CHAPTER 34
CRETE
Crete had been on his way to St. Louis when Sorrel called. Sorrel called only when he needed to make an appointment, and since he was supposed to be at an appointment at that very moment, Crete knew the call was no good.
Sorrel was a kinky bastard. Crete had seen that right away when he showed up with props. Most guys did their business and got out. One, he knew, didn’t even touch the girl; he just liked to look at her while he jerked off. But Sorrel would spend hours in the trailer, doing things Crete didn’t care to hear about.
Sorrel was blubbering on the phone. His story came in gurgling spurts, taking longer than Crete had patience for. From what he could make out, Sorrel had hooked the girl up to some electrical device and given her a few little shocks, and he may have also held her head underwater—none of this intended to truly hurt her, all this shit just turned him on, and he needed it to get hard enough to fuck her. Well, the girl started jerking around and collapsed like she was in cardiac arrest, and Sorrel didn’t think she was breathing. He panicked and grabbed the biggest kitchen knife he could find, thinking he’d cut her up and carry her out in a suitcase and everything would be fine. He started with her leg, hacking away at the hip joint, but somewhere short of bone, the girl came to, puked, and started dragging herself across the room. She was bleeding real bad by this point, and before Sorrel could figure out what to do, she ran out of blood and breath and collapsed in a swamp of her own fluids. He went back to work cutting off pieces, but the knife was poorly suited to the job, and the realization of what he was doing caught up to him.
Fear made his voice shrill. He was scared not just of what he’d done but of what Crete might do to him. You owe me, Crete told him. He hung up and called Carl.
He gave his brother an abbreviated, partly true rundown of the situation: A whore had been operating out of a trailer on his property, and the whore was now dead. Possibly very messily dead. The whole thing was an accident, he said. Like with you and Sump. Which rankled Carl, who didn’t agree that killing a hooker was anything like what had happened between him and Joe Bill Sump. Carl was getting worked up on the phone, and Crete knew he was pushing his brother dangerously close to the line where he could no longer keep his mouth shut and look the other way. It would be worse when Carl got to the trailer. But Crete trusted him, and there was nothing to be done for the girl at that point, no reason to tangle with the law. I’d clean it up myself if I was there, he said. But it can’t wait. If you take care of it, we’ll call things even on Joe Bill. I’ll throw out that wallet and license plate of his and be done with it.
Crete kept Sump’s belongings locked up in a shed along with some other things he needed to hold on to but didn’t want people to see. Though he’d never planned to use his collateral against Carl, he liked having it there all the same. In truth, Crete would have disposed of a dozen bodies for his brother and not expected anything in return. Not that Carl was likely to need such a favor.
It was unfortunate that Crete couldn’t call on Emory to clean up the mess, since he was the one to blame for it. Emory had gotten a bit too involved with methamphetamine and was starting to get sloppy. He’d had a little blond boy with him a few times, and Crete hadn’t asked whether it was Emory’s kid or if something entirely different was going on. He didn’t want to know. Crete had been furious when Emory showed up with Cheri, a girl who lived down the road from Lucy and hung out with her when they were kids. Taking a local girl was risky in the first place, but keeping her nearby was even worse. Emory promised she’d be on Crete’s property only temporarily, that he would get her set up at his own place as soon as he was able, but it hadn’t happened soon enough.
Crete wasn’t happy with how things had played out, but his cut of the girl’s profits was a small consolation, and now he no longer had to worry about keeping Cheri hidden. There were plenty of other things to hide, so many secrets burrowing down into the dark like roots knotted deep in the earth.
CHAPTER 35
LILA
Sometimes Crete didn’t even stop the truck. He just drove by slowly, eyeing the house. Making me nervous. Other times he brought things for Lucy, little toys and gifts. If Carl was home, I had to let Crete in. I made excuses to feed Lucy, put her down for a nap. Watching him hold her cramped my stomach. I told myself the novelty would wear off. That he had no real interest in my baby. That he was doing this to scare me, and if I didn’t act scared, he’d stop.
