Bone Dust White (34 page)

At the back bumper she follows a tentative hello with an apology for being late, but she finds it difficult to raise her voice higher than a whisper. The man sitting at the wheel doesn’t turn to acknowledge her presence. She says hello several more times, trying her best to sound casual. Those last few footsteps to the passenger door seem to take forever. She stands at the window and the top of her head barely skims the bottom of the glass.

She looks on, detached, as her bare knuckles knock on the cold metal door. There is no response. She takes hold of the freezing handle and eases up onto the chrome running board so she can look inside. Through the thin layer of condensation she can see two children slumped on the seat next to their father. He’s sitting under the bright ceiling light, awash in an unkind glow. His forehead hangs heavy over his face and his jowls are as thick as earflaps. He mutters to himself, barely opening his mouth to speak. Grace strikes the glass with three short raps but he makes no move to invite her in. Left with no choice she backs along the side and tries the door handle. An equal measure of fear and relief comes with finding it unlocked. The intense heat of the interior hits her immediately. The children stir in their sleep and their father’s gaze finds her at last. He has a gun in his lap.

“Where in the hell have you been?” His shouts awaken Isobel’s sisters. Instead of crying the girls slide their young eyes from side to side, surveying the scene like seasoned pros.

Grace can’t think what to say. She’s lost her nerve. She stares at the little girls, trying to find something familiar in their features, but she’s coming up short.
Maybe I’m wrong about Isobel,
she thinks.

The man slams his big head back into the seat and it bounces forward like a basketball. “I asked you a question, Isobel.”

Grace swallows hard. She looks back toward her car. Isobel is long gone. She can barely see her front bumper through the heavily falling snow.
Isobel is safe,
she thinks
. At least that’s something.

Grace reaches for her gun, stopping short of her coat pocket when Brian’s big head swings back at her like a wrecking ball. “I’m not Isobel,” she stutters. “I’m sorry. I’m late. It wasn’t easy getting away.”

Brian Camberwell watches her, his head dipping a fraction so that he might get a better view. His eyes narrow when he realizes his mistake. “Well, if it isn’t Dustin’s little friend. I thought you’d lost your nerve.”

Grace stares at the gun on his lap and remains silent.

Brian smirks. “I knew your mom. May she rot in hell.” He presses his palms into his eyes before reaching for the fifth of Jack Daniels resting on the dashboard. It’s half full and the label has been picked off at the edges. “You know, you’re lucky. If it had been up to me, you’d be dead by now. Did you bring the money?”

“I’ve never told anyone,” she says, finally recognizing Brian from all those years ago. He was the driver who chased her away from Katya’s trailer out to the fence line where she’d hid in the shadows. “I never told anyone about those girls in the back of your truck.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m fucked anyway.” He twists off the bottle cap and repeats the word
fucked
again and again between swallows. “Do you know what that feels like?”

Grace wants to run but instead concentrates on the emptying bottle. She answers truthfully, “Yes, sir. I do.”

“What do you fucking know? Bet you’ve never had a rough day in your life.”

Grace decides it’s best not to argue. “I have the money.”

He leans back. “And I have the photos.”

“I don’t want them.”

He lets out a low laugh that doesn’t sit right with his mood. He ruffles the hair of the girl closest to him and she flinches. “What are you talking about?”

Grace’s shoulders are blanketed in white. She’s getting cold. “You’ve got a chance of getting away on your own but you’ll never manage with your daughters.”

He shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath like he might be going underwater. “Tell me something I don’t know. I reckon half the state is looking for me by now.”

“I promise I’ll take them someplace safe.” She hesitates. “They’re only little. You need to do right by them.”

Brian Camberwell lunges forward and grabs his two remaining daughters roughly by the arms and pulls them close to him. He kisses them fiercely on the tops of their heads. Tears puddle in the shallow grooves beneath his eyes. He lets go and the girls melt back into the seat, the eldest of the two inching closer to the open door every time her daddy turns away.

“It would have been okay if Isobel were here. I would have gone through with it.”

Grace’s eyes dart to the gun on Brian’s lap. “Maybe you should take a walk and think things through for a bit.” She’s hoping he’s drunk enough to consider the suggestion. “I can look after your girls while you’re away.”

“Do you think I’m stupid or something?”

