One Breath Away (16 page)

“What the hell?” she shouts, reaching out to grab me, but I’ve caught her by surprise. Just a few more yards and I’ll be back in the building.

Chapter 44:
Holly

I
’ve always known that I was a little bit different from the other girls from Broken Branch. I don’t mean that I think I was better than them; if anything I wished I would have been more like them. I put them into three categories: the girls who wanted to get married right out of high school and start having babies, the girls who wanted to go away to college and then come back to Broken Branch and settle down, get married and then start having babies, and me. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of Broken Branch. Yes, I ran away with a boy from Broken Branch, but we both knew it wasn’t going to last. It was kind of like jumping off a bluff at the Pits, the sand and gravel pits just south of town that were filled with water. It’s so much easier to leap off a cliff holding someone’s hand. There’s the thrill of being up so high, seeing the jagged, rocky walls of the quarry, of knowing that your body could hit the sides if you didn’t plan your jump just right. The problem was I kept trying to find someone to jump off those cliffs with.

I don’t know what was missing inside of me that I felt like I had to fill it up with just about every man I met. I’d like to blame my father; it’s so exceptionally easy to do this. I’ve never felt a connection to him, always felt that he always loved the farm, my brothers, more than he loved me. But in all honesty, I can’t blame my dad for this aspect of my personality. Ever since I was thirteen I was sneaking out of my house in order to meet up with boys and sometimes men. To be with a different man, to know the different ways that I could be kissed and touched and
wanted,
was intoxicating to me. Almost like jumping off a cliff.

There are names for women like me. I know. But I don’t feel like a bad person, I just like the way it feels when a man touches me. For me, sex never had anything to do with love, though I’ve certainly been in love before. When I married David, I was in love. We had Augie and we were happy for a long time. Five years. The longest I’ve been faithful to anyone. You’d think that after having a little girl of my own, I would have learned my lesson, tried to be a better example for Augie. I wasn’t. I remember leaving Augie and David at home while I went out with some of the other girls from Bang!—the salon I worked at. We’d go to bars, drink chocolate martinis and somehow I’d end up in a bathroom or a back room or in the back of a car with some random guy. I thought I would just get it out of my system, that one day David would be enough for me. But he wasn’t.

I tell P.J. that his father is a marine, a good, kind man that I loved and who went away to war. He loves to hear this. I don’t have the heart to tell him that his father, in all actuality, is one of three men. An accountant from Phoenix that I met at a wedding reception, a frat boy from Ohio who was in Arizona on spring break or the guy who ran the craps table at the casino. I told you there are names for women like me. I look at my bandaged skin and touch my grizzled hair, which is starting to grow back, and wonder if any man will ever want me now.

I don’t want this for Augie. But she is so different than I am. She is determined and tough, but she is content. Something I don’t think I have ever been.

I’d like to ask my mother about this. I want to ask her what it is like to be married to the same man for fifty years. Not the sex part. God, no. But day-to-day bits. Those are the things I want to know about. But she has gone off to talk to someone about my health insurance and I realize I miss her. That I’ve missed her for the past fifteen years.

Chapter 45:
Meg

U
nbelievable. First the girl runs back into the building. Then she kicks aside the basketball that holds the door open, shutting her inside the school and locking me out. Who the hell is this girl? I’m beginning to think she has something to do with this whole thing. Is it possible that this thirteen-year-old girl is an accomplice to the gunman? I pound on the gym door, yelling at her to open it up and come on out.

“I have to get my little brother,” she tells me through the glass door. “I’m sorry.”

“Goddammit,” I say, and look behind me where several more officers have come together. Faith has disappeared into the crowd. “Open up, Augie,” I say loudly so she can hear me through the door. “I’ll help you find your brother.”

She shakes her head no. “I can’t. I’m sorry,” she says, and turns her back on me.

“Augie, please,” I plead with her, trying to soften my voice. “Open the door. I can take you somewhere safe. Do you really think that you’ll be able to outmaneuver a man with a gun? Do you know where he’s at?”

She is walking backward away from me now, fighting back tears. She says something but I don’t catch her words; they are deflected by the glass door.

“Get out here, now!” I shout.

She doesn’t turn around, but moves quickly out of my line of sight. For an instant I actually consider shooting my way into the building, but instead I pick up the basketball and throw it as hard as I can toward the cornfield.

