You Believers (20 page)

Shelby pressed her lips tight as if sealing in what shouldn’t be said. “She’s troubled. Like all of us. No deep, dark secrets. She has
doubts about things. But who doesn’t?” She looked at Livy. “I promised I’d keep what I read to myself. That was the only way I could get the journal from Billy.”

Livy nodded. “I know she doesn’t really want to get married. I know she still has a thing for Frank. And Billy said she’d written some other guy’s name. Randy. Was there anything more about him?”

Shelby shook her head. “Just a name.”

Livy wanted more than a name. She wanted some kind of hope that Katy might have run off with Randy. That would be bad, but she could live with another disappointment from Katy. “I know I was pushing too hard for her to get married.” Tears came stinging her eyes again, but she would not cry. “I just want her to settle down.”

“I don’t know why anybody gets married,” Shelby said. “I mean really. No one has to get married these days.” She turned to Livy, gave a tight grin, and shook her head. “We need to do something. Do you have any plans for today?”

“You are my only plan, Shelby Waters. I’ve been awake since dawn, doing nothing but waiting for you.”

“Let’s go to the beach. I’ve got my crew and Roy working on finding Katy. You and me, we need to go walk Kure Beach and let that ocean breeze blow this worry out of our skins. Then we’ll go to this place I know that has the best shrimp and grits in town.”

“You sure? We can start out by taking a day off?”

“Today we’ll call it getting ready. What you need is rest and recovery and shrimp and grits. Trust me on these things.” She looked around the house, then back to Livy. “You like staying here or you want to be someplace else? I can arrange an apartment.”

“I like to be near Katy’s things,” Livy said. “But it’s sad. And Billy. Well, there is Billy.”

Shelby nodded. “I know Billy. A boy-man. Lots of boy-men in the world. Very few grown ones.”

“Well said. You’re a wise woman, Shelby Waters.”

“We’ll look into finding you a different place to stay. Someplace by the water, a place where you can get out, walk, and breathe. When you’re going through times like this, you forget to breathe.” She took a slow breath in and out. She patted Livy’s arm. “So we’re going to start today by breathing good air and eating good food.” She looked down at Livy’s feet.

Livy followed her gaze. “Too dressy?”

“Those sandals might be too good for the beach.”

“I can slip them off,” Livy said. “You know the only way to walk a beach is barefoot.”

“Damn right.”

Livy reached for her purse, paused. “There’s one thing,” she said. Actually there were a million things she wanted to say, like
Where is Katy
? and
What was really written in her last journal
?

“What?” Shelby paused halfway out the door.

“I don’t mean to sound too . . .” She paused, wondering how she might sound, but pushed on. “I don’t mean to sound too righteous, but I’m not fond of cursing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shelby said. “I apologize. I do get a little foulmouthed sometimes. I’ll try to be more mindful of my language.”

“Thank you.” Livy headed toward the door, checked for her keys, stopped again. “I ought to get some sunscreen.”

Shelby kept going. “Not a problem. I have everything you need in my truck.”

Livy followed her out onto the porch, locked the door, and headed down the sidewalk. “You’ll come to know and love my daughter,” she said.

Shelby beeped the truck unlocked and glanced back. “I already do. Now, you climb in, sit back, and relax.”

Livy sat back in the plush leather seat and sighed. “Can I just close my eyes a while? They feel like they’ve been open forever.”

“You do anything you want. I’ve got liquid tears and Visine in the glove box if you need them.”

“I just need to close my eyes.” Livy squeezed Shelby’s arm. “You’ll find my Katy, won’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll find her.” Livy looked into her eyes, saw some sorrow there, knew Shelby kept her own crying inside.

They passed a corner with a rundown house, and on the sidewalk there were guys in hoodies and pants slung halfway down their butts. “What kind of neighborhood is this?” Livy asked, already knowing. “Katy told me she lives in the historical district.”

“It’s transitional,” Shelby said. “Varies from block to block.”

Livy shook her head. “I know what
transitional
means.”

“Katy lives on a nice block,” Shelby said “To get to the highway that takes us out of town, we have to go through a bad part.”

“Every town has its bad part.”

Shelby nodded, forced a smile. “Tell me something good about Katy.”

