“We’re not okay, are we?” He asks it quietly, but I hear the heartbreak in his voice.
I take the glass and turn toward him. The kids are in their rooms, and I keep my volume low as well. “Sam, did you know the Lost Angels were ramping this up again?”
“No.” He says it definitively, and I believe him. “I thought they were letting it go. Last time I checked, we weren’t high on their list of monsters anymore.”
“But not off it.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever be off it.”
“Sam,” I say gently, but with purpose. “It isn’t we. Me and the kids are the ones on the posters.”
That silences him. He squeezes his eyes closed, then says, “I know. I’m sorry.” I hear the guilt. He started this. He knows how much damage it’s already done, and will continue to wreak. But there’s also little he can do about that, and I take a breath to acknowledge it.
He opens his eyes, and we hold that gaze for a long moment before he says, “Gwen, what are you going to do?” I can feel the solid ground between us trembling and eroding, and I hate it with every muscle fiber. Someone did this to us. But not Sam. I know that. I wish I could feel that, but I know it takes time.
So for now, I reach across that uncertain ground and take his hand, step close, whisper, “Stay.” It’s a promise from me, and a question for him.
I feel the relief that floods his body as he hugs me, a long and warm embrace that soothes the screaming parts of me. I hope it does the same for him, but that’s the hell of being human: you never really know. Never.
You never know what the person you love might do. Or could be capable of doing.
Sometimes you don’t even know that about yourself.
We seem better as we get the kids settled for the night; we take our wineglasses out to the porch. It’s not the same as it was back on Stillhouse Lake; the view’s of a cul-de-sac and a neighbor’s front window, not the soothing, cool ripple of the water. But we still have a covered porch, and our two rocking chairs, and we sit together and sip in silence.
I ruin the mood by telling him about my new, worrying stalker. After a fairly significant pause, he tells me about the call from the newspaper.
I nearly spill my wine. “Someone called in my obituary?”
“Probably the same guy, don’t you think? Hell, he might have gotten busy with the flyers too.”
I take in a deep breath. “You took care of that obituary, though. It won’t—”
“Show up online, or in the papers? No. But we should be aware that’s a tactic that’s out there. Stay alert.”
I feel sick at the thought. There’s so much viciousness to all this. And I understand the impulses behind it. It’s so easy at a distance to pass judgment, to feel satisfaction when someone else receives pain you think they deserve.
What this man—if it is just the one man—is doing is the bigger, more toxic version of that common, petty feeling.
“Anything else?” I ask him with a sigh. It’s been a hell of a day. I take a big gulp of wine.
“Thank God, no. That’s all I’ve got. We’re going to get through this, you know.” He takes my hand, and we sit quietly, connected. “You trust me, right?”
“I love you, Sam.”
“But do you trust me?”
I turn to look at him, and find him staring straight at me. I feel the impulse to lie to him. To protect myself. And I fight that with all my heart. “Honestly? I’m trying as hard as I know how. Sam . . . I hate this. I hate that all my instincts tell me to grab my kids and protect them from everything, everyone, even you. I know it isn’t right. I know that you’re the love of my life, the man I ought to trust above anyone else. But I have to learn that. It doesn’t come naturally.”
I’m afraid, when I say it, that he’s going to take offense . . . and I realize that fear, too, is part of what I have to unlearn. Melvin got in me as deep as cancer, but if I have to claw him out by the bloody handfuls, I will.
It feels like a piece of that rot falls away when Sam says, steady as always, “It didn’t come naturally for me either. You’ll get there, Gwen. I trust you to find the way. And I’m not going anywhere.”
The gift of that makes tears burn in my eyes. I lift his hand and press my lips to it in silent gratitude.
“Now,” Sam says. “Somebody’s fucking with our lives. What are we going to do about that?”
I take a deep breath. “Go get him,” I say.
“Damn right.”
We clink glasses and drain the last of our wine.
10
KEZIA
I’m so damn tired that night when I get home, I fall asleep on the couch without doing any of the normal things I’d take care of before bed.
Like putting my phone on the charger.
I wake up at 5:00 a.m. and instinctively reach to check messages only to find the damn thing’s dead. Shit. I plug it in and go off to shower and make coffee; when I come back it’s got enough power for me to see that I had just one missed call.
Gwen. I call back while I take my first, life-saving sip of coffee, and I forget about the cup altogether as she tells me about her night. About the damn wanted posters, the gun range expulsion. That has to hurt, and it’s worrying. My coffee gets significantly cooler while she tells me about the new internet stalker she’s acquired, but I take a big gulp anyway before I say, “You think it’s the same guy?”
“Seems pretty likely,” she says. “Sam’s going to check on the Lost Angels site and find out who’s agitating against us right now. This guy . . . seems pretty devoted, and pretty capable. I’m worried, to be honest.”
“About how the kids will handle it? Or about how you will?”
“Shit, Kez. You get right to the heart of things, don’t you?” She lets out a breath. “Both, I guess. You know what my impulse is, don’t you?”
“Grab what you love and run?”
“I can’t do that anymore. I can’t do it to them anymore.”
“‘Stand your ground’ didn’t work so well out at Stillhouse Lake.”
“That was special circumstances,” she counters. “Unless the NPD finally decided to get serious about the Belldenes, it was the right decision to go.”
“We haven’t, and we probably won’t unless they do something real stupid,” I say. “So you’re likely right. You think the kids can handle that pressure?”
“I think we all have to learn to live with it. Somehow. Sorry to add to your burdens, Kez, I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Look, I called you out to a crime scene at God Knows O’clock, so you get to drop whatever you need on me. I’m so sorry. You don’t need this shit.”
“I really don’t,” she says. “But I’m shoveling. Listen . . . I should have said before, but I turned up something you need to know about Sheryl Lansdowne.” Then she launches into the story, and I grab pen and notebook and find myself taking quick, furious notes, writing down names in sharply slanted handwriting that tells me my hunter’s blood is up. I’m completely focused on what she’s saying, and deep down I’m not even that surprised. I believed Tommy’s father last night when he told me his son didn’t just run for the hills. There’s something here. Something dark and twisted and very, very dangerous.