Trespass (14 page)

A little while later, camped out on a couch with a steaming mug and clear view of the bathroom window, Russ looked up from the newspaper. He flared his nostrils and frowned in the direction of the closed door, all his suspicion rushing back in to banish the melancholy. He set the paper aside and crossed the den, knocking.

“What’s that smell?”

Her muffled reply came through the door. “Hair dye.”

“Oh.” He didn’t know what he’d been expecting—plastic explosives, homemade arsenic, moonshine. A pang twisted in his chest, sadness for this woman whose only privacy was to be found in a stranger’s bathroom, reduced to changing who she was to stay free. Or
sort of
free. He made a stab at levity. “What’s the hot color for fugitives this season?”

There was a pause, then a faint laugh. Russ could picture her smile and how she must be shaking her head at him. “It’s called…”

She opened the door, a pile of slick curls plastered atop her head, eyebrows painted with the dark goo, smears on her temples and ears. She had one of Russ’s ratty old towels wrapped around her trunk. His eyes watered from the chemical smell.

She read the top of the box. “Chocolate Truffle,” she concluded, smiling at him, those wide lips banishing the fumes for a second as Russ got lost staring at the base of her throat.

“Doesn’t smell too delicious,” he said, eyes still glued to her collarbone.

Sarah closed the door on him.

“Turn the fan on before you asphyxiate,” Russ said.

An hour later she emerged looking different. Not just the dark, damp locks brushing her shoulders—she’d cut off at least four inches—but something about her face too, details Russ was too hopelessly male to pinpoint. He’d always gotten himself in trouble with his wife over things like that, never noticing when she’d gone to trouble with her hair or makeup, earning himself some major eye-rolling.

“Your face looks real nice,” Russ said.

Sarah laughed. “Thanks?”

“You know.” He waggled a hand in front of his own face. “Your makeup or whatever.”

Sarah crossed her arms over her chest, plastic bag swinging from her wrist, and gave him an eye roll that put Beth’s to shame. “You’re supposed to pretend a woman always looks naturally made-up.”

“Oh.” Russ blinked at this latest damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t female snare and stepped aside to let Sarah wander past him to sit on the couch.

“Well, you look real nice.”

“Thank you.” She was wearing her tank top thing and Russ’s old boxers, the fly safety-pinned closed. Her bare legs looked smooth, almost shiny. She stretched them out and wiggled her toes. “I feel like a human being again, anyhow. Amazing what deodorant and conditioner and some lotion can do.” She opened the shopping bag and drew out a magazine, the glossy kind with a dazzling woman on the cover.

Russ pointed to it. “You’ve got a handful of dollars left to your name and you spent it on that?”

She lowered the pages, giving him a withering look as she sat up straighter.

“Fine,” he said. “I won’t argue with that face. I’m just saying, if you’d sold my great-grandfather’s watch and spent the spoils on
that
, I’d be mighty pissed.”

Her smug expression wilted, replaced by sadness. “Sorry. I guess that does make me look pretty shallow.”

Russ returned her frown then walked over and flopped down beside her, watching the pages flip in her lap. “I don’t think you’re shallow. I just don’t follow your priorities.”

“Well, imagine if you were exiled in New York City or somewhere for, I don’t know, a horse vet convention or something. A whole week stuck in meeting rooms, no fresh air, and even when you’re outside it’s crammed with strangers and buildings and honking cars.”

“Okay.”

“How much would you pay just to like, get over to Central Park and smell the stupid horses for a few minutes?”

He considered it, not sure where this ham-fisted analogy was headed. “I couldn’t say. Maybe a lot.”

“Well,” she said, flipping through ads and spreads, an indistinguishable blur of makeup and jewelry and shoes. “This for me…it only cost four bucks, and I get to pretend for an hour or so that I’m still back home, still imagining what I might want to save up and buy for myself.”

She set the magazine down and stared Russ square in the face. He looked to her knee, eye contact too much, too likely to just confuse whatever he was feeling. Feeling. He’d started doing too much of that since Sarah had shown up. Or Nicole. Whoever.