I was so close, but I scared her away. That has always been my biggest challenge as a police officer. Balancing toughness and tenderness. I learned very early on in my career that I needed to be tough, show no signs of weakness. I got enough crap about being a woman from a small but vocal group of asshole cadets while at the police academy, there was no way I was going to let someone accuse me of being a pushover. And I’ve done a pretty good job of it. I’ve cuffed violent, toothless tweakers, stood toe to toe with armed poachers and even ended up with a broken nose and twenty-six stitches in my arm after I was stabbed trying to break up a drunken bar fight. I’ve worked so hard at appearing strong sometimes I forget there are times, many times, as a police officer when a more gentle approach is necessary. Now this little girl, maybe the one person who can tell us what is going on in the school, is gone and I’m the one who let her get away. I let that little girl down just like I had with Jamie Crosby.

Her Own Words, the headline had read. Alleged Rape Victim Speaks about Her Terrifying Encounter with Candidate’s Husband by Stuart Moore.
My blood went cold.

The night I was called to the Crosby home, after an hour of pleading with her, I finally convinced Jamie to go to a rape crisis center in Waterloo—Jamie insisted that she not be taken to an area hospital—where she was examined and evidence was collected. It wasn’t until three days later that Jamie named her attacker: Matthew Merritt, the husband of gubernatorial candidate Greta Merritt. Jamie was terrified. She was convinced that no one would believe that the well-liked future first husband of Iowa could be capable of overpowering and raping a plain, slightly overweight nineteen-year-old nanny in his beautiful wife’s home while she was on the campaign trail. It broke my heart. I knew these weren’t Jamie’s words, but most likely Matthew Merritt’s poisonous threats to the poor girl after the attack. I promised Jamie that her identity would be protected, that the evidence the nurses collected—the swabs, the nail scrapings, the photos of her bruises—was all the proof anyone would need.

Somehow Stuart got to Jamie. Somehow he learned that she was the rape victim. Everyone in the state, hell, in the Midwest, knew that Matthew Merritt was under investigation for sexual assault, but it wasn’t public knowledge that Jamie was his victim. But Stuart figured it out and the only way he could have done that was through me and now he has the balls to try and get a quote from me for his next big story. Not going to happen.

Chapter 46:
Mrs. Oliver

“H
ey, get the hell away from there!” the man barked at Mrs. Oliver, who had lingered in the doorway after all of the students had returned from the bathroom and to their seats. She saw the two girls, one a teenager, one much younger, creeping toward her down the corridor and she franticallly waved them away before shutting the door. She hoped they would disappear from sight quickly. The man was becoming tenser, like a trapped bird nervously flitting from one corner of the room to another. His gun slapping more and more erratically against his leg. She hoped he had the safety on. She returned to her spot in the front of the room, well aware that the more on edge the man became, the more likely something bad was going to happen.

It was nearing two o’clock. Not so late that Cal would begin worrying about her whereabouts. He probably wouldn’t even remember that it was an early dismissal day. Besides, Mrs. Oliver would often spend an extra few hours after school making lesson plans, grading papers, putting up a new bulletin board. He was probably deciding whether or not to go ahead and eat the beef stew that had been simmering in the Crock-Pot all day. He would be getting hungry but hated to eat alone. No, he would probably turn the temperature on the slow cooker to low and slice off a hunk of cheddar cheese to tide him over until she arrived.

It was providence, Evelyn thought, that forty-six years ago, Mrs. Ford invited Cal to join them for a snack of her banana bread, warm and moist from the oven, and cold lemonade when he finished fixing their washing machine. Together with Mrs. Ford, they sat in the sunny breakfast nook, taking small bites of the fragrant bread and slow sips of the lemonade. Cal listened attentively as Mrs. Ford went through her litany of stories about George. Evelyn thought it would be intolerable hearing, yet again, Mrs. Ford’s account of how George had scarlet fever as a youngster and how they thought he would never survive or the story of how George was valedictorian of his high school class. It plucked at her heart, but she found it wasn’t quite so bad as usual. Hearing Mrs. Ford talk about George to someone else was quite pleasant. Cal seemed genuinely interested and asked questions in all the right places.

Mrs. Ford called Cal three more times in the following two months to come and fix something or other on the washing machine. Each time, Evelyn would join him in the basement, handing him tools and chatting about politics and books. Then Mrs. Ford would holler down to them that the cookies were just out of the oven and to come on up while they were still hot and the three of them would sit at the table. Mrs. Ford would reminisce about George, and by the end of the visit, Evelyn saw a lightness return to Mrs. Ford’s face.

