Still Mine (12 page)

Charlie eases the truck over to the switchbacks and begins the climb. Clare watches him through the windshield as he uncoils the chain and pries the gate open with a key he takes from his pocket, the way the gate gouges the wet gravel as it drags. Already the light seems different. Brighter. If she squints until he is fuzzy, she can see Jason in Charlie’s place, the young Jason from their courtship, the man who incited nothing but desire in Clare. Sara’s breathing has calmed from the earlier staccato, some color returned to her complexion. Charlie drives the truck through the gate, then gets out to repeat the task in reverse. Clare tilts the rearview mirror so she can see him drawing the gate closed, mesmerized by the scowl that sets on his face when he thinks no one is watching.

T
he warmth. It comes first to the fingers and toes, then up the arms and legs, into the core. Clare can feel the flush in her cheeks. She lies starfish on the bed and lets it wash over her, her fingers uncurling, her jaw released from tension she hadn’t even known was there. The kicking in. There is a patter of rain on the roof of the trailer, the black of the tall pines out the rounded window. Clare reaches for the photograph atop the folder, Shayna’s eyes two dots in the poor pixilation.

You left a hole in Blackmore, Clare thinks, her finger tracing Shayna’s outline. A vacancy.

It is almost seven. Clare strips out of her clothes and wets a towel in the kitchen to run over her body. She scrubs at her skin until it is red and goose-bumped, then stands naked in front of the mirror. The sight of her own body still surprises her, the curves that have come since she left, since she stopped running. The gash on her shoulder looks inflamed. Underneath her belly button snakes a light scar. Clare rests her palm on it, this small dent of stretched skin all that remains of her pregnancy.

Clare rummages through her duffel bag for something decent, a black top and jean skirt. She walks downhill to the Merritt house. Every light is on. Through the screen door she can see Charlie seated at the kitchen table, eyes forward to an empty kitchen. She watches him for a minute from the shadows, his slow mannerisms, the way he rubs his brow, then strokes his beard in silence. Some distant part of her understands that she should be fearful of him; that part washes away for now, replaced by a strange sense of solidarity, two people having faced the loss of so much. Before she can knock on the door, Charlie swivels on his chair and spots her.

“You coming or going?” he asks.

“Coming,” Clare says. “I mean, going. With you.”

He motions to her skirt. “You’ll be cold.”

“I feel warm right now.”

Charlie smiles, studying her. “You look different with your hair down.”

In the trailer Clare had combed out her hair, the dark curls halfway down her back, holding up the photograph of Shayna to test the resemblance. Now she squirms under his long gaze, unsure whether it holds sadness or lust or anger. She follows Charlie to the truck, waiting at the passenger door as he returns to the house to let Timber out and tie him to the porch.

They drive to town in silence. At Sara’s house Charlie stays in the car while Clare fetches her, the door opening before Clare can knock. Sara stands at the hall mirror, applying the last of her makeup. Her outfit takes Clare aback, a tight red tank top and miniskirt, towering heels, her legs thin as sticks. Next to her Clare feels like a schoolmarm, plain and prim. Across the street the lights are on through the drawn curtains of Jared’s house. Clare feels an urge to go over and knock, her inhibitions muted by that pill, but follows Sara instead, the two of them sliding into the cab next to Charlie.

“Gorman,” Charlie says. “That’s some outfit.”

“Thank you,” Sara says. “I picked it just for you.”

The drive takes two minutes, the parking lot across from Ray’s lined with cars.

“Whole town’s here,” Charlie says.

Sara rolls her eyes. “All fifty of us.”

As they cross the street, Sara links arms with Clare and walks in a near strut, laughing at nothing, so that Clare can’t be certain who between them is commanding the sidewalk stares. Ray’s is busy, a scattering of people on the makeshift dance floor. From her vantage at the door Clare can see everyone in the place. Donna the waitress mans some kind of coin-toss game. A band plays on a plywood riser in the corner, the lead singer a fiftysomething man who looks dressed for a family dinner, and though they look sort of ridiculous in their belted jeans and flannel shirts, three grandfatherly types who bob their heads to their own music, Clare thinks the band isn’t half bad.

Sara drags her to a table, then leaves as soon as Clare sits, crossing the dance floor to hug someone on its far side, abuzz and happy. Charlie dips into the chair across from Clare.

