Still Mine (11 page)

“Are you okay?” Clare asks.

“Fine,” Sara says, leaning, hands on her thighs. “It’s been a bit of a rough week.”

“I’ve had a few of those.”

“This morning my father-in-law told me I look like I have liver disease,” Sara says. “He’d know. That’s what killed his wife. Three years ago I weighed fifty pounds more than I do now. And it wasn’t like I was fat.”

“We can go back and get the car if you want,” Clare says.

“I’m fine.” Sara’s tone is sharper.

Beyond the Cunningham driveway the road to the mine climbs and winds in a pattern that disorients Clare. Sara appears to have settled into a rhythm, walking with her arms crossed a few paces ahead, bent forward with the effort of the ascent. Last night there had been an openness between them that Clare can’t detect today. She will have to pry.

“Have you thought about rehab?” Clare asks.

“Did
you
ever try it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I never felt totally out of control,” Clare says, a half-truth. “I felt like I could stop if I really needed to. Eventually I did.”

“Lucky you,” Sara says, sarcastic.

“I’m just saying. I get it. I know the feeling. It took me years to quit. I was a kid when I started. Too dumb to know any better.”

Sara plucks a wildflower from the side of the road, pulling off its petals one by one, eyes down. Clare can almost hear it, Sara’s inner voice debating what trust might be had between them. Clare plucks a flower of her own and pulls off its petals too.

“Michael was clean as a whistle,” Sara says finally. “He used to stop me after two glasses of wine. We’d never have stuck around here if he’d made it out. We’d have found someplace better. He’d have made sure of it.”

Clare searches for the sun behind the clouds. The blot, Louise called it. Jason was never one to stop Clare, happy as he was to have her debilitated, beholden to him to bring her more.

“Derek would love for me to go to rehab,” Sara says.

“The doctor?”

“He sent Shayna to rehab over and over again. He’s trying to get me to go now too. To give me strategies, he says.”

“You never know. He could be right.”

“Shayna went six times. Six bloody times. Always came back worse off. She told me they have dealers who’ll meet you behind a tree in the Serenity Garden and sell you a fix at a premium. Got a problem with ox? Try heroin instead. If the rehab worked at all, she’d come home and stay sober for a week, then relapse in a huge way. Worse than before. Derek’s like a dog biting down on a dead rat. He insisted she’d get better if she just kept going. He’s a one-trick rehab pony.”

“It can take years for some. To get clean.”

“I’d rather kick it on my own. I’m not leaving Danny and leveraging my house to go spend a month at some junkie spa where pushers jump out of the bushes.”

Sara and Clare both laugh, a pressure valve released between them that allows for the right kind of silence. It takes thirty minutes of steady climb to reach the gate marking the entrance to the mine. A heavy chain is woven through the links of the fence, and a sign dangles: A
BANDONED
M
INE:
D
O
N
OT
E
NTER
.

“It’s locked,” Clare says.

“There’s a key in a can somewhere. Charlie pried a hole too. We could squeeze through. Timber?”

The dog sniffs out the opening where the fence meets the trees, the links cut and pried apart. Clare secures her camera against her when she crouches to wedge herself through. Sara does the same, then continues down the hill at a march, ten paces ahead. Clare is slowed by her sense of disquiet, the death this place holds. All those men, ghosts under her feet.

The first structure they come upon is the parking lot, two stories of cement jutting out of the mountainside. The entrance is sealed with another chain-link fence. A sea of empty spaces, yellow lines still visible but much faded. Before the mine closed, hundreds must have worked a single shift, a logjam of pickup trucks at this very entrance, miners with their Thermoses and packed lunches on the passenger seats, hard hats and headlamps too.

“I used to meet Mikey here,” Sara says. “He’d skip out on lunch down at the mess hall and eat up here with me.” She laughs. “We’d make out in the cab of his truck like a couple of teenagers. I guess we were basically teenagers.”

“How old were you when he died?”

“Twenty-three. Eight months pregnant.”

“Jesus. I can’t imagine.”

“Neither can I. Nothing. The funeral, the birth, nothing. I have a picture of Danny and me in the hospital. I swear it’s my only proof that I’m the one who gave birth to him, because I have no memory of any of it. Blanked it all out.”