One cold, wintry afternoon, a few weeks after Cal declared the washing machine deceased and admitted that any more attempts to revive the appliance would only serve to lighten Mrs. Ford’s pocketbook, and that he couldn’t, in good conscience, keep trying, Mrs. Ford invited Cal to dinner. Evelyn had taken the bus home after spending the day signing up for classes at the college. She had used the life insurance money from George to pay her tuition. She had offered the money to Mr. and Mrs. Ford. After all, they had more of a claim on George than she did. But they told her no, that George would have wanted her to get her education. She was already half a year behind the other students, having dropped out after hearing the news of George’s death, but she was determined to graduate with a degree in education right along with her classmates. She was exhausted by the time she trudged from the bus stop to the Ford home. While her pregnancy wasn’t obvious to others, she could actually feel the child sucking the nutrients from her body, from the very marrow of her bones. All she wanted to do was take off her rubber boots, peel off her winter coat and climb into her bed.

The Fords had collapsed into grateful tears upon hearing the news that she was going to have George’s baby. Perhaps even a son to carry their son’s name, someone to not exactly replace George, but someone to whom they could shift their love to.

So while Evelyn wasn’t unhappy to see Cal, whose cheerful, unassuming presence always seemed to take the pressure off of her, she was surprised to find him sitting in the living room wearing chinos and a button-down white shirt rather than the gray work shirt with his name embroidered in red thread.

Cal stood when she stepped into the house, looking as uncomfortable as she felt, as if the realization that coming to the Ford house in the evening breached some unwritten machine repairman etiquette was dawning over him. It was an odd dinner, even though Mrs. Ford and Cal tried to keep the conversation moving along. Evelyn couldn’t imagine what they were thinking, bringing Cal there for supper; and Mr. Ford was so bewildered that he just kept looking to Evelyn as if asking for an explanation. While the conversation was not at all unpleasant, Evelyn was so bone tired that she could barely keep her eyes open. She tried to smile in the appropriate places but halfway through the beef Stroganoff, when her fork clanked to the floor, she had to leave the table. “I’m sorry,” she said as she stood abruptly. “I’m not feeling well. Please excuse me.” She fled to her room and sat on her bed holding George’s graduation picture, tracing the outline of his face with her index finger until she heard a gentle knocking at her bedroom door. Thinking it was Mrs. Ford, she reluctantly got to her feet and mentally prepared an apology. She opened the door to find Cal standing there, holding a plate of apple pie and a fork.

“Here,” he said, offering it to her. “I thought you might want a piece.” She took the plate and stepped aside so he could enter the room. It was strange, having a man who wasn’t George in her bedroom.

“Do Mr. and Mrs. Ford know you’re up here?” she asked, peering through the doorway.

“Mrs. Ford is the one who told me to bring you the pie. Are you okay, Evelyn?” he asked with concern, his brown eyes crinkled in worry.

“Just tired,” she responded.

Cal shoved his hands into his pockets and lowered his voice. “I don’t want to upset you by coming here,” he said hesitantly. “I thought you knew. I thought maybe it was your idea.”

“My idea?” She was suddenly indignant. “Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know.” Cal shrugged. “I thought maybe you liked my company.”

“I do, but…the timing isn’t exactly the best now, is it?” she whispered, hoping Mrs. Ford wasn’t lurking around the corner. Evelyn looked around the room she had shared with George. “I live in the same house with my dead husband’s parents.” Tears started rolling down her cheeks, and she brushed them angrily away. “I’m nearly six months pregnant with their grandchild and now they are trying to set me up with the washing machine repairman.” Upon seeing Cal’s affronted look she sighed. “I didn’t mean to say it that way, Cal. It’s just that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”

Cal sat down next to her on the bed, leaving a respectful distance between the two of them. “Maybe,” he said, “this is just the way it’s supposed to be.”

Mrs. Oliver sniffed back tears at the memory, clutched at her chest and made a groaning sound. The gunman, who had been leaning against the wall, straightened and came quickly to her side. “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

“My medicine,” she croaked, indistinctly aware of the renewed cries of some of her students. “I need my medicine.” She pointed a shaky finger toward her desk. “In my purse. Over there.”