| |
As they moved ever eastward, the sparse cedars gave way to oppressive pines that hugged the road and blocked the sun. Macy Donner sat silently in the passenger’s seat. She didn’t often stay quiet, but she rarely found herself in such an awkward situation. She focused on the hum of the tires against the road, which had gotten louder as they moved farther from her hometown of Rose Valley. Now the pavement changed every few miles, a patchwork of half-repairs and worn asphalt. The shifts rattled her bones with every transition.
The seven-year-old in the backseat didn’t seem to notice. She held a tablet just inches from her nose. As a child, Macy would have been scolded for getting that close to a screen.
And in the driver’s seat sat Kat Baker, though she went by Kathryn now and her last name had just switched—for the second time. As a freshman at Rose Valley High, Macy had thought Kat a goddess among women. Now, seven years later, it was hard to see the once-effervescent glow of the head cheerleader. Macy felt bad for what Kat had been through. Pregnant straight out of high school. A shotgun wedding. It must have looked pretty bleak in the early days.
A ringtone jolted Macy’s attention away from the road, causing her to instinctively reach for her phone. But the ring came over the car speakers. Kat’s phone.
Kat pushed a button on the steering wheel. “Hey, babe. You on the road?”
A slight pause. Macy recognized it. He did that when there was something he didn’t want to say.
The voice of Macy’s father, Cam Donner, rumbled through the speakers like a bass guitar. “Not yet. Dub needs some help tying up this case.”
Kat sighed, glancing in the rearview mirror at her daughter. “Babe. Come on. You’re not a cop anymore. You’re the mayor. Leave all that to Dub. He can handle it.”
“It’s a murder, Kat. Doesn’t happen every day in Rose Valley. We gotta do this right.”
“She wasn’t even from Rose Valley.”
Macy knew all about this particularly strange case. She hadn’t spent much time with Brynn Kerrison, but it still broke her heart what had happened to Brynn’s mother. Especially after all that went down out at Gray’s Point.
“That just makes it worse,” Cam said. “But listen, I promise to get on the road tonight. I’ll be there to make you and Olivia breakfast tomorrow.”
Macy cleared her throat and joined the conversation. “Should I just make my own breakfast then?”
Kat rolled her eyes and shook her head, a show of support and apology for Cam’s thoughtlessness. At least she was trying to be a cool stepmom.
“And Macy, of course. Special pancakes for my little girl.” A hasty stab at recovery, but Macy smiled in spite of herself. She did like her special pancakes.
She wasn’t upset, really. Her dad dealt with Kat and Olivia every day, but Macy had been away at college for years now and didn’t feel as close with him as she once had. She couldn’t blame him for taking care of them first. It was his job now. Though it still made her uncomfortable that his wife was closer to her own age.
“Fine,” Kat finally relented. “I’ll hold you to that. We need you to chop the wood.”
Cam laughed. “Macy, can do it.”
“Not a chance,” Macy piped in.
“See you tonight,” Kat said. “I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
The screen changed back to the radio station, as Macy tried to process her dad saying that to someone other than her mother. It had been a decade since the divorce, and her mom had remarried just a few years ago, but she foolishly thought maybe she’d be able to keep her dad to herself forever.
Macy turned to her phone, eager to let the silence set in again. Her battery ticked down under fifteen percent. She should have charged it overnight, but hadn’t. She never remembered to charge anything.
“Do you have a USB-C cable?” Macy asked.
Kat twisted up her mouth in thought. She indicated for Macy to look in the glove box. No cables except the one snaking back to Olivia’s tablet. Olivia’s iPad.
“No, sorry. We have mostly Apple devices.”
“It’s okay. I have one in my bag. I’ll just charge up when we get there.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
Too much apologizing. Kat seemed just as nervous with this awkward arrangement as Macy, and Macy knew that was partially her own fault. She hadn’t exactly thrown a fit at the union, but she could have been a little warmer to the news. She’d eventually make peace with Kat and Olivia, but not yet. Not when it came on so suddenly. Dad hadn’t even invited her to the wedding; if you could call a visit to the Justice of the Peace a wedding.
Agreeing to come on this “family” vacation seemed like enough of a concession for now.
Macy shot a quick text to her boyfriend, Tanner, before putting her phone away to preserve the battery. Off chasing monsters, he wouldn’t answer for a while.
“Did you hear about Starla Batson?” Kat asked suddenly.
Macy mentally ran through names and faces before it clicked. Starla. Yes. About her parents’ age. Owned a boutique downtown. Infamous for losing her top at her eighth-grade swim party. Stories like that were immortal in a tiny town like Rose Valley.
