A Good Idea

by Cristina Moracho

  When Calder had passed out next to me in the sweat lodge, it would have been as simple as pressing my hand over his nose and mouth; in the darkness, maybe no one would have even seen it happen. But I would have known.

  “I never wanted to see him dead,” I answered.

  “What did you want, then?”

  “I don’t even know anymore. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t this.”

  • • •

  Serena didn’t come see me while we were in the hospital, and I didn’t go see her. She and Calder were discharged before I was. Silas was recovering on another floor, but he’d already been placed under arrest. When he left, he would be going directly to jail.

  Dad stayed with me the whole time, installed in my bedside chair, reading Mary Roach’s Stiff while I stared at the ceiling and clicked my morphine button ruthlessly anytime the fog around me started to lift. For the first time in years, the newspaper didn’t go to press on time. I didn’t ask Dad how he planned to cover the story, and I didn’t make any jokes about the police blotter. I never really slept, and I was never really awake. When the nurses changed the bandages on my hands, I couldn’t stop myself from looking at the raw, peeling skin. They all liked to tell me how lucky I was, that I could have lost a finger. At least there’d be no permanent damage, they’d say, and I’d just laugh and laugh.

  I didn’t know where Owen was, either. Dad said he’d been the first one released, but the diner was still closed, and no one was answering the phone at the cabin. I hoped maybe he’d taken the hint, finally packed up his truck with his books and left town, but I had a feeling he was around somewhere, lying low, maybe hiding out at Emily’s or camping in the woods.

  When I finally got to go home, I started packing. Not just the clothes and books I’d brought with me for the summer, but things I’d kept at Dad’s house for years, even the chipped kitten mug I used for my coffee every morning. He said nothing, but we both understood my intentions. At last I had taken some of Emily’s advice to heart. When I left Williston this time, I wouldn’t be coming back.

  I was taking a break from filling boxes, sitting on the screened-in porch and struggling to light a cigarette with my damaged hands, when I heard the front door open. It was the middle of the afternoon and Dad was still at work, but I didn’t get up. Owen’s knife was in my back pocket—never out of reach now—but I didn’t bother going for it. I recognized the quiet footsteps as they made their way through the house to where I was staring out at the woods and fumbling with my Bic.

  “Hey,” Serena said.

  “Hey.”

  She took the lighter from me and sparked the flame. I leaned forward, Marlboro in mouth, inhaling gratefully.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She sat next to me on the chaise. She’d changed her hair again, shearing most of it off into a pixie cut that made her neck seem even longer and more graceful. Her brown roots were growing in, and only the very tips were still black. The crucifix had been returned to its rightful place, nestled in the hollow of her throat. I let my gaze linger there for a moment, recalling the many kisses I’d planted in that exact spot, and then I had to look away.

  “When are you leaving?” she asked.

  “As soon as I can.”

  “Weren’t you even going to say good-bye?”

  I took another drag of my cigarette. “No.”

  “I guess I can’t blame you. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  “You loved her,” I said. “I get it. I was just a proxy, the next closest thing. She was all we ever had in common. Betty and the blues.”

  “It wasn’t just that. I wanted someone else who cared as much that she was gone.”

  “And you knew I’d be it. That first night,” I said. “Did you follow me to the high school?”

  She nodded. “I watched you break in. I needed a partner in crime. You didn’t take much prompting.”

  “And that whole scene at graduation? Was that all for my benefit?”

  “I wanted to get your attention, sure. But I meant every word of it. I wasn’t pretending.”

  “And the rest of it? Which parts were pretend?”

  She put her hand on my thigh. “Come on, Finley. Some things you can’t fake.”

  Even now her touch had the power to alter my blood flow; I felt like my veins were dilating. I moved away, putting some distance between us on the chaise. “So what was your plan? Wait for me to get back and start making noise about Calder and Betty, then kill him and make it look like I had done it?” I felt sick. “The sweat lodge was your idea. Silas didn’t find you wandering around his property—you went to him. Then you used yourself as bait to get me in there, too.”

  “I thought you wanted revenge, just like I did.”

  “I guess you’re an even better liar than I am, because I thought you wanted me.”

  “I did. I still do.”

  “Well, all I want is to get the fuck out of this town. No offense or anything, but I can’t wait to never see any of you people again.”

  She wasn’t about to let me get away that easily. “Finley—”

  “Don’t—”

  Then she was kissing me.

  Afterward, I gave her the chance to zip up her jeans; then I stood. “I think you need to go.”

  I didn’t walk her out. We didn’t say good-bye. I waited until I heard her car drive away before I sank back down to the floor, the taste of her on my lips for what I knew would be the last time.

  I haven’t seen her since.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

  THE DAY BEFORE I planned on going back to New York, I went to the beach where Betty died one last time. I thought about going to the cemetery, but there was no marker or headstone on her grave yet, and I felt oddly unsentimental about the box of bones beneath it. The spot where she drowned had kept its hold on me all summer long, so it was there I went to say whatever half-assed good-bye I could muster.