“I know you probably don’t think I deserve frivolity,” she said, “but if I could, I’d go back in time three weeks and I wouldn’t be here now, wrecking your life. Or mine. I’d be home on a day off, flipping through a magazine.” She shook it at him, subscription cards falling onto their legs. “And maybe having a glass of wine, thinking about what I might wear out to a party or a bar, fantasizing about some nice, handsome guy I might magically meet.” She looked down, lips pursed, and Russ suspected she was close to crying. “I’m not supposed to be here, you know, stealing some other nice, handsome guy’s heirlooms. I’m supposed to be home, safe and bored. Worried about catching the bus, not about prison or getting knifed by the wrong choice of driver to bum a ride from. So lay off, Russ. Let me read my stupid magazine.” She sniffed irritably, ignoring the fat tear slipping down her cheek.

The ugliest, meanest part of Russ searched her face, wondering if this might all be some new con, a ploy for his trust. He didn’t want to be that man—suspicious, expecting the worst. But he wasn’t aiming to be her fool again, either. In the end he just clapped her on the shoulder and stood, leaving her to her handbags and perfume samples, to her sadness, real or manufactured.

Chapter Eight

Sarah perused her magazine for an hour while Russ was out doing whatever it was he did. She listened through the open kitchen window to the various sounds of his productivity—automotive noises and hammering ones, distant hinges creaking and the odd grunt. She didn’t know what it meant that he’d left her alone.
Trust
was too much to hope for, as even she wasn’t sure if she’d try to run again.

It sucked to commodify Russ, to see him as an opportunity. Still, that’s what he was, in essence—a chance at redemption, should he choose to let her stay. A ticket to prison if he changed his mind and decided that was best. The only power she had now lay in her two feet and how far and fast they could carry her, but three weeks of running had left her exhausted. She wanted to stay with Russ and earn what he’d offered, some money and a safe place to sleep for as long as he’d allow. She said a little prayer to a God she’d never believed in that he’d keep his promise from last night and give her this second chance she didn’t particularly deserve.

Out of habit, she dog-eared the magazine’s best pages, the things she’d try to copy or find cheapie versions of, should she ever find her herself with extra cash and within a hundred miles of a shopping center. Gift ideas for friends she’d probably never see again. Stupid articles about men to cut out and paste up in the break room to annoy her male coworkers, if only she still had something as normal as a job. These things had always seemed silly, but now it was too much. She’d lost the luxury of wasteful daydreaming. She might never again be in a position to fantasize about a purse or a pair of sunglasses she could buy if the tip gods smiled upon her some Saturday evening. With an annoyed sigh, she tossed the magazine aside and rubbed her temples to banish a headache.

She dropped her hands and gasped, surprised to find Russ standing before her.

“Sorry. Wasn’t trying to sneak up on you.” He tucked his hands in his pockets.

“That’s fine. It’s your house.” She studied the black grease smear on his arm.

“You um…you want to go for a ride?”

She frowned, transported mentally to the police station parking lot again. “Where to?”

He shrugged and nodded toward the back of the house. “Just around.”

“Oh, you mean on a horse?”

“Yeah. One of those things you groomed the other day. The huge, furry, smelly things that crap everywhere?”

She considered it. “Do I get a saddle?”

“Sure.”

“I guess I could try that.”

“Cool.” He glanced at her feet. “My sister’s got a pair of boots she keeps here that’ll probably fit you. We can go and mess up your pretty new hairdo.”

Sarah tugged on her filthy sneakers. Following Russ out back, she waited as he laced his shoes in the laundry room. He rummaged for a couple of minutes and found her a pair of riding boots, tight but workable.

“Where are we riding to?”

“Just around the property.”

Property,
she thought.
Territory.
She remembered that possessive quality she’d felt in his touch before she’d gone and screwed all that up for them both.

Russ fitted Lizzie with a blanket and saddle and bridle. He led her out into the pen, looking expectantly to Sarah.

She wrung her hands. “I’m not sure how to do this.”

“Get your left foot in the stirrup, and hold on to her mane—don’t yank it—and swing your right leg up and over.” He held Lizzie’s bridle, pale eyes squinting against the sunshine.

Sarah got her foot in the stirrup, hand on the horse’s knobby neck. “They should make stairs for this.”

“Just do it. Don’t think.”

Right.
That philosophy had gotten her in enough trouble to last a lifetime. But she pushed off the ground and with a little shimmying, lo and behold, there she was, perched on a horse.

Russ handed her the reins. “Just sit tight. Don’t pull on those.”