“I’m buying the drinks,” he says.

“Aren’t you driving?”

Charlie sets his car keys on the table and pulls a quarter from his pocket.

“Winner drinks, loser drives. Call it.”

“Heads,” Clare says.

With a flourish Charlie launches the coin high upward and snatches it midair. Heads.

“What’d you call again?” Charlie asks.

“Heads. You know I did.”

“Bah. Screw you,” Charlie says, retreating to the bar.

It has been years since Clare was at a party like this, clusters of bodies on the dance floor, the lights dimmed just so, the floor sticky with spilled drinks. Perhaps even since her own wedding five years ago. Clare wore her mother’s dress taken in at the bust and hips. After the meal and the slapdash speeches, when the bar was nearly dry, her brand-new husband ripped off his tie and hurled it across the room, messy drunk and wild with dance-floor abandon. From her perch at the head table, Clare watched Jason, red-faced and ignoring her, and she was filled with an aching sense of wonderment at how she ended up at her own wedding.

The music stops. Down the bar, looking right at Clare, is Jared Fowles. His collar is undone, and though he wears a smile, he still manages to look bored, disinterested, the same air about him that riled Clare so easily yesterday. The doctor Derek Meyer is at the bar too, his face in a frown. Charlie returns and sets an open beer in front of her.

“You go ahead and get hammered.”

The beer is so cold it stings Clare’s throat. Charlie tilts his own bottle and takes a long drink.

“Good party,” Clare says.

“This?” Charlie says. “This is nothing. Thousands used to be at homecoming. Everyone came back. Kids, cousins, whatever. They’d hold the dance up at the old arena and there’d still be a line at the door. You’d have to show up at six to make sure you got in.”

“It’s not a bad crowd tonight.”

“The room’s barely full.”

“The music’s good.”

Charlie shrugs. “You like that treat I gave you earlier?”

Clare can still feel the fuzz of it around her, the haze.

“Doesn’t hurt to dabble,” Charlie says.

“Some people are incapable of dabbling,” Clare says. “Like Sara, I’m guessing. Or Shayna Fowles.”

“See?” Charlie says. “That kind of talk makes you sound like a cop.”

“And you sound like someone with something to hide.”

Behind them the lead singer banters into the microphone as he tunes his guitar.

“Speaking of something to hide,” Charlie says. “Tell me about this husband of yours.”

“I’m not married.”

“It’s not hard to dig things up,” Charlie says. “Should I become more curious.”

“I could say the same thing to you.”

With a one-two-three-four from the singer and a straight pounding of the drums, the band starts up again. When Clare goes to speak, she can barely hear her own voice. Charlie appears only bemused, as though the tension between them is more playful than hostile. He leans back with his arms crossed, staring her down, the legs of his chair tilted so that Clare is certain he will tip over. Finally he breaks his gaze and leaves for the bar to summon another drink, their coin toss nullified.

The dance floor is populated mostly with older couples like Donna and a man who must be her husband, and next to them a handful of teenagers dancing in an awkward pack. Across the room, Sara swills a glass of white wine and lines up to spin the large prize wheel. She makes such a fuss of it, reaching up on the tips of her toes for the top spoke and then yanking down, nearly pulling the wheel off the axle. As it spins Sara jumps up and down and pumps her skinny arms, and a few people gather gamely around to watch. When the wheels stops on T
HREE
F
REE
D
RINKS
!!! Sara’s yelp pierces the room despite the loud music, and then she hugs everyone within reach.

Her beer empty, Clare tucks her bag under the table and walks along the edge of the dance floor to the bar. Derek Meyer wedges over to make room for her. Even in a T-shirt and jeans and with a drink in hand, he looks stiff, the only man in Blackmore who might resemble Malcolm Boon.

“You fit in well here,” Derek says.

“I’m not so sure.”

“Taking lots of pictures?” he says, his tone not quite sarcastic.

“A few.” Clare pulls back the collar of her shirt. “I fell down the other day. Gashed myself.”

Derek leans in. “It looks infected.”

“It doesn’t even hurt.”

“It probably should have been stitched. You might need antibiotics.”

“I have ointment.”