“No, sir,” she says, feeling her throat close.

“Then don’t treat me like I am.”

He takes another long drink, wrapping his big hand around the bottle, white-knuckle tight. Grace watches his Adam’s apple bounce around his neck like a rogue wave. He grimaces and chokes back what might be a sob. Snow melts from Grace’s hair and runs down her forehead. She pushes a damp strand from her face and he looks up at her.

“Why are you still here?”

Grace is unbalanced. Her toes almost slip on the damp ledge. She corrects her footing. “Your girls. I’ve come for your girls. You said you’d let your girls come with me in exchange for the money.”

“You’re not taking my girls anywhere.”

“But you said you wanted to do right by them.”

“Yeah, and I could have if Isobel hadn’t run off. Had it all planned out.” He gestures to the suitcases piled behind him on the rear seats. “I was finally gonna get out of this shithole once and for all.”

“What will you do now?”

“Ain’t got no idea. No idea at all.”

“I have the money with me. It’s in my truck. If you give me the girls, I’ll go get it.”

“Why do you care so much about my daughters?”

“I just don’t want to see them get hurt.”

For a while Brian doesn’t say anything Grace can hear. He mumbles words to himself before drifting back to silence. Twice his chin drops to his chest. The second time she gestures to the girls and speaks softly. “You two come along with me. I’ll take you back to town.”

Brian brings his fist crashing down on the steering wheel and his daughters scream. Grace grabs at the gun in her pocket but it’s tangled in the silk lining. She almost falls backward out of the truck, barely managing to hold on to the back of the seat.

Brian rubs his face with the palms of his hands, pulling his lower lids downward and exposing the soft pink flesh of the inner eye. For a few seconds he looks like a bloodhound. His voice is rabid when he speaks. “Get out of here,” he says, directly addressing his daughters for the first time. “All your whining is pissing me off. You sound just like your mother.”

Like a lynx, the older of the two girls slides off the seat and slips straight past Grace. She’s running toward the main road before Grace has a chance to tell her where to go. The youngest sister, a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl, who Grace guesses to be four or five years old, is wearing not much more than a T-shirt and dungarees. She scoots back against her father’s side and tucks into the protective folds of his body.

Her father smiles and puts his arm around his remaining daughter. “I guess this one wants to stay with me.”

Grace glances back toward her pickup truck. She knows she’s lucky to have found two of Toby Larson’s granddaughters, but she wants all three. “What’s her name?”

“Cybil. Same as my mom.”

Grace tries it out on her tongue. “Cybil. That’s a nice name.” She gazes at the girl and smiles, hoping she’ll get something in return. “Your mom must love her to bits.”

“My mom spoils her rotten.”

“Must be nice.”

Brian picks up Cybil and pulls her close, kissing her on the cheek and burying his head in the crook of her shoulder. Then he yells, “I told you to get out of here,” hurling the child toward Grace.

Cybil’s dimpled arms spin out into the air. She slips off the seat and curls into a ball under the dashboard. Grace leans over her, grabbing her beneath the shoulders, but the child wedges herself into the small space and refuses to move.

Grace struggles to keep her balance. “Come on, sweetheart. I’m taking you home.”

Brian Camberwell’s voice sounds off like cannon fire. “You best get hold of her before I change my mind.”

Teetering on the running board, Grace falls forward and her legs bicycle kick the empty air behind her. Cybil is as tangled as a ball of twine. Grace begs her. “Please. I won’t hurt you.” And then more quietly, “I’ll take you to your mom.”

“I’m going to count to five,” he says, pushing his gun against Grace’s head so hard it feels like the barrel might bore right through flesh and bone.

“Please, I’m trying my hardest.”

“One.”

Grace cowers under the gun’s weight. “Please.”

“Two.”

Grace crouches on her knees and bends low until her upper body is almost buried under the dashboard. She begs Cybil. “Come with me, sweetheart. Come with me now.”

“Three.”

“Please,” screams Grace as she strains against all that resistance.

