“Your sister, of course. Rosie. I’m certain she can tell you things that I cannot. It’s not my place. I’m sorry.”
With that, he said good-bye one last time. I stepped back from the car, watched him drive out of the lot and away down the road, his trunk drooping with the weight of those boxes. When he was gone, I walked to the Jeep. The moment I opened the door, Dereck started talking, “I got here just as that guy was walking into the church.”
“That guy,” I told him, “is the parish priest.”
“Oh. Well, I saw him head inside, then I started in too. But it sounded like you were having a pretty heavy conversation, so I waited out here until you were done.”
So my ear wasn’t playing tricks after all, I thought. I had heard the church door open and close. “But how did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t. After I left your sister, I stopped at the farm to grab another pair of boots. I kept thinking about you, Sylvie, wondering what you’d done after we drove off. So I went to that field, only you were gone. When I was driving back and passed the church, I remembered asking if you’d been back here so I wondered if this is where you might have gone.”
By then, it was completely dark. The air carried a chill. I glanced at the clock on Dereck’s dashboard. Sixty-one hours and forty minutes remaining. Walking home would be a waste of time, and if the conversation with Coffey had done anything, it heightened my sense that I needed to stop wasting it. I climbed up onto the passenger seat and was about to buckle my seat belt when I felt something beneath me. A pair of gloves, I saw when I pulled them out. The interior lights glowed enough for me to make out flecks of something on the material. Before I could look closer, Dereck reached out his hand with the missing fingers and snatched those gloves from me, shoving them under his seat. I said nothing, leaving my seat belt unbuckled instead. As we pulled out of the lot, streetlamps cast shifting shadows over our faces. For some time, that Jeep rolled along, neither of us speaking. Finally, Dereck said, “It’s turkey blood. I left my regular gloves in the pockets of the coat I gave you. So I grabbed a spare pair at the farm.”
I reached in his coat that I was still wearing. Sure enough, his gloves were inside. “I thought you didn’t slaughter the turkeys until Thanksgiving?”
“We’re only six days away, Sylvie. We do some each day. Makes no sense, I know, to go through the effort to buy a fresh one, only to freeze it first. But people don’t care, and we’ve got a lot of birds to slaughter.”
I looked at Dereck’s hands on the steering wheel, at his handsome face in the shifting light.
“You’re trying to figure it out, aren’t you?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Then go for it. Make a guess.”
I was quiet, thinking of all that I really was trying to figure out. At last, I gave him what he wanted. “A firecracker went off in your hand at a Fourth of July party.”
“Now you’re getting somewhere, Sylvie. It happened at a party. That’s the closest you’ve come.”
We reached Butter Lane, and Dereck made the turn. After passing the empty lots, he pulled into my driveway. Same as it had since Halloween night, the basement light glowed. The rest of the house was dark, Rose’s truck gone. “Where’s my sister?”
“Don’t know. Not my problem anymore. We broke it off.”
The news was the smallest of so many disappointments that day. And yet, it poked at something inside. Now I’d only see Dereck at the farm if he happened to be outside when I passed. After Thanksgiving came and went, he’d go back to just working at the garage, and I wouldn’t see him at all.
“So,” he said, flashing his wolfish teeth in the dark. “Do you finally want to know how I lost my fingers?”
I told him I did.
“First you have to admit that you couldn’t figure it out on your own.”
“I admit it.”
“See, Sylvie. And you’re still here just the same. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t always know all the answers.”
It will be soon, I thought, glancing at the dashboard clock.
“Well, here goes. The fall after graduation, when everyone was home for Thanksgiving, one of my buddy’s parents went out of town. So we got the idea to throw a party. Not just any old lame kegger; what we wanted was a rager people would remember. A reunion blowout. All the guys from every team I ever played on were invited along with their girlfriends. Plus, all my Honors Society buddies were there. For once, everyone got along. Word got out and tons of people crashed. Your sister was there, too, with her friend. Rose was lucky to walk away without getting hurt the way a lot of us did. She never mentioned any of this to you?”
I shook my head.