“Jesus,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said. “Jesus.” I knew I was being a jerk, but it felt good seeing some of my pain on her face, like maybe I didn’t have to be so alone with it.
There was more to the story about my dad, a lot more, but I’d already exceeded the family-sanctioned version: After a long battle with depression, our father ended his life. Nice and vague and neat-sounding, like he took some sweet-tasting pills and we found him all cuddled up in a comfy bed looking like an angel sleeping. Only the sheriff and the coroner knew how he’d done it. And they knew only the tail end. As for the necessary cleaning and painting, Mom and I did it ourselves. She didn’t make Nells help. Given what happened, that seemed fair. But we all agreed to secrecy. “It’s none of this town’s damn business what happened here,” Mom said.
Red studied me a long time, then said, “I could use that beer now.”
I thought she was serious. She saw it on my face and laughed, started speaking in a low whisper, escalating her voice as if witnessing in church. “Dear Lord in Heaven, Our Heavenly Savior, Blessed Jesus, we open our hearts to you in all your loving-kindness, knowing that no matter how much putrid shit you rain down on us, your love is sacred and pure, a love so magnificent it is beyond our puny understanding. We gratefully submit our lowly, wormlike selves to your benevolent will. Amen.”
She had thrown herself back in the seat, her arms spread wide as if God had descended on her, the back of her left hand touching my chest. I grabbed it, pulled her to me, and kissed her. I had kissed girls before, but never like this, not this type of disappearing, everything that hurt falling away and the rest falling together, one dark, warm aliveness between us. I’d never been lost like that. That’s probably why I jumped the way I did when her hand gripped my cock through my shorts, why I nearly went through the roof.
She jerked away, her face a mess of surprise and hurt. Why had I done that? She was beautiful, and I’d been dreaming of her hands on me. I tried to guide her back, but she was over it, every bit of heat in her snuffed out. My hard-on was pretty much done for anyway.
She wiped her hand on her shorts as if she’d fouled it by touching me. “Well, better go,” she said. “Thanks again for the frog.” Before I could stop her, she’d slipped out the door and darted through the trees toward the cliff.
I almost went after her, but what would I say? That I was an idiot? That she was the most stunning, sexy girl I’d ever seen? That she could be disfigured in a terrible accident and still my heart would feel as if it would explode, would send my shattered ribs flying like shrapnel if I couldn’t see her again, if I couldn’t slip back into that place with her where everything else fell away?
I slumped in my seat. No. If I wanted her to disappear forever, that’d be how to do it. Sappy, romantic stuff. Red wasn’t as tough as she acted, but she wanted me to believe she was. You don’t catch wild things by running after them. I waited ten minutes, then another ten and another, thinking she might find her way back to me, that if I were quiet and still and patient, she might light on me like a bird on a branch.
At ten thirty, I knew that my mother was worrying and guessed Red had left the park by a different route, so I started the engine and headed home. I thought I’d never see her again. I thought I would be missing her for years.
24
Evangeline had run, and I had let her run until she’d run so far I reasoned there was no point in searching for her. I wouldn’t find her unless she wanted to be found. Let her come back on her own or let me be.
She’d smashed a glass jar by the gate, and Rufus slipped out to investigate. After rounding him up, I closed him inside and went to clean the mess. A sharp odor, pungent and distinct, hit me. I squatted to inspect. Capers?
When certain I’d cleared the last shards of glass, I released Rufus. He ran to the spot, sniffed and pawed at it, then leaped at the gate. He yelped and reared up on his hind legs, tore at the wood, peeling off paint and splinters as if trying to dig his way through.
I grabbed his collar and dragged him back inside, offered him an early dinner to calm him. With the dog then lying peaceably, I saw what Evangeline must have seen. Her filthy backpack emptied, tossed on the floor as if trash, her small collection of private things exposed on the table before a man she barely knew.
And for what purpose? Condemnation? Ridicule? Blame? What else could she have seen in it? Evangeline had gotten it right. I was a fucking bastard. Likely only one of many men who had invaded what should have been solely hers.
But my moment of regret was brief, ripped through with anger. The girl was a liar. How else to stop her endless prevarications but with irrefutable evidence of the truth? She not only knew that my son was dead well before she arrived but had been sufficiently intimate with his killer that she possessed his bracelet. There was no doubt it was Jonah’s. As I’d crouched in that dark closet, turning it in my hand, a flake of dried mud fell off, exposing the J stitched awkwardly in red.
So what if I am a fucking bastard? If anyone is entitled to be, it should be me.
* * *
—
IT WAS AFTER NINE WHEN I CAME to my senses and remembered that Evangeline was a child. I collected the clippings and placed them in her pack with the bracelet and the hoarded food and set it on her bed. I headed with Rufus into the wet darkness, thinking she might have hidden on the property as she had that first night.
When I commanded Rufus to find Evangeline, he zigzagged the grounds with his nose down. I swept a beam across the field, lit the blowing rain, drops sparking like embers. Disembodied eyes glowed green near the back fence. A racoon or a bobcat or a coyote. They flickered and disappeared. I was glad Rufus was distracted. That dog never could resist a wild creature in need of a good chasing. But I worried for Evangeline on this gusting night with eyes like those waiting for her.
Rufus and I shifted to the front. At the ancient plum, he picked up his whining and pawed at the trunk. For a moment, I thought she might have taken refuge in its old limbs. But the tree was empty, only lichen and moss growing like barnacles on its wrinkled skin. I led Rufus inside and grabbed my keys.
In the garage, the car’s engine roared to life, and I sat in its dark safety, my breath loud and echoing. Who was this girl to my son? The only witness to the murder was the killer, and he too was dead. With two teenage boys and the only evidence of criminal activity a few beers and an out-of-season buck, it was easy to suspect a girl at its heart. But a month had passed after his death without the slightest sign.
Then she appeared. This girl with her casual beauty. This girl, sixteen and pregnant. This girl who rose in the middle of the night from beneath a gnarled tree like a nightmare—or a wish.
I backed out of the garage. She’d claimed to have been looking for the park. Though everything about her story was almost certainly a lie, it might have reflected an inclination on her part, so I headed there.
The wind had grown fierce, and as I turned toward town, a large branch flew from a tree, barely missing the car. So now there was the murder and the baby, wild animals and lethal branches fretting my mind. That’s likely why I hadn’t heard the other breath in the car, why my heart jolted when a shadow rose from the backseat.