Still Mine (16 page)

At her mother’s funeral, Jason held her hand firmly and deferred to her in conversation, standing in the background while she greeted the long line of neighbors and friends. When she alluded to the possibility of a baby, to the waves of nausea, he’d offer her the small smile of someone in on your deepest secret. He’s changed, Clare said to Grace. She even showed Jason some photographs she’d taken and talked about signing up for a class or two, working part-time toward a degree, taking his silence as permission. For weeks, she stayed clean.

Then, shortly after Clare buried her mother, she came home from a trip to the city with Grace, a bag full of darkroom supplies tucked under her arm. Jason was at the table, drinking, his face already a deep red. The positive pregnancy test was in Clare’s purse, and she set down the bag to dig for it, meaning to rest it on the table in front of him, a silly riddle, a moment she’d planned the entire drive home. But before she could find it Jason was already against her, her darkroom supplies crushed underfoot, pressing her into the refrigerator, his forearm into her neck, lifting her right off her feet. If you leave me, he said, I’ll come for you. She’d almost forgotten the sensation. The perfect fear. Though she gagged and struggled and he only hissed, she could hear him clearly, the exact words he said, repeated under his breath after he’d released her and sat down again to finish his drink. Wherever you run, I’ll be right behind you.

W
ilfred is in the corner, his fists in angry balls. At the foot of Louise’s bed Clare stands next to Derek, the scrubs Eleanor gave her loose on her frame. Eleanor hovers close to Wilfred, caging him in. In the bed Louise looks frail and bewildered.

“Louise?” Eleanor says. “You’re in the hospital. You took a spill at the parade.”

“I was looking for Shayna. She was supposed to be there. Is she here?”

Derek coughs.

“You saw a poster, Louise,” Eleanor says. “It upset you. She’s not here.”

Louise shifts her smiling gaze to Clare. “Yes she is,” she says.

“I’m not Shayna, Louise. I’m Clare. We went for a walk today. Remember?”

“Don’t ask her if she remembers,” Eleanor says under her breath. “It’s not helpful.”

“We should discuss restraints,” Derek says. “Until we can calibrate her medication. See if that helps.”

“So she needs a leash,” Wilfred says.

“Well, no,” Derek says. “She needs reliable, constant supervision. We’ll make a plan. She may need to go into a home for a while. There are devices you could wear, Louise. Beepers, sort of, but with GPS.”

“You mean a collar?” Wilfred says, no lilt to his voice.

“Mr. Cunningham,” Eleanor says. “Please keep in mind that your wife is very much able to understand you.”

“At this rate I could just stick her in the cellar and lock the door. Would damn well be cheaper.”

“Watch your tongue, Wilfred,” Eleanor says. “For God’s sake. She hears you.”

“Does she?” Wilfred waves his hand in Louise’s face. “Hey, Lou! Hey! You there?”

“Stop it, Wilfred,” Eleanor says.

Louise smiles at her husband, blinking as he waves, reaching to take hold of his hand.

“Hello,” she says.

“See? She has no goddamn clue who I am.”

“She knew who you were this morning,” Clare says. “She talked about you today. You and Shayna.”

“Shut your mouth,” Wilfred says to Clare. “I know Charlie sent you here. He wants her dead.”

“What?” Clare says. “That’s not true at all.”

“Mr. Cunningham,” Derek says, “I know you’re angry. I think you know that anyone could lose track of Louise at this point. She appears very determined to get away.”

“I know who you are,” Louise says to Derek. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten. Shayna will be here any minute to get me.”

Wilfred throws up his arms. Derek opens the drawer next to Louise’s bed and pulls out a folded piece of paper.

“Louise was trying to show me this earlier,” he says. “She kept trying to fish it out of her purse.”

The paper is a poem written in the large cursive of a child’s writing. Derek hands it to Louise. She stretches it taut and holds it to her face.

“She won a poetry contest at school,” Louise says.

“Who did?” Eleanor says.

“Wilf and I took her out for lunch the day of the ceremony. She got a certificate and everything.” Louise laughs. “They even published her poem in the newspaper. She made the front page, if you can believe it.”

“When was that, Louise?” Derek says.

Louise considers the question. “I’m not sure. Last month?” She shakes her head. “You’d have to ask Wilf.”

“Where is Wilf?” Eleanor says.

Louise scans the four of them standing in a semicircle at the foot of her bed.

“What day is it today?” she says.

