“Yes, he will,” and the certainty with which Miranda said the words made Tiffany regret her own. There was no retort in Miranda’s tone, just a stated fact. Tiffany was so surprised, she forgot to apologize.
“And,” said Bobby, “the state is going to want to have every detail in duplicate. But it shouldn’t be too complicated really, not as bad as some cases—”
“But what about the note they left?” Tiffany asked. “They said they’re going to the armory to see their dad. We know where they’re headed.” She wanted to do something. Anything.
“Paperwork is never too complicated when no harm’s really done, as is the case here. First they’ll want a statement from your son, to get the story straight.”
“About that note, Tiffany.” Miranda’s eyes grew weary-looking.
“Then they’ll take a statement from the other boy too, that Breadwin boy, and want to find another home for him most likely.”
“What about the note?” asked Tiffany.
“I was going to tell you, but then the constable showed up. And we did just meet each other.” Miranda picked up a plate and held it with both hands. “Fischer’s dad isn’t at the armory, Tiffany. My husband is—I’m a widow, Tiffany.”
“And then,” droned Bobby, “when he gets to feeling better in the hospital, they’ll take down a statement from that Breadwin boy’s father, though he ain’t fit for fathering in my opinion. So. Oh well.”
Tiffany and Miranda both spun at the sink. Bobby crunched a cookie.
“What did you say, Constable?”
Bobby turned in his chair, had to rock a bit on his haunches to do so.
“Say again, miss?”
“What did you say about the boy’s father?” Miranda’s voice was metered and quiet. She gripped the plate in both hands. Soap suds dropped to the floor.
“It’s nothing out of the ordinary, miss. If his father is found to be unfit, as they say, the state will find the boy another place to live. But they’ll find him a good home. Plenty of good foster families in the county. In fact, I remember—”
“The father, Bobby!” shouted Tiffany.
“Oh, now why are we getting upset?”
Miranda straightened herself to her full height. The fire was back in her eyes. She cut an imposing figure for such a slender woman. “Constable. The man my son shot. Jack Breadwin. Is he dead or isn’t he?”
Bobby rocked in his seat. “Oh my word, no. You were thinking he was dead? He’s a bit shook up, I’m sure, but he lives.”
The constable grew uncomfortable under the women’s glares, rocked his weight in his seat again. He chuckled, and then he stopped, cleared his throat.
“Miss, that man they say your boy shot at was just grazed. Skimmed him right here—zip—over his left ear. Knocked him out cold as potatoes. He lost blood, but he’ll come around.” Bobby brightened. “And when he does come around, the county will take his statement and find that Breadwin boy a nice home.”
“Tiffany,” said Miranda, without removing her eyes from the man eating her father’s cookies.
“Yes.”
“Get your things.”
“We can go now?”
“Immediately.”
THE MARIGAMIE COUNTY HOSPITAL REMINDED TIFFANY OF HER high school. It was a multistory brick building with crumbling mortar. The lawn was mowed neatly enough, but the grass grew poorly under the pine trees, and the foundation hedges were overgrown and blocked some of the windows. She’d been there once for an appendectomy, and when she split a stitch from coughing, the doctor came in with what looked like a staple gun. She entered now with the additional trepidation of Miranda’s unclear plan.
The smell of burnt coffee permeated the entranceway and lobby. A very tidy-looking nurse about twenty years old sat in a chair behind the information desk. She wore scrubs with kittens on them.
“And can you spell the last name for me, please?” she asked. Tiffany looked around. There was no one else there. The sound of the nurse’s typing filled the quiet lobby. A clock on the wall read 4:35 a.m. It had taken them an hour and twenty minutes to drive here, despite the way Miranda pushed her father’s truck down the highway at speeds that made the tires shake and pieces of hay straw roil in the cab.
“It’s Breadwin,” said Miranda, “just like it sounds.”
The nurse mouthed the letters as she typed. “Relation?” she asked.
“I’m his wife,” Miranda said without blinking.