“Of course you did. How would you cope otherwise?”

“I didn’t cope. Mike’s dad coped for me. I’m still not coping.” Sara crouches to pet the dog. He licks her face.

From the parking lot the road curls around a sheer rock wall, then comes to a bowl and zigzags down from there. Below is a larger building and scattering of smaller structures, a long conveyor belt that would have carried the coal from the shaft to the trucks. The mine has an air of flash abandonment, as if the workers dropped everything and ran, leaving it to rot and crumble back into the ground. The clouds overhead churn and descend the mountainside like spilled milk. Clare pulls her camera out and snaps a picture.

“That camera’s older than you are,” Sara says.

“It’s professional grade but still pretty small. I like that I can jam it into my pocket.”

“Doesn’t exactly look pro.”

“It’s vintage pro,” Clare says. “And I prefer real film.”

“You’d have to drive for a week to find a place to develop it.”

“I develop it on my own. I have a portable kit.”

“No you don’t.”

“It’s easier than you’d think,” Clare says. “My brother taught me.”

Sara nods as if humoring Clare. The road overlooking the bowl makes for a good perch. They sit, feet at the edge. Sara points down into the bowl where the remains of the mine structures sit tilted and rotting.

“You see that tower? That used to be made of timber.”

At the sound of his name, the dog barks.

“The year I was born they built the steel one,” Sara says. “My dad used to say it’d take fifty lifetimes to get at all the coal out of this mountain. I suppose they were figuring on that. Just keep digging. No one figured the whole thing would blow up.”

Clare takes a long breath and decides to risk it. “Can I ask what happened between Charlie and Wilfred?”

Sara hugs her knees to her chest.

“It goes way back. Charlie’s dad, Russell, he hated Wilfred. They were third cousins. Came to Blackmore around the same time. Russell bought the land right next door to Wilf. They were warring neighbors for a generation. They both worked at the mine and jockeyed for position all the way up. Wilfred got the foreman job and Russell didn’t. A few months later the mine blew up on Wilfred’s watch. Charlie’s dad and his younger brothers all died. A week later his mom walked out to the field and put a rifle in her mouth.”

“That’s horrible.”

“She was a shrew. Mean-looking woman if there ever was one. Louise Cunningham heard the shot. She found the body. Charlie shows up at the hospital and there’s Wilfred with his hat in his hand. I heard Charlie slapped him right across the face. We all got settlements from the company after the accident, but Charlie burned right through his. Bought that dumb truck and spent weeks at a time in the city on crazy binges. Got it in his head to sue Wilfred in civil court. And he won. Some jury from three towns over found Wilfred guilty. Culpable, they said. For the Merritts’ deaths. They ordered him to pay Charlie two million dollars.”

“Jeez. But insurance must have covered it?”

“It was personal culpability, something like that. The mining company declared bankruptcy years ago, after the initial settlements. So Charlie gets a lien on everything Wilfred owns. Including his land.”

“So how come the Cunninghams still live there?”

“Because the judge took pity on them. Because of Louise. It’s her house too, she’s on the title. He put a stay on the proceedings to buy Wilfred some time. But if Shayna’s dead and Louise goes into a nursing home or dies, then Wilfred’s the sole owner and the property transfers to Charlie.”

“So it suits Charlie that Shayna might be dead.”

Sara cocks her eyebrow. “You’re a real cynic, you know. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No,” Clare says. “I’m not saying he killed her. But all men are angry about something.”

“His issue is with her father. I know Charlie. He’s not a savage.”

Just wait, Clare thinks. The savagery might come later.

“I’m just saying,” Clare says. “He’s probably not heartbroken that she’s gone.”

“Nobody’s heartbroken.” Sara stretches out her legs. “I was with him that night anyway. If he was going to strangle anyone, it would have been me.”

Timber barks. Below them a black truck pops out from behind one of the buildings, its windshield reflecting the stirring clouds. When Charlie emerges from the truck, Timber’s bark guides his gaze up to them. Charlie cups his hands around his mouth and hollers up.

“You two lost?”

“Looking for you,” Sara calls back.

The wall of rock behind them bounces their words in such a perfect echo that Clare actually looks over her shoulder. When Charlie sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles, Timber takes off, back and forth in a sprint down the jags of the mine road. Sara and Clare follow him.

