Every fuckin’ body.
Elizabeth turned onto Brambleberry Road and checked the pistol on the seat beside her. It was not the Glock she preferred, but when she pulled behind the old gas station and got out of the car, the gun went with her. She told herself it was smart, and only reasonable; yet the safety moved under her thumb. It was the silence and the darkness, the still trees and the scrub and the gray car bleeding into night as it sat under a tree at the back of the lot. The place had been old when she was a kid and was ancient now, a dirty cube on an empty road, a scratch mark that stank of chemicals and rust and rotting wood. Elizabeth understood why Adrian chose it, but thought if it came to dying, the old gas station was as good as any place she’d ever seen. Maybe it would open in the morning, and maybe not. Maybe a body could lie beside it forever, seasons rolling one across the other until the old bones and concrete looked like a single patch of broken pavement. That’s exactly how the place felt. As if bad things could happen here. As if they probably would.
“Adrian?”
She stepped over shattered glass and cinder block to where a sliver of light spilled through a crack at one of the rusted doors. Up close, she saw a pry bar and twisted metal. The lock was broken.
“Hello?”
No one answered, but she heard water running beyond the door. Opening it, she saw a single bulb above a grimy sink and a metal mirror. Adrian stood over the smudged porcelain, washing his hands in water that ran red. His knuckles were swollen and split, and Elizabeth felt her stomach turn as he pulled a bit of tooth from beneath the skin and dropped it in the sink.
“It’s just what prison does. It’s not who I am.”
She watched him work more soap into the cuts and tried to put herself in his shoes. How would she fight if every fight were to the death? “Crybaby didn’t deserve what happened to him,” she said.
“I know.”
“Could you have stopped it?”
“You don’t think I tried?” He was looking at her in the mirror, his face blurred in the filthy metal. “Is he alive?”
“He was alive when I left him.” Adrian looked away, and she thought she saw something soft. A blink, maybe. A flicker. “What did they want with you? Those guards?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It’s personal.”
“And if Crybaby dies? Is that personal, too?”
He straightened and turned, and Elizabeth felt the first real fear. The eyes were so brown they were black, so deep they could be empty. “Are you going to shoot me?”
Elizabeth looked at the gun, forgotten in her hand. It was pointed at his chest, her finger not on the trigger, but close. She tucked it away. “No, I’m not going to shoot you.”
“May I be alone, then?”
Elizabeth thought about it, then gave him what he wanted. She would help him or not—she didn’t really know. But this was not the time to worry or plan. Crybaby was dying or dead, and as much as she wanted to know Adrian’s heart, what she really wanted was to breathe and be alone and grieve for the places of childhood. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”
“Thank you.”
She eased the door closed but stopped at the end, watching through the crack as Adrian stared long in the mirror, then soaped his hands again, the water running red and pink and then clear. When it was done, he spread fingers on the sink and lowered his head until it was perfectly still. Bent as he was, he looked different yet the same, violent and held together and still somehow lovely. It was a foolish word—lovely—but that, too, came from childhood so she gave it a moment. He was lovely and undone, every tortured inch a mystery. Like the church, she thought, or Crybaby’s heart or the souls of wounded children. But childhood was not all good, nor were its lessons. Good came with the bad, as dark did with light and weakness with strength. Nothing was simple or pure; everyone had secrets.
What were Adrian’s secrets?
How bad were they?
She watched a moment more, but there was no insight in the filthy room with the metal mirror and the dim, greenish light. Maybe he’d killed two men in the drive of his old farm, just shot them dead and left them there. Maybe he was a good man, and maybe not.
Elizabeth lingered, hoping for some kind of sign.
She left when he started crying.
*
When the door opened again, Elizabeth was beside the shuttered pumps in front of the old station, watching taillights fade a mile down the road. “Are you okay?”
Another car appeared in the distance, and Adrian shrugged.
She watched the lights swell and spill across his face. “You need to leave,” she said. “Leave town. Leave the county.”
“Because of what just happened?”
“That’s part of it. There’s more.”
“What do you mean?”