“Sunday.”

“Sunday? He’d be at the mine. He’s working weekends this month.”

Wilfred yanks the paper from Louise and tears it in two. Louise shrieks.

“That was twenty years ago. Twenty years ago, Lou!” Wilfred hurls the pieces to the floor.

“Stop it right now, Mr. Cunningham,” Derek says, yanking at Wilfred’s arm.

“Some damn poetry. You’re nuts. Your daughter’s no writer, Lou. She’s a junkie. Remember? The booze and those pills? Those little crappy pills and that garbage she’d snort? She even started shooting up.” Wilfred tugs himself free from Derek’s grasp and sits on the bed, leaning close to his wife, squeezing her arm. “Remember the time we found her on the kitchen floor? Foaming at the mouth? Remember forking over our life savings to pay for rehab? Remember when we found her in the barn sniffing at the gasoline can? You don’t remember any of that. You spoiled her! You always let her off the hook. Everything’s perfect and sunny in your world. Then you come begging to me to fix it!”

“You shut your mouth right now, Wilfred Cunningham,” Eleanor says.

The fight is gone from Wilfred all at once. He stands and straightens the blankets over Louise. From her vantage Clare can see his pained look, the scowl of suppressed rage. He sidles to the door and withdraws down the hall followed by Eleanor. The room is quiet but for Louise’s whimpering cry.

“He’s gone,” Clare says. “It’s okay.”

“Shayna,” Louise says, her eyes wild with fear. “Is Shayna here? Is she dead?”

“Shayna isn’t dead.” Derek hesitates. “She’s just . . . not here right now.”

“That’s right,” Clare says. “We hope she’ll be back.”

Derek bristles at Clare’s words, frowning at her. He opens a drawer in search of surgical gloves, a stethoscope, the blood pressure cuff, then eases Louise over on the bed so that he can sit next to her. Louise soon cries in gulping sobs. After a minute Eleanor returns with a syringe. Derek Meyer means business now. Clare watches him, the way he tends to Louise, as he would his own mother, the way he’d raged at Jared in the waiting room, the way he’d chastised Wilfred. She’s just not here right now, he’d said, as if there were more to that answer. Clare steps to the door so she is out of Eleanor’s way.

“Horrible,” Eleanor says. “Just horrible, all of it. What a thing to say to your own wife.”

“He’s struggling,” Derek says.

“We all are,” Eleanor says, flicking at the syringe to prepare it. “That’s no excuse.”

The needle goes in and Clare watches as Louise falls limp for the second time in only a few days. Sedated, released from her pain and her questions, Clare knows, in a way Wilfred will never be.

T
he chocolate bar has melted on her fingertips. Clare licks them one by one. She sits on a bench in the hospital garden, Blackmore’s main street stretched out below her. Beyond the town Clare can see the road to the mine cut out of the mountainside. Somewhere along that ridge is the trailer, the Merritt and Cunningham homes. Whatever it was that Charlie gave her now presses into her bra against the flesh of her breast. She lifts her hand to it, jagged on her skin, a tiny bomb. The gash on her shoulder is redder than it was yesterday. It stretches taut with jabs of pain if she moves her arm too quickly.

The next town might be fifty miles away as the crow flies, but by road it would take three or four hours. Clare considers what she would pack to make such a journey on foot. Good shoes. A tarp of some kind. Matches. Her gun. A coat. She wouldn’t weigh herself down with food or water. She could drink from the creek. Clare and her brother used to play this game as kids. Runaway. Survival. He’d show her which berries she could eat and how to huddle into a ball if hypothermia was setting in. Just try not to die, Christopher would say, as if not dying were the only goal a runaway could realistically set.

Her chocolate bar finished, Clare jams the wrapper between the slats of the bench. The rush of sugar sets in right away, dulling the ache in Clare’s head. How strangely normal it feels to be here, to be absorbed into this town and its secrets. The camera sits on the bench next to her, her cell phone stuffed into the pocket of the scrubs. No message from Malcolm. No word since he left her in darkness on the road. I have things to tell you, Clare would say to Malcolm now. I have leads, I have suspects, I know their motives.

How long will he make her wait?

The scrubs are baby blue, an exact match for those Grace used to wear. In the days and weeks after Clare left, as she picked her way along the backcountry roads, driving ever west, she would narrate speeches to Grace, all the truths finally told.

I hated you, she would say aloud in the car. I hated that you had it so easy.

