Carnival

by Kory M. Shrum

  It was true that she’d only intended to scare the hell out of Terry and not actually kill him, but that hardly mattered now. She’d fired the gun. Someone was shot.

  “In the plaza—” Mel began.

  “Ah, yes. King is the one that hit him, not you.”

  “The blood—” she tried again.

  “What blood?” Detective White asked. He looked to King. “You break the man’s nose or something?”

  “My client is tired,” Mr. Rushdie interjected. “We’ve been here all day and—”

  King leaned in and whispered in Mel’s ear, “There was no duffle, no gun, no bricks, and no rope. And if you’re wondering, there are no tapes from the plaza security cameras either.”

  Mel searched his eyes. “What?”

  “I spoke to a friend. He’s more Lou’s friend than mine, but he took care of the footage. There’s nothing to pin on you.” Then aloud, loud enough for the squabbling White and Rushdie to hear, “We have more than enough to convict Terry for extortion.”

  You could not say anything, her mind suggested. You can go back to your life, to your shop. You don’t have to give everything up.

  “No,” Mel said, wiping at her face. “No, I have to say something.”

  Both Rushdie and King looked stricken.

  King held up his hand, and it filled Mel with sudden anger. No. She would not be deterred, damn it. She was sick of living with the guilt of that night. Of closing her eyes and seeing the rain pelting the window of Terry’s red Firebird. Of seeing Grandmamie’s anguished face when Terry pulled up in the driveaway.

  Don’t be a fool.

  “Please let me show you something,” King said, going around the table to the TV cart. He pressed eject on the machine, looked at the tape, and put it into the VCR once more. Then, as if he didn’t believe she could keep her mouth shut, he said, “Just give me a minute to show you one last thing, and if you still have something to say, I’ll be the first to hear you out. I promise.”

  He lifted the remote from the cart and pressed the buttons until the television flickered on.

  King rewound the tape, explaining as he went. “In May of eighty-one, Dustin Malone submitted a complaint to the county commissioner, to the state patrol, to the mayor—hell, he complained to just about anyone that listened that they needed to add speed signs and a speed trap to his road. He said that twice cars had been racing by too fast and had clipped his farm dogs. There had been three crashes on that curve. Because nobody listened to him, he installed these cameras on the edge of his property. He recorded the road for sixteen months, hoping to gather enough evidence to take the state to court over it.”

  Mel’s heart knocked in her throat.

  “I don’t see how this is relevant—” Mr. Rushdie began beside her.

  King stopped the tape, watched for a second, rewound it, and played it again. “Here we go.”

  Two seconds…three…and Mel’s chest was so tight she couldn’t draw a breath. She started, physically jumped in her chair, when the red Firebird rolled into the frame from the right side of the screen.

  Mel leaned forward, searching both sides of the road for her victim. Where? She must be—

  There was no one.

  A fox, low to the ground, shot out from the trees away from Malone’s property line and into the road. Its lithe body was momentarily lit by the headlights of the approaching Firebird. The fox hesitated, sinking back onto its heels, but it was too late. The tires struck the animal on its right side, rolling it under the car and onto the pavement. It tumbled to a stop in the glow of red taillights.

  The car screeched to a halt.

  The passenger door opened and a much younger Terry—the way she often still saw him in her dreams—stepped out into the rain. He went to the front of the car, bent down, and inspected the grill. Then he went to the back of the car and saw the fox. He nudged it with his foot.

  King bent close to Mel’s ear and whispered, “You didn’t hurt anyone, Mel. He lied to you so he could control you. You hear me? The bastard lied. Then he bragged to his jail buddies about it.”

  “But I saw…” I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t kill anyone.

  “You might have been drunk or scared or tired. Or maybe it was late, I don’t know. But you didn’t kill anyone. You didn’t. He lied to you,” King whispered.

  She covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

  “Can we have a minute?” King asked, and Mel was distantly aware of dismissing her attorney.

