The Stormchasers: A Novel (28 page)

Karena nods. She is starting to feel warmer, and she slumps against him.

“I was thinking the same thing earlier,” she admits. “But maybe if we just tell the truth—”

“Which is what, K?”

That you were manic, Karena thinks.

“That it was an accident,” she says, sitting up straighter. “That you didn’t mean to—”

Charles scoffs. “Oh, and what, K, you think that’s going to make it all right? You think I can walk into the sheriff ’s office and be like, Hey, officer, so sorry, but I was driving in this storm and I clipped a guy and killed him and now he’s dead but I didn’t mean to, so can you let me go, please? And oh, so sorry for the extra paperwork. You know it doesn’t work that way, K. You know it.”

“All right, maybe not,” says Karena, “but Charles, what else can we do? We can’t just leave him lying out there.”

Charles looks around wildly, as if the sheriff and his deputies might be creeping up on the Jeep at that very moment.

“You’re right,” he says. “I’ll bury him.” He nods. “I don’t know where it happened, exactly, but if it takes me the next year, I’ll find him and bury him myself.”

Karena huffs in disbelief.

“That is
not
what I’m talking about, Charles, and you know it. The point is, we killed a man! We did the worst thing you can do to another human being. We stole his
life
. We have to pay for that.”

“Why?” says Charles, and then, as Karena rears up, “Wait, that came out wrong. Look, I totally agree we have to pay. Or rather, I have to pay. Because I did it. You didn’t have anything to do with it. You tried to stop me—”

His voice climbs and cracks, as it did when it was changing, and he looks away and swallows several times.

“Which is exactly what I’d tell them,” he says, rubbing his wrist over his eyes. “That I did it. So I’m the one who should pay. But it won’t stop there, K. Even if they believed me that you didn’t do anything, they still might consider you a—what is it, not an accomplice . . .”

“An accessory,” Karena says.

“Yeah,” says Charles. “An accessory. And think what would happen then. I’d go to jail, without question. And that would suck, although I could handle it. I think. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I could. But you, K!”

His chest starts to hitch. “You’re just about to get out of here,” he says, speaking faster and faster. “Out of New Hellishburg. You’ve got your scholarship. You’ve worked so hard for it. And when I think of you being stuck here because of me—that they might take away your funding—that they might not let you go to college at all—”

“Okay, Charles,” says Karena. “Okay.”

Charles subsides, wiping his mouth. Karena leans back against her headrest and looks out the side window. She’s tired, so tired. She can’t think. She watches a woman help her little girl climb out of the high passenger’s seat of an RV pulled up to the pump. The girl is about three or four, towheaded as Karena and Charles used to be, with thick glasses. She takes her mother’s hand and yawns as they trot across the lot, and Karena tries, and fails, to remember what it was like to be that small and have somebody else taking care of everything.

“Just think about it, K,” Charles is saying. “That’s all I’m asking. Let’s sit on it for a couple of days. If you still think I should tell then, I’ll do it. I’ll go to Sheriff Cushing and tell him everything. But please, K. Let’s not decide right now. Please.”

Karena rolls her head to look forward. The sky glows pink and gold in the west, the trees black against it. Peppery shapes rise and fall above them—bats. Karena can hear the shouts from the river, some kids inner tubing down there, a bottle breaking, somebody’s radio blasting “Sweet Home Alabama.” It is such a normal night. Who would believe that not a hundred miles from here today there was a tornado, that a man died on the road? That he is still there? Such violence doesn’t seem possible. The two worlds can’t coexist. In fact it is starting to seem unreal that this afternoon’s events happened at all.

And Charles. Karena doesn’t look at him, but she can feel his stare on the side of her face, the same way he used to wake her up when he’d had a nightmare—not saying anything, not touching her, just standing by her bed and gazing pleadingly at her and in that way pulling her, like a tractor beam, from sleep. He will almost certainly go to jail, and there’s no way he’ll make it. It’s bad enough what happens to guys in prison, especially first-timers—Karena’s heard the stories, from Stace Rudiger’s brother who did time for assault. Charles would be considered fresh meat, a tasty snack for some older inmate. That is, until he got manic and opened his mouth to the wrong person. Then he could get beaten to death. Or what about the times when he is curled on his side, moaning, insensible, helpless? Karena can’t stand to think about what they might do to him, the other prisoners, the guards. It is unbearable.

