After, Russ drives deep into the mountains. The roads are thin up by the timberline. Precarious. They snake across the cliffs—real cliffs, in the heart of the Rockies. No plateaus.
Russ rolls down the windows, even though it is February. The trees are naked, except for the pines; their needles stand erect, having shaken off that thin, misleading layer of snow. Russ turns on the radio. “Eye of the Tiger.”
He starts to sing along, quiet at first, then louder, louder, until he is yelling—he is hollering—and the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night—the bright sun is simple nourishment to his skin.
When the song is over, Russ pulls to the shoulder of the winding mountain road. He gets out of the car and breathes alpine air, sharp, retreating. He looks down at his hands, which are red and barren in the cold, but resolutely his own.
At the end of Fulcrum Street, Ivan is sitting on his front porch. He reads a book, a bottle of Coke wedged in the crook of his elbow. Russ pulls up in his new car, a Subaru with no sirens or lights.
I thought you might come by eventually, Ivan says.
Russ walks up to the porch, and Ivan beckons him forward. Russ sits, awkward, on a wicker chair, which creaks beneath his weight. The floral cushion is fraying.
I quit my job, Russ tells Ivan.
Yes, Ivan says. Ines told me you were considering it. Good for you.
I kept thinking about what you said, Russ says. A long time ago, do you remember? You were right. I felt like a puppet.
Sometimes you need to do something new, Ivan says.
I found a good option already, Russ tells him. Teaching a six-week gun-safety course. The job travels all over Colorado.
That sounds great for you, Ivan says, and he sounds sincere.
They sit. A brooding good-bye.
I came to tell you I’m sorry, Russ says. I’m sorry for everything.
I appreciate that, Ivan says.
As Russ gets back into his car, it occurs to him that throughout this ordeal—Ines and Marco, Lucinda Hayes, Lee Whitley back from the dead—and despite all Ivan’s hulking religion, his scary peaceful understanding of his own being, Ivan has been the only one telling the truth.
Even after he has cleaned up the yarn, Russ finds traces of Ines everywhere. Long black hairs littering the bathroom counter. An old T-shirt that fell behind a bookshelf, covered in dust. A single purple sock in his own drawer. Nail clippings by the bedroom trash can—frail, mooning slivers.
Russ runs. He takes off down the sterile Broomsville streets. In the weeks since Ines left, Russ has bought a new refrigerator. Read a whole novel. Applied for the gun-safety teaching position.
All he can do now is push—move his body, sweat it out, keep inching forward. For now, he focuses on his own limbs and the miracle ways in which they serve him. The freedom of the open Colorado sky.
A twilit periwinkle. Edgeless.
When Cynthia opens the door, she takes an instinctive step back.
Russ, she says, composing herself. Come in.
The house looks different now—it has taken on Cynthia’s colors and scents. No remnants of Lee. Since Lee left, Cynthia has redone the living room; the couch is on the opposite wall, reupholstered. She has spent a lot of money on new hardwood floors.
Tea? Cynthia offers.
She puts on the water before Russ can answer.
He tells her the house looks great, and Cynthia thanks him. They hover over the kitchen table, and Russ picks up a framed photo from the windowsill. In it, Cameron is gangly—ten years old, maybe eleven. He stands in front of the Denver Art Museum, his arms raised in triumph.
Good picture, isn’t it? Cynthia says. That was Cameron’s first trip. He’s always loved that painting by the window, and they opened a temporary Van Gogh exhibit. Cameron spent hours looking at it.
She puts the tea in front of Russ and invites him: sit. The water burns a patch on Russ’s tongue.
I brought something, Russ says.
From the pocket of his sweat shirt, Russ pulls out Lee’s old deck of cards. Tattered, yellow around the edges.
Is that . . . ? Cynthia trails off.
I thought I could teach Cameron how to play gin rummy, Russ says.
For a pulsing moment, Cynthia squeezes her eyes shut. Tilts her head to the light. Russ watches as she stands, shaky, and calls down the hall for her boy.
Cameron
Cameron sat on the stool in Mr. O’s office, trying to make an apple stem look three-dimensional.
“It looks good,” Mr. O said. “You’re getting there.”
He patted Cameron on the shoulder, twice, and went to check on the rest of the class.
Cameron drew an apple in a bowl. Why don’t you try still life? Mr. O had said when Cameron came back to school. Mr. O had been spending most nights at Cameron’s house, in Mom’s room. Even though this had been awkward and embarrassing at first, he felt better with Mr. O just down the hall at night. Safer. Russ Fletcher came over some nights too, and when Mom was in the other room, he told Cameron stories about Dad, stories that made Dad seem like the sort of guy Cameron could feel okay about missing.
Cameron had spent two weeks at home with Mom, driving half an hour every day to see a psychiatrist—a nice woman named Maura, with curly red hair and tortoiseshell glasses. She asked him questions like How do you feel when you first wake up in the morning?—the sorts of questions he’d always wanted to ask someone, but hadn’t known how. The potted plant behind her head sprouted up like alien hair.
Ronnie was afraid of Cameron, but that was okay. Cameron didn’t miss him. Everyone at school looked at him funny when he walked down the hall, even though Detective Williams had found the bloody dog leash in a gym bag that Mr. Thornton had stuffed into a trash can at his office in Denver, along with Lucinda’s cell phone. Mrs. Thornton was back in the hospital. Baby Ollie was with her grandparents in Longmont. Some people said Cameron had caught a murderer, and some people still swore Mr. O did it, even though he’d never even been accused and the school district was threatening to sue the police department on his behalf.
Cameron heard Lucinda’s name less every day.
Now, he drew an apple in a bowl. It was nice, he thought, to see what he was drawing as he drew it. Even though it didn’t breathe, the apple was difficult to replicate. It had its own contours, bits where it rose and fell in very lovely ways. He found it refreshing to draw something that was actually in front of him. Something with weight.
Things Cameron Would Not Dare to Touch Again:
1. The drawings of Lucinda. Mr. O had taken them to his own house, to keep them in a safe place where they could not make anyone Tangled.
2. The Collection of Statue Nights: he stored this Collection in a part of his head that he only visited when it was safe. When he was in bed, alone with thoughts of her. Just in case of sleepwalking, Mom put a child-safety lock on the drawer that held the kitchen knives.