“Stop.”
My voice cracks, but it’s loud enough. Duniway looks over his shoulder.
“Holy Mother!”
Jackrabbit quick, he twists in his seat and raises his own gun. Quince wails, “Don’t do it—don’t don’t don’t …!”
I don’t know who he’s screaming at, don’t care. I aim at Duniway’s face and squeeze the trigger.
The damn thing doesn’t even click.
Duniway bares his teeth and fires.
At once, the van swerves and I tumble backward, cracking my head against the rear door. As the Stiff veers and sways, Duniway struggles to squeeze between the seats.
“Hold it together, Quince!”
One-handed, he drags himself along the cot, trying to aim as he comes. There’s only one choice left to me. With my free hand, I feel for the latch and give it a yank. The back doors fly open with a rush of wind. Caught in the latch, my finger snaps and I shriek. The Stiff tilts hard to the left. Eyes like eggs, Duniway falls toward me. I lash out with my feet, connect at the spot where his neck meets his shoulder. The force of my kick launches me through the open cargo doors as he bellows. Then I smack hard and roll, tumbling to a stop facedown on pavement. Behind me, a metallic crash rings out, followed by a high, mechanical whine. Somehow, I’m still holding the gun.
My lungs feel like they’re about to collapse. Every inch of me hurts. I suck air and force myself onto my side. Across the road, the Stiff hangs at a crazy angle as if it’s run up onto a stump. As the engine revs and the van shudders, a figure climbs out of the back.
“Just let him shoot you, Mellie. Quick, at least.”
A whimper escapes me. Somehow I make it to my feet. Heedless of the darkness, I stagger, my legs threatening to give out with each step. The useless gun is a dead weight in my right hand, but I’m afraid to let it go.
Duniway screams my name.
A gunshot lights up the night. Something hard slams against my thighs. I pitch forward, gasping. For the space of a heartbeat I marvel at sudden weightlessness. Then, with cold air rushing past, I start to fall. Before I hit, I have just enough time to wonder if some shadow of Kendrick Pride’s spirit lingered as his remains plummeted from the Tsokapo Gorge Bridge.
PART FIVE
Remains
Here lies One
Whose Name was writ in Water
—Epitaph of John Keats, died 1821
FORTY-THREE
Lake Champlain
I died at Lake Champlain on a stormy summer afternoon when the electric air lured me down to the windswept shore. Thunder pressed against me like a warm, damp blanket. I laughed as the wind inflated my lungs. Waves broke against the dock, and the cool spray raised goose bumps on my legs. Hopping from foot to foot, I lifted my arms to welcome the sudden rain.
Grandma Mae later said she and Fitz looked out the cabin door at the very moment lightning leapt through my hands and tossed me into the lake. He was out the door before she could speak. From her wheelchair, she could only watch as he sprinted to the dock and dove into the turbulent water.
Somehow, she said, he found me on the murky lake bottom. Somehow, he carried me back to the surface. Somehow, he pushed me onto the dock. It was the last thing he would ever do. A wave smashed him into the piling, and he disappeared. There was no one to bring him back. Our mother and father had driven to Burlington for the day.
For a week, machines kept me alive. Tubes fed me and a pump filled my lungs. But wires recorded a chronicle of emptiness behind my eyes. I missed Fitz’s burial and slept through the decision to pull my plug. They expected me to follow him into the dark.
Instead, I woke up. To an empty room.
Mother had given up on me before Fitz was in the ground. Father reached acceptance about the time I learned to breathe on my own again. And that was that. No second chances with Cricket and Stedman Dulac. I was eight years old.
I grew up an orphan in my own home, a guest who had overstayed her welcome. There were days when all I wanted was to know if I existed—a question Cricket and Stedman would never answer. They’d forget to account for me at meals, to pick me up if I stayed after school. When they went out, I never knew when they’d return. I was nine the first time they left me an entire weekend. I ate cereal and read Katherine Paterson.
