He sat down in a kitchen chair, then leaned forward to tug the gun from the back of his pants and set it on the table. His face was so young, but those wire-rimmed glasses gave him an owlish look. With his pale skin and high-and-tight haircut, he had the earnest look of a missionary. I said nothing. I could only hold his gaze and wait for him to go on.
“Now’s a good time to get out, Jill,” he said. His voice had grown so quiet that the low syllables bumped against each other like marbles, but his meaning was clear enough. “Remember what I said to you about Randy.”
Fear prickled at the back of my neck. “What’s going on?”
“If I knew I’d tell you. I figured you knew more than I did. You live here.” He glanced up at the landing again. “I don’t think they trust me enough anymore to say. But I know they’re not watching the property twenty-four-seven because they’re worried over Eddy. That never even came up.”
I felt panic tightening my chest as I pictured TJ fast asleep in the laundry basket beside the bed, clad only in a diaper and a thin white undershirt, and the keys to the Jeep in the pocket of Cade’s dirty jeans. I had waited much too long to make my escape plans, as if this moment would never come, when all along I knew it would. “Well, what
“It has to do with getting retribution for Elias, that’s all I know. If I knew details none of us would be here now. Maybe I would have turned him in already.” At the sight of my fearful gaze he lowered his voice to a conciliatory whisper. “I’m sure they won’t do anything till after your kid gets his ear thing done. Cade loves his son and all. I know he’s planning to be around for that. But if I were you I would go straight to Randy’s from there. I wouldn’t mess around.”
“Have you said anything to anyone? The police?”
“No, they wouldn’t do anything. There’s plenty of people up here who make that same kind of noise. I’d get thrown under the bus for it, and they’d think it was nothing special. Except Cade always wants to be the special one. That’s the one difference, I guess.”
I sat down wearily in the chair closest to his and rested my temple against my hand, gazing out the window at the Jeep. Crescents of moonlight reflected off the curve around its headlights, a sharp glint against the darkness.
“I understood it at first,” said Scooter. “When the government isn’t just, people
In my life I haven’t felt a great deal of regret, but I felt it then. It was like a dissolving in the pit of my stomach, a sense of waste and lost time. The seam of my shorts felt damp from Cade, and again I pictured him dozing upstairs, peaceful and complacent with no right to be so, draped half over my side of the bed. As the regret moved through me I felt it trailed by a fresh burst of anger: at what a stooge he had made me, how easily I had mistaken his ambition for character, and how now I would have to scrap this life and cobble together a new one, again—but this time with a child who deserved better. The thoughts twisted together into a tight bundle of rage. But I needed to push that down for now. Throwing my energy into the chaos of anger would only make things harder for my son.
“Thanks, Scooter,” I said. I looked away from the window and into his eyes, nervous and grave as they were. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you trust me like this.”
He shrugged his narrow shoulders and rubbed at a smudge on his gun. “You know what, Jill, I hate feeling like a snitch. The rights and the wrongs here run together until I don’t know for sure which is which anymore. But the one thing I know is, the whole reason Elias was in Afghanistan was to fight the ones who brought down buildings full of innocent people on 9/11. So if somebody says they’re going to go and do that same kind of thing in Elias’s name, I’m going to speak up. If I follow that way through it, doing what seems right and logical, I guess I can feel okay when it’s over.”
I nodded, but more than anything I wondered what those last three words would mean.
As the sun rose the following morning I lay quietly beside Cade, listening to the peaceful rhythm of his breathing. I wondered how I was going to get through the next days, living alongside him knowing all that Scooter had told me, wondering every moment if my words or actions would give away my plan to leave him. I felt my mind shuttling itself into survival mode—locking its doors, sealing its windows with tape, filling up the bathtub with water to last the duration—doing whatever would help it press through the day ahead, accomplishing what needed to be done without incurring further damage. Once Cade had left for work, I loaded TJ into his car seat and drove over to the U-Store-It. Any calls I made from the little office would be listed on the phone bill, but I figured by the time the family received it, I would be gone.
I let myself in with my key, and dialed. Dave picked up on the third ring.
“Jill,” he said, and even over the fuzzy connection I heard happiness in the way his voice lifted. “Been wondering how you’ve been. What’s going on?”
My laugh was short and hard. “Things with Cade aren’t going so great. I need to get out. Like, Wednesday.”
“Oh, jeez. Well, you know you can come here whenever you need. Come now if you want.”
Silently I started to cry. My throat grew too tight to speak, and I moved the receiver away from my mouth so he wouldn’t hear my breathing. TJ twisted the long, curling cord between his fists, catching my hair in his grasp and pulling painfully, but I didn’t care. I could go home now. There was an end to this, and it was Wednesday.
“Can you get down here?” he asked into my silence. “You need gas money or anything? I can wire it to you. Where are you, New Hampshire?”
“Yeah.” I forced an even breath, then said, “My son is having surgery on Wednesday. I can’t leave till after that, but it’s outpatient. Cade will get a ride in to work once it’s over so I can keep the car in case there’s any complications later and I need to take him back in. But my plan is to leave straight from the hospital and just keep driving.”
“Wow. Sounds like things are pretty bad over there.”
I blurted a quick, humorless laugh at the understatement. “I can’t even tell you, Dave.”
“Is he beating you? What is it?”
I couldn’t let Dave know the details—not this way, over the phone. If I told him what Scooter had said to me he would probably leave Southridge before the call had ended and show up at my door, throwing everything into disorder. So I only said, “I’ll explain when I get there.”
There was a long silence across the phone line. Then Dave said, “Jill, let me come up and get you. I don’t like the sound of all this. Sounds like you could use a backup in case something goes wrong.”
“No, don’t go to all that trouble. Just be at camp when I get there.”
“Uh-uh. No. The most dangerous time for a woman in your position is when you try to leave. That’s when people get killed.” I heard drawers opening and slamming shut. “I got a pen. Give me an address where to meet you.”
I thought about the tires on the Jeep, worn almost bald. It was a long way down the state, through all the long stretches of woods and past so many abandoned houses and motels, miles between towns. If I broke down and he came looking for me, I’d have no place to go. I said, “The hospital.”
“Where your kid’s having his surgery, you mean?”
“Yeah, in Laconia. I’ll meet you in front of the emergency room. I’ll try to be there at noon. We should be done by then.”
He wrote down the information I offered him, asking for specifics about the door I’d come out from and what the family members looked like, just in case. As I spoke I saw Dodge’s long black truck pull up in front of the office. I slammed down the phone and moved toward the door, holding TJ across my chest with his head cradled in my hand. Dodge sauntered toward the door, keys in hand, with Scooter close behind him.
“Didn’t expect to find anybody here,” he said. “Something going on?”
“No. Just using the phone. The pharmacy got TJ’s prescription all mixed up. Had to call the doc.”
Dodge’s gaze was cool and narrow. I hiked TJ higher on my shoulder and asked, “You need any help, as long as I’m here?”
