Still Mine (15 page)

Clare straightens up and takes his water bottle from him, draining its contents.

“You disappeared last night,” he says.

“I needed some air.”

In the midday light Jared shows his age, the skin around his eyes lightly cracked. But he is handsome, still disarmingly boyish. A group of small children dressed in flags of the world walk by. Louise stands and claps for them, reaching out to touch their little hands as they pass.

“She has no idea who I am,” Jared says.

“That could change any minute. You really should leave.”

“You’re not being very nice.”

“This is making me uncomfortable. Show Louise some respect. Isn’t she your family?”

At last Clare sees it, the smallest wince across his face. He tilts toward her.

“What are you up to? Pretending to be Shayna?”

“Don’t say that. She might hear you.”

“You can tell Louise not to worry. Her daughter’s not dead. There’s no tragedy here. She took off.”

“Took off where?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Have you heard from her?”

“No.”

“So how do you know she took off?”

“Because she was threatening to do it for months. Said she hated it here. Hated everyone. Hated being dragged to rehab. Hated her father. Hated me. The world was an awful place and this town was the worst of it.”

“Surely she’d know people are worried about her.”

“Sure,” Jared says. “Whatever drama she can muster. She loved to torment us.”

There is scorn in his words, but still, Jared’s look bears more sadness than anger. He may well be right, that even necessary escapes can be partly motivated by the need to punish those left behind. Seared precisely into Clare’s mind is the image of her husband’s shotgun perched high on the wall of their mudroom, the ammunition nearby. Sometimes, as Clare stood in the kitchen washing dishes, he would take it down and fiddle with it at the table, pointing it to her left, then to her right. You’d never leave me, right? he would say. After he’d go outside, Clare would watch him through the window as he fired at any living thing that dared traipse across his property.

I will leave you, Clare would think, studying him as he paused to reload. I will leave you with nothing.

The blast of a horn rights Clare back to the parade. The makeshift marching band has lost its configuration, the saxophonist about to knock up against the trumpeter. Clare’s hand rests on the damp concrete of the sidewalk. She squeezes her eyes closed to ward off the throb in her head. Louise isn’t there.

“You okay?” Jared says.

“Where’d she go?” Clare says to Jared. “Where’d Louise go?”

“I didn’t see her walk away.”

Clare jumps to her feet. She walks against the parade’s flow, her pace quick but restrained. Behind her, Jared keeps up. It takes them less than a minute to reach the tail end of the parade.

“We’re looking for Louise Cunningham,” Jared announces to the group.

“Where is she?” a man asks.

“If we knew that, we wouldn’t be looking for her, would we?”

At this admonishment the man grits his teeth, then turns from them to fiddle with the float. This must be the parade’s main event, this large papier-mâché rendering of a mine’s entrance. Four children in overalls and hard hats with headlamps sit along the edge of the flatbed truck. One boy fiddles with a costume mustache taped over his lip, his cheeks and hands smeared with black, the look of coal dust. The banner draped across the float reads B
LACKMORE
’
S
M
INING
M
USEUM:
O
UR
M
EN,
O
UR
H
ISTORY
. The pickup truck starts its engine and the float lurches forward. The parade will soon be over.

“You walk back up the other side,” Jared says. “I’ll head down this way. Give me your number.”

“I don’t have a cell phone,” Clare says, though she can feel it wedged into her pocket.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Can we focus?”

“Jesus. Meet me at Ray’s in thirty minutes whether you find her or not.”

“What will you do if you find her?” Clare asks.

“What do you mean? I’ll bring her back.”

“She doesn’t recognize you. She might refuse to come with you.”

“I can convince her.”

“Shouldn’t we—”

But Jared is off in a jog. The miner’s float is already a hundred feet ahead of her. The boy with the mustache watches Clare, his eyes bright against the dust on his face. The onlookers fold down their lawn chairs, gawking at Clare as though she were famous, a small-town novelty.

Clare retraces their earlier path up the main road, then down Sara’s street, her wits dull. Louise. White sweater, white hair, blue jeans. Everyone should know her. How could she disappear so easily? Where might she go? Should she wander toward home, back to the Cunningham house, it will be Jared who finds her. Or Wilfred. The gorge. Clare slows when she spots Charlie sitting shirtless on the front stoop of Sara’s house, cigarette in hand. He stands and wanders down the walkway to meet her.

