“Maybe I am,” I mumbled.
“Come sit.” The same woman patted the ground beside her. “We were just about to eat lunch.”
I sat, because I didn’t think I could stand much longer and also because she told me to. Dunc and Archie, however, remained standing. They were disappointed by the company and the women and weren’t even trying to hide this.
“You know what,” Archie said. “I’ll be right back. I need to go do something.”
“Me, too,” echoed Dunc.
To me it was clear they were going to get high, but the Preacher barely acknowledged their departure, not turning to watch as they jogged off into the woods, vanishing into the shadows and the trees. His attention was fixed solely on Avery, who was fiddling with the buttons on her camera.
“You’re a photographer?” he asked.
Avery glanced up, gave a shy smile. “Trying to be.”
“Well, the light’s perfect down by the water,” he said. “I could sit for you, if you’d like.”
“Ave . . . ,” I said in a low voice.
“Yeah, sure,” she told the Preacher. “I would like that. Thanks.”
Before I could interject, the two of them headed off toward the riverbank, walking side by side as Avery continued to mess with her settings. I was about to go after her, only the second woman beat me to it. She leapt to her feet, a dark scowl scrawled across her face, and hurried after them. Seeing this calmed my nerves. Somewhat.
Despite telling me to sit, the woman beside me seemed wary of my presence. She was the smaller of the two women, darker-skinned, too—the one who’d made me think of Rose from afar. Up close, however, there was no comparison. Where Rose was a bud, all the promise in the world, this woman was far past her bloom. Her beady eyes latched on to me, watching me closely, and her thin lips twisted into something sour before taking a swig from her flask.
“I’m Ben,” I offered.
The woman started to cough, a phlegmy sound that wrinkled my nose. I didn’t hold out my hand.
“Maggie,” she said finally.
I tipped my head toward the stream. “This is a nice camping spot you found.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You come out here a lot?”
She paused. “Did Elvin tell you why we’re here?”
“Not really. Are you part of his, uh, church . . . group?”
One-half of Maggie’s face broke into a ragged smile. “Church group,” she said. “Yeah, that’s right. We’ve been doing a little baptizing out here in the mineral water. Supposed to be good for you, you know. Cleansing. In a spiritual sense.”
“The water’s spiritual?”
“God willing,” she said. “So where you kids from?”
“Teyber. We’re just here for the weekend.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said.
“What about you? Where’re you from?”
Maggie nibbled at something out of a can. Tuna or sardines, something fishy and rank. I noticed that the tips of her fingers were smudged with black, like she’d been painting with raw ink or had had a ballpoint pen explode on her. “Arcata,” she said when she’d swallowed. “Just drove down yesterday.”
“That’s a long drive for baptizing.”
“What’d you bring to eat?” She leaned forward, pulling my backpack toward her with her grubby fingers, unzipping and rifling through my stuff. I didn’t have the strength to stop her, and her probing hands deftly found the mixed nuts and turkey sandwiches I’d packed, along with some Cokes. The only two I had. “Can I have some of this?”
I opened my mouth to protest, but a wave of pain snapped my jaw shut. I reached for one of the Cokes and pressed it to my cheek, while gesturing with my other hand to Maggie that she could have the rest.
“You’re not hungry?” she asked.
I shook my head.
She unwrapped one of my sandwiches. “You should eat more, you know. You’re too skinny.”
“I’m getting a migraine,” I said when my jaw decided to work again. “I can’t eat.”
She paused. “You get those a lot, migraines?”
I nodded.
“Sucks,” the woman said. “I get them, too.”
“You do?”
“Every month. PMS is a bitch.”
“Well, that’s not why I get them. I mean, obviously. But I got hurt when I was a kid. Head injury.”
“How’d you get hurt?”
“My mom’s husband,” I said.
“Your dad?”
“Stepdad.”
“He hit you?”
“Not exactly.”
“What, then?”
I leaned back on the blanket. Closed my eyes and rolled the Coke can up to rest on my forehead. “I shot him.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he die?”
“Yup.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“I don’t remember.”
Maggie snorted. “Well, if you did the shooting, how’re you the one who got hurt?”
How indeed? “Well, after . . . after I did what I did, my mom drove our car off the road. That’s when I got hurt. That’s when—”
“Wait, so you were in a car when you shot him?”
“No.” I couldn’t help myself. I rolled over and put my head down, one arm over my face, hunching my body like a pill bug. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel good.”
“It’s okay, kid. You do what you need to do.”
It was stupid, but there was something in her words or the way she said them that made my chest tighten, then grow tighter still. “Thank you,” I said. “And no, my mom, she put us in the car after I shot him—she was upset about what had happened, I guess, about what I’d done. She didn’t believe it was an accident, even though that’s what she told everyone later. But she was so mad when she found us that she tried to, to . . .” I choked. I couldn’t say it.
“Drive you off the side of the road?”
I nodded, then shrugged, but didn’t really answer because my stomach was starting to do the thing it usually did in response to the rising tide of pressure in my head, which was to thump around and around, like a clothes dryer filled with shoes. I also didn’t answer because what is there to say when everyone believes your mom drove her car off the road in a foolish panic, trying to save her son from the cops in the only way she knew how, but you know that they’ve got it all wrong? That what really happened is she tried to kill you, to punish you for what you’d done, and in her rage just considered her own life collateral damage?
“Shit, kid,” Maggie said, followed by a low whistle, and the funny thing was, she seemed to understand exactly what I meant without my saying anything. I appreciated that more than she knew because it wasn’t like I could tell anyone in my life about what my mom had done. She had a right to be mad at me, obviously. She still had a right. Guilt was a long game, and I’d ruined her life, after all. That was something we both ended up having to live with. An accident. It was just an accident, were words I’d repeated so frequently over the years, there were times I almost believed they were true.
“You want something for it?” Maggie asked. “Your headache? I got Percocet. I’ll give you some for the food. How’s that sound?”