Lanny rabbits ahead, but I catch up at the end of the gravel drive, and we head east on the road at a good, loose lope. It’s a perfect time of day, with the air warm, the sun low and friendly, the lake calm and dotted with boats. Other joggers pass us heading the other direction, and I open up the pace, Lanny pulling easily up. Neighbors wave at us from porches. So friendly. I wave back, but it’s all surface, this trust. I know if these good people knew who I really was, knew whom I’d married, they’d be just like our old neighbors . . . distrustful, disgusted, afraid to be anywhere near us. And maybe they’d be right to be afraid. Melvin Royal casts a long, dark shadow.
We’re halfway around the lake before Lanny, gasping, calls a halt to lean against a swaying pine. I’m not winded yet, but my calf muscles are burning and the points of my hips ache, and I stretch and keep up a light in-place jog while my daughter catches her breath. “You okay?” I ask. Lanny gives me a filthy look. “That’s a yes?”
“Sure,” Lanny says. “Whatever. Why do we have to make this so Olympic-level?”
“You know why.”
Lanny looks away. “Same reason you signed me up with that Krav Maga freak last year.”
“I thought you liked Krav Maga.”
She shrugs, still studying some fronds down by her shoes. “I don’t like thinking I need it.”
“Neither do I, baby. But we have to face facts. There are dangers out there, and we need to be ready. You’re old enough to get that.”
Lanny straightens up. “Okay. Guess I’m ready. Try not to run me lame this time, Terminator Mom.”
That’s hard for me. While I was still Gina, but after The Event, I’d taken up running, and it had been grueling and exhausting until I built up my strength. Now, when I stop holding myself back, I run like I feel breath on my neck, as if I’m running for my life. It’s not healthy or safe, and I’m well aware that driving myself that hard is a form of self-punishment, and also an expression of the fear I live with every day.
I forget, despite my best efforts. I’m not even aware of Lanny falling back, gasping, limping, until I’m around a curve and realize that I’m running alone in the shadow of the pines. Not even sure where I lost her.
I end up stretching against a tree and, finally, perching on a handy old boulder as I wait. I see her in the distance, walking slowly, limping a bit, and I feel a surge of guilt. What kind of a mother am I, running a kid into the ground like that?
That sixth sense I’ve developed suddenly drenches me in adrenaline, and I straighten up and turn my head.
Someone’s there.
I catch sight of a person standing in the shadows of the pines, and my nerves—never calm—go tight. I slide off the boulder and into a ready stance, and I face the shadow head-on. “Who is it?”
He gives me a dry, nervous laugh and shuffles out. It’s an old man, skin like dark, dry paper, gray whiskers, gray curls tight against his scalp. Even his ears droop. He leans heavily on a cane. “Sorry, miss. Wasn’t meaning to worry you. I was just looking at the boats. Always like the lines of them. Never was much of a sailor, though. I spent my time on dry land.” He wears an old jacket with military patches on it . . . artillery patches. Not World War II, but Korea, Vietnam, one of those less clear-cut conflicts. “I’m Ezekiel Claremont, live right over there up the hill. Been here since half forever. Everybody this side of the lake calls me Easy.”
I’m ashamed for assuming the worst, and I advance and offer my hand. He has a firm, dry grip, but his bones feel fragile beneath it. “Hi, Easy. I’m Gwen. We live up over there, near the Johansens.”
“Aw, yeah, you’re some new folks. Nice to meet you. Sorry I haven’t been up that way, but I don’t do as much walking these days. Still healing up since I broke my hip six months back. Don’t get old, young lady—it’s a pain in the ass.” He turns as Lanny lurches to a stop a few feet away and braces herself, bent over with her hands on her thighs. “Hello. You okay, there?”
“Fine,” Lanny gasps. “Peachy. Hi.”
I don’t quite laugh. “This is my daughter, Atlanta. Everybody calls her Lanny. Lanny, this is Mr. Claremont. Easy, for short.”
“Atlanta? I was born in Atlanta. Fine city, full of life and culture. Miss it sometimes.” Mr. Claremont nods decisively to Lanny, who returns the gesture after a guarded look at me. “Well, I’d better get myself on home. Takes me a while to get up that hill. My daughter keeps after me to sell my place and move somewhere easier to get around, but I’m not ready to give up this view just yet. You know what I mean?”
I do. “You going to be okay?” I ask, because I can see his house, and it’s an impressive distance uphill for a man with a bad hip and a cane.
“Fine, fine, thank you. I’m old, not decrepit. Not yet. Besides, the doctor says it’s good for me.” He laughs. “What’s good for you never feels good, my experience.”
“Boy, is that true,” Lanny agrees. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Claremont.”
“Easy,” he says, starting his way up the hill. “You run safe, now!”
“We will,” I say, then turn a sweaty grin on my daughter. “Race you the rest of the way.”
“Come on! I’m practically dead here!”
“Lanny.”
“I’ll walk, thanks. You run if you want.”
“I was kidding.”
“Oh.”
2
We’ve almost made it home again when my phone pings with a text message. It’s an anonymous number, and hackles immediately go stiff at the back of my neck. I come to a stop and step off the road. Lanny gleefully jogs on by.
I swipe and open. It’s from Absalom; it has his cryptic little text signature as the first character: ?. Then, Are you anywhere near Missoula?
He never asks exactly where we are, and I never tell. I type back, Why?
Somebody’s posted a thing. Looks like they got it wrong. I’ll try to head off and divert. Bad for whoever they’re tagging. CY?.
That was Absalom’s standard signoff, and sure enough, no more pings arrive. I assume he uses disposable phones, just as I do; his number changes every month like clockwork, always unrecognizable, though his symbol usage is totally consistent. I can’t afford that many burners, so mine stays the same for six months at a time, the kids’ phones for a year. A little stability in an unstable world.
The second that someone gets close, though, I burn everything—phones, e-mail accounts, everything. If there’s a second close call around our location, Absalom notifies me, and we pack up and go. That’s been our routine for the past few years now. It sucks, but we’re used to it.
We have to be used to it.
I realize I’m looking forward to receiving that treasured concealed carry permit in the mail with an almost physical hunger. I’m not one of those jackasses who feel the need to strap an AR15 to their back to pick up groceries; those people live in a dystopian fantasy where they’re the heroes in a world full of threats. I understand them, in a way. They feel powerless, in a world full of uncertainty. But it’s still a fantasy.
I live in the real world, where I know that the only thing that stands between me and a thriving, violent, organized bunch of angry men could be the sidearm I carry. I don’t need or want to advertise that fact. I don’t want to use it. But I’m ready and willing.
I’m fully committed to our survival.
Lanny’s celebrating wildly up ahead, and I let her have her victory. We stop at the mailbox for the day’s haul of mostly junk mail. Lanny’s stopped limping by now, charley horse smoothed away, but she continues to pace as I sort through the envelopes. I’m just a couple in when I realize that someone’s walking toward us down the road, and I feel my body shift into a balanced stance, a different state of alertness.
It’s the man from the gun range, the one who’d de-escalated Carl Getts from murder to general mayhem. Sam. I’m surprised to see him here, on foot. Have I ever glimpsed him around here before? Maybe at a distance. He looks vaguely familiar in this context. I must have seen him out walking or jogging, like so many others.
He continues walking in our direction, hands in his pockets, headphones in. When he sees me watching him, he gives me a vague wave and nod and keeps walking right past us, heading the opposite of the route we took around the lake. I keep my attention fixed on him until he goes over the slight rise that branches off to the upper homes—the Johansens’, a little above ours, then Officer Graham’s place—and he disappears. Just taking a walk. But where is he coming from?