In our room at Baskens, sometime later in the night, I woke to use the bathroom. Back in bed, I was restless. Had my mother really said such a horrific thing to me, or had I, through the haze of years and bitterness, painted her more of a villain than she really was? Our minds were tricky things, manipulators of time and space, coloring events with our personal palette of rage, fear, or desire.
I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep, I thought, not now. And I couldn’t bear to lie here, being recorded by the extra cameras Cerny had hidden in our room. I decided to go outside, let the night air wash over me. Maybe I’d sit on the metal chaise on the patio, try to get a glimpse of the stars, and fall asleep there. Let Luca cover me with a quilt when he found me in the morning. I fumbled for my glasses, wrapped myself in the fuzzy throw from the foot of the bed, and crept down the stairs.
The moon was high and bright, and frost had crystallized on the velvet grass of the backyard. But between the two, just above the ground, a layer of fog hovered, wispy and spectral. At the far end of the yard, it shrouded the barn. Down the terraced levels to my left, it gathered thickly over the bird garden. How strange, that the sky above me should be so clear but down here, all was obscured.
It was cold and I was barefoot, but I felt myself pulled to the bird garden. Something worrying at the edges of my mind, an insistence. I picked my way past the vegetable beds and down to the redbud trees, each step filling me with greater dread, until the weight of it was as tangible as the mist I was passing through.
Just as the birdhouses materialized through the haze, I felt a lump of something under my bare foot—soft and solid at the same time. I jumped, then looked down to see a dead bird on the grass. My hand flew to my mouth, but then, after another moment, I had to adjust my glasses. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The grass beneath the birdhouses was strewn with dead birds. Dozens of them.
I was standing in a graveyard.
Friday, October 19
Night
In the bathroom of Mama June’s restaurant, I press against the floral-papered wall. But the three women don’t even look my way. Chattering nonstop, they head to the single sink and crowd around it. One woman, with long, carefully curled red ringlets and a knee-length crocheted vest, jabbers as she washes up.
“I told her, I said, ‘Dee, if you don’t do something, he’s just going to stay up all night looking at porn, chatting with those inter-sluts.’”
“Inter-sluts,” cackles another, yanking paper towels out of the dispenser.
“Lord, Natasha,” the third one says. “That man is not chatting with women. He’s a pastor.”
They rotate places. Natasha flips back her curls and points a French-manicured finger at her friend who’s now at the sink. “That man hasn’t stuck it in her in over six months. Mark it, he’s either sticking it somewhere else or talking about it. You know as well as I do, you gotta watch them pastors.”
When they’re finally finished, I follow them back into the restaurant. Natasha and her friends settle at a table in front of the long, plastic-shielded buffet where three men—their husbands, I guess—are working on plates of pie, locked in on the boxy TV.
I sit at a small table a couple of yards away. There’s a check printout and a five-dollar bill near a plate with a couple of soggy fries in a pool of ketchup and an uneaten biscuit. I pull the iPad out and start to open it, then stop.
Across the room, Natasha has her arm draped around a man I recognize. Round, shiny face, swoop of mud-brown hair. Dr. Reggie Teague. The face is the same, but he looks different from when I last saw him. He’s not dressed in a suit and bow tie or wearing the preppy glasses.
He’s wearing a firefighter’s uniform. All three of the men are.
I am shaking now. Reggie Teague, or whoever this man is, is a firefighter. Not a therapist who was called back to Dunfree on a family emergency. Not Matthew Cerny’s jovial associate.
I’m shaking so hard, I’m not even sure I can move. I close my eyes and try to slow my breath. If I have a panic attack in this diner, Reggie Teague will see me. I’m not sure where his loyalties lie—how deeply involved in this thing he is or how far he might go to protect his own interests—but I can’t risk getting caught. If he stops me from getting to the police station, I’m done. This much I know.
I resist the biscuit, despite my gnawing hunger, but I slip the five-dollar bill out from under the plate. The familiar act of self-preservation gives me a boost of adrenaline, which turns out to be the necessary motivation to get my legs working. I stand up as inconspicuously as I can and make for the door.
The bell jangles, and back in the restaurant I hear Reggie and his two firefighter buddies cheer lustily in response to something wonderful that just happened on the TV.
Chapter Twenty
Thursday, October 18
The Day Before
Heath’s breakfast dishes were already cleared from our room. My plate, still covered, waited on the table.
I yawned. The clock said it was past ten—which was hard to fathom. I hadn’t slept this late in years. I nestled farther under the covers, warm and contented, until a wave of nameless anxiety washed over me. I bolted up, remembering last night.
The fog. All those dead birds.
When my brain had finally registered what I was looking at, I’d bitten back my screams and run back to the house. I’d woken Heath and told him what I’d seen. He explained that it was probably a coyote or some other predator that had gotten after them, that I should try and get some sleep, and he’d tell Cerny about it in the morning. I was so distraught I’d almost told him about the Sinatra song I’d heard in the hallway. But I stopped myself. Something told me it wasn’t a good idea.
Maybe it was the fact that Luca and I had been together when we’d heard the song—sneaking around the house like some kind of detective duo—and Heath might misread the situation. Or maybe I worried he was beginning to doubt my stability. Last night, as I’d ranted about the dead birds, the expression on his face had seemed so patient. So completely unconcerned, like dead birds in the yard were an entirely normal situation, and he was merely allowing my neuroses to spin themselves out.
He’d held me until I’d finally fallen asleep, which hadn’t been until around three in the morning, reassuring me that everything was fine. His voice had remained calm. The voice of reason in the midst of my hysteria.
I returned to bed and drifted back to sleep almost instantly. When I awoke again, light in the room had shifted, and the room shimmered in the cold. I burrowed deeper under the blankets and looked up at the ceiling, at the unseen camera that was, no doubt, recording me. I felt the tension creeping back into my neck and shoulders. I needed to run. I needed to sweat, to feel my heart swelling and pounding like it was going to explode. To feel my jaw ache with the lack of oxygen, taste the trace of blood in my mouth.
I rolled over and looked at the clock. One forty. I cursed aloud. Glenys and I were supposed to meet at two thirty at the top of the mountain, that’s what we’d agreed at the creek yesterday. She’d be glad to hear I’d finally talked to Heath and told him everything about Chantal. And she’d probably want to hear the story too. I owed her that much. If it wasn’t for her, I didn’t think I would’ve ever been brave enough to come clean with Heath. If I threw on clothes now and sprinted up the mountain, I’d only be a few minutes late.