Page 48 of The Vacancy In Room 10

“Who’s this?” Reid says with an accusatory tone, but also with a twinge of something I recognize. Jealousy? Maybe not exactly, but something in that category.

I go with this and jump into action. I walk over to Callum with my back to Reid, trying to convey a look that says just follow my lead but having no idea if he picks up on it. He’s scared out of his mind right now—we both are—so he’ll make sure we get rid of Reid as quickly as possible.

I put my arm around Callum’s waist, and I can feel him tense.

“This is Callum,” I say. “Callum, Reid here thinks some of his things were taken last night and put in my trunk, but I was just about to explain to him that we didn’t take my car. We took Crystal’s van, so you should ask your neighbor to specify whether this was a Volkswagen trunk or a minivan hatchback.”

“Sure, whatever, Cass. I’m going to get my shit out of your trunk,” Reid says, and starts to walk away.

Callum and I exchange a look of panic. We follow him around the side of the building.

“I’m telling you to leave the property, so you’re trespassing if you don’t. You want the tools back, sue me. File a report, but you have to leave, or I can have you arrested, too,” I say, my words coming out at a furious pace.

When Reid reaches my car, I hear the beep-beep of the key fob unlocking the doors, and Callum leaps between Reid and the trunk.

“She told you to leave the property,” Callum says, and I can hear his voice shaking.

I quickly pull out my phone and start recording Reid. “This is Reid Chapman,” I say. “He’s a respected real estate broker and father-to-be. Let’s watch him trespass on private property after he’s been asked to leave and break into my car and other illegal shit.”

“Cass,” Reid says with an exasperated tone.

“He likes to make a spectacle of me, so let’s make sure the world sees the other side of it. Here he is at my place of residence, harassing me,” I say, and Callum flashes me a look—raised eyebrows and a slight nod telling me he approves of the tactic.

“Ohhh. I can post this on Insta. I know how you two enjoy having your epic love story out on social media. The slutty waitress and the cheating barfly and their forever love. Heart emoji. This will be a nice addition to your romantic legacy. Or maybe on your real estate website. Do they let you post video links in the comments?”

“Fine,” Reid says, flashing his palms and backing away.

“And give me my fucking car keys,” I say, and he hands them over and continues backing away, a show he’s putting on for the camera.

“You really want the tools that bad, wow. Just wow,” Reid says, and then he looks Callum up and down. “Whatever.” He walks around to the front of the building. Both Callum and I are still until we hear his car start and pull away.

Callum squats down on the ground and runs his hands over his face. I can’t tell if it’s in relief or terror, or maybe a mix of both.

“This was about tools?” he mutters. “God, the shit you put me through.” He holds his hand to his heart for a few minutes and breathes.

I go inside, grab the paper maps and some bottled water, and tell him we should just start driving and figure it out as we go, but we gotta get out of here. He ducks in the back seat until we are away from the property where any resident could have seen us together.

The drive is long and quiet. I have my window open and relish the small comfort of the night air. The Eagles are playing softly on the radio. We don’t say much until about forty miles out into a long stretch of desert and nothingness. And even then, we are both so numb, it’s hard to admit what we are really doing and actually figure out the details of how it will go.

“We have to leave all the money with him,” he says.

But I already know that, as much as it kills me to literally throw away literal piles of cash. It’s dirty and could be traced, and we don’t know anything about it or how dangerous it is to keep. “All the IDs stay with him. His phone is at the apartments and won’t be connected to anything,” I say.

“Good, that’s good,” he says, and he’s just comforting himself now, repeating the facts we already know.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I say, out of some bizarre conditioning to say stuff like that when people are upset.

“Yeah,” he mutters.

We drive into the night, and when we feel certain we are miles from anything—only the open scrub desert of the high planes around us, and after the darkness has swallowed the horizon—we decide to pull off the main road. We drive a short distance and park near a cluster of parched bushes and kill the headlights. The only light is a sea of stars. There are no cars on the lonely stretch of highway, and we are far enough off the main drag that we go unnoticed in the darkness...probably.

You never think about how long it takes to dig a grave. It’s not something that would ever cross your mind, and then when you begin, it seems like it will be easy to do. It takes hours. You also don’t think about bringing gloves. Rubber gloves for touching the body, yes. Working gloves never crossed my mind. With two wooden-handled garden shovels and bloodied hands, Callum and I dig in the silence and blackness, only the sound of our breath, and metal breaking up earth.

We don’t speak often, and when we do it’s about how much longer it will take or how much water we brought, and then, when we worry about dawn breaking, we decide that the hole is deep enough, and we are far enough away from anything for the loose earth to be noticed by anyone.

When it’s done, we sit on the ground, exhausted. It was a brutal act and traumatic. Trauma lives in the body, an old therapist of mine once said, and I didn’t really know what she meant. Now I do. The weight of him—the smell, the look in his eyes before he collapsed, the fear—it’s a part of me now. It’s etched in the story of my life now, and I’ll never be the me of a few days ago ever again. I’ll never be the me that thought idiot Reid and The Sycamores was the worst it could get. Now I live with all this, and I carry it with me.

I still somehow find myself thinking, just for a moment, about all of the life-changing thousands of dollars in that backpack we buried along with him, and it makes me sick. Sick because I need it so badly, and even more sick that I let my mind worry about that when a human life is gone, and I’m the monster who did it.

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