She watched him lead Mitch out into the dusty ring, walking him to the far stretch of fence, where Russ lifted a catch and pulled the gate open. He did his little cowboy trick, flinging himself on Mitch’s back. He turned and made a clicking noise, and Lizzie started walking, startling the bejesus out of Sarah.

“What do I do?” she asked, one hand in a death grip on the knob at the front of her saddle, the other clutching the reins.

“Nothing,” he said over his shoulder. “Just don’t panic and focus on your balance. She’s driving so sit back and relax.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Lizzie’s not the brightest horse I ever met, but nothing spooks her. You’ll be fine as long as you don’t faint and fall off.”

“And if I do?”

“If you can find your rhythm, just let your body move with hers.”

It took a good ten minutes, but Sarah did relax. She tried to imitate how Russ rode, with that lilt in his hips to offset the movement of the horse. He led them along a well-worn dirt trail through his property’s overgrown grass, taking them into the shade along the edge of the woods. The dogs followed, trotting behind them like an entourage.

“How we doing?” Russ asked, craning to catch her eye.

“Not bad. I’m still upright.”

He slowed, clicked at Lizzie until she came forward to walk side by side with Mitch.

“You look about right. Bit hunchy.” He slouched forward, shoulders bunched around his ears.

Sarah sat up straighter, mustering dignity.

“Better.”

“Do you know how good you have it?” she asked, surprising even herself with the question.

“How good I have it?”

“That it’s like a Monday afternoon—”

“Tuesday.”

“A Tuesday afternoon, and you’re like, on a horse, patrolling your vast, waving acres.”

“Yeah, and an hour ago I was shoveling manure, and tomorrow I’ll probably have my arm jammed halfway up a cow’s backside.”

She smirked. “Well it all seems very luxurious to me. Nobody’s got a yard where I’m from, let alone all this.” She nodded in the direction of his home.

“They probably don’t have to drive an hour to the store either, or spend years waiting for an eligible member of the opposite sex to stroll into the same zip code.”

She caught and held his eyes, leaned over and let his greener grass whap her hand demonstrably. Russ just smiled his private smile, eyes on the land.

A half-mile onward Sarah gathered enough balls to clear her throat and say, “You know, I’m really sorry about what happened.”

Russ flinched, if she wasn’t mistaken. “I know you are. And I believe you. You don’t have to keep apologizing.”

“My name really is Sarah,” she said. “Sarah Novak.”

Russ turned to her. “Middle name?”

“Jean.”

“Right, Sarah Jean Novak.”

“I lived in Buffalo. Like my whole life. If you Google me, you might find out there’s a warrant for my arrest.”

His eyebrows rose but he didn’t reply.

“I’m not actually sure,” she said.

“Okay.”

“But I killed somebody.”

Russ nodded grimly, as though he’d already prepared himself for a worst-case scenario. “Who?”

“This guy… He was my friend’s boyfriend, or her dealer or something. I only kind of knew him from around the neighborhood. And actually she wasn’t even really my friend anymore. She called me up the night it happened, after we hadn’t talked in a couple months. And we used to be really close, like in high school and for a few years after. Before she got all involved with him and these other sketchy assholes.” She looked to Russ, wondering if this information was what he deserved or merely another burden he was willing to take on.

“Go on.”

“Do you actually want to hear all this?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I think you owe me some insight.”

“Okay. Anyhow, this former friend called me, freaking out. I’m sure she was drunk or high or something. I was a little drunk too, out at a bar, watching a baseball game with one of my coworkers. She was only a few blocks away, and I ran over there, to her boyfriend’s place. You could hear them yelling from the street, like four stories down. One of them buzzed me in and I ran up there and she was in her underwear, all strung out, with this huge red bruise on her throat. And I don’t know…I lost it. I started screaming, saying I was going to call the cops, then the boyfriend freaked out, and he started yelling at
her
for calling
me
, started threatening us both. He hit her, and I just…I saw red. He had one of those old blenders on his counter, the heavy glass kind, and I grabbed it by the handle and I…” She could almost hear the dull clunk it’d made, just about feel the jarring echo of the impact in her wrist. “I hit him. In the head. Hard. And there was blood just…everywhere.” Her heart pounded, adrenaline from that night coursing fresh in her veins.