The temperature had soared into the fifties, which Wisconsin people think of as balmy. Shouldn’t there be college kids rocketing around on bikes and skateboards, pushing the calendar to its limits? Across the street was a little pocket of a park, in the center a dry fountain and a few stone benches, ringed by a tiny labyrinth of paths. From the groomed evergreens hung suet balls studded with berries and birdseed.
I decided to sit for a moment, send a text to Esme, and savor the raw white sunlight. My arrival startled up birds. I looked down the street and realized I was near the police station. There came a piercing recollection of Belinda’s love for Edna St. Vincent Millay (“Don’t you think Vincent and William Butler Yeats would have been perfect for each other?” Belinda told me once, without a scrap of irony. “They had so much in common. Sad love, being Irish.”) I thought about the lines, Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before. Every girl who dies is canonized, of course; but Belinda’s sweet hopefulness was latticed with the cheerful steel of a supermodel. She was National Honor Society and Prom Queen—both things. With grueling practices and iron will, she pushed the cheer squad not just to compete, but to place first in state. She wrote op-eds about the fate of abused animals that raised thousands for the Humane Society. The plaque on the cherry tree that her class planted in Whitehorse Park read She Always Had Time For a Friend. Seeing her walk shining into a room of adults, Jep used to tease, “I’m Belinda McCormack, your senator.”
And what might she have been?
Whether from the breeze or the sentiment, my eyes watered and I reached up, for just a moment, to cover them with my hands. That was when a feeling crept over me again. And I knew he was there. I knew he was watching me from behind those aviator glasses. I should never have come to Black Creek for any reason. This was the place where our future was revoked. And now someone who seemed to sense my every movement had followed me here, as well. No wonder I was a scream with a skin around it.
I jumped into my car and, within moments, I was on the highway. Esme called me. I refused the call. She texted me. I glanced quickly at her words. Where are you?
I pulled the car over into some murderous-looking little rest area, the kind with crumbling asphalt and a battered box the size of a phone booth meant for donating old clothes. My hands were shaking. I texted back: I think you’re nuts. I came all the way up here to get a few pieces of paper that probably won’t be useful for anything, but I was willing to see you. I really believed you wanted to help Stefan and me. If you just want to spy on me, then leave me alone. Esme, this is your last chance. Do you want me to meet you? I started the car and backed it up so that my way back onto the road would be a straight shot. No need to put the car in Reverse. I checked all the locks, turned the old Marvin Gaye song that just came on the radio up as high as it would go, pulled my coat around me and closed my eyes. Just then, I got a text from her. Tell me where you are. I’ll be there in ten minutes, it said.
I typed in the mile marker sign and hit Send. Then I panicked. Who might she bring with her, to this lonely apron of concrete surrounded by a thicket of spindly trees cackling in the wind? I sat still, trying to breathe my mind and hands into a semblance of composure.
Then a car pulled into the rest area. It couldn’t be Esme; I’d barely completed my last text message to her. The driver stopped, opened the door. Striding toward me was no slight college-age girl, but the androgynous young guy in the hoodie and aviator glasses who now stood next to my car. It was the same person, the same narrow shoulders, the same lanky swing of the arms. Slow, slow thoughts slid into my consciousness like syrup: Move, Thea. Move, for your life. I jammed the car into Drive, so wildly that I all but ran him down, and spattered gravel onto the highway right in front of an eighteen-wheeler whose driver sent out a blast of air-horn outrage as he hauled his rig into the next lane. I never even dared to glance in the rearview mirror.
I’d driven at least ten miles before I remembered that I had left my things in the room at Connell’s Glory Be Bed-and-Breakfast. I should turn around, I thought. Nothing would make me turn around. I could call when I got home and ask the owner to mail them to me and add that to my bill.
When the fuel light blinked on an hour north of Portland, I did not even stop for gas. Let it run down to nothing. That was what the tow trucks from AAA were for.
It wasn’t until I got off the exit closest to home, begging the indifferent universe just to let me get there, promising in return that this was really over, this time for sure, I would stop chasing shadows, willing myself into my house, into my own bed, imagining myself pressed against Jep’s sturdy, warm, inert back, that I remembered Esme’s text. I’ll be there in ten minutes, she had typed.
I began to pant. I scrabbled for my phone.
Nothing.
I had left her there. I had left Esme to pull into that deserted scrap of pavement, all alone, looking for me, where he waited.
9
When I hit my own driveway, it was late. Except for a small light in the upstairs hall, one we always left burning, the house was dark. On a street suddenly as still as a canyon, I got the willies. I actually missed the protestors. When I called Stefan’s cell, it went over to voice mail. Jep...same thing. Pulling into the garage, I let the door close behind me and summoned my courage, getting out briskly and opening the door to the kitchen, pushing my purse and the box of documents inside.
“Molly!” I called.
The dog didn’t come running. She would have come running, acting as though she hadn’t seen me in ten years instead of less than a day. This was the part in the scary movie when the person trips over the mutilated body of the dog. That did it for me. I slammed the door and turned on all the lights. If somebody had killed Molly, that somebody would reap the whirlwind. I heard her then. She was scratching at the back door. She was outside in the yard. Somebody had let her out and left her out there. I didn’t know for how long, but she was thirsty, giving me only a cursory greeting before heading toward her water bowl.
Who had done that?
Jep or Stefan...never. Jep and Stefan treated Molly with more regard than they did most people, and they were nice to most people.
Who had left Molly outside? I knew the doors were locked. The fussy slider downstairs was long since fixed. Who had been in our house and how?
I sent Stefan a text, asking if he had let Molly out. Jep too. Jep answered that Molly was not outside, that must be asleep upstairs and our bedroom door just got closed on her. Let her out before she gets all excited and pees, he wrote. A second later, he wrote, U do ok? U ok now?
I told him I was fine.
Who put Molly outside?
What did the hooded young guy have to do with Molly? With our family photos? With the night Belinda died? His visits could not be a coincidence. And they carried a definite message, be afraid, presumably meant for Stefan. But Stefan had not been with me on my little fact-finding journey. So he meant to scare me. Why me? I didn’t kill anybody. This was part of...something. It made no sense. Maybe it made no sense because you have to be crazy for it to make sense.
How could this guy creep around for months without anyone else but me ever seeing him, except for that one time on the highway on the way back from the prison?