“No,” Macy replied. “What’d she do this time?”
Kat laughed. That laugh—vibrant and alive. A hint at who she might have once been.
“Some guy tried to shoplift something from her. Starla chased him clear out onto the square, eventually caught up with him and beat the ever-loving shit out of him.”
“Mama—language!” Olivia said in a fevered whisper.
Kat ignored her. “Word is that by the time Dub got there, she had the poor guy pinned to the sidewalk beggin’ for mercy.”
Macy giggled. “I guess that’s the last time someone shoplifts from her.”
“Woah,” Kat said.
Up ahead, cars blocked the highway. Red and blue lights pulsated. Kat brought the van to a slow halt.
A young cop, barely older than Macy, stood directing traffic. Behind him, two squad cars blocked both sides of the road. And beyond that, a pick-up rested on its top. Glass shards littered the highway. Red stains. Everywhere. Dozens of feet away from the smashed truck, paramedics surrounded someone she could barely classify as human anymore.
Surely dead.
Her pulse increased. Macy tried to avert her eyes, but found it difficult. Her life had taken her on crazy adventures, hunting krakens and taking down creepy cults, but she’d never actually seen a dead person like this.
“Baby,” Kat said to Olivia, “just play on your tablet, okay?”
Macy turned to the backseat to see Olivia staring straight ahead. How much could she see? Without a thought, Macy unbuckled her seatbelt and shoved herself into the backseat, almost kicking Olivia in the face before finally settling in the seat beside her. Olivia looked at her like she’d gone crazy.
“What are you watching?” Macy asked.
“Playing,” she said, looking briefly back to the screen. “’Plants vs. Zombies.’”
“Oh yeah?” Macy said, inching closer in. “The first one came out when I was a little girl. Just a little older than you.”
“Really? They had tablets when you were little?”
Macy scrunched up her face in fake disgust. “How old do you think I am?”
“Hmmm.” Olivia studied Macy’s face carefully. “Forty-two.”
“What?”
Olivia giggled and turned back to her tablet. The little rat knew she’d overshot. With the girl misdirected, Macy tuned into the conversation Kat was now having with the cop at the window.
“Where you ladies headed?” he asked.
“Just up to Hogg Run. The old Baker place.”
Macy had never been. From her understanding, it was an old cabin owned by Kat’s family.
“Oh, that old place?” the cop asked. “I thought it’d been abandoned.”
“Yeah, Daddy hasn’t been able to get out there as often as he used to. We’ve got a caretaker that’s supposed to be looking in on it.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s in fine shape then. Who’s your caretaker?”
“Hauser maybe? I haven’t seen him in years.”
The cop didn’t respond right away, and took a beat to glance at the dead body in the road. His friendly demeanor melted into discomfort. He forced a smile, then patted the door.
“Well, we’ll be another hour or so cleaning this up. There’s a barbecue place back up the road about half a mile. Maybe stop in and have an early dinner.”
“Okay. Thanks, officer.”
As Kat backed the van up, Macy locked eyes with her in the rearview mirror.
“Thank you,” Kat said.
Macy nodded solemnly.
A quick trip up the road and they pulled into the aforementioned barbecue place, the corrugated steel walls of which promised little refuge from the nippy winter air. Empty picnic tables took up the parking spots closest to the entrance and smoke billowed out the back. The late January sun made the whole place almost look like a mirage. It would have been a great place to stop if Olivia were the type of kid to run around, but Macy suspected the tablet would be a mainstay of their trip, even in the great outdoors.
Kat opened her door first. A mouth-watering odor of smoked meat wafted into the van. Until that moment, Macy hadn’t even noticed her hunger.
“Come on, Liv,” Kat said. “Put the screen away. It’s time for dinner.”
To Macy’s surprise, Olivia didn’t protest. Must’ve been hungry.
They piled into the restaurant to find it mostly empty, though the smokers in the back kept the place toasty enough. The metal walls were filled with old license plates, kitschy signs from a bygone era, and a particularly large faded sign of a mustached man in a long-tail coat and top hat. As old as it was, the man’s eyes still held a mischievous twinkle. Above his head, once-bright letters proclaimed him to be The Amazing Schlitz. At his feet sat all manner of animals. Cute bunny rabbits. A baby pig. Even an elephant that was clearly not drawn to scale. And below them it read: And His Wondrous Petting Zoo.
Wide-eyed, Olivia tugged at Kat’s hand. “I wanna go. Can we go?”