Tiffany closed her eyes as Miranda said the words. Miranda hadn’t said anything about that on the drive. The plan was to visit the front desk, confirm the man was living—to be certain—and then go after the boys. I cannot allow, Miranda said as they first climbed into Teddy’s truck, my son to spend another night in the forest thinking he has killed a man. And when Tiffany asked her why they didn’t just join the search right away—why go to the hospital at all?—Miranda told her that she needed to see for herself. How did the sheriff and my father not know about this? Why was I not told about this? Why is this man not being questioned? She slapped her hand on the steering wheel as she spoke. Thank God my father is out there. Tiffany felt the urge to defend Cal. To be fair, his only link to the world was the radio attached to Bobby’s belt, which wasn’t saying much. So he couldn’t have been informed after the fact. But Miranda had a point. Why hadn’t Cal known beforehand? Surely he felt for a pulse when he found the man lying in the kitchen, talked to the ambulance crew. Tiffany didn’t know what to say, so she frowned at the mile markers speeding past in the darkness.
“Mrs. Breadwin, I can get you started with a bracelet. Your husband is in CC203. I will need identification.”
“I didn’t bring identification. And it’s over an hour’s drive home.” Tiffany watched Miranda swallow between words.
“Mrs. Breadwin.” The young nurse blushed slightly, opened her mouth before she spoke. “I can’t let you visit without identification. However, general visitors are allowed on the second floor beginning at six a.m.”
“Can’t you let us up for a moment? We just need to see him, my daughter and I.”
Tiffany tried to brighten her countenance and smiled at the nurse without breathing. She feared she looked like a crazy person. Perhaps she was.
“Does your daughter have ID?” the nurse asked.
“I don’t drive” was Tiffany’s tight-lipped response.
The nurse looked at her and then at Miranda. Tiffany pretended not to see suspicion in her eyes. Certainly there was a page in the nurses’ manual that said to be suspicious of people without identification, who claim not to drive, who have purple bangs. It was right next to the page about selecting kitten scrubs.
“You can wait in the lounge and can visit during breakfast. I am sorry for the inconvenience.”
The nurse seemed to buckle a bit beneath Miranda’s gaze. Miranda played the part well of a woman scorned. But then again, she wasn’t playing it. Upstairs lay a man in a soft bed who had done something evil enough to make her boy shoot him, or at him, while Miranda’s son was sleeping somewhere in a forest filled with coyotes. If that wasn’t scorned, Tiffany didn’t know what was.
“Come, Tiffany. We’ll wait,” she said.
“Let me know if I can get anything for you,” said the nurse, and Miranda didn’t respond as she turned away toward the chairs lined up in the lobby.
The lobby smelled like sweat and lemon Pledge. On the wall next to the restroom doors hung a framed picture of a beaver, swimming into current with a stick in its mouth. There was another photo of a sailboat with a blue and orange sail tacking into the wind. In the corner of the lobby sat a popcorn machine with the lights turned off, and a small table with a trash bin and a coffeemaker. Tiffany sat and watched Miranda pace the lobby. Miranda looked at the nurse, then at the clock on the wall, then at the nurse again. She folded her hands under her arms and turned toward the coffee pot. She spoke to herself in a whisper as she walked. But she did more than just speak. She was having a co
nversation. Agreeing. Arguing. Stating her case.
Could they not leave now? thought Tiffany. Was the fact that the nurse wouldn’t let anyone up to see him not proof enough that the man was indeed alive? Tiffany was beginning to fear Miranda’s lead in this. Tiffany hardly knew this woman. She hardly knew the family. What was she doing here in a hospital impersonating the daughter of a gunshot man she had never even met? She’d heard of him, of course. Breadwin was a name everyone knew in Claypot. It was synonymous with cheap auto work and the worst kind of man. She’d once seen Jack passed out in a lawn chair next to his shop, the sun burning his face, his work boots unlaced. He no doubt got what he deserved when that boy shot him, but this hospital business was going too far. Tiffany pulled her legs up under herself. And the pitiful constable, too, waddling out onto the porch the way he did, yelling for them to come back, spilling coffee on himself. She ran from a deputy. She ran from the law. And now she was here getting into who knows what kind of trouble. She thought of Cal then, his handsome face and his stupid dog. She had tried to do the right thing by Cal, by this woman, but now felt confused and fearful and very tired. Like she did with most things in life, she’d simply decided to go along with it all. When a door shut, she stayed put. When it opened, she walked through. She hated that about herself, and wished she could muster more direction, more backbone. She remembered walking into the bright kitchen when she was a little girl, rubbing her eyes in the morning light and hoping someone would put breakfast in front of her. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t. She grew up knowing she wasn’t worth the effort, and the world wasn’t really worth hers. She thought about it specifically, in those very words.
