One corner of the parking lot had been cordoned off. A choral group on risers was singing Christmas carols. Nearby, in a roped-off area, a crèche was displayed. Actors dressed as wise men, Mary and Joseph, as well as a shepherd and at least one angel, all hovering around a manger with a lifelike doll representing the baby Jesus. A donkey and sheep were caged in the makeshift stable, the donkey braying loudly enough to be heard over the chorus.
Johnson rolled down her window. “I love this,” she said. “So Americana.” The final strains of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” seeped inside.
“It kind of puts me in the mood.”
“More than trying to solve a gruesome murder?”
“Yeah, but just a bit more.”
He was able to jockey around the knot of vehicles trying to go in and out of the strip mall’s lot when the beginning notes of “Silent Night” slipped into the interior. Johnson rolled up the window as he picked up speed. Thomas was still thinking about Edmund Tate’s last words. Was the guy so out of it, so near death, he didn’t know what he was saying? His last spoken thoughts hadn’t been “Call my wife” or “Tell my family goodbye.” No, according to the EMTs, Edmund Tate’s final breath came out as “Simplify.”
What the hell did that mean?
*
“This is the last time,” Brittlynn swore, thinking of how many other times Chad Atwater had walked out on her. “No more. This is the end.”
She really hadn’t believed that he’d leave her, but she’d watched and listened and thought he’d change his mind. But oh, no. Instead, he’d started the old pickup, the engine grinding like it always did before catching, then torn down the driveway, kicking up snow from the big tires.
“Bastard,” she’d said. “Dick-wad!” And it was her damned truck. Registered in her name, she’d thought, as she’d observed the taillights, winking red through the trees before disappearing altogether.
So, she was done. Really done.
Now she carried the last of Chad’s things, his stupid snowboard that he never used, his favorite Oregon Ducks sweatshirt and his precious cell phone that he’d probably left on purpose. It was going to die, too.
Outside the back door, she tromped over a well-worn path in the snow to the fire pit. It was already overflowing with his things—clothes, golf clubs, fishing gear and even his high school yearbook and letterman’s jacket. Then she soaked the entire mass in lighter fluid she’d found in the garage before tossing in his precious trophy for playing on some big-deal football team. He was all-state or something. She should remember because he always bragged about it. Get a few drinks in him and it was back to the glory days of Bumble-Fuck High all over again.
But it was the last time she’d ever hear the time-worn story about that final touchdown. She was through with Chad Fucking Atwater and had already called an attorney, a number she’d gotten from a friend who had already been through two divorces and looked like she was heading for number three. But Brittlynn was going to beat her to the punch and file immediately. She and Chad were history!
When the prick came back, she thought, pouring the last of the lighter fluid on the plush green alligator he’d actually won for her playing a game of ring toss at the state fair about a billion years ago, he’d get one helluva surprise.
If he came back.
There was always the chance that this time he was walking out for good.
“Fine,” she said as fat snowflakes began to fall from the heavens. “Just fucking fine.” Then she threw the empty bottle of lighter fluid onto the ever-growing pile of all of Chad’s things. Using his favorite lighter, an engraved silver thing he’d inherited from his dad, she lit a cigarette, one she’d found from a forgotten pack in his fishing vest. She’d smoked her last one fifteen years ago, at Chad’s insistence, but now, she thought, taking a deep drag, she might just take the habit up again. She was a free woman, could do what she wanted for the first time in her shitty adult life.
Cigarette clamped between her teeth, she rolled a final page of yellowed newspaper, then lit the paper with the tip of the Marlboro and watched as the paper caught quickly, flames rising as the obituary section of the Whimstick Times blackened and curled. She dropped the flaming torch onto the pile of his crap that was half as tall as she was. It landed right on the hand-knit sweater his grandmother had given him the Christmas before she died. “Sorry, Granny,” Brittlynn said, though she wasn’t. Not one bit.