Livy and settled back in the seat. “Katy loves to watch a sunset. She says there’s something magical about transitional light. It’s something she learned in an art class.”

Shelby nodded. “Tell me something else.”

“She loves to watch the sky. Back home on the mountain you can see the sun rise and the sun set. Katy likes that. And from our deck at night you can see the stars spread out so white and thick, if you squint your eyes and let go and imagine a little, it’s hard to tell the stars in the sky from the lights in the city below. And it’s quiet up there. Katy likes to stay out and watch the stars. Sometimes she’ll fall asleep in the lounge chair, and I’ll go out and cover her with a
blanket and let her stay, and in the morning I have the coffee ready.” She grabbed her purse and dug for her emery board. She had to do something with her hands. She felt Shelby watching her but kept her eye on the file smoothing her nail. “Katy loves my coffee. I grind my own beans, use a French-press pot. Katy likes that. She sits at the table and drinks it, and she looks so pretty. Katy has the kind of face that fresh out of bed and no makeup at all is pretty.”

“She looks like you,” Shelby said.

“Thank you,” Livy said. “There was a time people thought we could be sisters, but that was a long time ago.”

“Tell me something else,” Shelby said.

“She could have finished college if she’d just stayed one more semester. She could be anything, but she says she’s happy being a bartender. Lately she’s been painting for a decorator, hanging wallpaper. She told me once she was tired of thinking, didn’t want to spend her life analyzing things.” Livy looked at her hands, wondered when they had started looking so old. “I guess I can see the point in not wanting to think. But why’d she have to leave home to tend some bar?”

“Everybody has to leave home sometime,” Shelby said. “That’s how we grow.”

“I never left.” She clenched her fist, rapped her thigh. “And I did just fine.”

“You left Suck Creek.”

Livy smiled. “Yeah. Thank the Lord. It’s just a few miles from Suck Creek to Lookout Mountain, but I might as well have moved to the other side of the world. What a difference one turn down a road can make.”

They were in another bad part of town. Fat girls in tight tube skirts and guys in hoodies were standing around a strip mall with a Value City, a Salvation Army, and a Rite Aid. She checked the lock
on her door. “I’ve been coming to this city for years, and I’ve never seen such places as you’re taking me through.”

“They like to protect the tourists,” Shelby said “They keep you on the clean path to the beaches and the highway to downtown. Kind of like a yellow-brick road.”

“I know Wilmington quite well,” Livy said. “We’ve often rented a condo on the beach. We’d drive into town for dinner. It was always lovely, just lovely. That’s why Katy moved here. We introduced her to the place. Then she met Billy at some bar at the beach. Nothing more romantic than meeting some new love on a beach.”

“Shorelines,” Shelby said. “There’s something that draws people to shorelines, something promising about living where something as simple as the tides can make a shoreline change. I remember walking the beach the first time and thinking the ocean air, the saltwater could clean all the hurt out. When you are on the shore, no matter what kind of day you’ve had you just breathe and you’re clean.”

“But hurricanes hit shorelines all the time,” Livy said. “That’s why we’d never buy a condo here. Hurricanes can take it all away in one smack. Remember Katrina? You tell those people in New Orleans and Biloxi how great a shoreline is.”

“Resilience is a virtue,” Shelby said. “Right there next to patience.”

“Oh, God,” Livy said. “I know all about resilience.”

“The idea is for you to relax today. Leave anything like worrying to me.”

Livy nodded, felt the tears seeping up in her eyes. She wiped at them with her finger, then leaned back, shut her eyes. “Okay, I’ll just rest a little now.”

“Good,” Shelby said. “Go on.”

Livy settled deeper in the seat and hoped she’d slip into something like sleep as she closed her eyes and gave in.

The Other Side of Living

When Molly pulled into her driveway that night, she didn’t know Jesse Hollowfield was waiting inside. She was thinking about all the other things she’d rather be doing than going home alone. The ballroom-dance classes she’d wanted to take with Matt had been canceled—not enough enrolled to make the class. Matt was playing Texas hold ’em with his boys at the frat house. And her mom had declared Wednesday nights tennis nights, so Molly was alone with her homework and Chinese takeout. She didn’t know Katy Connor’s image was fluttering on flyers tacked on phone poles in Wilmington streets, her face beaming from the black-and-white photograph. Molly didn’t see the curtain move at her living room window. She beeped the garage door open, pulled in, then got out of her car, dreading the night alone.