Miranda stopped pacing in front of the coffee machine. With her arms folded and shoulders hunched like that, she didn’t look as strong and certain as she did behind the wheel of her dad’s truck. She looked wounded and afraid. Tiffany felt a pang of pity, and then guilt. She was here because of this woman’s need, those hunched-up shoulders, this woman with fire kilns for eyes who was missing her son. That was reason enough to come along.
Miranda reached out toward the box of coffee filters. She lifted one filter partway out, then another, and then she reached inside and grabbed the rest and dropped them into the trash. Tiffany felt awake again. This beautiful denim woman was very odd. Empty box in hand, Miranda strode over to the information desk. Tiffany stayed put.
“I’m sorry,” Miranda said, “for being rude earlier.”
“I understand,” said the nurse. “Family hardships are—”
“I haven’t slept in some time, and—”
“I understand.”
“I was wondering if you had more coffee filters hidden someplace? I can’t seem to find any. A cup of coffee would be a great comfort.”
“Certainly,” said the nurse. Tiffany heard the nurse’s soft shoes squeak away down the corridor.
Miranda spun on her heel, pressed the front of her dress flat. “Do not follow me, Tiffany. Go to the truck and start it. I will meet you there in five minutes.”
Tiffany swallowed and watched Miranda disappear through the double doors leading farther into the hospital. Without thinking, Tiffany was on her feet. She felt her heart in her neck as she sneaked toward the front desk. Each footstep seemed as if it might break glass, or make an alarm go off, even though she was tiptoeing through a lobby with no one in it.
“Miranda,” she hissed. The double doors rocked to a stop on their hinges. “Miranda!”
When she heard footsteps squeaking back from the opposite corridor, Tiffany froze in midstep. It was now or never. Bolt for the swinging doors and find a stairwell, bolt for the exit, or be caught standing like a cat burglar in the middle of the hospital lobby.
She decided to bolt for the exit. She crouched low. The nurse’s footsteps arrived in the lobby as her hand reached the door frame. Too late.
Tiffany stood up. “Hi!” she said.
The nurse gave a start to find Tiffany standing beside the information desk. She clutched a box of coffee filters to her chest, then looked around the room. “Where’s your mother?”
“Restroom!” yelled Tiffany, plastering what must have been a frightening smile on her face. “She had to go very badly. She’s in there now.” Tiffany motioned toward the door near the pictures of the sailboat and beaver. Her arm felt artificial as she moved it. “Mmm, coffee filters! Sounds good!” Tiffany stepped toward the nurse and took the filters from her chest. She tried to rein in the enormity of her smile, but that made it feel even more insane, so she left it plastered there as she turned away.
She felt the nurse watching her walk across the room.
Tiffany turned back when she reached the table and shuffled the various grounds and flavored creamers. The nurse was still watching. “Mmm, hazelnut!” Tiffany declared, and cussed under her breath as she hastily pulled filters from the box. The nurse sat slowly down behind her desk.
“Would you like a cup?” Tiffany asked, not turning around.
“No, thank you,” said the nurse. “I’m off at six.”
The nurse’s keyboard started up. And then it stopped.
Tiffany yanked open a package of grounds and spooned the contents into a filter. She heard squeaking shoes and froze.
“Mrs. Breadwin?”
The nurse stood next to the restroom door, tapping her knuckle on it. Tiffany could only smile as the nurse narrowed her eyes at her. The nurse pushed through the door, and Tiffany could hear her walking on the tiles inside, checking the stalls. For some reason, Tiffany was still spooning coffee. This was it, she thought. This was the end of the road. Not only would Sheriff Cal come home to a lost dog, but Tiffany could tell him all about it when he transported her to the county jail for impersonating a hospitalized man’s daughter and helping a madwoman break into intensive care.