“I don’t know if it still exists anymore, baby. It’s a really old sign.”
Sensing someone behind them, Macy turned to see a short, stocky woman with skin that looked like it might fall straight off her face. She smiled a stained-toothed smile—at least for the teeth remaining.
“He passed on a while back now,” the old woman said, her voice clearly ravaged by years of smoking. “He ran into a bit of trouble after an unfortunate accident at his zoo.”
The way she said zoo raised Macy’s hackles, leaving her to wonder what exactly had gone wrong. Olivia slid behind her mother, courageous enough only to peek out with one eye.
“You girls come here for supper?” the old woman asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kat replied. “Have anything left?”
A reasonable question. In Texas, proprietors of barbecue made a set amount each day and stayed open until the public snatched it all up. Back in Rose Valley, it wasn’t unheard of for the local barbecue joint to be closed by noon.
The old woman smiled and waddled off, motioning towards the empty tables filling the room. “Y’all sit down and I’ll fix ya right up.”
Choosing a picnic-style table near the entrance, Kat and Olivia slid in beside each other as Macy took the bench across. From her purse, Kat retrieved Olivia’s tablet and handed it to her.
“Have you eaten here before?” Macy asked, turning her attention back to Kat.
“No. Daddy always smoked his own meat out at the cabin. I haven’t been out here since Liv was born, though.”
“So, high school then?” Macy said, immediately regretting the question.
Kat shifted her eyes away and sighed. “Yeah. Feels like a lifetime ago.”
“Sorry Bobby did that to you. Left you alone like that.”
Kat smiled pensively at Olivia before responding, “Such is life, I guess. I had a good network. We made it work. And we’re doing better than ever now.”
The conversation veered far too close to the recent marriage. Macy didn’t want to talk about that yet, so she brought up safer topics until the food arrived.
The old lady slapped down an old, plastic bread crate lined with butcher paper. Inside, beautifully smoked brisket and juicy sausage mingled together, with a half loaf of bread off to the side. There were pickles and onions, too. Those counted as vegetables, right? Macy’s stomach rumbled with anticipation.
With no more time for words, the three of them dished portions into red-checkered paper boats they found next to a roll of paper towels on the table. The brisket melted in Macy’s mouth, making her forget about everything else. Kat picked at the food slowly. Macy recognized the concern—weight gain. She was intent on bucking that mindset, though of course it still haunted her.
Somewhere in the silence of their meal, the rain rolled in. The first few drops struck ominously loud, then more followed, sounding like the pops of popcorn in the microwave. By the time they took the last bites, Macy found it difficult to hear her own thoughts above the cacophony. January rain was the absolute worst. It rarely got cold enough to turn to snow, which left nothing but cold wet stings. And not one of them had thought to bring their jackets into the restaurant. The skies had been clear when they’d arrived, but such was the cruelty of Texas weather.
After paying for their food, they piled outside and huddled together under the metal awning. Macy looked to the sky and saw nothing but dark clouds unfurling in every direction. Somewhere up there, the sun still tried to poke through, but it couldn’t win the fight. Evening had descended early.
Kat pulled the keys from her purse and clicked a button to unlock the van. “Ready?”
Olivia smiled before letting go of Kat’s hand. Macy nodded. Then they were off, darting through the rain. She felt the raindrops against her skin almost immediately, her thin t-shirt providing only a quickly-soaked barrier against the cold. Frizzy wisps of red hair matted against her face.
They made it to the van. Kat started the engine and pulled back out onto the highway. Macy wondered whether the accident they’d seen earlier might be cleaned up.
With the rain falling so hard, the van inched along at only a few miles per hour.
“Mama,” Olivia chimed from the backseat. “Can you turn on the heater?”
Kat glanced down at the controls, causing Macy to do the same. The heater was already on. It just hadn’t warmed up yet. Macy answered before Kat could: “It’s already on. Just give it a minute.”
“Okay.”
After a few minutes, they approached the now-abandoned stretch of road where they’d seen the wreck earlier. The headlights shimmered off broken bits of glass still strewn about the highway. Macy tried to ignore the black stain on the asphalt, but just driving towards it made her uneasy, as if the ghastly essence of it would somehow filter up through the undercarriage and suffocate them all.
When they drove over the spot, Kat said, “We’re not far now.”
Macy wondered whether Kat chose that exact moment to distract from the reality of the situation. A shiver shot up her spine as she regarded the dark clouds stretching out before them.
What a weird trip this was turning out to be.
