bed with our son?”
I recalled what Barry had told me, what Donna had supposedly confessed to her sister. That she’d slept with the neighbor.
Maybe she hadn’t been exaggerating after all.
Ellen opened the fridge, took out two bottles of white wine, set them on the counter. She got the corkscrew out of the drawer and opened both of them. Christ almighty, I thought, how much is she planning to drink?
She unwound the corks from the corkscrew, tossed them across the counter, then turned both bottles upside down over the sink and drained them. “I need my mind clear to get myself through this,” she said.
If she wanted to be the rock from here on, that was okay by me.
She stood the empty bottles back on the counter, turned to me, and said, “I think we’re being punished.”
“What?”
“For things we’ve done, or not done, in the past. What’s happened to us now, it’s some kind of retribution. We’re being made to pay.”
I asked, “I don’t get you. For things we’ve done in this life, or past ones?”
She walked out of the kitchen without answering.
It was another sleepless night, at least for me. For most of it, I stared at the ceiling, unable to see anything but my son in a cell. This was his third night behind bars, away from us, and it still didn’t seem possible that all of this was happening to our family.
I was only able to stop worrying about one thing when I moved on to worry about another. I couldn’t seem to focus on any one aspect of our troubles because there seemed to be so many of them.
Derek, of course, was my primary concern. But because I remained convinced he was not responsible for the Langleys’ deaths, my thoughts kept returning to what might have actually happened there that night, and who pulled the trigger.
One thought that kept coming back to me was whether the murder of the Langleys was a mistake. Not in the obvious sense. Of course it was a mistake; a tragedy, a horrific event.
I was thinking a different kind of mistake.
And about our mailbox. With our name on it. And no mailbox with the name “Langley” on it.
What if the Langleys’ killer, or killers, had gone to the wrong door? Was it possible our house had been the target? And if so, why?
That computer. I always kept coming back to that computer. It had been given to Derek, and now it was missing. Maybe, whoever killed the Langleys assumed they’d found the right house, because what they were looking for was there.
And maybe it was all bullshit. I wished I were confident that if I went to Barry and laid this all out for him, he’d at least consider it. But the chances of that happening now were somewhere between nil and zilch.
After we turned out the lights, Ellen put her head on her pillow, and moments later, I could hear her taking tissues out of the box on her bedside table. She cried herself to sleep, and I held her until she stopped. I rolled over and pushed my face into the pillow. I figured if I could muffle my own crying, I would not wake her.
The priority, as we both saw it the next morning, was seeing Derek and his lawyer and finding out what the hell was going on. But setting that as a goal, and actually being able to do anything about it, were two entirely different things. We divvied up duties in the morning. Ellen was on the phone first thing, trying to set up a visit to the jail, checking in with Natalie Bondurant.
She couldn’t reach anyone at the jail with the authority to set up a visit, and Natalie wasn’t available to take her call.
So we could spin our wheels all day, or try to get some other things done.
I decided to go to work. Ellen could reach me on my cell if something happened. She’d make a trip to the bank and start going through the process of cashing in some, or possibly all, of our retirement savings. It wasn’t as though we had hundreds of thousands of dollars set aside. Like most people, we often found ourselves struggling with our week-to-week obligations, and figured we’d deal with the financial needs of our golden years by purchasing a winning lottery ticket.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said to her as I prepared to go outside.
Before I got in my truck, I checked that I had everything I needed. The gas cans were full, the mowers and weed trimmers were in the back, my cell was turned on. I had my cooler with a sandwich, a piece of fruit, and several bottles of water. Not fancy, store-bought, bottled water, but tap water in bottles that once held the fancy stuff. Finally, I threw a metal watering can into the pickup bed, not something I usually brought along with me, but I thought it might come in handy today.
I’d promised my new employee to pick him up by eight, so one other stop I wanted to make that morning, one I hadn’t mentioned to Ellen, would have to come after. But I wanted to make it before I got sweaty and had tiny bits of grass stuck to my neck.
Drew Lockus was right where I expected him to be, standing on the corner out front of his mother’s house, paper bag in hand. Had he been a hitchhiker, I might not have been inclined to pick him up. Short and solid, those thick arms straining at his shirtsleeves, eyes set deep under a heavy brow, he had a bit of a Cro-Magnon thing going on.
I hoped I wasn’t making a mistake here. It was an impulsive decision, asking him whether he wanted some work. But what were the odds he’d turn out to be a worse employee than Stuart Yost, Heat Rash Boy?
Drew had been in the right place at the right time, as far as I was concerned. I don’t subscribe much to the belief that things happen for a reason, that there’s some higher power at the controls, directing all of us like we’re in some cosmic summer-stock production. Shit just happens is more or less my philosophy. I’m more a cause-and- effect guy. I believe one thing leads to another.
I didn’t believe in destiny, but I was grateful that the gods, who’d been so angry with me lately, had decided to cut me some slack and place Drew in my vicinity when the tractor had landed on my leg. I certainly wouldn’t have been rescued by that dipshit idiot of a reporter, or his driver.
Ellen, when I told her the night before how I’d met Drew, suggested fate had played a hand. Maybe we’d been drawn together so that he could save me from losing a leg when the tractor came down on me. Or maybe, she speculated, our paths had crossed so he could save us from a greater peril.
This time, I told her, you’re the one talking out of your ass.
I was feeling pretty sore this morning. My leg had throbbed all night, and my face and gut were still sore from Lance’s pounding. But there wasn’t much I could do about that. I couldn’t phone in to myself and say I was sick. I had to make a living. I had to help my son.
Drew opened the passenger door and got in. “Hey,” he said.
“Morning,” I said. “I see you brought a lunch. If you want, you can tuck it in my cooler, behind the seat there.” Drew, who didn’t yet have his seatbelt on, looked around, found the cooler, opened it up, and dropped his lunch in. “You’re welcome to share my water, too,” I said.
“Thanks,” Drew said. “I guess I should have thought of that.”
“Not a problem. Most houses have a hose hooked up to the side anyway, if we need a drink. And some people, at least the ones who aren’t miserable pricks, if they’re home, they offer you a drink, especially on a hot day like this.”
“That’s good,” Drew said. He studied me. “What happened to your face?”
“Oh,” I said, reaching up to it without actually touching it. “I had a little run-in with a former associate.” I hung a right, aimed the truck toward the downtown.
“That’s some shiner you got there,” he said.
“I kind of wasn’t ready.”
I thought Drew might ask for details, but instead he said, “Where’s our first place?”
“Up on Culver. But I’ve got one stop before that. Down at city hall.”
“Forget to pay your property taxes?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” I said.
Promise Falls is too large to be called quaint, but it’s a pretty city, lots of historic architecture, a river running