“That won’t help,” Derek says. “The cut’s too deep. Are you taking something for the pain? Your eyes seem a little . . . unfixed.”

Clare looks down. She knows this feeling well, her brother or Grace so often scrutinizing her as Derek does now. The questions, the steady doubt.

“I’m fine,” she says.

“Do you know how things work around here?”

“It’s a dance,” Clare says. “Aren’t we here to have fun?”

“I don’t find this fun.”

“So why do you come?”

No answer.

“The doctor!” Clare says playfully, swirling her finger through a spill on the bar. “Out to save everyone. Or so I hear.”

Derek angles away from her, repulsed or angry, and signals to the bartender.

“I’d be careful,” he says. “The infection could spread. Enter your bloodstream.”

The bartender has come over. Derek orders a soda. Charlie stands at the far end of the bar, his finger jabbed in another man’s face. Clare knows Jared Fowles is watching her from the corner. Why does she save her venom for this doctor, the one man who might actually be trying to help people in this town? Clare thinks of Christopher shuffling his terrified son to her front door as she screamed at him from the kitchen, enraged that he’d taken control of their mother’s prescriptions, cutting off her easy supply. Her fury at his good intentions.

Clare takes a deep breath in an effort to compose herself. What would Malcolm do if he were here in her place? Surely he would order a soda too, say something about faculties, about keeping your wits. But the circle is closing around Clare at the bar, all of Shayna’s people absorbing her into this fold. Clare orders a beer. Before she can dig a folded bill from her pocket, Derek offers the bartender a twenty.

“Thank you,” Clare says.

“Let me know if that gets any worse,” he says, touching her shoulder above the gash. “If you get desperate.”

Soon Derek has moved away and Charlie and Sara are there, then Jared too, others she doesn’t recognize. All these bodies pressed together bring a heat to the room. Someone orders shots. One after the next Clare touches the little glass to her lips and jerks her head back, the booze burning down her throat. She slams each shot glass down a split second before anyone else, again the winner. How long has it been?

The band is back and they play hard rock, no more smiles on their faces, their shirts untucked. Sara takes Clare by both hands and drags her to the center of the dance floor. Together they throw their arms overhead and spin.

Clare closes her eyes, the bass in her ears. She knows every word to this song. It even might have played at her wedding. Someone reaches for Clare’s hand and pulls her into a twirl, then passes her to Jared, then to a stranger, a blur of faces. She and Sara fly around the circle, and Clare is giggling, dizzy, drunk. It was Jared who started with the shots. Each one sweeter than the last, down the hatch. The row of glasses was a foot deep along the bar, all of them partaking, even Charlie.

In the bathroom stall Clare wrestles with the buttons on her skirt. She emerges to find Donna at the sink.

“You need a ride?” Donna says.

“I’m good.”

“You don’t look so good.”

Clare leans into the sink and splashes cold water on her cheeks.

“I heard you took the trailer,” Donna says, watching Clare through the mirror.

“There was nowhere else to go.”

“You’re asking for it, you know.”

“No I’m not. Really.”

But it takes effort to enunciate, and as Donna shakes her head, Clare can only look sheepishly away. In the bathroom mirror her reflection seems the spitting image of her own mother, the circles under her eyes just dark enough, eyes not green but hazel. How old was her mother when she died? Clare clamps her eyes closed and opens them again. This time the reflection is hazy, a film over her eyes that she cannot blink away. She is struck by her sharp likeness to Shayna, the same pale skin and big eyes cradled by a mess of dark hair. She recoils backwards into Donna, who must then intervene when she can’t get the paper towel dispenser to work.

“You might want to put a cork in it.” Donna holds the bathroom door open for her. “Sleep it off.”

At the bar Clare orders a glass of water. Jared is swiftly beside her.

“If it isn’t Clare O’Dey.”

“If it isn’t Jared Fowles.”

“We never shook hands yesterday,” he says. “Yours were full.”

He takes Clare’s outstretched hand and holds it in place.

“It’s still pretty crowded,” Clare says, withdrawing from his grip.

“People like to party. It’s the common denominator around here.”

“I guess no one has to work tomorrow.”

Immediately Clare regrets the words, but Jared laughs.

“I did some recon on you.”

“What did you find?” Clare must plant her hand on the bar to steady the incoming spins.