I knew what he meant; without city lights and noise, this place freaked me out too. Add in the looming threat of the trees, and I could hardly think, but I couldn’t help teasing him. “You’re scared of the dark, Chance? You?”
“I’m not scared of anything as long as you’re beside me.”
Call me an idiot, but I melted a little over that. I covered by unpacking the food. I found it unspeakably sad that the old woman who’d lived and died here had probably spent her mornings sitting at a table with placemats laid for two. The kitchen was small, old-fashioned, and painted a pale, streaky yellow. The fridge looked like it had last been updated in 1945—a squat Hotpoint unit with rounded edges and a silver handle.
Before we sat down to eat, I set out Butch’s portable dishes. After the dumplings earlier, he wasn’t too interested in dog food, but he did take a drink, and then he came to sit on the floor by the table, telling us via big bulging eyes he thought we sucked for not giving him more people food. The waitress at Ma’s had packed us two blue plate specials, which turned out to be meat loaf and green beans. Good packaging had kept it warm while we drove around country roads after dark, looking for our destination.
Chance tucked into his food, but I had a phone call to make first. To my surprise, I had twelve text messages and four voice mails, but the phone hadn’t rung. I checked the settings, and it was programmed to vibrate and play J.Lo’s “If You Had My Love.” My cell hadn’t made a peep all day.
I tried to dial out, but even though I had two bars, I couldn’t get a call to connect. A dark, dreadful feeling crept over me, as if I were marooned on a broken log with flood-waters rising all around me. We had to find a way to contact the outside world. Jesse would go nuts if he didn’t hear from me, and what about Chance’s mom? Not to mention Chuch and Eva. We would not disappear in Kilmer, an unsolved mystery.
Taking a deep breath, I started wading through my text messages. The first one astonished me. Jesse—the man I’d left to clean up the mess in Laredo—had simply written, You ok? That might not have been so shocking if it hadn’t also been time stamped around the moment when I’d been so terrified, standing in the bathroom at the Kilmer Inn. Things got weirder as I read the next message.
Corine, what the hell is going on? This one bore a time stamp just after Chance pushed me out of the way of a rampaging Cutlass. Even in text, Jesse’s tone grew increasingly more agitated as he asked why the hell I wasn’t answering. The tenth just said, Where are you?
I read the last text message with a growing sense of foreboding. Jesse had written in shorthand, as if he were driving, or in a hurry: Omw. I dont hear from u in 24, I report u missin.
He’d packed up and was coming to look for me? From that, I extrapolated he’d sensed my emotional state from hundreds of miles away. Jesus. I didn’t know how he expected to find Kilmer when it wasn’t on MapQuest, but I didn’t imagine that setback would deter Jesse Saldana. But what would an unexpected trip mean to his suspension from the police department? Dammit, I had enough to worry about.
The last message came from Booke. A weight lifted when I realized he was all right. I’ve been ringing all day; left messages. Hope you get this. The astral over Kilmer is like a wicked dark scar. I tried for hours, but I couldn’t see a thing, just swirling, inky fog. Do be careful, and get in touch if you can.
As I closed my phone, Chance called, “What are you doing in there? Eat your dinner, woman.”
I smiled at his faux-peremptory tone. He was trying to keep the mood light, dispel some of the shadows, but he didn’t know the worst of our problems. I decided to let him finish his food before addressing the issue, so I came back to the kitchen and sat down with the folder we’d stolen. While I ate cold meat loaf and green beans, I skimmed through the collection of yellowed articles, most of which dealt with the town losing bids for contracts, developers building elsewhere, businesses closing down, and other crappy developments.
None of it was helpful.
Before I knew what I meant to do, I slapped it from the table and lunged from my seat, stomping on the articles. Chance cut me a worried look, but I didn’t care. A storm of words rose, tangling in my throat until I couldn’t tell one from another, and it became a voiceless scream. It took me a moment to recognize the pain I’d been repressing; then it drowned me in a red wave.
“This stuff is worthless! Your luck doesn’t work here, because nothing here works the way it’s supposed to. This is the ass-end of hell, a stupid Southern Bermuda Triangle!”
Chance put out a hand, as if he might try to calm me, and I took a step, wanting to fight. I wanted to hurt someone, break things, because here I stood, a grown woman surrounded by the woods where I’d hidden as a child, and I felt as helpless as I had then.
My mother died in this town, and I didn’t know where to begin. I had no ideas, no leads; just a certainty something was wrong. We had no object for me to handle and find the answers. He backed off, looking worried.
For a good ten minutes, I ranted at Chance about broken cell phones, evil trees, murderous Cutlass Supremes, and black astral mist. I’m sure I made no sense, but he gazed at me steadily all the while. When the storm blew itself out, I crumpled amid the fallen clippings, tears burning at my eyes. I never had the luxury of crying as a kid. I’d dedicated my energy to dealing with the stress of living with strangers.
He came to me then, quietly. Maybe he didn’t think he could offer any words to assuage my feelings; he would’ve been right. Instead, he wrapped his arms around me and drew me between his long legs, cradling me against his chest. He rocked with me, ever so slowly. Butch crawled into my lap, and I half hiccupped, half laughed.
“This place is evil,” I whispered. “And I don’t know what to do about it. Jesse is on the way here. I’m afraid something terrible’s going to happen to him while he’s looking for us, and it’ll be my fault. I won’t be able to stop it. I won’t be able to save him.” The words just kept spilling out of me.