Cybil’s shoulder bones shift in Grace’s hands—a painful pop and the child’s face is next to hers, red, raw, and screaming. They fly out of the truck backward in a faltering arc. The icy ground cracks beneath them. Their bodies buck upward from the road in a kickback that leaves Grace breathless. Her ears ring in a single high-pitched note and her mouth hangs open, wide and begging. Winded by the fall, she only sees the frosty trace left by her screams. She tries to break free of the child’s weight but Cybil sticks to Grace’s chest. Her young face is buried in the red wool of Grace’s coat and her cries vibrate through the layers of fabric, making a determined line toward Grace’s already panicked heart. Grace begs Cybil to be still, yelling at her with a voice barely registering above a whisper. Seconds later they are both silent.

Brian Camberwell has at last reached the number
five
.

Grace swallows back every word she’s ever known. She rocks her head upward and expects to see him looming above them, gun in hand, but there’s no one in the empty spill of light. Nothing moves except for the round flakes of snow that drift down, lazy and slow. They melt against the bare skin of their faces but all around them the landscape is covered in another layer of white. Her leg is twisted at an odd angle beneath her body. The pain in her knee is so intense that Grace can barely breathe. She counts in her head down from ten again and again. All the while she cradles the girl protectively, but her arms are numb and her fingers paw ineffectually at the exposed skin of Cybil’s back. Cybil’s breaths are shallow and her eyes droop like snowbound tree limbs.

“He’s coming,” she whispers warm into Grace’s neck.

Somewhere close by Grace can hear muffled footfalls as Brian makes his way through the freshly fallen snow. Grace slows her breathing and waits for the final blow.

Brian nudges Grace’s leg with his boot and she cries out. He mutters under his breath. “And I thought I was the stupid one.”

His jacket is open. His big head is bare. Grace gazes up into his face and whispers
please
once more, but he only lifts his chin a fraction and clenches his jaw. He’s crying when he removes his jacket and tightly cocoons his daughter. When he bends low and whispers in Cybil’s ear, Grace can hear his muffled sobs. He buries his head in the nape of his youngest daughter’s neck and strokes her blond head with hands that look powerful enough to crush her skull.

“I’m so sorry” is all he says.

Brian’s legs buckle when he tries to stand. He catches himself with an outstretched arm and staggers to his feet. He looks toward the main road one last time and turns away. Without ceremony, he lumbers past his truck, heading into a wilderness that stretches for miles.

Grace is the only witness. She strains her eyes, but it’s not long before he’s swallowed up in a shroud of white.

She doesn’t shiver. Her tired eyes gaze down the length of their bodies, past Cybil’s tightly bound back and damp blond curls. Finding solace in the warmth of Cybil’s breath against her neck, Grace puts her head down and stays perfectly still. She listens for Jared. He’s a belief that’s settled in like winter. She knows he’s out there somewhere, smoking his cigarettes and driving up Route 93, shoulders hunched, he’s hatless. With hooded eyes, he concentrates on the road ahead of him, cutting through the snowbound lanes like a determined knife. She gazes up into the falling skies and strains her ears for sirens. When she finally hears them she cries and cries and cries.

28

Dark clouds cover the sky and rain strikes like buckshot against the windshield. Below the road, the Flathead River tosses and turns in the early morning light. Chunks of ice the size of cars ride the swollen currents, and all along the eastern shore stands of pine trees wade knee-deep in floodwater. Spring has finally come to Collier.

Macy gazes past the flicking windshield wipers and yawns. The oncoming headlights reflect in the rivulets of rainwater that wriggle on the glass like worms. The roads are coated in slush and a gusting wind rocks her vehicle. She passes over the Flathead River on Collier’s southernmost bridge and enters the industrial section of town. There’s a single sheriff’s patrol car guarding the entrance to an abandoned mill. She stops briefly to say hello and the officer waves her through. Her 4x4 rattles along the heavily rutted access road. The mill and a set of low-lying outbuildings are situated near the river. Black snow stubbornly clings to the shadows on the north end of the building. The rain has washed away the rest. She pulls up behind Warren’s vehicle and looks around. Everything is boarded up, chained, and tagged with odd scrawls of graffiti. Until now she’s only seen this place in photographs.

She puts her car in park and steps out into the rain. She is unprepared for the loud roar of the river. Just beyond the line of trees, its milky glacier water is spilling over its banks. A gust of wind blows up from behind and her hair flies around her face, slapping her in the cheeks. She secures it behind her ears and walks over to meet Warren. She’s not seen him since she left Collier four and a half months earlier.