“Did you tell him we were coming?” Clare asks.

“He wants to talk to you.”

“Here?”

“Here.”

“You could have told me that,” Clare says.

“Then you wouldn’t have come.”

Up close Charlie’s face looks better than Wilfred’s, the swelling around his eyes all but gone. He opens his arms and welcomes Sara into a hug.

“You two friends now?” Charlie asks.

“She asks a lot of questions,” Sara says. “She likes to know other people’s business.”

This is why Clare was never one for girlfriends, aside from Grace, unable as she always was to grasp the intricacies of female friendship, its unruliness, how someone like Sara can act the confidante one minute, then throw Clare to the wolves the next.

The building beyond them is boxy and built from cinder blocks, its windows smashed. Behind it is another smaller building, fenced in. M
INE
S
HAFT
. Clare feels her whole body stiffen, the adrenaline coursing. Sara pouts and wraps her arms around Charlie’s waist.

“This place could still be put to some use,” Clare says, straightening up. “To someone with vision.”

Charlie smiles. “I had a dream about you. Pointing your gun at me.”

“I could say I had the same dream about you.”

“There’s just something in the timing,” Charlie says. “Has me thinking.”

“What timing?”

“You show up here right out of the blue.”

Clare opens her mouth to speak, but no words come.

“She says she’s on the run,” Sara says. “From a husband.”

“Is she?” Charlie says. He unhooks himself from Sara. “Should I be worried about you?”

“No,” Clare says.

“It occurred to me last night, with that shot of yours. Maybe you’re more than just a plain old cop or PI. Maybe you’re some kind of special ops.”

“Special ops!” Clare forces a quick laugh. “In Blackmore? I don’t think so.”

Charlie’s face darkens.

“We’ve had cops up here before,” Sara says. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

“Well, I assure you, I’m not a cop of any kind. My father taught me how to shoot. I grew up on a farm.”

“Right,” Charlie says. “Sniper farm girl. On the run. That’s some story.”

For a moment they stand in a stalemate. In the silence, Timber lets out a low growl.

“Two things,” Charlie says finally.

“Okay,” Clare says.

“Don’t come around here on your own.
Ever.
People have fallen down the shaft before. It happens.”

Clare feels the air catch in her lungs, her hands tighten into fists, the same sensation that came over her when Jason’s voice began to rise in their kitchen. Anticipation. She nods at Charlie.

“And don’t ever tell me you feel sorry for Wilfred Cunningham.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yes you did. Yesterday. You don’t feel sorry for him. That man killed my family. Got it?”

Clare nods again, unwilling to break eye contact first.

Charlie looks up to the sky. “Rain.”

On cue, Clare feels a drop on her cheek, and then another. In an instant a torrent unleashes on them, straight and hard. Charlie tugs Clare and Sara by the arms over to his truck, opening the door to let the dog jump in first. In the cab Clare sits wedged between him and Sara, the dog panting at Sara’s feet. Clare tucks her camera under her arm to rub it dry. The windshield is opaque with water.

“Open it,” Charlie says, pointing.

Sara yanks open the glove compartment and extracts a small baggie of pills. Clare recognizes them at once, the round blue of them matching those taken so often from her mother’s stash. Sara pinches the bag open and lifts two pills out, swallowing one and handing the other to Clare.

“No,” Clare says, a deep pull within her countering her refusal.

“Think of it as a hazing ritual,” Charlie says. “Welcome to Blackmore.”

The drone of rain fills the truck. Clare knows what will come, that gentle euphoria, where everything feels light, easy, beautiful. Months of restraint undone in a single swallow. She can’t read the expression on Sara’s face, whether it is worry or anger, jealousy. Do you want to see me undone? she would like to say to Sara, the pill rolling between her forefinger and thumb. Clare tilts her head back and drops the pill in. It tastes bitter on her tongue.

“See now? That wasn’t so hard.” Charlie jabs Clare lightly with his elbow. “Now you’re one of us.”

“Aren’t you going to take one?”

Charlie just laughs. “You coming to Ray’s tonight?”

“Of course she is,” Sara says, eyes closed.

“Good,” Charlie says. “Come to the house at seven. I’ll drive you down. Keep you in my sights.”