Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy

She sits in the back nursing Max.

'I could eat.'

'Best barbeque joint on the planet is just ahead. How about we stop there? Besides, the car’s running hot.'

'Fine. I need to change Max anyway.'

I pull the Kites’ Impala into the crowded parking lot of Lexington Barbeque # 1.

We walk together, like a family, to the back of the line that snakes out of the front doors.

'Whole fuckin’ town’s here tonight,' Vi says.

'Yeah, well, it’s what they call good eatin’.'

The evening is muggy and clear, and the hickory-fueled fire inside the kitchen spits the sweetest-smelling smoke up the chimney and out into the cooling night, no greater tease in the world if you’re hungry.

As we inch toward the doors, I glance at the families who’ve come out for their Friday night dinner, innocuous and tame, a cheery hopeless bunch, moving orderly and herd-like toward the feeding trough. They talk of church and jobs and things they want to buy at Wal-Mart. They feel so ordinary and safe.

We finally make it inside, find a pair of vacant stools at the counter, and order two large plates. They come in a hurry—chopped pork shoulder, red slaw, hushpuppies, and tall Styrofoam cups of sweet tea. I haven’t had western-style North Carolina barbeque in ages, and it’s better than I remember it.

I finish long before Vi and ask for a piece of peach cobbler.

Max squirms in her lap, making it difficult for her to eat.

'Let me hold him for you,' I offer, taking the infant under his arms and lifting him into my lap. I dandle Max on my leg and he smiles.

An older woman on her way to the cash register stops and makes silly faces at him.

The waitress brings my cobbler and a scoop of vanilla ice cream that has already begun to melt. As I stab my fork into a steaming peach slice, Vi says, 'I’ve been thinking.'

'Yeah?'

'About what I’m going to say happened. I mean, this is all I’ve thought about in the car today.'

She glances over her shoulder and then continues, her voice lower, barely more than a whisper above the din of restaurant noise.

'I leave you in a motel in Davidson tonight. We have just enough cash left. Then I go home. I’m sure Max thinks I’m dead. Everyone’ll want to know what happened. It’ll be crazy. I’ll tell them most of the truth. About Rufus and Maxine. About Luther.'

'About Portsmouth?'

'What good would that do? I’ll make you a hero, Andy. Say you saved our lives, but that I left you in Ocracoke. Took the car, got the hell out of there. No one will question me running after what I’ve been through. I dare them to.

'And tomorrow, I find a way to come to you. I’ll bring money. We have some savings, enough to get you home, back to your paradise.'

'Vi—'

'Shut up, Andy. This’ll work. You’re innocent. I know that now. But to everyone else, you’re the Heart Surgeon. They don’t know about Orson. What he made you do. All they know is your face, the Washington Boxes, bodies dug up at your home on Lake Norman, the rumors, the—'

'You think I’m innocent, Vi? Think you are?'

Vi glares at me as if I’ve slapped her. She takes Max and storms out of the restaurant. I leave a twenty with the check under my ice-filled cup and follow her back to the car.

She’s sitting in the front passenger seat when I climb behind the wheel and close the door. We stare through the bug-splattered windshield at families lumbering toward the restaurant.

'Andy,' she says, her voice holding at a whisper, as though volume might break it, 'you tell me right now what else we were supposed to do.'

'I don’t know.'

'Well, I have to know that what I did to that poor boy—'

'There are no answers, Vi. All I’m saying is we aren’t innocent. Me especially. You had a son to protect. You did it for Max. I did it for me.'

'But they’d have killed him if you didn’t—'

'I’m telling you, Vi, I did it for me.'

She lifts Max up so that his tiny head rests on her shoulder. His eyes begin to glaze and close. He sleeps.

'Only way I’m gonna be able to go on, is if I know there was no other way. That I had to do it. That my son would’ve died if I didn’t.'

'Then believe that. But I’ve had enough.'

'What are you talking about?'

'I can’t go back to Haines Junction and pretend like none of this happened. Hide in the woods till I’m eighty. I’ve killed two people in my life, Vi. Because I was scared of dying. Orson and Rufus were right about me—'

'Andy—'

'No. They were. That’s the kind of man I am. I have murder in my heart. But so do you. So does that little girl walking between her parents. So does your sleeping baby boy.'

'I don’t believe that.'

'Fine. Believe whatever it takes so you can look yourself in the mirror and not shudder. I can’t anymore. That’s why I’m doing this.'

Her voice quivers: 'Doing what?'

I hand Vi the car keys.

'Surrendering. To you. Right now. I want you to take me to your precinct tonight. I’m done, Vi.'

'Are you crazy?'

Her voice wakes Max. The baby emits a feeble cry.

'You want to go to prison?'

'Think that’s how it’ll end up?'

'Andy, it won’t be too difficult for them to pin murders on you you didn’t do, considering where they found some of those bodies.'

'I don’t care. I’m going to tell them the truth. What they do with me is out of my control.'

'You gonna tell them about Portsmouth?'

'I’m going to tell them the truth, Vi.'

Crying now, 'About me killing that boy?'

'I don’t know.'

'Andy, please. Let me help you. You feel like this right now, but will you feel like this for the next fifteen years? Or the rest of your life? Do you honestly want to rot in prison?'

I sigh, lean back into the warm vinyl, the summer sky now fading into dusk. I can’t imagine next week. Can’t even see tomorrow. I could cry, but I don’t.

'Look, if I don’t do this, I won’t last. I’ll get up to the Yukon, kill myself. I’m close to it now. I want to. There’s comfort in the idea of it. Please do this for me, Vi. Please.'

# # #

Vi guides us home—64 to Statesville, I-77 to Davidson. I sit in the passenger seat holding Max, asleep in my arms, watching rivers of carlight streaming south toward Charlotte.

As we cross Lake Norman, rimmed with the light of wealth, I think of my old home, glowing somewhere out there in a distant cove.

Vi reaches over, steadies my hands.

# # #

The knot in my stomach tightens when she veers onto Exit 30. I shut my eyes, feel the car come to rest at the stoplight. Ten seconds. Accelerating again. Turning left. Cruising through Davidson, the college close now. In the autumn, I’d take a manuscript and spread a blanket out on the grass of its lovely campus, surrounded by those tall, molting trees.