Bad Karma

She would leave.

His mind got ahead of logic, racing blindly into tomorrow, wondering what he could do to make her stay.

“Where did I learn something like that?” she asked airily, their bodies unable to get any closer, their minds unable to get any farther apart. “From one of my many lovers.”

He made a sound of frustration. He rolled away to sit on the edge of the bed, tossing the used rubber into the wastebasket. Then he lay back down beside her. Close, but not touching.

“You haven’t had many lovers,” he said, sensing she was lying again, hoping she was lying again.

“No?”

“No.”

“You don’t know anything about me. Except that I’m a con artist. Isn’t that what you called me? And if I’m a con artist, then it would probably stand to reason that I’ve slept with a lot of men.”

“Come on, Cleo. Don’t start this.”

“Are you actually trying to give me some redeeming qualities, qualities that two hours ago I didn’t have? Wow. Sex certainly changes everything. It can make saints out of sinners.” Her anger was building, pulsating in the small room. “Two hours ago I was the lowest lowlife in Egypt, Missouri. But now that you’ve had sex with me, well, I must not be the lowlife you thought I was.”

Is that what he’d done? Is that what had really happened here?

She rolled off the mattress and began to dress.

He slid across the bed, snatched his shorts off the floor. “What about you?” He buttoned and zipped. “You’ve done nothing but lie since you got here-even before you got here, with that blind stunt. You and your phony seances and all that spooky barn crap.” He brought up his hands to cup her face.

The chain around her neck caught the light. He linked his fingers around it, lifting the ring to her face. “What about this? You lied about this not a half hour ago.”

She shoved at his chest and pulled back at the same time. The necklace snapped. The ring went flying.

Daniel heard it hit the wall and fall with a ping to the wooden floor.

She didn’t take her eyes from his. “Do you want the truth?” She jabbed at his chest, at the very spot her lips had recently kissed. “I’ll give you the truth. That necklace? It belonged to my fiance. But he’s not alive anymore. You wanna know why? Because I killed him. Oh, not on purpose, but it was my fault.”

She was crying now, but he doubted she knew it. “That was four years ago, and I hadn’t had sex with anyone until you.” The last word was spat from her mouth, as if it were something vile.

Sweet Jesus. He tried to pull her into his arms, but she pushed him away.

“You’ve touched me enough,” she said. “Don’t touch me anymore.”

He put up both hands. “Okay, okay.”

She jerked open the bedroom door. Harsh light from the hallway hit him in the face, casting her in shadow. But enough light fell over the contours of her cheek for him to see the wetness there, for him to see that her lips were swollen from his kisses.

How had this happened? How had things gotten so out of control? They’d just made love. That was all. And yet it had triggered an avalanche of emotions. He hadn’t known that to touch her physically had meant to touch her mentally, pushing an already delicate psyche close to the edge. He knew guilt could wear a person down, could eat at a person’s soul until there was nothing left but fear and bitterness.

She turned and walked away with an air of slow dignity.

“Wait.” He caught a flicker of a shiny object on the floor near the foot of the bed. The ring. He picked it up, surprised at its lightness.

Lying in his palm was a fake gold ring. The kind of ring kids bought from gum machines, the kind whose size could be adjusted simply by squeezing.

Fresh doubt crept in.

Had the past five minutes been nothing but an act too? Had he finally fallen for her bullshit the way everyone else in town had?

He turned to go after Cleo, and his foot came in contact with the cold metal of the broken chain. He snatched it up and ran down the hall toward the living room.

She was gone.

Outside, heavy, icy raindrops hit him in the face, the sidewalk cold and wet under his bare feet.

He stopped and stared down the road. “Cleo!” he shouted into the darkness. “Don’t you want your ring?”

There was no answer. Only emptiness and the lonely patter of raindrops on the leaves above his head. He wouldn’t go after her. She would just elude him, the way she’d eluded him from the beginning. Maybe she did know something none of the rest of them knew. Maybe she could make herself disappear and appear at will.

He heard footsteps coming from the opposite direction and swung around, expecting to see Cleo emerging from the darkness. Instead, Beau appeared, Premonition at his heels, a smile on his face, the blue Tastee Delight cap turned backward. “Daniel!” he said, his voice holding joy at seeing his brother, as if Daniel’s presence were some remarkable treat. “What are you doing out here?”

Daniel curled his fingers around the ring. “Waiting for you,” he told Beau. “Waiting for you.”

Seeing Cleo’s dog-because he could only think of it as Cleo’s dog now-brought a fresh wave of misery to Daniel. Had he taken one of the only things she cared about?

Beau was too wired to sleep, Daniel too confused. Instead of going in the house, they sat in the wicker chairs on the front porch, Premonition at Beau’s feet, and listened to the rain.

Beau told him about all the hamburgers he’d prepared, and all the shakes he’d made, and how Matilda had let him clean out the shake machine after they closed.

Then he hit Daniel with something Daniel had never expected.

“If I had kids, would they be like me?”

Daniel’s heart almost stopped. He wiped a hand across his forehead, thinking fast. “Good-looking?”

Beau didn’t waver. “You know what I mean.”

Daniel did know what he meant.

The great security that came with growing up in a small town meant everybody had accepted Beau. Everybody liked him. Even though Beau knew he wasn’t like other people, Daniel had been thankful it had never seemed to bother him. Oh, there had been the time in second grade when Beau had been held back while his friends and classmates moved on. That had been tough.

In third grade it almost happened again. Instead, by some silent agreement, Beau moved on to the next grade with his new friends. He stayed with that class through middle school and high school, earning a diploma just like everybody else. That never would have been possible in a big city.

“Will they be different, like me?” Beau asked.

When Beau had a question, he wouldn’t let it go until he got a satisfactory answer, an answer he felt was fair. He would settle for nothing less than the truth. “When you were born, your oxygen was cut off for a little while. That changed something in your brain, so you have to work harder to learn things. But what happened wasn’t genetic. It isn’t something you have to worry about passing to your kids.”

That seemed to satisfy Beau.

A little later, when Daniel was lying in bed unable to sleep, his mind jumping from Cleo to Beau and back, a thought came to him. Was Beau thinking about getting married?

Chapter Twenty

Rain pounded the dark street, cooling the asphalt, running down Cleo’s face, plastering her hair to her head. She liked the feel of the cold rain on her skin, liked the way it absolved her of Daniel’s touch, erasing the imprint of his lips, his hands, his body. Why had she gone there?

You wanted him. You know you wanted him.

Yes.

As a child, she’d had urges to jump off high places. She’d wanted to experience the sensation of flight. But even at a young age she’d understood that there were risks involved. She understood that she could break a leg, or both