He’d looked it up. The word, as a noun, meant ‘offspring’.
Despite his anxiety that night he’d laughed. Because in this context the word was perfect. Something within him, a creation in his own body, something he’d given birth to was turning on him. The way Oedipus would destroy father and mother both.
And – he couldn’t help but think of the pun – whatever this feeling was, it forced young Antioch March to do whatever he could to ‘get’ peace of mind, comfort.
And so the hunger, the lack, the edge was named.
The Get.
He’d felt it all his life, sometimes quiescent, sometimes voracious. But he knew it would never go away. The Get could unspool within you anytime it wanted.
It wanted, not you. You didn’t have a say.
And if you didn’t satisfy the Get, well, there were consequences.
Somebody wasn’t happy …
He’d talked to doctors about it, of course – well, shrinks. They understood; they called it something else but it was the same. They wanted him to talk about his issues, which meant he’d have to be open about Serena, the Intersection, about Todd. Which wasn’t going to happen. Or they wanted to give him meds (and that made the Get mad, which was something you never, ever wanted to happen).
March tried to be temperate on his jobs. But the Asian family’s death had been denied him, the theater disaster too.
What the hell?
‘Miss? A Johnnie Walker Black. Neat.’
‘Sure. Are you finished?’
‘I am, yes.’
‘A box?’
‘What?’
‘To take home with you?’
‘No.’ The Get made you rude sometimes. He smiled. ‘It was very good. I’m just full. Thanks.’
The drink came. He sipped. He looked around him. A businesswoman eating dinner accompanied by an iPad and a glass of grapefruit-yellow wine glanced his way. She was around thirty-five, round but pretty. Sensuous enough, probably Calista-level sexy, to judge from her approach to eating the artichoke on her plate (food and sex, forever linked).
But his gaze angled away, avoiding her eyes.
No, not tonight.
Would he have a family some day with someone like her? He wondered what her name might be. Sandra. Joanne. Yes, she would be Joanne. Would he settle down with a Joanne after he got tired of the nights of Calistas and Tiffs?
March – yeah, yeah, so fucking handsome – could have asked Joanne, sitting over there with her artichoke and wine, a bit of butter on her cheek, to dinner tomorrow, and, in a month, a weekend getaway, and in a year to marry him. It would work. He could get it to work.
Except for one thing.
The Get wouldn’t approve.
The Get didn’t want him to have a social life, romantic life, family life.
He thought of the attack, at Solitude Creek.
How was that for a sign? Though Antioch March thought this in a droll way: he didn’t believe in signs.
Solitude …
The family was preparing to leave, collecting phones, bags of chocolate sea otters, leftovers to be discarded in the morning. The father had the keys of his car out. Keys didn’t jangle any more. They were quiet plastic fobs.
And, in this damn reflective mood, he couldn’t help but think about the intersection. Well, upper case: the Intersection.
Serena had changed his life in one way but the Intersection had changed it most of all. Everything that came after was explained by what had happened where Route 36 met Mockingbird Road. Reeking of Midwest America.
After Uncle Jim’s funeral, driving back.
‘Nearer My God To Thee’.
‘In Christ There Is No East Or West’.
The insipid, noncommittal Protestant hymns. They had no passion. Give me Bach or Mozart any day for gut-piercing Christian guilt. March had thought this even then, a boy.
It had been quiet in the Ford, the company car. His father, home for a change. His mother, being a wife for a change. Driving on the bleak November highway, winding, winding, pine turned gray by the mist, everything still.
Then around a bend, rocks and pines with stark black trunks.
Then: his mother gasping a brief inhaled scream.
The skid flinging him against the door, the brakes locking, then— ‘Sir?’
March blinked.
‘Here you go, sir.’ The waitress set the bill in front of him. ‘And at the bottom you can take a brief survey and maybe win a free dinner for the family.’
March laughed to himself.
For the family.
He doled out bills and didn’t tell her that after his business was concluded here he wouldn’t be coming back to the area again for quite a long time, if ever.
When March looked up, the couple and their children were gone.
It would be a busy day tomorrow. Time to get back to the inn.
His phone hummed with an email.
At last.
It was from a commercial service that ran DMV checks. The answer he’d been waiting for.
That morning as he’d enjoyed the Egg McMuffin and coffee, parked near the multiplex that would have been his next target, March had noted an assortment of police cars and – this was curious – a gray Nissan Pathfinder.
He couldn’t learn anything from the other vehicles or the uniformed or sport-coated men who climbed out of them. But the occupant of the Pathfinder, that was a different story. It wasn’t an official car. Not a government plate. And no bumper stickers bragging about children, no Jesus fish. A private car.
But the driver was official. He could tell that from the way she strode up to the officers. The way they answered her questions, sometimes looking away. March was at a distance but he supposed she had a fierce gaze. Intense, at least.
Her posture, upright. March had sensed instinctively that this woman was one of the main investigators against him.
The search had revealed that the Pathfinder belonged to one Kathryn Dance.
A lovely name. Compelling.
He pictured her again and felt a stirring low in his belly. The Get was unspooling. It, too, was growing interested in Ms Dance. They both wanted to know more about her. They wanted to know all about her.
PRECAUTIONS
FRIDAY, APRIL 7
CHAPTER 27