At least I never had to sweat through a parent–teacher conference.
FORTY-FOUR
Downstream
“Melisende.”
A hollow emptiness surrounds me like the sudden silence in the preparation room after Carrie turns off the embalming machine. So cold, so deep.
Did he—
Pain laces my chest and back, pierces my head like a spike. I can’t remember why.
“Did he hit us …?”
Did who hit us?
“Duniway!”
Does it matter?
“Melisende, try to move.”
I have no strength. All I have is enveloping quiet and peaceful cold. “Algor mortis, the second stage of death, is characterized by a postmortem change in body temperature until equilibrium with ambient conditions is achieved.”
Equilibrium. I could stay here forever.
“You need to use your legs while you still can.”
Please stop talking, Fitz.
“Wudn’t me, li’l sis.”
But it’s so familiar, a voice I hear every day. Not that I care. I just want it to shut up. To leave me to float in the deep, so very quiet. Deep enough the cold can’t reach me, this silent void. Only the pain in my legs, my back, my hand pierce the quiet. Little jabs in the dark.
I can’t remember why—
Use your legs, Melisende!
“Why—?”
My mouth fills with water and I choke, spinning in the powerful current. My hip slams against rock, my hand drags through gravel. The pain makes my whole body go rigid.
“Rigor mortis, the third stage of death—” The voice drones like someone reading aloud from a textbook. “—characterized by the stiffening of the muscles due to chemical changes in the tissue—”
“You’ll be with us both very soon.”
Jeremy lies in a heap on the dark road—
I’m sorry! It should have been me!
Lightning leaps through my hands—
Kick, goddammit—
An explosion of light as waves smash me against the piling—
I said kick!
My feet dig into sand and propel me to the surface. I gulp air till the ropy current drags me down again. The silence has become a boiling roar. I kick against nothing, and nothing, and … my right foot strikes rock, and my ankle buckles. I shriek bubbles, then a piercing wail through bitter air. I claw at weeds and rock. The current pulls at my legs, but I wedge the hard metal object in my hand between boulders and heave myself onto a muddy bank. A coughing spasm overtakes me, and my arms give out.
For a long time, all I can hear is my own dying heartbeat.
* * *
“How you holding up, Mel?”
An insistent whispering intrudes upon a dark dream about Jeremy at the crossroad.
“How you holding up …?”
Lights flash, red and blue. Flames smolder in the bunchgrass. Jeremy approaches the injured horse from behind. I try to stop him, but my tongue is a swollen lump in my mouth. The horse kicks him in the chest. He falls into a shapeless heap in the road. My eyes snap open.
“… was out of my hands …”
I’m lying facedown, numb, mouth filled with mud. The whispers are like stones falling into deep water.
“… you know how to stir up trouble at the crossroad …”
So deep, so cold.
“… batshit, bug-ass slag …”
With a shudder, I jerk up onto my knees. I’m soaked, freezing. My bones ache, my muscles are as weak as wet paper. I pull my legs out of the stream and crawl. When the mud becomes crumbling earth, I flop over. Bits of gravel stab my back. My ankle, my thighs, my finger all hurt more.
The stars overhead skitter and leap as nausea wracks me. I force myself to a sitting position. Little by little, my stomach settles and my head clears. I’m on a sandbar at the edge of a creek or small river. Out in the stream, froth surges. Around me lies a broken landscape in browns and grays. Thick darkness looms at my back. The inscrutable whispers continue to swirl around me.
“You should—”
“Not now.” My teeth chatter, my breath is a fog. I may have pulled back from rigor mortis, but algor mortis still has me in its frigid grip … calm down, Spooky … I need to move, to get my blood pumping. Twelve hours from now, it’ll be ninety degrees, but I may not survive to see daylight if I crouch beside a cold stream for what remains of the high desert night.
“That’s all I was gonna say, li’l sis.”