No matter how I acted or what I said, he kept coming around. And he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Lucy. He was gentle with her, soft-spoken, and she smiled at him the same sweet way she smiled at me. That was the most painful part. She wasn’t old enough for me to explain the danger he represented. I was failing her. I stood there, helpless, as he impressed himself in her life.
I’d been practicing my shooting, as Ray had suggested, and had grown comfortable with Carl’s guns. I felt prepared to protect myself and my baby if anything should happen, but Crete had yet to break into the house or threaten me in a way that justified self-defense. In fact, he hadn’t made any threats since the day he came to warn me that I couldn’t keep him away from Lucy. The worst thing he’d done was get close to her. As much as I wanted to be rid of him, I couldn’t just shoot him as he walked into the house for a visit.
An unseasonable cold snap hit right before Lucy’s first birthday, and freezing rain fell through the night, knocking out the power. The world glittered the next morning, every surface smoothed and rounded, encased in a half-inch of ice. I’d never seen anything like it. Carl and I dressed Lucy in her snowsuit and slid around the glassy yard with her, her eyes wide with wonder. At the moment she turned one year old, the three of us were snuggled on the couch, basking in the heat of the stove by candlelight. Carl and I sang “Happy Birthday” to Lucy as she dozed in my lap.
When Lucy was born, I thought maybe I’d finally found the direction I’d been missing. Here was something I was good at, something I could devote my life to: being her mother. The first year of her life had been the best year I could remember. The love I felt for her dwarfed everything else, even Crete. Life was not perfect, but it was better than I’d dared to hope. I had friends, a devoted husband, and a healthy child. I wavered between utter joy and the fear that it could all be taken away.
Spring weather returned the day of Lucy’s party, and sheaths of ice fell from the trees, the hills echoing with the sound of breaking glass. Birdie came, and Gabby and Bess, and Ray brought his wife. Crete was there, too, with a rocking horse for Lucy that wasn’t safe for a child her age. Everyone was eating cake when I remembered the ice cream and went to fetch it from the freezer. Crete followed under the pretense of helping and cornered me on the back porch.
“There’s a way,” he said, “to see who her father is. A test you take. I wanna know.”
“What does it matter?” I sputtered. “She’s mine. She’s Carl’s. You get to see her, what more do you want?”
“It matters,” he growled. “I got rights.”
“You don’t want Carl to know what you did to me. Why would you want to do something like this?”
He chuckled. “You haven’t had any trouble keeping that secret. I think you don’t want Carl to know. Maybe he’ll think you cheated on him. Or be mad at you for lying. Maybe he’ll be mad enough to kick you out, send you back where you came from, and keep Lucy here with us. I already know he’ll forgive me—are you sure he’ll forgive you?”
“What if I won’t do the test?” I hissed.
“Oh, I don’t really need you,” he said. “I just need Lucy.”
My skeleton tingled inside my skin. If he was her father, I never wanted her to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. “Please,” I said. “Don’t do this. Don’t.”
“You can’t stop me,” he said.
The ice cream was numbing my fingers. I wanted to get back to Lucy. “I can’t even talk about this right now. This is her birthday party.”
“It’s gonna happen,” he said, “unless you got something to convince me otherwise. Maybe we can find a way to work this out. Huh?”
“Never.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. “But if you change your mind, you can meet me out at the cave Monday noon. Nice and private out there, no chance anybody’ll see us. I’ll give you one last chance to talk me out of it. I told Carl I got a nice little birthday trip planned for Lucy later this week. Figured she’d like to go to Springfield with her uncle and see the zoo. Then we can swing by a doctor’s office and see about that paternity test.”
I turned and walked away from him. “Monday noon,” he repeated. I rejoined the party in the kitchen, scooping ice cream with trembling hands. I plucked Lucy out of her high chair and hugged her tight, her frosting-covered fingers knotting in my hair, her sticky mouth smearing my cheek with kisses.