  I took off my shoes, rolled up my jeans, and waded into the water, letting it wash around my ankles, sand sucking at my toes. The ocean was as cold as it had been when I’d arrived two months before; there’d been no sun to warm it, all summer long. Tomorrow I’d go home, and soon after that I’d start orientation at NYU. I’d move into my dorm room, meet my roommate, Kate the dancer, and register for classes. Life would, ostensibly, return to normal. No more mission of vengeance, no more wandering around the woods in the dark, lying and scheming and fixating on how to make Calder pay for what he’d done. I had tried, and failed, and nearly been killed in the process. I was already thinking up what lie I would tell when people asked me about the scars on my hands. I was leaning toward inventing a baking accident.

  “Finley.”

  I turned around and there was Owen, walking toward me across the beach, also barefoot, shoes in his hands and Dickies rolled up to his knees.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “I called your house and Frank said you’re leaving tomorrow. I thought maybe I’d find you here.”

  “I was going to say good-bye, but I didn’t know where you were.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I wanted it that way. I needed some time to think.”

  “And?”

  “And I was pissed at you. Really fucking pissed. All I’ve done since you got back is try to protect you, and all you’ve done is get yourself into more trouble.”

  I fumed. “That’s funny, Owen, because I could say the same thing about you.”

  “I tried to tell you, Finley. I told you to leave it alone, I told you to go back to New York, but you wouldn’t listen. What you said to Calder in the sweat lodge? About how you thought there might be a witness, but then again it might be an accomplice? You were right, and you were wrong. There were both.”

  “What are you talking about, Owen?”

  “I never wanted to tell you this. Because I
knew you’d never forgive me. But you’re leaving now, and I have a feeling you won’t be back, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  “Whatever it is, you don’t have to tell me.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “Because soon everyone will know, and I don’t want you to hear about it from your father, or read it in the paper.” He looked away from me, out at the water. “I was here that night, Finley. I saw everything.”

  I didn’t say anything, just stared ahead at the water.

  “She came by the diner that day. I blew her off at first. I thought maybe she was just trying to score. But she sat at the counter, had a cup of coffee, and it turned out all she wanted was to talk. There was something strange about it. She was cheerful like she hadn’t been in ages, and when she said good-bye she came around the counter and gave me a hug, and a kiss on the cheek, and I got this feeling, like something wasn’t right. I don’t know, I can’t explain it. But when she said good-bye, I didn’t like the way it sounded. And she quoted Hamlet to me, one of Ophelia’s lines. I recognized it from when she’d made me fake-rehearse with her. ‘Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!’ And then she left.

  “So that night, after I closed the diner, I drove by her house. Her light was on, I could see her upstairs, so I thought, Okay, she’s fine, I was overreacting. And then Calder pulled up, and she snuck out and got into his car.

  “I followed them, feeling like a creep—for all I knew they were getting back together, coming out here just to fuck. But it was cold, that made no sense, so I sat in my truck and watched them go down to the water. She was in her pajamas, I didn’t understand what was happening. She took him by the hand and led him out until they were about waist deep.” He shivered. “God, she must have been so cold.”

  I found my voice. “And then what happened?”

  “She kissed him, and then she lay back in the water. She looked like one of those born-again Christians, being baptized in a river. And he held her under by the shoulders—”

  “Stop,” I said. “Stop talking.” I couldn’t bear to hear any more.

  “You don’t understand, Fin. She didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t fight it at all. I barely realized what was happening until it was over.”

  “You watched her die?” I said. “You watched Calder kill her? And all this time you’ve said nothing?”

  “He came back with Leroy. Leroy. I watched them move her body together, watched them—”

  “Don’t tell me!” I shouted. “Why are you telling me this now?”

  He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his Dickies. “I didn’t know what to do! When he confessed a few days later I thought, Okay, fine, he’ll go to jail, I don’t need to get involved.”

  “And when the charges were dropped, you still said nothing?”

  “It was my word against theirs. Yeah, I run the local diner, most people in town have a little soft spot for me, but we’re talking about Mayor Leroy Miller and his kid versus the local drug dealer. Calder knew Silas, he knew I was selling—if I said anything, he could have pinned it on me. I decided to stay out of it and hope that the cops would eventually do their job. Instead, Emily got pushed out of the force and everyone pretended that Betty had just run away or something. I honestly didn’t think it would make a difference if I spoke up. But then you came back.” He tried to brush the hair out of his face, fighting a losing battle against the wind.

  “And?”

  “You rolled into town like you weren’t afraid of Calder or Leroy or Silas, like butter wouldn’t melt in your goddamn mouth, and I just felt so ashamed.”

  “Of course I was afraid of them, I was terrified.”

  “And you reached into the rock pit anyway. And that’s the reason we’re all still here. So this is the least I can do. Better late than never.”

