Blood on My Hands

CHAPTER 45

Saturday 8:37 P.M.

IT’S DARK AND the rain is coming down hard. My hair is soaked. As I walk across a parking lot, water drips down my neck and sends chills as it runs down my back. My feet are soaked and cold from stepping into puddles. The smell of fish and ocean is in my nose as I pull open a door. This is the twelfth bar I’ve gone into. The odor of stale beer is in the air. Yellowish light inside illuminates half a dozen grizzled men hunched over drinks. TVs on the walls at either end show a baseball game.
I peer through the gloomy shadows at the booths along the walls, expecting the same result as I got at the past eleven places. But there’s one person sitting in a booth by himself, wearing a baseball cap. It’s dark in here and I can’t be sure, but it could be him.
A moment later I’m standing beside the booth. On the table are an empty shot glass, a half-finished beer, and a laptop computer with a ragged piece of tape where my photo used to be. Feeling a presence nearby, he glances up casually, then does a major-league double take. He looks utterly astonished as I slide into the booth, across from him, then reach over the table and take his hand in mine.
“You … you remembered,” he says.
I nod. “That night you called, so excited.”
He lifts the baseball cap off his head, then replaces it, as if he needed to let the heat out. “They let you go?”
“Uh-huh. Aren’t you happy to see me?”
He looks surprised, than squeezes my hand. “Oh, yeah! I mean, yes, of course I’m happy about that, Cal. It’s just …”
“Just what?”
Instead of answering, he changes the subject. “I heard they were trying to get you to claim it was self-defense.”
“I would have … for you. But they didn’t press charges.”
Slade’s eyes go blank. I thought he’d be happy to hear that, happy to see me, but now his forehead bunches. “You … didn’t agree to say it was self-defense?”
“I just told you I didn’t have to. Aren’t you happy? Slade, I don’t understand what’s going on. Why did you leave? I thought you said you were going to stay.”
He gazes at me with eyes that turn sad, then places his other hand over mine. Now both of mine are in both of his and he leans over the table and presses his forehead against my knuckles. It seems as if he’s just realized something. What is it he’s not telling me? I wonder. What is it that I still don’t know? But now that I’m with him, I don’t have to press. He’ll tell me when he’s ready. “So that’s the deal. It’s okay. I’m glad you came. Really, you don’t know how happy I am to see you.”
“You don’t sound happy,” I tell him.
He leans back in the booth, takes a deep breath, and lets it out, then finishes the beer in one gulp. “Come on, Shrimp, let’s get out of here.”
When word of a kegger began to circulate, Mia called up and asked me to go with her. I said I didn’t think I’d feel like it.
“You can’t hide forever,” she said.
“I’m not,” I said, although that wasn’t true. I’d been going to the library every day at lunch.
“So why haven’t I seen you in the cafeteria?” she said. “Listen, Callie, I want you to come to the kegger. I want people to see us together so they know I’m on your side.”
Slade and I spend the night in his motel room. I’m so happy to feel his arms around me, to feel his lips on my neck and face and mouth, to hear him tell me he loves me, to be able to tell him I love him and know he believes me, and finally, to fall asleep with my head on his shoulder.