So she says, “Okay.”

“Really?” says Charles. “You mean it? You won’t tell?”

“I
said
okay.”

“Oh my God, K,” says Charles, but then he grips her arm again. “Promise,” he says urgently. “Promise you won’t tell. We’ll both promise. Promise!”

“I promise,” Karena says.

“Oh, thank you, K,” Charles says. “Thank you, K, thank you so much. You know you made the right decision, right? Now you can go to school and I can figure out some way to make it right, and I’m so sorry I got us into this mess, God, just so sorry—”

“Okay, Charles,” Karena says, “enough already. I just want to go home now. All right?”

“Okay,” says Charles humbly. “Okay. Sorry.”

Karena starts the Jeep and checks the gas gauge. They have just under an eighth of a tank. She pulls over to the island and Charles leaps helpfully out to fill it. Checking her reflection in the rearview, Karena notices an object gleaming in the backseat. The wing mirror. She doesn’t think Charles ever got more than a foot away from the Jeep back on that road, so Karena must have picked it up at some point. She must have put it in the back. She doesn’t remember, but part of her must have made a certain decision already. On the way out of Decorah, she pulls over and Charles throws it into the river.

W
hen they get home they have to go in through the front door like visitors, since Frank’s one surviving car, the diesel Mercedes, is parked in the garage, blocking the inner entrance. “Oh, crap,” Karena says. She has forgotten they made Frank swear to be home tonight—of course, for her and Charles’s stupid birthday. Her stomach sinks. Of all the nights for Frank to keep a promise. It is going to make running this part of the gauntlet that much more difficult.

“You go in ahead of me,” she tells Charles. “I’ll cover for you.”

Siri is where Karena has thought she would be, down in the sunporch, though when she hears them she comes running out into the living room.

“Oh thank God,” she cries. “Where were you? I was so worried—”

Then she sees the scratches on Charles’s face. Behind Charles, Karena bugs out her eyes and vehemently shakes her head.

“But!” says Siri. “You’re both home now, and that’s what’s important. Are you hungry? Anyone want some supper? There’re special birthday burgers just waiting to go on the grill.”

Charles trudges through the living room to the dining area, where the steps of the cellar are. He starts to descend to his lair, head hanging.

Siri lights a cigarette. “Charles?” she says. “Honey? Would you like some cake?”

See, this is what Karena means about Siri. She can see Charles is hurting, that he’s off-kilter. Yet she pesters him with questions. She can’t leave well enough alone. Karena knows Siri tries, but really. Can’t Siri exercise better judgment? Isn’t she, as she always reminds them, the mother?

They don’t have anything to fear from Charles tonight, though. Charles is done. He says, “No thanks, Ma. I’m really tired. I think I’ll just go to bed.”

“All right, honey,” says Siri, “if you’re sure.”

“Yup,” says Charles. “Night. Tell Pops good night too.”

Siri and Karena stand holding their breath until they hear the plywood door to Charles’s lair close. They wait a few seconds more to make sure he won’t come up again. Then Siri says to Karena, “What
happened
?”

Karena shakes her head.

“Forget it,” she says. “It’s done. It was bad, but it’s over. I really don’t want to talk about it.”

Siri frowns as she sucks on her cigarette, her upper lip working around the filter in a way that reminds Karena of a camel. The wrinkles there look deeper than usual, her clown furrows more pronounced. And are there more lines beneath her eyes that weren’t there this morning? Is that even possible? Karena shivers. Charles is making their mom old.

“Are
you
all right?” Siri asks.

Karena shrugs and reaches for Siri’s Marlboro but hastily drops her hand when the back screen door slaps shut and Frank comes in through the sunroom, on a waft of charcoal smoke.

“Why, Karena,” he says in his soft voice, lifting his hands and clasping them. “If it isn’t the birthday girl.”

Karena has been prepared to be mad at Frank, in fact has been mad at him for ages. For returning to business as usual after the incident at the Starlite. For pretending everything has been taken care of. For not even knowing about all the terrifying Charles moments, big and small, that Karena and Siri have had to cope with. Justice waits for no man. But at the actual sight of Frank, Karena feels something trembling in her throat like a soap bubble, the secret of what she and Charles have done. She would love to open her mouth and let it pop, to run to Frank and put her head on his shirt and tell him everything. She remembers when she was on her learner’s permit and barreled backward out of the garage and ran over her mom’s favorite planter, the ceramic one shaped like a pig. And her dad, her poor dad who has such bad luck with his kids and cars, just cleared his throat in the passenger’s seat and said,
Well. I don’t think your mother necessarily has to know about this, do you?
The next day, there was a new planter, Frank probably had his receptionist, Jill, pick it up at Menards, with the same ivy in it even. Nobody said anything more about the incident.

