchen doorway while Mr. Wallis tried to find his sports game.