  Then they were alone in the questioning room.

  Forty years of regret…over something that didn’t happen. Forty years, forty years, forty damn years wasted—her first emotion was raw, raging anger.

  Goddamn you, Terry! Goddamn you and your lies!

  But she couldn’t sustain the anger in the face of such blessed relief.

  Her sobs shook her whole body. Strong hands found her back, pressing gently into them.

  “I can’t believe you were going to shoot him and shove him into the canal,” King whispered. A surprised little laugh escaped him.

  “I wasn’t.” She lifted her head, sniffling. She knew she wouldn’t have been able to follow through actually taking his life. “I thought if I scared him bad enough he’d leave me the hell alone. The gun only went off because Lou surprised me.”

  It was over. It was really over. This ordeal with Terry, these forty years of torment, they were really, truly over.

  She began to cry harder.

  “You’re all right,” King said. He kissed the top of her head. He rubbed her shoulders. “You’re all right. You’re going to be just fine.”

  “I’m sorry I lied to you,” she said. “I told you I was divorced and—”

  “I know,” King interrupted, squeezing her shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m not mad. It hurt, thinking there was some reason you didn’t trust me, but I’m not mad.”

  “I trust you,” she said, sniffling.

  And a warm smile broke out on his face. “Good. Because I trust you, too. You’re my best friend, Mel.”

  But part of her couldn’t believe she could be so totally exonerated.

  There was still Lou.

  She’d shot the girl. She’d watched her bleed all over the pavilion, the blood bubbling up between her lips as she screamed out in pain.

  Mel dragged her nose over her sleeve, trying to clean herself up. Oh god, Lou. “How is she?”

  38

  Lou understood that she was dreaming. Or maybe she was dead. She suspected that both may be the same: dead and dreaming. It was the awareness that one clung to despite the way the world warped around a feverish mind.

  Lou was in her parents’ house—or rather, it was the house they’d had when they were still alive. She stood just inside the front door, overlooking the pristine living room with its fluffed cushions and vacuuming marks in the carpet as if her mother had just finished her daily pass. She noted the way the light slanted through its large bay window. It was early afternoon, perhaps even the time when she would have just come home from school.

  Lou crossed the living room, half expecting to find her mother any moment, knowing the woman would click her tongue at Lou’s leather boots and jacket and the mirrored sunglasses poised on her face.

  All the blood…

  But her mother wasn’t in the living room.

  Lou passed the bathroom on the first floor, noting distantly that this was the tub she’d disappeared from all those years ago when her parents began to take her condition seriously. But now it was dry, empty, awash in light.

  She regarded it from the corner of her eye, noting how much smaller it seemed, and kept walking.

  Her heart flopped in her chest when she did find her mother. She stood in the kitchen, by the stove, dragging a wooden spoon through a pot of something red.

  “You’re late. Your father is outside waiting for you,” she said.

  Lou had forgotten how high her mother’s voice was. Nasal. Indignant.<
br />
  Affection welled in her chest for this long-dead woman. It surprised her. Her mother had never been particularly kind or patient. She had not been a loving mother. The closest Lou had gotten to tasting that experience was the day after she’d disappeared, when she was delivered safely to her mother’s arms.

  She’d gotten a long, lingering hug then. But that was the extent of Courtney Thorne’s love before Martinelli’s men shot her.

  She won’t even look at me.

  But then she did. And Lou was stunned by their resemblance. She’d always thought she looked like her father, and she did, but now it was undeniable that she had Courtney’s features too. It was the hard mouth and eyes, the sharp cheekbones, and the build of her body. Though her mother had always bleached her hair, and Lou’s was dark like her father’s.

  “Wash your hands. Dinner’s almost ready.”

  Lou didn’t wash her hands. Instead she backed away from the kitchen and the woman tending the stove. She strode through the dining room to the doors that would let her out onto the patio.

  Time skipped.

