“You’re going to be okay,” he said again. “I promise.”
Now, she sat on the bed, nodded.
“I’m going to make some dinner,” he said. “We’ll talk more. When you’re ready.”
There was a mirror over the dresser. She didn’t recognize the girl she saw there. In Texas, they’d cut her hair in a short bob, dyed it black. Charlie shaved his dark mane down to a crew cut. He grew a goatee. They weren’t the same people they were when they were packing up boxes in the bookstore. It hadn’t even been a week. Could life change so fast? Could you be one person on Monday, and someone else by Sunday? She touched the necklace she wore, Stella’s locket. Charlie had taken it for her. That and a picture album, some journals that Pearl didn’t even know her mother kept. She hadn’t opened them. There was a shoebox of cash; he’d given that to Pearl, too. He’d grabbed files—her birth certificate, Social Security card. Everything she owned was in a single large suitcase.
She took a shower. The water was tepid, the flow flaccid. But she felt more alert, more focused when she was done. She got dressed, listening to Charlie move about the kitchen. Finally, she joined him. He’d already set the table, was serving the food.
“Sit,” he said.
Grilled chicken breast with a fresh green salad, mashed potatoes with butter. They ate and ate. It had been all burgers and fries, sodas, microwave burritos, chips for days. The food on her plate now was fresh and clean, healthy. They drank about a gallon of water. Neither of them spoke until they were both done.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” said Charlie. “I can only imagine how you must be feeling.”
But she wasn’t feeling anything. That was the strange thing. She wanted to feel something—grief, fear, rage. But there was just a floating numbness inside, an awareness of the present that wasn’t impacted by the past.
“But here we are,” he said. She saw it in him, too, that strange coolness, that ability to only look ahead. “If they don’t find us soon, their case will go cold. You have no family or connections that will put pressure on them to keep looking. No one’s going to hire a private investigator or anything like that.”
Pearl figured that was true.
“So, if no one spotted us, recognized us from the news, called in a tip—and we were careful…” He paused here, maybe thinking back to all the places they’d been, the precautions taken or not. “Then we should be okay here until we figure out what comes next.”
Even though he was much changed—thinner, cropped hair, goatee—those eyes were the same.
“Did you?” she asked.
“Did I what?”
“Did you kill her?”
His mouth dropped open, hand flying to the center of his chest. “No. Whoa, Pearl, no. You were there. You were with me all afternoon.”
That was true. But she’d been at school all day. She’d heard something in the night. Hadn’t seen Stella in the morning, though she’d heard movement. Was Stella dead in her room while Pearl was eating breakfast? Was her killer still there?
“Then who?”
“I-I-I don’t know,” he stammered. He leaned forward across the table. “Did you think that all this time? That I—killed your mother?”
“It crossed my mind.”
Charlie looked stricken, which was not what she expected from him. He was cool, slow in his speech, not reactionary. She’d expected him to calmly offer her a yes or a no.
“I—cared about Stella,” he said, his voice soft. “I wanted to be with her, but she didn’t want me like that. While I was with her, I grew to care about you. I’ve made mistakes in my life, done things I’m not proud of, yeah. But I’d never hurt anyone—not like that.”
She flashed again on Stella’s broken body. She did feel something, a twist in her gut. But the feeling didn’t have a name. She watched his face; he didn’t break her gaze. Finally, she looked away.
“So, if the police find who killed her, they’ll think that he did something to me, right?” she said. “They’ll assume I’m dead, too.”
Charlie watched her, some of the color returning to his cheeks. “Maybe.”
The sun was setting outside the picture window, the sky turning a painted pink, purple, and orange. She was still hungry. She felt like she could eat another full meal, and then keep eating until she’d devoured the whole world. And then she’d still be hungry.
“So far, they have no leads, except for the fact that I’m missing, too,” said Charlie. “That’s made me a person of interest. My DNA is not in the system; I don’t have a record. So even if they find it at the scene—and they will because I was there—it won’t matter.”
“Okay.” She wasn’t sure what he meant for a moment. Because they already knew who he was. The police wouldn’t need his DNA to identify him. Then it struck her. Charles Finch wasn’t his real name. What was it? Did it matter?
“So, we stay here for a while, lay low,” he went on. “We’ll keep track of what’s happening. Figure it out day by day.”
She tried to imagine Stella’s house sitting empty, Pearl’s locker at school deserted. The store unopened. The books collecting dust. What happened to all of that when you just walked away? She thought of the boxes of books, waiting for shipment. Who would dismantle their life? She had no friends to wonder what had happened to her; the neighbors were distant and unfriendly. There was no family—no worried grandparents, or gaggle of loving cousins.
The truth was, no one would miss them. She would just disappear and be forgotten.
“They’ll forget about me,” she said. “I barely exist.”
He drew in a breath, put down his fork.
“You exist here,” he said. “With me.”
“Yes,” she said. There was an essential truth to that, but she didn’t feel real. She felt like a ghost about to be absorbed into the ether.
“What about the bookstore?”
Charlie pushed his glasses up. “It’s bankrupt. Stella was about to go under, and she knew it. She had a pile of debt, hadn’t paid the property taxes in two years. She was about to lose the building.”
“Logistically, what will happen?”
She thought about all the beautiful books, crisp and fresh, waiting hopefully for their readers. The story nook, the counter cluttered with pretty pens, funny buttons, bookmarks, the shelves she and Stella had built together, the big prints with quotes from famous works.
“I imagine the items inside—books, furniture, computers—will get sold off to pay the taxes, and the building will go to a seizure auction.”
“And what about her bank accounts?”
Charlie shrugged. “Honestly, Pearl, she was living on credit. There was nothing except the cash in that shoebox. A little under three grand. It’s yours; save it for a rainy day.”
If rainier days were coming, she didn’t want to know about it.
Outside, something hooted, low and mournful.
“So now, the good part,” he said, standing with his plate. “This is where we recreate ourselves.”