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She was shaking out the blue hounds tooth rug when Kelsey walked in and stared at her.
“What?” Rachel asked, defensively.
Kelsey had been acting oddly. More oddly than usual. She’d been hanging out in the living room with her brother when usually she escaped to her room unless forced to spend time in the common areas.
Had Tom told her anything about what he’d seen? He was a pig, but surely he wouldn’t do that.
Kelsey moved closer. She eyed the open garbage can and the shards of glass that lay on top.
Rachel readied herself for a quick comeback should Kelsey remark about her drinking again. Lately, that had been Kelsey’s argument of choice.
“I saw a man in the backyard, Mom,” Kelsey said finally.
“When?” she asked, dropping the rug.
“The other night.” Kelsey took a seat on a barstool. “And it was really weird. He was looking at our house. He, like, looked at it for a really long time.”
“Where were you?”
Her daughter hesitated for a quick moment. “In the woods. I was coming home and I saw him the yard.”
“Why were you in the—” Rachel stopped. Kelsey was talking to her for the first time in weeks. She couldn’t put her on the defense. She needed to know about this man. “Did you recognize him?”
“No. It was too dark. All I could tell was that he was tall,” her daughter said, rubbing the back of one of arms. “Mom, this guy was creepy. He really scared me.”
Rachel reached for the phone on the wall. She was livid. She was calling the sheriff again. She’d file a lawsuit against the department for not doing more.
“Mom?”
“What darling?”
“I, uh. . .” she said, then stopped. She gazed into Rachel’s eyes, her eyes almost soft.
Almost.
“There’s something else.”
Rachel noted that the usual anger in Kelsey’s eyes had vanished. In its place was what appeared to be confusion.
Rachel put the phone down. Was this about Mac? So, Tom had told her. The big shit! Suddenly she felt ashamed.
“What baby? Go ahead, you can tell me,” she said, preparing herself.
Kelsey’s voice was gentler than it had been for over a year when she next spoke. “Why are you staying with Dad?”
Rachel blinked. “What?”
“I know what he did. Everyone knows what he did, Mom. And he treats you like rat shit. He doesn’t come home. He won’t even talk decent to you. So why do you stay with him?”
Rachel was at a loss for words.
Kelsey dug her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and looked down at the floor so she didn’t have to meet her mother’s eyes. “You used to be so strong, Mom. What happened to you?”
***
RACHEL WATCHED THE blood swirl down the drain. There was a lot of it. Too much.
She’d cut the inside of her hand picking up a missed sliver from a broken wine glass. Now she was ru
She was ashamed. Kelsey’s words had stung her worse than she’d ever been stung. . . even by Tom. She was right. Rachel had lost herself and she was no longer as strong as she’d once been.
No wonder the family had grown so far apart.
And now there was this strange man. He wasn’t a product of her imagination. She had to protect her children. She had to do so many things differently.
She quickly bandaged her hand, then picked up the phone. Her hand trembled as she dialed a phone number she hadn’t dialed in a long while. After a few moments, someone picked up on the other end.
“Mom? It’s Rachel,” she said, sniffing back tears. “The kids and I. . . we’re going to come out to Phoenix for a while if that’s okay.”
Chapter 49
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Erica sat on the sidewalk outside of Luke’s with a grilled cheese sandwich and a cold Coca-Cola. She pressed the chilly can against her forehead and neck.
Red ants swarmed in the cracks of the sidewalk and in the gravel, busying themselves with a sandwich crumb. She watched them for a while, until the white glare of the sidewalk grew so intense, she felt it burning her eyes through her cheap sunglasses. She spread her slender legs out in front of her and squeezed her eyes shut.
She was confused by what she’d seen two evenings earlier. When she stopped at Mrs. Anderson’s hoping to ask her a question, Mac’s truck had been parked in front of the house. She had been mildly curious when she first saw the truck, but as she waited and it grew later, it seemed even more bizarre for him to be there. Especially since Tom Anderson didn’t appear to be home.
While she waited, she found a swing set in the backyard. It was set back far enough that it was bathed in darkness and she was confident she wouldn’t be seen. She sat on the swing and watched the house long after the lights had gone off.
Were the two having an affair? No, they couldn’t be. It just didn’t make sense. She thought about Haley.
The rumble of an eighteen-wheeler grew closer and she opened her eyes. The rig pulled into the gravel lot and after some raucous rattling, the engine cut off. The trucker stepped out into the dust the rig had kicked up. He gri
Through her sunglasses, she glared back.
Why were men such children? Especially truckers who would flirt with anything that moved. Had they always been such horrible flirts? What came first, she wondered, the urge to flirt or to drive big trucks?
“Howdy,” the man said, walking up to the building. He tipped a filthy baseball cap and smiled.
She kept her eyes narrowed until he walked past, her lungs filling with diesel exhaust and dust. She closed her eyes again and wished to be in the city where her mother was. The air bursting with exotic food aromas, blending with the exhaust of stop and go traffic. Not an ounce of back road country dust in sight.
She wanted to hear the sounds of the city. Cars beeping their horns, people yelling for cabs, corner musicians playing guitars or violins maybe, change clanking into the money baskets splayed out before them. Street magicians surrounded by crowds of open-mouthed people, oohing and awing at the startling magic they witnessed. To see hookers strutting down the streets, their pimps laying low, smoking cigars and counting their money beneath the shade of giant buildings.
Everyone would be different in their own right. They’d even be celebrated for it. And Erica knew that she’d finally fit in.
Chapter 50
HALEY GRABBED A cane pole from its place in the overgrown, wasp-infested monkey grass and stepped cautiously onto the small rectangular pier behind Erica’s house.
Most of the families in Grand Trespass lived on lots that backed up to the bayou. Most only had small piers, splintering and warped from decades of Louisiana sun, the wood jutting up in odd places from rot. Erica’s lot was no different. She lived in a small white clapboard house with black shutters and a black door, a concrete carport and long gravel driveway.
Slender lizards scuttled up and down the siding, some content to be in the sun, others slipping into the slats of the shutters to nap in the shade.
The yard wasn’t well cared for. A row of dead bushes, burnt from the summer sun, lined the front of the house. Moldy pecan husks lay everywhere in the tall grass, and Haley had counted four wasp nests in the few minutes she’d been there.
“Does your father ever cut this grass?” she asked, wiping sweat from her brow. It was past six o’clock in the evening and the air was still heavy with heat and humidity. She sat down and the heat from the dry wood stung the back of her bare legs.