Of course Grace knew. She must have felt Clare’s wrath. When Clare showed up at Grace’s office last April, the pregnancy test in her purse, Grace had hugged her tight, then pulled her own positive test from the drawer of her desk. Talk about perfect timing, Grace said. Clare had wanted to slap her, as if their pregnancies meant the same thing, Grace married to a well-established doctor and settled in their renovated farmhouse with a nursery already in place. As she took Clare’s blood pressure during her first prenatal exam, Grace braced Clare by the shoulders.

You can stay clean, she said. You can leave. I could help you.

Who says I want to leave?

On those drives, those endless hours of oncoming headlights and maps folded every which way on her lap, Clare had confessed it all. I hated you and I loved you, Clare would say, speaking aloud to the empty passenger seat. I wanted to spare you and I wanted to hurt you, she would say. I was afraid he’d come after you too.

A familiar sedan pulls into the hospital parking lot, snapping Clare from her reverie. Sara slams the car door. She sees Clare on the bench and walks over. Up close Sara is unkempt, mascara still circling her brown eyes. Clare shimmies over on the bench but Sara doesn’t sit.

“You okay?” Clare asks.

“Steve says Louise got lost. Danny said he saw her at the parade.”

“They found her. She ran out in front of a float.”

“Jesus. Was she hurt?”

“She’s fine,” Clare says. “A few bruises. Seems to have already forgotten the whole thing.”

Sara points to Clare’s scrubs. “You work here now?”

“My clothes got soaked in the rain. I’m waiting for them to dry. The nurse gave me these to wear in the meantime.”

“You really get around, you know.”

“I know I do. It’s a skill.”

They both laugh. Despite her gauntness, Sara’s features are pretty, her skin so fair and smooth, as if never touched by the sun. She plops down on the bench.

“Is Derek here?” Sara asks.

“He’s inside. Do you need him for something?”

“We had an informal appointment.” Sara faces forward, avoiding eye contact. “Listen. I’m sorry about springing Charlie on you at the mine.”

“It was a bit of an ambush,” Clare says.

“It was his idea. I mentioned you wanted to see it. He took issue with that. Had me convinced we should be watching you.”

“Charlie can be a convincing guy,” Clare says.

“After last night I think he thinks he can bring you on board.”

“On board with what?”

“Nothing. Never mind. All I can say is try not to piss him off.”

“Or what?”

“Or . . . whatever,” Sara says. “He loves drama.”

“Do you love it? Must be exhausting.”

“Danny and I are about to starve and Charlie comes over and leaves a wad of twenties under our last apple on the counter. Steve wants to help but he’s struggling to make ends meet too. It’s hard to know what to do. So I play Charlie’s game.”

“I get it. Believe me.”

Sara arches and pulls her cell phone from her pocket, checking the time.

“You’re meeting Derek?” Clare asks.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Sara says, shifting to face Clare. “Do you think you’ll stay in Blackmore awhile?”

“Not forever,” Clare says.

“You were dancing with Jared last night.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Clare thinks of his hand on her back, a rush of shame running through her. Nothing is clear, the evening playing out in broken scenes, like a film she watched years ago.

“Jared and Derek Meyer nearly tore each other’s throats out in the waiting room just now,” Clare says.

“Of course they did,” Sara says. “Jared gets him every time.”

“Do you think Jared could have hurt his wife?”

Sara shrugs. “I heard he found her in the winter.”

“Found her where?”

“Fully overdosed on her parents’ kitchen floor. She was back living with her parents by then. Rumor has it he just stepped over her and walked out. Left her there. Her father found her a few hours later. She was in a coma for four days.”

“How does anyone know he was there?”

“Charlie saw his truck pull in,” Sara says. “Then pull out.”

“That’s not the same as murdering her.”

Sara raises her eyebrows at Clare. “It isn’t?”

“He wasn’t the one giving her the drugs.”

Lifting her sleeve, Sara scratches at the red skin on her arm. “Everyone was in love with Shayna,” she says. “And now no one cares she’s gone.”

“Derek seems to care.”

“Derek just needs to win. To beat Jared. What’s Jared got? On paper, nothing. Lost his job, lost his wife, will probably lose his house. But it doesn’t matter. He’s just so unflappable. He oozes it, you know? He can still get Derek all twisted up in a knot. The guys below said Jared was the one who kept his cool. He came up the hero. It just added to the mystique. Derek can’t stand it.”