“Have you had other experiences?”
“Yes. My grandpappy. When he died . . . I found him hanging, you know. After the ambulance took him away, I got up on a chair and took the rope down. When my hands touched it, I saw him looping it around his neck, weeping. He’d never gotten over my mother’s death. It ate away at him until he couldn’t take it any longer. I watched him prepare the noose, get everything ready. He kicked a stool out from under him and the rope bit in, as if it were a set of jaws. I’ll never forget his eyes looking straight at me when I found him. Looking into me, as he knew I would be looking into him.”
“It’s not that I doubt what you’re saying—” Harper starts to say.
“Stop.” Ida looks Harper straight in the eyes. “Give me your hands.”
“What—”
Ida’s face says it all. Her cheeks clear of tears now. Eyes bright, and burning with an inner fire. Harper places her hands in Ida’s, feeling completely out of her element. Out of control. She has surrendered herself to a woman she’s only just met, and it goes against every fiber of her being, every instinct instilled in her through her training.
Ida’s eyes roll back into her head as they close. She squeezes Harper’s fingers. Harper is acutely aware of the air in the house, the jingle of a wind chime out on the porch, Ida’s chest rising and falling steadily as she inhales, exhales, inhales, exhales. Again, the air in the house seems to grow warmer, thicker, and the light dimmer.
“Your partner has matching scars on his chest and back, where a bullet went straight through, narrowly missing his left lung and a crisscross of vital arteries. He calls it his miracle bullet and wears it on a silver chain. You asked him about it the first time you slept together.”
Harper pulls her hands away, simultaneously repulsed by the way Ida has read her and disgusted with herself for acting as if Ida has done something wrong. She gets up, ready to run out of there, make her escape. But she can’t—she’s moved by what Ida revealed to her. The better part of her tells her she has to stay. She is confused.
“Sorry to scare you, sugar,” Ida whispers. “But that’s how it is.”
Harper runs a hand over her face, feeling lost. “Can I use your bathroom?”
“Sure. Upstairs, first door on the right.”
Harper runs up the stairs, goes in, and locks the door behind her. There’s a mirrored sun catcher hanging in front of the window, splintering the daylight and sending it shimmering around the room. She takes a good, long look at herself in the mirror over the sink. Ida couldn’t have known about Stu. How they’d talked about the bullet hanging around his neck.
“The miracle bullet,” Harper whispers, thinking: There has to be a reason she came chasing after me, got me back here. She said everyone’s got ghosts. These girls are hers and they’ll never be put to rest while the killer’s still out there, doing what he wants. She’ll always wake up in the middle of the night, picturing his hooded face coming toward her, seen through her mother’s eyes . . .
Harper heads back downstairs.
Ida turns around to look at her, face expectant. “Well?”
“Okay,” Harper sighs.
Ida closes Harper’s car door, then leans on the frame. “Whatever I can do to help, I want to do it. I’ve spent a lot of years out here on my own, going to bed early. Jumping at shadows. Hoping a foul wind don’t blow. I think I’ve kept out of the way for long enough.”
Harper nods, just the once. “That old phone I saw in there work?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’ll call to let you know what’s happening.” She starts the engine, starts to leave, then stops. “Can I ask you something, Ida?”
“Sure.”
“You ever wondered about him coming after you the way he did your mom?”
Ida’s face grows heavy as stone. “All my life, sugar. All my life.”
5
Gertie Wilson sits midway on the bus, earbuds in, Taylor Swift drowning out the noise from the engine and the other passengers.
A notification sounds in her ears. She looks at the cell phone.
It’s a text from Hugo:
Why do we live on opposite sides of town? ?
Gertie taps her reply and sends it in seconds.
Because it makes you miss me even more?
Hugo’s reply is instant.
I always miss you. I don’t stop thinking about you. Does that make me sound like a fucking stalker? LOL
Gertie smiles.
If you are then you’re MY stalker. Can’t wait to see you tomorrow.
She looks out the window at the town rolling by. Gertie is the first in her family to attend college and do something other than work the dirt for a living. She plans to keep her hands clean.
Her phone pings.
Love you. Call me tonight XXX
Gertie’s stop comes up, and she joins the half dozen people about to get off. The bus slows, the doors open, and they spill out. She would be glad to be free from the hot confines of the bus if it weren’t raining. Gertie darts beneath the shelter of the bus stop and taps a reply.
Promise. Love you too, Hugo ? xxx
She riffles in her bag for her umbrella. It’s a pocket-sized contraption that just about manages to keep the rain off her head and shoulders. The rest of her is getting steadily soaked. As she crosses the street and heads for home, walking by the side of the road, she can feel the water getting in her shoes, seeping in around her toes.
Her father continues to nag her about taking driving lessons and getting her license, and she’s seriously considering it. Days like this, she could put her environmental concerns to one side if it means getting home dry. Her studies so far have incorporated the cause and effect of climate change. In all good conscience, she can’t warrant expending the additional carbon just for her own comfort . . . but there comes a point, sometimes.
A car would make sense.
“Hey!”
The voice makes her jump. She looks to her right. A truck has slowed next to her, the window down so that the driver can call out to her.
She ignores him and continues walking.
“I faid hey!”
Gertie stops. “Can I help you?”
The rain drums down around her, beating the top of the umbrella.
“Are you going far? I could give you a lift. You look foaked!”
Gertie looks at the man. He appears harmless enough. Funny scar running along his top lip, lifting it up a shade to reveal his gums and teeth. “I’m okay, thanks.”
“If you ain’t got far to go, jump in,” the man says. When she hesitates, he shrugs. “Look, I’m juft doin’ my good Famaritan bit.”
She knows she shouldn’t. She knows it goes against every impulse to get in the man’s car. But he looks honest enough. Perhaps even a little simple. “I just live up the road,” she tells him, getting closer to the driver’s-side window.
“That farm up there? I know it.”