  She neither opened the doors nor stepped outside.

  One minute she was at the glass, looking out at the manicured lawn, at the clusters of daylilies and cone flowers, and then she was outside. She stood beside the pool, looking down into the dancing crystalline water.

  The shine was too bright.

  Because this is a dream, her mind reminded her. This is how it is in dreams.

  The old gate creaked, and Lou turned, half expecting to see Angelo Martinelli again, bursting through the fence with a gun and an all-encompassing desire to end their lives.

  But it was her father. He was in a white t-shirt and jeans—his favorite weekend outfit. His dark hair had fallen forward into his eyes as he whistled the tune “Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen.

  He was also young, no older than Konstantine. He grinned, his smile catching sunlight. “Lou-blue! I’ve been looking for you.”

  The love she’d felt for her mother paled compared to what she felt for him. It had been a drop of blood in an ocean. This was the ocean itself.

  She wrapped her arms around his waist.

  It’s a dream, just a dream, a dream, her mind reminded her.

  She didn’t care. It felt real enough.

  A large hand pressed into her back. He planted a kiss on her forehead. Even how he smelled—though there was something different about it—took her back.

  “Come here,” he said, motioning her toward the water.

  She dug in her heels. “You’ll push me in and I’ll wake up.”

  “No, I won’t.” He laughed, and it startled her to see that she had his smile, as rare as it was for her to show it.

  “We don’t have a lot of time. Come on,” he said.

  He crossed to the glass patio table adjacent the pool and sat in a red-and-white-striped beach chair. He pulled something from his pocket.

  It was a piece of paper, which he began to unfold with his large, tanned fingers.

  “It’s not just who,” he said. “It’s when. The when is very important. Do you understand? Too soon and it will be worse. Too late and then more damage is done. Timing is everything.”

  He spread the page flat on the table.

  Lou didn’t see anything written on it. “It’s blank.”

  Her father laughed, as if she’d made a joke.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in, but it’s about balance. You couldn’t have saved Christine, because it wasn’t the right when.”

  “Who’s Christine?”

  Her father’s finger went down the page, stopping at a name. “Like this one. You won’t be able to stop this one either, but it’s okay. It’s not your job to save everyone, Lou-blue.”

  Lou stared hard at the paper, now convinced there were names of people that she couldn’t see. Dark shapes began to form on the paper, squiggly shadows, but nothing legible.

  “I’m showing you this because I don’t want you to beat yourself up about it. You’re doing everything you’re supposed to do.”

  He placed a heavy hand on her shoulder, squeezed hard enough for her to feel it through the leather jacket. She didn’t give a shit about names on some paper. She wanted to soak in every second with him.

  He smiled. “I’m so proud of you. Do you know that? I want you to know how proud I am of the amazing woman you’ve become.”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “I miss you too.” His smile brightened. “But we’ll see each other again soon. Until then, don’t forget, Lou-blue. I’m proud of you.”

  She had only a moment to appreciate the beauty of his face in the lazy summer afternoon before night fell.

  It was as if someone had snapped their fingers and sunshine was replaced by moonlight. The pool was lit from within. It glowed, ethereal with steam rising from its surface.

  Her father was gone. A woman stood on the first step of the pool. The water rippled from her knees out toward the deep end. Her long skirt floated on the surface.

  “I’ve come to take you back,” Lucy said without turning. “You can’t stay here. If you stay any longer, that might be the end of it. And there’s still so much you can do. You’re only getting started.”

  “Take me where?” Lou asked. She was trying to remember what her father had said, what he’d been doing the moment before. But already it was a memory slipping away from her. The tighter she tried to hold on to it, the faster it bled through her fingers.

  “You can trust him, you know,” Lucy said, and then she did turn, casting Lou a mischievous look over her shoulder. Lou thought Lucy was talking about her father at first. Then she said, “It might help you to know that he’ll outlive you.”