“Your mother is not in the restroom.”
The nurse stood in the lobby between Tiffany and the double doors. Tiffany tried not to look at them, but the nurse followed her gaze. The nurse was sharp and on her game. Her ponytail flashed in the fluorescent light. Her cheeks flushed red and her mouth opened. Tiffany felt hunted.
“I’m calling security,” said the nurse, and moved quickly behind the desk.
Tiffany made a rush for the exit doors. “What? Security?” she heard herself saying, and she feigned laughter. The last thing Tiffany saw as she turned to push through the glass doors was the nurse with a phone to her ear, drilling her finger into a keypad. Tiffany couldn’t breathe. She banged through one set of doors and then another, and as she bolted out into the parking lot beneath the purple dawn, she turned to see the nurse speed-walking into the double-doored corridor where Miranda had gone. Tiffany aimed for the red truck parked beneath a streetlamp and sprinted with all she had. Were there sirens going off? Tiffany couldn’t tell. She could only feel the pavement beating her feet. The cool air in her throat. There probably would be sirens soon, and lights, and then handcuffs and fingerprints and Sheriff Cal.
Ten
FISH DREAMT OF A MAN WITH HORNS PUSHING TOWARD HIM through a hedge of briars. The man, or beast, snapped branches with cloven fists. It wore shreds of coveralls dripping with gasoline. When the beast became entangled in the hedge, it dropped to all fours and raked its antlers in a rage. And then it roared the way a river or a train can roar, and the hedge burst into flame.
Fish cried out, sat up, and brushed frantically at his body. The fire wasn’t there. His clothes sat in a pile on his backpack. He was in a dark place lit by firelight, with pine branches reaching in from the shadows. To his left sat a boy hunched over a hot fire. Fish could feel its heat. The fire snapped and popped in the darkness.
“I wondered how long you’d sleep,” said the other boy, turning from the fire. He held a stick in his hand and held its tip in the coals. Fish became aware of the smell of food cooking. He remembered he was in a forest, on an island.
“Bread?” Fish asked.
“You slept li
ke a log. Breakfast is cooking.”
Fish felt cold and pulled a flannel over himself. He remembered stalking chickadees. He remembered Lantern Rock. And he remembered the reason they were out here, felt again the silence of Bread’s house.
The fire was almost too bright to look at. Overhead, Fish could see purple light slipping through branches. It was dawn. Fish buttoned the flannel shirt and shimmied into his jeans. He felt the barlow knife in his pocket, the wad of chew in his flannel. Everything seemed to be as it was. Fish still felt caught in the dream, that beast tangled in brush, roar, and fire. Fish’s head ached. He was thirsty. He remembered the man with horns on his head, in the spruce trees. But that hadn’t been a dream. Fear rose to his throat.
“Bread,” Fish whispered. He stood and discovered his left leg had fallen asleep. He limped toward his friend. As he got closer to the fire, he noticed all of their gear lying beside it. The packs. The fish poles. And some things he didn’t remember bringing. Cast-iron cook pots and some cans of beans. Two spoons gleamed on the stone edge of the firepit. Bread lowered the lid back onto the pot. The smell that rose from it made Fish’s stomach feel incredibly empty.
“Are we back at our camp? How’d you get me across the river?”
Bread lifted the stick from the coals. It was attached to a pot lid. Steam rose up in the firelight.
“We got a new camp,” said Bread. “And guess what else?”
Fish didn’t want to guess about things. He felt too foggy.
“The man on the island, with the horns?” he asked. “Where is he? And what is all of this? How long have I been asleep?”
Bread grinned at him. The food smelled excellent.
“You slept all night. And there’s your antler man right there,” said Bread. “And guess what else?”
Bread had motioned to a deer skull lying in the shadows near the fire. It came from a large buck, and the skull was picked clean of all its flesh. The intricate gaps in its nose and eye sockets flickered in the firelight. A cross of wood draped with a pair of rotten coveralls lay beside it.
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