Still Mine (24 page)

“You
are
a cop,” Jared says.

“No.”

“I never believed you just showed up here with your camera. No one did.”

Clare clears her throat, her mind a muddle. “You’re right,” she says. “It’s not that simple.”

“Are you searching for Shayna?”

“I wasn’t,” she lies. “At first, no. Maybe I am now. Her story is . . . It’s taken hold.”

“You’re a runaway too.”

Clare doesn’t answer.

“What are you running from?”

“Not what. Who.”

“A him?”

Clare reaches over Jared and retrieves her gun. He makes no motion to stop her. She tucks it back into her belt.

“Of course a
him,
” she says. “Don’t ask me anything else.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Clare O’Dey.”

“No it isn’t. Is this man looking for you?”

“I said don’t ask me anything else.”

Jared sets his head in his hands and begins to laugh, quietly at first, then so deeply that his shoulders shake. He sits up again and rubs his eyes.

“You wanna know something?” he says.

Clare shrugs, the chill of her wet clothes coursing through her.

“A few weeks ago this plainclothes police officer showed up at my door to take my statement. Interviewed me in my living room. He looked bored the whole time. Irritated at having to make the drive all the way to Blackmore on a Friday. I’m wondering if he’s going to arrest me, and then he says, ‘Women go missing all the time.’ He’s sitting on my couch and he asks me if I killed my wife the same way you’d ask your neighbor for a cup of flour. He’s even yawning while he takes notes. ‘Did you hurt her?’ he says. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Are you glad she’s gone?’ he says. And you know what I said? I said, ‘Yes. I’m glad she’s gone.’ He nods at me. Doesn’t even write it down. Then he shakes my hand on his way out.”

“Women do go missing all the time,” Clare says.

“So they do.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said about Louise and Wilfred being in on it.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Jared says. “Actually, I meant the part about Derek.”

“Louise is always saying things. I think she knows where Shayna is.”

“It’s occurred to me to ransack their house,” Jared says. “I’m pretty sure Wilfred’s crazier than his wife.”

The bitter taste lingers on Clare’s tongue. She feels jumbled, her pulse too fast. Jared pinches a curl of her hair and pulls it straight, then releases it to bounce back into place. He raises the flashlight and touches her shoulder.

“You’re bleeding a little,” he says.

“It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt.”

“One day you’ll tell me?”

“Only if you stop asking.”

“No one would ever think to look for you here,” Jared says.

“You’d be surprised.”

There is little space between them on the log.

“Do me a favor,” she says, edging away from him. “Don’t tell Charlie about the gun.”

Clare is shivering. Jared takes her hand and guides her back to the fire. Only a few people linger around it, Sara and Charlie huddled at the far end. Jared tells her to sit and Clare obeys, and on the ground they negotiate a position where they face each other, Clare’s back to the fire and Jared facing it, the yellow of it in his eyes. The quiet descends on her like a thick wool blanket, warm and calm at once. She closes her eyes. So many years since she kissed another man. Jared’s breath is sweet from all the drink.

Sleep is coming. There is no fighting it. Jared stares at her, smiling, perplexed. Clare reaches for the small gash below his eye and pinches it gently closed, as her mother used to do. All healed, her mother would say. As if one touch were enough to fix anything. Her hand finds the bare skin under Jared’s shirt, warm too, the beat of his heart steady and slow. Clare was never one to succumb to a first kiss. She waits for it. But when she closes her eyes, all she sees is Shayna, awake and watching them, aware. Shayna.

Sometimes, in the absolute darkness, I’m certain I can hear your voice. Calling my name. I can’t be sure how long it’s been. The daylight peeks through in no pattern I can discern. My head is clear, but the shadows play the strangest tricks on me.

I know his face so well, the contours of it, but there’s an emptiness to him that wasn’t there before. Does he even know who I am?

I understand why you’ve done what you’ve done, I tell him. I can’t be sure he hears anything I say. They will come looking for me, I tell him. Please. Let me out. I tell him that you will come for me and I try to imagine it, you finally here to rescue me. But how long has it been? What if you’ve given up? Or worse, what if you were never searching at all?

T
he ground cracks underfoot. The day’s first light has woven through the woods, everything a dull gray. Everything out of focus.

Clare is running.

Her shoe catches on an exposed root and she falls hard against the ground. Where is the sweater she was wearing earlier? Jared had given her his coat, but now she is down to only a T-shirt. Her head throbs and the warmth of her own blood tickles her mouth. She sits up and presses her hand to her lip. The knees of her jeans are padded with mud.

Deep breaths, Clare tells herself. Deep breaths. She looks behind her, back toward the fire pit. He is not there anymore. He is not chasing her.

When Jared leaned in to kiss her, his mouth felt perfect and warm.

Run, Clare said.

Jared had pulled back and frowned at her.

Who? he said. Run? From what?

She must have been dreaming. Her eyes wouldn’t open. She could see Shayna sprinting through a field flat and white with snow. Shayna locked in the cellar. Was that Shayna? When Clare woke up, Jared lay next to her, his face slack with sleep, the wood in the fire pit blackened and hissing. Next to her the creek seemed to sing, and the water curled around the rocks in a perfect pattern. Her jaw felt stiff.

Beyond the creek, just before the earth dropped off, Clare spotted movement. A figure. A man. The gold of his hair.

Where am I? Clare thought. How is it possible? Is it him?

He lunged from behind the trees.

Then, Clare was running.

Though the morning light is seeping in, she cannot see far into the trees in any direction. Clare spits blood onto the soft ground. The creek still gurgles next to her, she has traced its path, the sludge pipe beyond it slick with rain. If she stays with it she will find that upward trail, a way home, a way back to the trailer.

