HEATHER DIDN’T RETURN TO METH ROW. IT WAS CONVENIENT, in some ways, but there was no privacy in it, now that Dodge knew where she was. She didn’t want him to be spying on her, seeing how she was living, maybe running his mouth about it.
Heather had been careful, thus far, to move the car only in the middle of the night, from parking lot to empty road to parking lot, when there was less danger of being spotted. She’d developed a routine: on work days, she set her alarm for four a.m., and, while Lily was still sleeping, headed through the ink-black to Anne’s house. She had found a break in the trees just off the driveway where she could park. Sometimes she slept again. Sometimes she waited, watching the black begin to blur and change, turning first to smudgy dark, then sharpening and splitting, peeling off into vivid purple shadows and triangles of light.
She tried very hard not to think about the past, or what was going to happen in the future, or anything at all. Later, when it was almost nine, she’d walk up to the house, telling Anne that Bishop had dropped her off. Sometimes Lily came with her. Sometimes she stayed in the car, or played in the woods.
Twice, Heather had arrived early and chosen to bathe, sneaking through the woods to the outdoor shower. Then she’d stripped, shivering in the cool air, and stepped gratefully under the stream of hot water, letting it run in her mouth and eyes and over her body. Otherwise, she’d been making do with a hose.
Heather had to stop herself from fantasizing about running water, microwaves, air conditioners and refrigerators and toilets. Definitely toilets. It had been two weeks since she’d left her mom’s, and she’d gotten two mosquito bites on her butt while peeing at six a.m. and eaten more cold canned ravioli than she could stomach.
What she wanted to do was make it to Malden Plaza, where they’d crossed the highway—to that vast, impersonal parking lot with only a few streetlamps. Truckers came on and off the highway all the time, and cars stayed in the lot overnight. There was a McDonald’s, and public restrooms, with showers for the truckers who passed through.
First they needed gas. It wasn’t yet dark, and she didn’t want to stop in Carp. But she’d been running on fumes for almost twenty-four hours, and she didn’t want to break down, either. So she pulled into the Citgo on Main Street, which was the least popular of the three gas stations in town because it was the most expensive and didn’t sell beer.
“Stay in the car,” she told Lily.
“Yeah, yeah,” Lily mumbled.
“I’m serious, Billy.” Heather wasn’t sure how long she could take this: the sniping, the back-and-forth. She was losing it. Cracking up. Grief had its hands around her neck; she was being choked. She kept seeing Vivian sipping from Bishop’s mug, her black hair hanging in wisps around a pretty, moon-white face. “And don’t talk to anybody, okay?”
She scanned the parking lot: no police cars, no cars she recognized. That was a good sign.
Inside, she put down twenty dollars for gas and took the opportunity to stock up on whatever she could: packages of ramen soup, which they would eat dissolved in cold water; chips and salsa; beef jerky; and two fresh-ish sandwiches. The man behind the counter, with a dark, flat face and thinning hair slicked to one side, like weeds strapped to his forehead, made her wait for change. While he counted singles into the register, she went to the bathroom. She didn’t like standing under the bright lights of the store, and she didn’t like the way the man was looking at her either—like he could see through to all her secrets.
While she was washing her hands, she dimly registered the jangle of the bell above the door, the low murmur of conversation. Another customer. When she left the bathroom, he was blocked from view by a big display of cheap sunglasses, and she was almost at the counter before she noticed his uniform, the gun strapped to his hip.
A cop.
“How’s that Kelly business going?” the man behind the counter was saying.
The cop—with a big belly pushing out over his belt—shrugged. “Autopsy came in. Turns out Little Kelly didn’t die in that fire.”
Heather felt like something had hit her in the chest. She tugged her hood up and pretended to be looking for chips. She picked up a package of pretzels, squinted at it hard.
“That right?”
“Sad story. Looks like OD. He’d been taking pills since he came back from the war. Probably just went to that Graybill house for a nice warm place to get high.”
Heather exhaled. She felt an insane, immediate sense of relief. She hadn’t realized, until now, that she had held herself accountable, at least a little bit, for his murder.
But it wasn’t murder. It hadn’t been.
“Still, someone started that fire,” the cop said, and Heather realized she’d been staring at the same package of pretzels for several seconds too long, and now the cop was staring at her. She shoved the pretzels back on their rack, ducked her head, and headed for the door.
“Hey! Hey, miss!”
She froze.