I struggle upright, keeping most of my weight on my left foot. The effort leaves me gasping. Gingerly, I test my right ankle. My leg trembles, but the ankle holds. My left index finger feels worse, swollen and canted unnaturally at the knuckle. Only when I reach over to probe the injury do I realize I’m still holding the gun. Water droplets glisten dimly on the barrel. Feeling stupid with cold, I stare at it, then titter morbidly. With my thumb, I disengage the safety.
Click.
No wonder it didn’t fire in the Stiff. Doesn’t mean it works now. Uncle Rémy’s firearms lessons hadn’t covered a dunking in a mountain stream. Last fall, Quince and I transported a man whose revolver exploded in his hand. I have no idea what water or sand might do to the damn thing.
But just pointing it at someone might be enough.
For what …?
Shivering, I scan my surroundings again, more clear-eyed now. The dark profile of Lost Brother puts me east of the mountain, but that doesn’t tell me much. While staggering away from the wrecked Stiff, I must have hit a bridge guardrail and fallen. Not into Tsokapo Gorge. The flow is too big, too strong with late season snowmelt. I can think of at least three streams Wayette Highway crosses, and there are other roads, other streams. I could be anywhere.
The darkness behind me seems to be a natural levee topped with pines, at least twelve feet high with a base gouged by spring floods. Too tall to climb. A fallen snag near me juts into the stream, forming the eddy where I escaped the river. Beyond, water leaps over submerged rocks and plunges into noisy, turbulent holes. On the far shore, trees crowd the water’s edge. Even on a warm day with proper gear, an attempted crossing would be reckless, if not impossible.
A light flashes away to my right, upstream. Duniway making his way down from the bridge, searching for me? The whispers surge along with my panic as I pick my way to the far side of the fallen tree and crouch. Above, the river shoots through a gap between high rock walls. Uncle Rémy once explained the rapids classification system. I don’t remember the details and couldn’t guess the degree of whitewater I survived. Class Are-You-Fucking-Kidding-Me.
“… trying to get away, maybe …”
I wait, leaning against the tree, for a long time. The light doesn’t return—if it was ever there. My anxiety remains. The space between the high bank and water continues downstream for as far as I can see, possibly for miles through the wilderness. Risky, but it’s got to be better than sitting here and freezing or waiting for Quince and Duniway to find me. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a spot where I can scramble up to higher ground and get a better sense of where I am. A cabin or homestead would be even better.
“… who ya gonna call …”
Near the water’s edge, I find a narrow track, perhaps a fisherman’s path. It’s a small blessing for my throbbing ankle. I move slowly, one eye on the bank to my left, the other on the foaming water to my right. My clammy clothing clings like a lead shroud. The whispers shadow me. I have to take frequent breaks, but I don’t dare sit. I may never get up again. I rest with the weight on my left leg, my arms wrapped around myself. High above, the stars are bright points in a black sea.
“… you in a hurry to get somewhere …”
As I toil around a rightward bend in the river, the moon emerges from behind a tree-lined ridge. Half full and still rising, it reveals details in the landscape—ashen sand, tumbled silver logs and round russet stone, patches of shaggy gunmetal brush. Ahead, the river straightens for some distance before curving left again, wider and less turbulent now. Yet the opposite shore remains out of reach, and on this side the bank is still too tall to climb.
Wind rises in the trees, stirring the whispers in the chill air.
“… in a hurry …”
“… heard about the baby …”
“You’re still breathing,” I say to myself. “Your heart is still beating.”
“But not Jeremy’s …”
An ache swells in my chest. If only I’d drunk less of Varney’s awful coffee, or none at all.
If only I’d found the gun sooner.
Or recognized the threat Duniway posed.
“… you’re one of those …”
Begged Helene for forgiveness and ridden off with her in her silver Lexus.
“… dyke for the dead, brah …”
So many if onlys. But Jeremy is dead. Kendrick Pride is dead, as is everyone from the crossroad—except the baby. How many ghosts haunt these hills and the high desert below? Molly Claire Maguire must have plenty of company. Soon enough, I’ll join her. The night is too cold, too dark, and I’m too far from anyone who might help me.