That night I rocked Lucy in the bentwood chair, singing softer and softer as her body relaxed into sleep. I was reeling from my encounter with Crete and didn’t know what to do. If I told Carl the truth, that Crete had raped me, would he believe me over his brother? I wanted to think that he would. But he’d been loyal to his brother his whole life, and I knew how Crete could lie. It would be easiest, I thought, to go along with the test. Maybe if Crete found out he wasn’t the father, he’d back off and quietly accept the role of uncle. Yet I couldn’t risk it turning out in his favor, granting him legal rights to my child.
I wondered if Crete was serious about meeting in private to “work things out,” or if he’d suggested it because he enjoyed watching me squirm. Did he really think I’d be willing to trade sex for his silence? That was what he’d implied. More likely, he thought I’d show up for one last desperate attempt to talk him out of the paternity test, and once he had me there, he’d take the opportunity to intimidate me, hurt me, remove me from his family the way I’d wanted to remove him. Why else would he choose such a secluded location? Whatever he was planning, he didn’t want anyone to see him near my house that day, didn’t want anyone to spot us together. But that could work to my advantage, the two of us alone in the cave. No one knowing we were there. Crete possibly unaware that I was smart enough to bring a gun or strong enough to use it.
I thought of the long-ago night when I’d slashed my cousin’s face with a kitchen knife as he reached under the covers to touch me. I was capable of hurting someone else to protect myself. I could live with blood on my hands. Crete had the advantage when he attacked me in the garage, but this time I was ready for him. And I had something more to fight for now, something bigger than my own life. My daughter. Lucy. I could go to the cave and put an end to the one thing that threatened to destroy my family.
I dropped Lucy off at Birdie’s Monday morning, kissing her little pink mouth and giving her an extra-long squeeze. I told myself that when I came back for her, everything would be different. She’d be safe, and we could live our lives without Crete’s shadow hanging over us. I didn’t allow myself to think I might not come back. That wasn’t an option.
The ice had all melted, and the sun shone in a pale sky. I’d been to the cave a couple of times with Gabby when we were out in the woods, but we’d never gone much farther than the cavernous room near the entry. She’d shown me the passageways that funneled into the darkness, warning me that any of them could be dangerous but that one in particular plunged down to an underground river. A conservation agent had fallen through a false floor in that tunnel, and his body was swept away in the current.
I reached into my jacket pockets, seeking reassurance in the flashlight and the gun. The confidence I’d felt with Lucy in my arms had waned, and I was nervous. I believed that I could shoot Crete if he gave me the chance, if I had time to aim and pull the trigger, but that wouldn’t be enough. I couldn’t just shoot him at the entrance and leave him there in plain sight. It was possible that no one would suspect me; Crete surely had other, more capable enemies. But I figured I’d have a better chance of getting away with it if his body wasn’t found right away or ever. As much as I wanted to protect Lucy from Crete, I was selfish; I wanted to be with her. I didn’t want her to grow up visiting me in prison. Crete’s body would be too heavy for me to move very far, and the only way I could think of to get him deeper into the cave and out of sight was to lead him there. I knew that he wasn’t stupid, that he might not follow.
As I approached Old Scratch on wobbly legs, not knowing whether Crete was already inside, I wondered if it would be better to turn around and run. I could go straight back to Birdie’s and wait there with Lucy, then tell Carl everything when he got home from work and hope for the best. Then I thought of Crete with his hands on my throat, the look in his eyes, and I knew I had to go through with it.
I stepped into the darkness. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Enough light seeped into the wide entry that I could see the old beer cans and cigarette butts that littered the floor of the cave. I walked farther in, eyeing the passages that gaped open like throats on the far wall. They looked more similar than I remembered, and I searched my memory for the one Gabby had singled out. I slid my hand into my pocket and gripped the pistol.
“Didn’t think you’d really come.”
The voice, so deep and familiar, so entangled with fear in my brain, came from behind me. I spun around, pulling out the gun, my hands shaking. My plans scattered, like papers dropped in the wind.
“Don’t be dumb,” he said, grabbing for my wrist. I stepped back just in time, out of reach, and he lunged at me. I wheeled around and ran for the nearest opening, knowing, and fearing, that he would follow.