So Frank might be understanding. And if not, at least he would know what to do. But watching her dad come up the sunroom steps, Karena knows she can’t tell him. He is a stern, quiet little guy nobody really knows, so fragile-looking and skinny. Frank’s hair is totally gray now, his face lined. He looks startlingly like Lincoln. Three years ago he turned fifty. Frank may be tough in the courtroom, but if it got out what Karena and Charles have done, it would ruin him. For starters, having a son who’s a killer would turn his practice into a joke.

So Karena just makes herself smile as Frank gives her a papery kiss on the cheek.

“Well now,” he says. “Eighteen years old. All grown up.”

“Hi, Dad,” she says.

“Did you bring your evil twin home with you?”

“He’s in bed, Frank,” Siri calls. “He doesn’t feel well.” She has retreated to the kitchen with her Marlboro to avoid one of Frank’s non-smoking filibusters.

Frank rubs his hands together and gives Karena one of his wry, infrequent smiles.

“Charles has already done a little too much celebrating tonight, is my guess.”

“Something like that,” says Karena.

“As long as he didn’t do it in my cars,” says Frank. “He’s going to have to work all fall to pay me back for the Healey.”

“No, we took Mom’s Jeep,” says Karena.

“Well,” says Frank. He clears his throat again. “Good.”

He laughs, a short bark. Nobody probably ever gets close enough to him to tell, Karena thinks, but behind his thick gold-rimmed glasses her dad has lovely eyes. They are a soft gray-blue, the color of Lake Superior as Karena remembers it from a long-ago trip to Duluth. They are Karena’s eyes as well, though hers are more slate than blue.

“Are you ready for your birthday supper?” Frank asks. “The grill’s all fired up. Your mom told me you made some great hamburgers.”

He winks, making a joke on himself because he never eats red meat. Tonight Karena would like to skip the burgers too, given the similarity between the scraped-away face of the motorcycle man and the ground chuck into which this morning she mixed ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and egg. Her stomach lurches and she gets that gagging, mucus-webbed feeling in her throat again. But if she and Charles are really going to cover up what they’ve done, somebody has to start acting normal around here, and it has to be Karena, and she might as well start now.

So she says, “Sure, Dad, hamburgers sound great.” Tomorrow she will tell Siri about the missing wing mirror too. About the deer they clipped. The fight she had with Charles for control of the Jeep, during which she scratched his face.

Frank goes out into the backyard to finish grilling. The table has been set with Grandmother Hallingdahl’s china and tablecloth and pewter horse candlesticks, the candles three-quarters burned down—Frank and Siri have been waiting a while. Siri brings out the salads Karena made that afternoon. She and Karena pour milk and, since this is a special occasion, Zinfandel. When Frank comes in with the burgers and the three of them sit down, Karena’s parents toast her. They give her a watch for college—so she won’t ever be late for class. Siri fixes Karena’s burger, decorating the patty with pickle eyes and a ketchup grin to make a face. Karena laughs with her parents over this reminder of her childhood and claps when Siri produces a bakery cake—
Happy 18th, Karena and Charles!
—and Frank and Siri sing to her. Karena dutifully polishes off two slices, just as she finished her burger, potato salad, and pea salad. She will never eat any of these foods again.

T
wo nights later Karena awakens suddenly at four thirty A.M. She sits in bed for a minute, heart thudding, trying to figure out what startled her. Then she gets up, uses the bathroom, and wanders out to the living room. Although it’s a warm, stuffy night her arms are covered with goose bumps, and she pulls them in against her ribs beneath her New Heidelburg Eagles T-shirt, leaving the sleeves empty. She curls up on the davenport and looks out the big window. The street-lamps fill the room with a baby-aspirin orange glow. The air pump at the B&M gas station across the street is still going
ticka-ticka-tick
. But nothing moves. In her parents’ bedroom one of them—Frank, probably—is snoring in a deep, fluttery way. There’s no sound from Charles’s lair. The house is so deeply silent it makes Karena’s ears ring.