Evangeline had run, and I had let her run until she’d run so far I reasoned there was no point in searching for her. I wouldn’t find her unless she wanted to be found. Let her come back on her own or let me be.
She’d smashed a glass jar by the gate, and Rufus slipped out to investigate. After rounding him up, I closed him inside and went to clean the mess. A sharp odor, pungent and distinct, hit me. I squatted to inspect. Capers?
When certain I’d cleared the last shards of glass, I released Rufus. He ran to the spot, sniffed and pawed at it, then leaped at the gate. He yelped and reared up on his hind legs, tore at the wood, peeling off paint and splinters as if trying to dig his way through.
I grabbed his collar and dragged him back inside, offered him an early dinner to calm him. With the dog then lying peaceably, I saw what Evangeline must have seen. Her filthy backpack emptied, tossed on the floor as if trash, her small collection of private things exposed on the table before a man she barely knew.
And for what purpose? Condemnation? Ridicule? Blame? What else could she have seen in it? Evangeline had gotten it right. I was a fucking bastard. Likely only one of many men who had invaded what should have been solely hers.
But my moment of regret was brief, ripped through with anger. The girl was a liar. How else to stop her endless prevarications but with irrefutable evidence of the truth? She not only knew that my son was dead well before she arrived but had been sufficiently intimate with his killer that she possessed his bracelet. There was no doubt it was Jonah’s. As I’d crouched in that dark closet, turning it in my hand, a flake of dried mud fell off, exposing the J stitched awkwardly in red.
So what if I am a fucking bastard? If anyone is entitled to be, it should be me.
IT WAS AFTER NINE WHEN I CAME to my senses and remembered that Evangeline was a child. I collected the clippings and placed them in her pack with the bracelet and the hoarded food and set it on her bed. I headed with Rufus into the wet darkness, thinking she might have hidden on the property as she had that first night.
When I commanded Rufus to find Evangeline, he zigzagged the grounds with his nose down. I swept a beam across the field, lit the blowing rain, drops sparking like embers. Disembodied eyes glowed green near the back fence. A racoon or a bobcat or a coyote. They flickered and disappeared. I was glad Rufus was distracted. That dog never could resist a wild creature in need of a good chasing. But I worried for Evangeline on this gusting night with eyes like those waiting for her.
Rufus and I shifted to the front. At the ancient plum, he picked up his whining and pawed at the trunk. For a moment, I thought she might have taken refuge in its old limbs. But the tree was empty, only lichen and moss growing like barnacles on its wrinkled skin. I led Rufus inside and grabbed my keys.
In the garage, the car’s engine roared to life, and I sat in its dark safety, my breath loud and echoing. Who was this girl to my son? The only witness to the murder was the killer, and he too was dead. With two teenage boys and the only evidence of criminal activity a few beers and an out-of-season buck, it was easy to suspect a girl at its heart. But a month had passed after his death without the slightest sign.
Then she appeared. This girl with her casual beauty. This girl, sixteen and pregnant. This girl who rose in the middle of the night from beneath a gnarled tree like a nightmare—or a wish.
I backed out of the garage. She’d claimed to have been looking for the park. Though everything about her story was almost certainly a lie, it might have reflected an inclination on her part, so I headed there.
The wind had grown fierce, and as I turned toward town, a large branch flew from a tree, barely missing the car. So now there was the murder and the baby, wild animals and lethal branches fretting my mind. That’s likely why I hadn’t heard the other breath in the car, why my heart jolted when a shadow rose from the backseat.
“You looking for me?” Evangeline said.
THE WIND JOSTLED THE RAMPS AND DOCKS, the sailboats and fishing vessels, set them all into confused, jangling motion. A stop sign, embedded in broken concrete, had been jackhammered up and deposited nonsensically a few parking spots over. It glowed under a lamp, the wind whipping it into high-speed vibration, blurring the white of the word into the sea of red. We sat facing the marina, the car damp and close, filled with the sharp edge of sweat and something like panic. Evangeline opened the back door.
“No. Stay there.”
She closed the door, but I felt her behind me, perched forward in the seat. “Why don’t we go home?” she said, the heat of her breath on my ear.
“I’m not ready.”
“If I could only—”
“Quiet!”
Evangeline drew a sharp breath. She was right to be afraid. Reason had abandoned me, replaced by a rage that blossomed like blood spreading through water. I was bright with it. So many people I hated as I sat in that dank car, the night wind beating against it. I hated not only Jonah but his mother, Lorrie. I hated Katherine for leaving and Peter for telling me what he knew. I hated my son for having died and myself for having allowed it. I hated Evangeline for her youthful beauty and the way it could seduce a boy like Jonah. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to tear her apart in search of my son.
I reveal this because there is no point to the telling if I hide what causes me shame. If it repels, so be it. But I wonder whether urges—urges we refuse to act upon—make us worthy of contempt. Doesn’t evil and its violence stalk us all, forever seeking points of entry? Shouldn’t our resistance to these atavistic urges be the criterion upon which we are judged?
As for the beast, it lives. It has always lived. It is one of God’s terrible guises.
Evangeline remained forward in the seat, expectant. I gathered myself and said, softer now, controlling my anger, “I need a few minutes. I’ll break the silence when I’m ready. Stay where you are. Better I can’t see you.”
“But the rearview mirror.”
I glanced up and there were her eyes, swollen and shadowed. I flipped the mirror away, and Evangeline went quiet. Over the past week, she’d learned my habit of reflection, my “weirdly long” pauses before a reply. It exasperated her, but she knew that efforts to force communication would only prolong my need. A minute went by and then another. She slumped back with a sigh.
Who could fault me for my withdrawal? For imagining my own throat being slit, half hoping it would happen? I didn’t know who this child was or what she was capable of. She had demonstrated a fearfulness of the truth, a ferocious imagination and a propensity toward manipulation—an animal scrabbling to survive, for herself and her child. Only a fool would attempt to engage such a creature without adequate stillness of mind.
We sat in the dark, and I heard her breathing, congested as if she’d been crying, and my rage was replaced by a sudden, fierce desire to comfort her. But I did not, because I could not trust the rampages of my heart. I watched the rocking of the boats and the swells of the Sound, and eventually my inner storm passed into those waves that lifted and rolled.
After an hour, I was ready to speak. Evangeline lay covered with the blanket Rufus used when he traveled with me. Though it must have smelled foul, she had it pressed to her nose as if a comfort. Her breath was slow and rhythmic, and her lips made small whispering motions. It was nearly eleven, and the urgencies of the day had dissolved. I could no longer make sense of how this sleeping child—or a friend who appeared to have spoken the truth—had provoked such rage in me.
I HEADED HOME, MY MIND AND BODY CLEAR. A certain peace existed in me then, a gentle affection for Evangeline and even myself. Perhaps of everything that happened that night, this is the most difficult to explain.