Jesse stood at the window and took a long pull from the bottle of scotch. The good stuff. Peaty. Single malt. He grinned as he moved toward the kitchen. She thought she was playing it safe, parking in the garage. He knew she’d walk in thinking she knew what was ahead, a night of homework. Jesse knew her schedule, her mother’s schedule. He knew that for the next few hours she would be alone.

Molly gathered her books, her purse, her Chinese takeout, clicked the garage door to close, and turned toward the kitchen door. Her mother was never home on Wednesdays; still, Molly hoped for light and something cooking in the kitchen. Even though she was twenty-two, she hated to walk into the house alone.

As she stepped inside, her belly trembled and a prickling ran down her back. She listened for the sound of someone in the house. She told herself she was silly, had watched too many slasher movies with her friends.
The media trains us to live in fear: random killers, robbers, flat tires, bad breath. Help me, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. And then they try to sell you something. We are a culture that profits from fear
. A communications professor had taught her that. She would not live in fear. That was why she’d taken kickboxing; she would not let fear run her life.

Molly shut the door and reached for the light, but there was tape on the switch. She ran her fingers over the strip of duct tape, wondered why her mother would tape the switch. She dropped her things on the counter and reached for the light over the sink. More tape.
Get out
, a feeling whispered, but Molly didn’t listen to the nervous voice inside. She remembered that there was a flashlight under the sink. She crouched and opened the cupboard, felt in the darkness past the dish detergent and Brillo pads.

Jesse pulled the ski mask over his face, pulled on the baseball cap that had two knives dangling from the sides. He’d tied them on with his mother’s cooking twine. They bounced lightly against his chest as he moved through the dining room, headed toward her. He was like Blackbeard the pirate, who terrorized his victims when he leaped onto their ship, waving weapons in both hands while flaming torches blazed in the long braids of his beard. The idea was to look like a devil, startle the sailors into thinking a true demon had jumped on board. Jesse liked the idea of running a ship along the Outer
Banks, watching for sailors who thought following the beams of a lighthouse would keep them safe from reefs that could gut and sink a ship in minutes. Jesse liked the idea of reefs under dark water, hard coral fluttering with sea anemones and hungry little fish. Sometimes Jesse felt like one of those reefs, waiting to rip boards and beams, filling hulls with a sudden rush of dark water. Jesse didn’t like it when people felt safe. There were coral reefs and rocks and pirates out there, even on the most perfect bright, sunny days.

Jesse liked to think of himself as a reminder. That was his mission: to remind the innocent who believed in things like cops and locked doors and home safety systems and Jesus. He was here to remind them it could all flip in an instant. A boy could be pushing his little red Hot Wheels car down the wooden floorboard of the hallway, happy,
vroom vroom
, and a man would scream and kick the boy for no reason but to see how one swift kick could send a boy flying into another room. Some days were sweet with barbecue sandwiches and new toys and a big glass of Coke, but a boy never knew when the hand would smack, knock the bite from his mouth, and leave blood running from his lip down his throat to his shirt. Jesse was a reminder that you couldn’t count on anything in this world.

He stood in the doorway and listened to the girl breathe as she fumbled under the sink. He watched as his heart pounded and a heat pulsed up from his gut, churning his blood. Sometimes the heat burst inside his head so thick and dark he believed he had hell inside. They had told him love could save him. But they had lied.

That girl fumbling under the sink didn’t know he had taped the switches and pulled the lamp cords to keep her in darkness. He’d be the one to determine when and where the light would be. She didn’t know he had cut all the phone lines. It was her fate. She still fumbled under the sink, found the flashlight, stood and turned with the circle of light illuminating the kitchen. She saw him filling the doorway.
He grinned, came toward her, knives dangling from his cap. She sucked in a breath to scream, but his hand clamped over her mouth. He shoved the gun in his waistband, pulled her arms behind her back, pushed her toward the living room, and knocked her to the floor. He stood back, held her in the flashlight’s wavering beam while she rolled to her side, whimpering. “Don’t hurt me,” she said.