“I was just about to go looking for you,” he says. “And here you are.”

“Louise Cunningham is lost.”

“She’s always lost.”

“Did you see her pass by?”

“Nope. But I just got out here. Old man’s home and he doesn’t like me hanging out with the boy.”

Charlie flicks his lit cigarette onto the lawn. Clare watches it, the curl of smoke rising from between the blades of grass.

“My truck’s still at Ray’s. I blame you for that.”

“I put your keys inside your door.”

“I’m stranded.”

“You were drunk,” Clare says.

“Don’t you want to know why I was coming to find you?”

“I need to find Louise.”

“And why is that old lady
your
problem?”

“I’m just trying to help.”

When Clare makes a motion to move past him, Charlie steps out onto the road and faces her. With his shirt off he looks stronger, taller. Two hundred feet beyond him is the guardrail, Blackmore falling away, a residential street cut off by a precipitous drop.

“I want you to be my guinea pig,” Charlie says.

“What? Not now. Please?”

There is a pleading to Clare’s voice. She can feel the desperation setting in, Charlie tapping at that rousing part of her. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a folded wad of paper towel. Inside it is a ragged, pea-sized rock. The headache grips her now. She knows what this pill will do. Wash it clean.

“It’s a prototype,” he says. “A special blend. All the good stuff rolled into one.”

“No.”

“Take it for later. Just take it. Put it in your pocket.”

They do a small dance, Clare trying to step around him, Charlie moving side to side to block her. He laughs as though it were a game, but Clare wants to cry, the tight swirl returned to her chest. Finally Charlie grabs hold of her wrist and pries open her hand, planting the rock in her palm. Instinctively she closes her fist around it.

“There,” he says. “Was that so hard?”

“I need to go,” Clare says. She stuffs the rock into the pocket of her jeans.

“No one goes to the gorge alone,” Charlie says. “That’s the rule.”

He crosses his arms, still smiling. Something catches his eye over her shoulder. Clare spins around.

“Hey!”

Jared stands at the main road, his hands cupped over his mouth.

“Hey!” he hollers again. “They found her!”

“Is she dead?” Charlie hollers back.

“Shut up, Merritt,” Jared says, jogging toward them. “They found her up the road. She ran in front of the mine float. Got knocked over.”

“Is she okay?” Clare asks.

“Banged up. I’m not sure.”

Clare turns back to Charlie. He makes a gun with his hand and points it at her pocket.

“I’ll expect a full report,” he says.

“Full report on what?” Jared asks.

“Ask her,” Charlie says. “My guinea pig.”

Charlie hugs himself as if suddenly beset by a chill, then wanders back to Sara’s walkway, patting Clare on her sore shoulder as she passes. She flinches. How can someone as malicious as Charlie seem almost a child in his actions? Though Jared faces Clare, his gaze has turned down the road. She raises her camera and snaps his picture, the sun replaced in only minutes by swooping clouds. Louise has been found. It should be a relief, but instead Clare feels only a sense of impending doom, Louise slipped from her grasp and hurt, the rock Charlie gave her sharp in her pocket, digging into her thigh. Jared takes hold of her arm. The rain begins, setting them to a run, the torrent soaking them anyway.

A
t the hospital the nurse gives Clare a towel and a set of scrubs to put on. Jared sits next to her in the waiting room, soaked and shivering, the nurse offering him nothing but a sharp glare. Clare hands him her towel when she’s done with it. Louise had wandered off, the nurse said, and spotted one of the missing-person posters on a boarded-up window. She tore it down and rushed out onto the road, hysterical. The truck pulling the float was able to brake just in time.

After a while Derek Meyer comes in, the nurse behind him. Jared stands but Clare stays in her seat, demure and defiant at the same time.

“She okay?” Jared asks.

“You should have left by now,” Derek says.

“She’s my mother-in-law.”

“Not anymore.”

“What’s your problem?”

“Is she okay?” Clare interjects.

“You’re the worst possible person to be here,” Derek says, ignoring Clare. “Louise hasn’t processed that Shayna is gone. Then you show up and she sees the poster.”

