I carefully set the clock far from the pool’s edge, then slipped into the water. It sucked at my shorts and T-shirt as I took Evan in my arms. His head cradled on my shoulder through the wracking coughs. Rasping, choking sounds, tearing him apart inside. He clung to me until the coughs subsided, then we stood still in the shallows, holding each other.
“Please tell me it’s worth it,” I whispered against his neck.
“It will be,” he said, his voice a hoarse croak. “It will be.”
The following morning, I woke with a heavy pall of dread in my gut. I’d had another dream about Lee. This time he’d been in our kitchen in Dolores, cooking up a batch of meth in the cast-iron skillet. His head was dented in and blood stained his collar.
“Don’t test me, woman,” he said. He dumped the contents of the skillet onto the floor and handed the pan to me, handle first. A blink or shift in time and we were in the living room. Lee lay face down on the cruddy green carpet.
“You’re a liar,” he said, his voice muffled. “I smell it on you. The lies.” Then he sat up, grinning with his rotten, broken teeth. “Clean up your mess!”
I woke up swallowing a scream.
And then I knew. It came to me like one of Evan’s dreams; distant and muted and then suddenly right there.
Dolores. The fire. Lee…
“I went down in the kitchen,” I murmured. “I woke up in the living room.”
And then that memory, in full Technicolor—cruddy green and blood red—emerged from the fog too. It hit me like a cold slug to the chest, but I’d known. Somewhere down deep I’d always known.
I rolled over and shook Evan awake, panic infusing my words. “I did it, didn’t I? I killed him. I killed Lee. I hit him with the skillet. Not you. I woke up in the living room and he was dead at my feet. It was me, not you.”
Evan came awake startled, then shook his head, as if saddened that I knew.
“It was an accident, Jo. You never meant to kill him. You were dazed from how he beat you, and you thought he was hurting me. You thought you were saving my life.”
I nodded, flinching as I remembered the pan striking the back of Lee’s head. Feeling his skull give…
“Oh god…” I looked at Evan, my eyes wide. “But…you told me you did it. You said you’d pay for it. But you didn’t do it. You’d go to prison for me? For life? Evan, it was me…”
“Not you, Jo. Never you. You’re not going to pay for Lee. Never.”
“But…”
He clutched my face in his hands. “I told you, I’m going to keep you safe and I meant it. Okay?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Come on. We gotta get going.”
I’ll be safe and he’ll be free.
I had half of that little puzzle now. But the rest?
I was sure I didn’t want to know. The nameless feeling of some force coming to take Evan from me returned, and that dread hung over me while he showered and I packed up our stuff. We only had one bag now, his duffel. I rolled my lavender dress up tight and shoved it inside. My hand brushed something hard. Closer inspection showed an inside pocket with a rectangular object in it.
I unzipped the pocket and pulled out the burner phone I’d used to call Del in Oklahoma. I glanced at the bathroom door, puzzled. Evan had said he’d ditched it back in Wichita.
I turned the phone on and went to the screen listing outgoing calls. Three numbers were showing. The first number, the earliest call made, was Del’s. It should have been the only number.
I made one call and then Evan threw the phone away. That’s what he told me.
Yet a second call was above Del’s. 411 information.
The third was a number with a 605 area code.
Eyes narrowed and my stomach rolling, I shot another glance at the bathroom door. The water was still going. I highlighted the 605 number and hit the call button.
Two rings, then a man’s voice answered, “Rapid City Police, Detective Sams’ desk.”
I froze.
“Hello?”
“I…”
“Hello, can I help you? Is this an emergency?”
I hung up the phone and tossed it onto the bed as if it had burned me. Where was Rapid City? Why the fuck was Evan calling the police?
The water in the shower shut off and I quickly jammed the phone back into the duffel’s inside pocket. Then thought about taking it out. Confronting him. Why not?
Because I don’t want to know.
Evan came out, wrapped in a towel. I muttered something about him hogging the hot water, and slipped in without meeting his eye. I stood for a long time under the shower spray, pulling myself together.
I trust him. I trust him. I trust Evan with my life.
It was the truth, but the questions I hadn’t been asking him and the oddities I’d brushed aside were now piled up so high, like that Jenga game, where you pull the wrong one—ask the wrong question—and the whole tower comes crashing down.
We dressed and packed up, said goodbye to Mary Ellen and left Franklin, Nebraska. I didn’t demand any answers. The dread had gained weight. It pressed me down and made my jaw heavy. Evan was quiet as well, strangely subdued. I wondered if he felt the same unease, sensed the same unnamed something looming on the horizon.
I expected him to take us north—always north—but he drove Snowball onto 80 West, heading toward Wyoming.