  I didn’t know what he wanted from me. Forgiveness? Reassurance? For me to do what I had done all summer, promise that everything was going to be okay? “But it’ll still be your word against his. Your word against Leroy’s.”

  “I don’t care anymore. You almost died trying to do what I could have done all along. Besides, something’s changed now, you can feel it. The cracks have been starting to show for a while. People won’t be so able to dismiss it this time.”

  “I hope you’re right, Owen. I really do.”

  “Leroy shut down the diner. With Silas in jail, I’m straight, out of business. Nothing to lose.”

  “Why didn’t you try to stop Calder?”

  He stared out over the water, and when I followed his gaze I knew I was looking at the exact spot where it had happened. “I almost envied her. On some level it seemed like such a good idea, to have it taken out of your hands, to let someone else put you out of your misery. Take away all that pain, all that unhappiness. The way they looked at each other in the moonlight right before—there was no malice in it, no anger. It wasn’t like he was hurting her. It was like he was giving her this gift. For a second, I almost wished I’d had the courage—to be the one to do it for her.”

  “That is,” I said, “the sickest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Maybe so, Fin. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

  “When are you going to tell the cops?”

  “Today. Now. Emily’s going to come with me.”

  “If I were you,” I said, turning away from the ocean and heading back toward my car, “I’d leave that last part out when you talk to the police.”

  “Wait.”

  I stopped, whirling around and reaching into my messenger bag, where Owen’s knife was safely tucked away with my cigarettes and keys and the last of the blues. I held it out to him, still folded. Beneath the gauze on my hands I could feel the blisters oozing; it was time to change the bandages again.

  Every time I looked at my scars, for the rest of my life, I would suffer the shame of knowing I’d earned them protecting the only person who could have saved Betty, but didn’t.

  “Here,” I said. “This is yours. I don’t want it anymore.”

  “Finley, don’t.” He looked at me pleadingly, finally dropping his mask of indifference, revealing the sorrow and remorse and self-loathing he’d carried all this time, and I realized that when he said he understood the appeal of Betty enlisting someone to end her unhappiness, he had not been speaking theoretically. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “You were right,” I said. “I had no idea how lucky I was, before I knew any of this. I should have listened to you. I should have left it all alone.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “What did it get me?” I screamed. “What good did I do her? And now you think, what, you can just walk into the sheriff’s station and tell the truth and suddenly it’ll make a difference?” I threw the knife into the sand at his feet, but it might as well have been sticking out of my chest, the way my heart was breaking.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Finley, please.”

  I turned my back on him and started walking, wind whipping my hair around my face, struggling to get traction in the sand, and I ignored him as he called after me, shouting my name again and again, until I couldn’t hear him anymore, just the steady rhythm of the waves against the shore.

  • • •

  On the way back to Dad’s, I stopped on Main Street, still devoid of tourists even though the weather had finally cleared and the temperature had risen. Now that I was leaving, it finally felt like summer, but even in the sunshine Williston looked grim, with the diner shuttered and Charlie’s front door propped open, revealing a not-insignificant crowd of day drinkers inside.

  I couldn’t wait to get back to New York. I didn’t care how small my dorm room was, how much I hated my roommate; it would never be as claustrophobic as this place.

  I went into the trader to stock up on cheap cigarettes while I was still in
Maine. Danny was sitting behind the counter, working on a crossword. He didn’t look up when the bell jingled. I wondered if he’d trained himself not to hear it.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t come in here anymore.”

  “Cut me some slack,” I said, holding up my bandaged hands. “I’ve had a rough week. Anyway, I’m leaving tomorrow. You won’t have to see me again.”

  “People are saying some crazy shit about whatever happened with Silas that night.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

  “There’s a few different versions going around. Drug-fueled orgy, Native American séance, some kind of satanic ritual.”

  “Believe me, it wasn’t nearly that much fun.”

  “Some people are pretty pissed about Silas getting arrested. The supply’s already drying up.”

  “I’m sure someone will take his place before too long. In the meantime, everyone can go back to stealing their drugs from their parents’ medicine cabinets.”

  He finally looked up from the crossword. “Is it true you almost killed him?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. Whatever. He almost killed me first. Can I have three cartons of Marlboros, please?”

  “You know the deal. Let me see some ID.”

  I rolled my eyes and took out my license.

  “There’s a party tonight,” he said. “One last rager before people start leaving for college.”

  “In the woods?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “On the beach, I think. Bonfire and all that.”

  I slid my money across the counter while he bagged the cigarettes. “I’ll probably skip it. I want to get an early start tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, makes sense.”

  “Will you tell Rebecca I said good-bye?”

  “Sure.”

  I stood there awkwardly, wallet tucked back into my bag, holding my cigarettes, no reason to linger but doing it anyway. There was a rack of postcards by the front door, meant to tempt the tourists. I spun it lazily, admiring all the idyllic pictures of my hometown—boats in the marina and sunsets off the water, lush green forests, gulls wheeling overhead in a cloudless sky.