Later, when he crawled into bed next to her, his arm snaking around her waist, she murmured, “Where were you? I’ve been calling you.”
He sighed into her hair, his palm flat against her stomach. “I’ve had a hellish day. A student, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It was life and death. I forgot about the meeting.” His voice came in fervent whispers, huffs of air, and when Alecia turned her head, she thought she smelled cigarette smoke.
“I wouldn’t have missed it if it wasn’t urgent.” He massaged the tops of her thigh, kissed the back of her head. “Do you believe me?”
When she didn’t answer, he asked again. “Do you believe me?”
Now her mind skipped back to that night. The smell of cigarettes on his hands. The roughness of his fingertips across her midsection. The coldness of his sweatshirt, like he’d brought the outside early spring chill in with him.
When she had questioned him about it the next morning, he would only tell her in vague terms a student needed his help. If she pressed him on it, he grew impatient.
“Do you trust me, Alecia?” He had put his hands on his hips, staring her down. Of course she did.
Alecia picked up her phone and looked through her calendar. Highlighted April, right swiped till she found the date, right there: April 2. Kindergarten readiness meeting, 6 p.m.
Her heart pounding, she opened the laptop, opened Nate’s email. She knew his passwords; his commonly used ones anyway. He’d never tried to keep any of it a secret. It took her two tries: Gabe2009. Of course. Nate wasn’t secretive, he wasn’t even very good at subterfuge; any truth was evident on his face, in his voice. Nothing about any of this felt true deep down true. When she thought of Nate, she thought of that affable laugh, the way he touched her shoulder when he talked. The way he’d stand, a hand clapped on Coach Berkit’s back as they discussed players, or an arm slung over Bridget’s and Alecia’s shoulders while they made dinner in Alecia’s kitchen. My two girls now, he’d said. They’d laughed.
A student?
Emails from Coach Berkit, another teacher she didn’t really know; one from Tripp Harris; two Dick’s Sporting Goods flyers. One from Bridget on April 2. Alecia hesitated, then double clicked.
Hey, found a sweatshirt of H’s, want it? It’s UNC. Let me know, I’ll bring it in. PS. Tried wasabi chips, are you nuts?
Alecia almost laughed. Emails about potato chips and here she was clicking through them, quick and suspicious, pounding heart. She closed the window and navigated to their shared bank account. No activity on April 2. She flipped the laptop lid shut and sat for a moment, stumped. She had to know; she could just ask, right? Tell Nate about the reporter, the accusation, the date she couldn’t get out of her mind.
Without thinking, she clicked open the computer again and typed an address in the navigation bar. She opened her wallet and typed in all sixteen digits off their single credit card, mostly maxed out. Nate had argued for an additional credit card: we have no safety net at all, Alecia. She’d been firm. They lived so close to the line every month, she had to be careful when she paid specific bills. She remembers what it was like when they were dinks. They’d laughed about it then: dual income, no kids. Swank restaurants in the city, bar tabs she signed her name to, and the only reason she looked at the total was to drunkenly calculate a decent tip. She’d kill for that freedom again.
She never looked at the credit card balance, just paid her two hundred bucks a month, which may or may not have been covering the minimum. It was like gas, right? Why did anyone ever look at the price of gas? You needed your car, you’d put gas in it no matter the price. Her eyes scanned the statement, skipping over the total. Gabe needed his therapy, every blessed one. Knowing the cost would only keep her awake at night.
She scrolled through the charges in April, her finger tracing down the screen: Whispering Pines (horse therapy), The Balance Center (Gabe’s yoga), A&P (sadly, charged groceries, not an uncommon occurrence, but one Alecia avoided dwelling on). Deannie’s MH, $125. Her finger paused there. She searched her memory for a therapy or maybe a lunch at someplace called Deannie’s.
In another tab, she opened Google and typed it in and clicked enter. When she scanned the results, she knew she’d found it and tugged on the ends of her hair, the roots aching.
Deannie’s Motel Honesdale.
I saw a blackbird yesterday, right on the sidewalk in front of the house, stuck between the concrete and the weeds. He was dead, and weirdly perfect, but they always are. I always know that something bad will happen on the day I see one. And then you came home, you see?
You’re so stupid, ugly, skinny. I tend to believe I’m the only one afraid of you. Who would be? You think smack makes you do bad things, but really, you’re just a bad person. If I said that, you’d kill me. I really think that, that someday you’ll kill me. Jimmy would hate what you’ve become. I’m almost done with you, only a few more months.
CHAPTER 7
Bridget, April 2, 2015: Three weeks before the birds fell
Lord, Bridget missed Georgia. April already and just still so damn cold, some nights you could hardly inhale, your lungs seemed to freeze midbreath.
Bridget sat at her desk long after the final bell, distracted, thinking about her mama. She’d spent the week south, in Colquitt, Georgia. They’d had off Monday and Tuesday, some slim semblance of a spring break, although to Bridget that had always coincided with Easter. She guessed they didn’t do that anymore, separation of church and school and what have you.
So she’d taken a personal day and made it a five-day weekend and flown south, like a snowbird. Down to Mama, her mobile home propped up on a poured foundation on thirty acres of land. Aunt Nadine in a unit behind Mama, on the same plot, the path between their homes worn thin from the sisters traversing the lawn in the dark. Bridget sat outside with them on the nights that it spiked up into the seventies, legs thrown over lawn chairs while they played canasta at a card table on the in-between dusty grass. Aunt Nadine surrounded the table with buckets of citronella candles to keep the skeeters away, and they sang loud as anything because who cared, they hadn’t any neighbors. The air was sticky wet, even in winter, the swamp behind the trailer vaporizing into the air and hanging there like a thick fog.