“Like I’ve never died before.”
Laughter bubbles up in me, becomes a harsh cough.
I force myself to move, my ankle protesting each step. I come to another downed tree, its bark stripped away by years of implacable water. The tree’s crown dips into the water, its root mass tangled in a thicket of thorny saplings. I half-scramble, half-slide over the top. Almost drop the gun, unclear why I’m still carrying it. Downstream, I make out a large, dark shape, dull against forested hillside behind it. An old lumber mill or an oversized pole barn. I wonder if they have a phone.
“… sorry for calling … I hope you’re okay …”
More likely, the place is locked or abandoned.
“… not a very trusting soul …”
A thin strand of cloud passes in front of the moon. The silvery landscape turns matte gray and vague, and for a dozen breaths I navigate by the sound of the water, by the whispers. When the cloud passes, a taller structure snaps into focus behind the first.
Ahead, across the river, is the Dalton Hensley Asylum for Infirm Ladies and Needful Girls.
I don’t know whether to feel relief or despair. If I dare show my face at the gate, a text alert goes to school security, followed by a call to the Sheriff’s Department. Duniway will know right where to find me. Helene used to say cops are most dangerous when they know one of their own is in the wrong.
It doesn’t get much more wrong than Omar Duniway.
Beside me, the river’s whispers surge and writhe, words half-remembered, half-imagined.
“… for probable cause shown …”
“That’s my girl …”
“… skip the coffee …”
“… held your shit together …”
Melisende’s greatest hits, churning and cold as the current itself, a Barlow County cascade.
“… you’ve done enough …”.
“… fun in funerals… girl raised by wolves …”
“… loved your …”
My breath catches in my throat, a strangled sob.
I look up at the long sweep of the Milky Way, remembering how it appeared from the rim of Shatter Hill. The catastrophe I found that night at crossroad has led me straight as a bullet to this river side—cold, battered, and alone. My mother and father left me for dead, my husband left me and for all I know died. I tried to save a girl and failed. I’ve lost Helene—surely for good this time. Even Fitz has run out of things to say.
“I loved your fearlessness …”
> Or maybe I gave up on myself when I told Aunt Elodie I was leaving.
“Some grow up in the work, like your Uncle Rémy, and others grow into it. But you? You seem born to it.”
She’s right. This is my home now.
“Whatever you decide, do it as the woman who pulled Landry MacElroy out of the back of that pickup.”
I can’t bring the dead back, but maybe I can give them justice. I’ll cross the river on the asylum bridge, avoid the cameras at the gate, and find the old trail. Then I’ll crawl back to civilization, if crawling is what it takes.
But when I reach the bridge, I’m too late. Quince and Duniway are already there.
FORTY-FIVE
The Bridge
I hear them before I see them—urgent murmurs obscured by the river. The sound freezes me halfway over a tree trunk. The waning moon suddenly seems bright as a spotlight, the scrape as I slide back behind the tree as loud as an ash grinder.
Someone coughs.
“Give me one.”
“These things’ll kill ya.”
“You wish.”
A lighter clicks, then a waft of smoke overwhelms the scents of water, sand, and pine. There’s another cough.
Quietly, I exhale. They haven’t seen me.
I ease my head up. They’re on the bridge, maybe twenty-five feet away and four or five feet higher than where I crouch—twin scarecrows distinguished only by the gear belt and sidearm on Duniway’s narrow waist. Motionless, he leans forward in a way that suggests restrained wrath. Beside him, Quince puffs smoke and paces, a walking nerve ending.
“Would you stop that?”
Quince ignores him. “She hadda drown if the fall didn’t kill her.”
“Or maybe she’s hiding in the trees, planning an ambush. Why didn’t you tell me they keep a weapon in the van?”
“They don’t.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“This whole thing has gotten way out of hand.”
“Whose fault is that?”
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