“Yep,” I say. But I don’t tell her where we’re from.
“I’ve got a cousin in Green Bay. Just outside, actually. In Suamico.” I’ve never heard of the damn place. But still, she’s talking. How her cousin is a principal at one of the middle schools. She’s got this dull brown hair, short like an old lady’s hair. She laughs when the conversation goes quiet. Nervous laughter. Then looks for something else to say. Anything else. “Are you all Packers fans?” she asks and I lie and say that I am.
I thrust on the spare as fast as I possibly can, then lower the car and tighten the lug nuts and stand, looking at the woman, wondering if I can just let her go—back to civilization where she might just figure out who we are and call the cops—or if I need to smash her head in with the wrench and leave her in the woods for good.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it,” she says, and I think of my own mother, lying in the abandoned woods to be eaten by bears and I nod and say it was okay. It’s dark enough out that I can barely see her and she can barely see me. I grip the wrench in my hand, wondering how hard I’d have to hit her to kill her. How many times? Wondering if she’d have it in her to fight or if she’d just drop to the ground and die.
“I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t found you.” And she steps forward to shake my hand and says, “I don’t think I caught your names.”
I clutch that wrench in my hand. I can feel it shake. It’s far better than killing her with my bare hands. Much less personal. I don’t have to stare into her eyes while she struggles. One good hit and it will all be done.
“Owen,” I say, clutching her cold veiny hand in mine, “and this is Chloe,” and she says that she’s Beth. I don’t know how long we all stand there, on the dark street in silence. My heart is beating fast as I eye a hammer in the toolbox. Maybe a hammer would be better.
But then I feel the girl’s hand on my arm, and she says to me, “We should go.” I turn to her and know she sees what I’m thinking, sees the way I’ve got that wrench gripped in my hand, ready to strike. “Let’s go,” she says again, her nails digging into my skin.
I drop the wrench into a toolbox and set it in the bed of the truck. I watch as the woman climbs into her car and drives away, slowly, headlights swerving through the thick trees.
I’m gasping for air, my hands a sweaty mess as I open the truck door and step inside and try to catch my breath.
Eve
After
We sit in the waiting room, James, Mia and me, Mia sandwiched in the middle like the cream filling of an Oreo cookie. I sit in silence with my legs crossed and my hands folded on my lap. I stare at a painting on the wall opposite her—one of many Norman Rockwells in the room—of an old man holding a stethoscope to a little girl’s doll. James sits with his legs crossed as well, ankle to knee, flipping through the pages of a Parents magazine. His breathing is loud and impatient; I ask him to please stop. We’ve been waiting more than thirty minutes to see the doctor, the wife of a judge friend of James’s. I wonder if Mia considers it odd that every magazine cover in the entire room is cloaked with babies.
People size her up. There are whispers and we hear Mia’s hushed name escape from the tongue of strangers. I pat her hand and tell her not to worry; just ignore them, I say, but it’s hard for either of us to do. James asks reception if they can hurry things along, and a short, redheaded woman disappears to see what is taking so long.
We haven’t told Mia the real reason why she’s here today. We didn’t discuss my suspicions. Instead we told her that we were worried that she hasn’t been feeling well lately and James suggested a doctor, one whose Russian name is nearly impossible to pronounce.
Mia told us she had her own doctor, one in the city who she’s been seeing for a half dozen years, but James shook his head and said no, Dr. Wakhrukov is the best. It never occurs to her that the woman is an ObGyn.
The nurse calls her name, though of course she says Mia and it takes an elbow from James to get her attention. She sets her magazine on the chair and I look at her with indulgent eyes and ask if she wants me to keep her company. “If you want,” she says, and I wait for James to disapprove but he is silent.