  Lou left her seat at the table and went to the pool. She stepped down onto the first step beside her aunt.

  “Konstantine?”

  Lucy regarded the shimmering water. Lou couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like the lights inside the pool were getting brighter.

  “They’ll all outlive you. You won’t see anyone else you love die. You’ve done enough of that.”

  Lou thought the water in her boots would chill her feet. But instead it seemed that warmth filled them, spreading up her legs into her groin, her abdomen, and climbing.

  “Even King?” Lou asked. “Because he’s pretty old.”

  Lucy’s smile was beautiful, radiant. She was healthy again, whole, looking the way Lou remembered her best. “Even King.”

  Of course, King could drop dead tomorrow, or live another fifteen years.

  Lucy turned and gave Lou a look full of so much sadness. She reached up and touched her face, the hand cool.

  The lights in the pool brightened more, causing Lou to squint her eyes against it.

  “Love them while you can,” her aunt said, and Lou clamped her hand over hers to prevent her from disappearing.

  When I open my eyes she’ll be gone, she knew. When I open my eyes—

  “Are you ready?” Lucy asked.

  Lou didn’t have to answer.

  Her eyes opened.

  She had only one moment of blessed ignorance before the pain made itself known. In this moment, she noted the hospital bed and the shape of her body tucked neatly under the blankets piled on top of her.

  She noted the dark, silent television hanging from the wall above. She noted the bathroom, the hint of a toilet shining in the dark behind the ajar door.

  Konstantine was in the doorway, speaking to a man in a white coat.

  “She’s awake,” another man said, and Lou’s eyes tracked the noise.

  It was Stefano, who stood by her bedside.

  Both the doctor and Konstantine stopped talking and turned.

  That was when the pain came—almost as if summoned by their gazes alone.

  Lou groaned, trying to sit up, as if she could escape it by adjusting herself.

  “Easy, easy,” someone said.

  “It hurts,” she groaned, and felt like a stupid,
petulant child. “It hurts.”

  “Hold on. Here we go.”

  In the periphery of her vision, she saw a thumb mashing a little button several times.

  “This will help.”

  Warmth spread through Lou’s arm and into her chest.

  “Welcome back!” the doctor said, perhaps too enthusiastically. “We almost lost you there!”

  “Mel—” Lou began.

  Konstantine shook his head and raised his brows. “Let the doctor tell you what happened, and then we can…catch up, amore mio. Quickly though?”

  The doctor released a nervous laugh. “Of course. As you know, you were shot. The bullet grazed your collarbone and tore through the muscles there. The stitches will have to stay in for a while, and you’ll definitely have restricted movement on your right side for, well, possibly forever. We can try PT to regain most of it, but I suspect you’ll discover some nerve damage once you begin moving it again.”

  Lou looked down at her shoulder and saw that her arm was taped to her side and chest.

  “You’re incredibly lucky,” the doctor went on. “Had the bullet been centimeters closer to your neck, it would’ve severed your carotid and you would be dead. If it had been any lower, it could’ve shattered your collarbone and punctured your lung. Even a centimeter lower and I wouldn’t have been able to dig the fragments out of your lungs. Someone up there must be looking out for you.”

  Lou saw Lucy standing in the pool, her dress floating on top of the water. Nonsensically, her mind thought, It’s because I was in the darkness. And Lucy lives in the darkness now.

  “How long until she is healed?” Konstantine asked.

  “Six months is the soonest for full use of the shoulder,” the doctor said.

  Konstantine’s gaze lingered on his face.

  The doctor seemed to take the hint. “I’m sure you want to speak to your wife. So if you’ll excuse me. But, uh, if you need more morphine”—he put a small remote control into her hand—“don’t hesitate to push this button.”

  Konstantine nodded toward the door, and Stefano followed the doctor out, shutting the door behind him.

  Konstantine pulled the empty chair up to the side of her bed and sank into it. He suddenly looked very, very tired.