Behind her, the sound of someone coming. Clare fumbles for the gun still tucked into her belt. She aims it at the woods, her breath in her ears, searching.

“Charlie?” she says.

Please let it be Charlie, Clare thinks. That blond hair. Jason is not here. He can’t be here.

The gun in her hand, Clare walks. Her legs nearly buckle from the effort of climbing the hill. She reaches a bend in the creek where the pipe splits into two, one branch heading down and away toward the gorge, the other up. This spot is not familiar. She must have missed the path back up to the Cunningham and Merritt properties. She must be close to the mine.

Her breath. Clare tucks herself behind a tree. Down the hill she spots another figure, another man. He is seated on a felled log, leaning against a tall stump, his shotgun gripped in both hands and rested across his lap. Wilfred Cunningham. He wears a thick coat and an army-issue blanket is draped over his legs. He seems to be asleep. Even from this distance Clare can see the wildness in him, the dirt on his face. Behind him the earth slopes downward. Only forest. No sign of anything or anyone. Only trees and rock, the creek, the sludge pipe.

Louise. Did she escape? Clare focuses, searches the woods around her for Louise. It might be that she is dulled by the remnants of the pill, that she isn’t thinking straight, because Clare steps out from behind the tree and approaches Wilfred. Once closer, she can see a large flashlight at his feet.

“Wilfred?” It might only be a whisper. “Wilfred?”

He doesn’t move. Clare lifts her gun and closes one eye, aiming for the center of his forehead.

“Wilfred?”

Clare thinks of Christopher, his hands up, Jason’s shotgun pointed at him, Grace’s voice behind her, the scene spilled out of her kitchen and into the yard. Don’t shoot. Clare had only wanted the money, her share of their mother’s will that he was refusing to hand over. She needed it, but not for the reason her brother thought she did. It was desperation. I am not your child, she’d yelled at Christopher. You are not my father. Seared into Clare’s mind is the fear in her brother’s eyes. He believed his own sister capable of pulling the trigger.

The light is upon them now. Clare steps even closer to Wilfred, lowering her gun.

“Wilfred? Are you alone?”

She cannot bring herself to raise her voice.

“Wilfred? What are you doing here?”

His hand grasps at his shotgun. The rest of his body still leans into the tree. His eyes open. Instantly Clare’s senses are about her again, her mouth leathery and dry. Why did she call his name? She ducks behind a thick pine tree and holds her breath. There is no sound of him rousing. He might be fifty feet away. His eyes are open but he has not moved. He stares straight ahead, unblinking, and then his eyes close again and he tilts back into the tree.

Behind her Clare can now trace the path of the creek and the pipe clearly, back from where she came. First she walks backwards, her eyes upon Wilfred, until a screen of trees is between them, enough distance so that even with good aim, he would surely miss. Then she tucks the gun away and wills herself to go. To run.

T
he trailer glints silver. Inside, Clare doesn’t sit on the bed, for her body aches with exhaustion, and even a small concession like sitting might lead to sleep. She does not look at the photographs that hang in the kitchen. She must clean herself up, keep moving, dance around the drop that will follow this high. In front of the mirror Clare pulls the elastic from her hair and shakes it out. A cluster of pine needles falls to the floor. She is rumpled and filthy.

Rage fills her. Clare yanks Jason’s portrait from the clothespin and grips it, squeezing it at the edges, pulling it taut. Her teeth are gritted and she cannot recognize the sound that comes from her, a quiet wail. Though she tugs with all her might, the photograph will not tear. She feels as though the black and white might spill over into her hands. There is blood on her fingers. Clare crushes the photograph into a ball and throws it at the window. Then she yanks down the pictures of Malcolm, Wilfred, and Jared and does the same. Finally she collapses at the banquette and cries, the tension seeping out of her, a blast of cold sweat running up her back and along her scalp.

A shower. Clare strips off her clothes and runs outside naked. Though the air is cold, her skin cold, the water cold, Clare feels only relief as it douses her in a torrent. She dances and lathers as quickly as she can, soaping the gash, its redness already faded. Once rinsed, she darts back inside the trailer and yanks the blankets from the bed to wrap herself. Her phone, tangled as it was in the sheets, drops to the floor. She picks it up and flips it open. How alert she feels. Hungry and exhausted and too alert.

No word from Malcolm. No message. Of course not. No signal.

From her duffel bag she’s able to dig out jeans and a T-shirt, a sweatshirt over it. As she wrestles with her clothes a panic sets in, a hollow pain filling her chest. She cannot keep it all straight. She keeps seeing Shayna, either dead or running, tied up. Trying to reach her. She thinks of Charlie behind the trees, it must have been Charlie. Wilfred sitting on the log with his shotgun, Derek lunging at Jared, his hands curled around his neck. Louise in her bed, the restraints undone. Clare opens the bottle of antibiotics and swallows two.

She will go to the Cunningham house. Intercept Wilfred. Louise.

Outside, there is noise. Someone is approaching. Before Clare can make it to the window, someone knocks on the trailer door.

“Clare?”

Whose voice is it? A man’s.

“Clare?”

Malcolm.

Clare swings the door open and waves him in, then slams the door closed behind him. Inside the tight space of trailer Malcolm can barely stand up, and in the ensuing fumble he and Clare do this awkward dance, each trying to step around the other. By the time he sits at the banquette Clare has retreated to the bedroom door. Malcolm wears a jacket Clare has never seen before, an earthy green.