“Right,” Jared says. “Because I handed it to her.”

“Of all the people who make things worse for Louise, you are number one,” Derek says. “I had to sedate her. She’s suffering.”

“You love it when people suffer,” Jared says, stepping closer. “It’s the only time they need you.”

“Shayna was done with you, Fowles. She hated you.”

The nurse wedges herself between the two men.

“Calm down,” she says. “You’re embarrassing yourselves.”

“You think she wanted you to save her?” Jared says. “All she wanted was her pills and her junk, and money for her pills and her junk. Whatever concoction Charlie had lying around. You’re the only guy in town she wouldn’t touch.” Jared jabs Derek’s shoulder. “Where’d you hide her?”

“Jared,” Clare says, pulling him back by the shirt. He tugs free from her grasp.

“Call security,” Derek says to the nurse.

“Security?” Jared laughs. “You’re going to sic the last of the town geriatrics on me? You’re really something, you know that?”

“You’re a murderer,” Derek says.

Jared spits at Derek’s feet. “Wouldn’t you love it if I was.”

“Jared Fowles,” the nurse says, a tremble in her voice. “You need to leave.”

Jared snatches up his jacket and bumps Derek’s shoulder on his way out. Clare wonders if he expects her to follow, but he turns the corner out the doors without a word or a glance. It takes a moment for the tension to leave the room.

“I’ve called Wilfred,” the nurse says. “You’re Clare?”

“Yes.”

“Eleanor. You’ll need to be here when he comes. He’ll want an explanation.”

“I don’t work for him,” Clare says.

“You were supposed to be watching her. That’s what he said.” She points to the scrubs on the chair. “Go change. I’ll throw your clothes in the dryer. There’s a locker room at the very end of the hall.” She looks to Derek. “You go to your office. Calm yourself down.”

“I am calm,” Derek says.

“Jesus, no you are not. Your neck is covered in blotches. I’ll move Louise into a proper room and come get you both when Mr. Cunningham arrives.”

Eleanor may be a small woman, nearly sixty, but Clare admires her efficiency. Clare takes the scrubs and wanders down the darkened hall. She feels numb, tired. She pulls the rock Charlie gave her from her pocket and tucks it into her bra. Derek’s office door is closed, but along the hall she’s able to peer into the few rooms still in use. On her shifts at work Clare made a habit of looking into every room she passed, of gleaning the details, the machinery, the presence or absence of visitors, the touches of home, the cups of medication on their trays, each patient’s story like a painted scene through the door to their hospital room. By the time Grace moved home Clare had been married for three years, her husband’s cycle of rage and remorse constant but unpredictable. She figured it was a matter of time before she ended up in the hospital too, her best friend tending to a broken jaw or a cracked skull or too many pills swallowed. But it was her mother who ended up there first, skeletal and depleted from a survival effort that went years longer than doctors predicted it would. Her mother’s impending death brought a new resolve.

I’m going to clean right up, Clare said in that hospital room, her mother unresponsive, comatose from the morphine. I’m going to leave him.

When it looked like only hours remained, the length of a day or two, Grace took a turn at the bedside so that Clare’s family could go home to shower. She found Jason at the table, eating oatmeal for breakfast, hugging his bowl as a child would. Clare sat down across from him.

I don’t think this is working anymore, she said.

It took a minute for his expression to change, for the life to spring to his eyes.

You leaving me? he asked.

What Clare felt in that moment was stillness. She’d witnessed the coming of death, the peace in it. This could be no worse than that.

I need help, she said.
You
need help.

The way Jason curled his fingers around the edge of the table, Clare was certain he thought to overturn it and crush her with it. Instead, he stood and came around to her. He brushed the hair from her forehead and kissed her, a touch so light that Clare could feel the texture of his fingertips against her cheek. I’ll do better, he said. And then he led her up the stairs to their bedroom, and Clare had allowed it, some body memory taking hold, the heat of his skin against hers. Why had she allowed it? When it was over he even managed to summon tears. I’ll do better, he said again, propped on one elbow and facing her. We’ll both get better. She fell asleep next to him, a deep slumber. Only when she woke and showered and dressed did the timing occur to her, the lack of protection. She set her hand against her belly and counted back through the days of the month.