thirty-one

MELISSA DROVE EAST out of Coldwater. Her thoughts drifted through the winding wooded roads. It had been forever since she had lived here, but her hands directed the car, instinctively guiding her to a dark destination. The area looked familiar but strange. The passage of time altering her childhood memory into a distorted present. She drove on until she came to a dirt road that branched north. She slowed and turned onto it.

The trees hung over in a blanketed canopy, a leafy tunnel extending out before her. When she was young, there was but one house on this access road. Now several two-tracks jetted off on either side every so often—hunting trails.

And then she arrived.

The woods dropped away, revealing a plot of ground that was scorched of everything save for a few weeds struggling against the dirt. Nestled back several hundred feet was a house. Her house. Her childhood home.

She sat in her car on the road for a while. Purpose had driven her out here, but now she was stopped with a sense of dread that left her feeling nauseated and doubtful. Was she ready to do this? Was she ready to put a bullet in Michael?

Melissa turned the wheel and pulled into the yard. She stopped the car, reached under the seat and grabbed the Glock, opened the door, and stepped out.

Looking around, she saw the hard-packed earth circling the house in concentric rings of decay until the woods slowly found their starting point. At the epicenter of the circle was the house. The remains of the house she remembered.

Motes drifted in sunlight as she stepped up to the porch. The front door was slightly open and hanging off one of the hinges. It looked half rotten, the handle and lock long since disappeared. She looked in, and a small animal, squirrel or something similar, scurried farther into the house and out of sight.

“Hello?” she said, her voice echoing in the vacant building.

Melissa placed a foot across the threshold, cautiously, as if unsure of the strength of the floor beneath her feet. The silence was overwhelming. She observed the scene behind outstretched arms, the gun before her.

The room she’d entered was in shambles. What little adornment the house once had now lay scattered on the floor. A wall sconce, a mirror now broken in several large pieces. The table was pushed over toward the sink in an impossible-to-be-useful position, its sole chair knocked off its legs. The years had taken a bat to the abode and wracked its bones.

She walked deeper into the house, her own faded memories racing before her. The living area was simple. A worn couch sat next to the wall under the window but now looked to be used as a rat’s nest rather than a seat. A coffee table with a chewed leg and rain-stained surface sat before it.

Melissa turned and walked into the hall that led to the bedrooms, the Glock held in trembling hands. She tried the first door, but it wouldn’t open. It was her old room, a room that she had shared with her brother, the memory of it circulating in her mind in single-frame snapshots. She more felt than visualized the memory of the house.

She put some weight behind her effort, but it wouldn’t budge. The handle of the door was new, its pristine brass coating standing out like a beacon in a trash pile. The handle had a keyhole suited for an exterior door. It was locked. She searched the top of the frame for a key, but found none.

Turning down the hall, Melissa walked to the back bedrooms. In one of them there was just a bed with more tattered books stacked up along the far wall. The roof above the bed had fallen away, and the weather had done its work to rot the gypsum on the walls.

Across the hall, behind a panel door that leaned against the doorframe, was her parents’ old room.

Melissa returned to the living area. She slowly took a last look around. Her eyes passed over the grimy window, and she paused, then dismissed a stray thought of scrubbing off the grunge to look outside.

If she had done so, she would have noticed a truck parked out on the road, its occupants watching, waiting for her to come out.

“Haywood, that woman Lila was talking about, I think she’s at the house,” Frank said into his cell phone.

A voice on the other end responded.

“And another thing,” he said, “when was the last time you were out here at Michael’s?”

More chatter.

“Has this place always looked like this . . . like, dead? It’s like someone let off napalm or something. It’s just—”

“Odd?” Earl piped in.

“Yeah, odd,” Frank said into the phone.

Frank looked at Earl as he received his instructions.

“Okay,” Frank said, then hung up the phone and placed it in his visor.

“What he say?” Earl asked.

“He said to sit tight, see what she does.”

“Sit tight? What, we stalking her now too? Jeez, man, this just keeps getting worse. What happens if she sees us?”

“Nothing. We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re on a public road. Every right to be here.”

“Oh, okay.” Earl scowled. “Just two dudes sitting in a truck watching a woman walk around . . . ain’t nothing weird about that, Your Honor.”

“Would you stop it! Haywood is right. We need to know who she is. We don’t know where Michael is, and suddenly she shows up looking through his things? It can’t be a coincidence. Chances are she’s here to help him. And if that’s the case, where she is, he could be also.”

“Which means best to stay away from her,” Earl said.

“Wrong. You know where she is, you know where he is. Better than finding him in your house in the middle of the night, am I right?” Frank asked.

“I guess so.”

“Right. So just relax.”

“Okay, genius, what if he’s in there with her right now?” Earl asked.

Frank thought for a minute. Earl wasn’t dumb all the time.

He put the truck in gear and drove to a more secluded part of the road but still kept the house in sight. He turned the truck around, feeling a little more at ease to be facing toward Coldwater than pointed away from the main road back to town.

“How long do we wait?” Earl asked.

“As long as it takes, I guess.”

“What he say about all this dead earth surrounding Michael’s house?”

“Said he seen it before.”

“And?”

“Just said it’s proof that Michael’s very presence is a cancer.”

Earl shook his head and looked out the window. “We never should have done this.”

“I know,” Frank said.

“Never should have listened to Haywood.”

“I know.”

“So why are we still?”

Frank sat silently and looked out the windshield. Nope, Earl wasn’t dumb all the time.