Page 94 of Lies He Told Me

Not the word I would use to describe my day.

I find a store clerk, a young woman in a visor and a company vest. “I just need to buy a few things,” I tell her. “But two of them, I need to buy in bulk.”

Twenty minutes later, I’m at the cash register with a young clerk who looks high school age, who’d need to call someone else to ring up a sale of liquor (which I seriously considered buying for courage).

“Run this,” says the woman who first helped me, showing him a ticket with a barcode on it. “Ma’am, pull around to the back with a receipt, and we’ll unload the boxes.”

The kid at the cash register aims his scanner at the barcodeand checks the register for the price. “Holy shit,” he says, doing a double take. “Is that right?”

I look at the screen. More than fourteen hundred dollars. “That sounds right,” I say.

“Uh, okay. And then you have …” He looks into my cart. “How many …”

“How many life jackets? Twenty-four,” I say. “I think they were all the same price, but we should probably be sure.”

I dump them out of the cart. He scans them one by one, then I throw them back in the cart.

“Okay,” he finally says. “Is that everything?”

“Don’t forget these,” I say. I hand him four pairs of kids’ toy handcuffs.

“Ohhh-kay, sure, why not?”

He rings me up. I pay my bill.

“And you’re going around back for your pickup,” he says. “You’ll need this receipt for” — he shakes his head — “a hundred and fifty reams of paper.”

“I won’t forget. Thanks.”

He looks at me with a question.

“Don’t ask,” I say.

ONE HUNDRED ONE

AROUND AN HOUR LATER, I take the exit off the interstate to Hemingway Grove with a flutter in my chest. I don’t know where Blair is or how much he knows, but I assume he’s here in town, probably with Silas, ready to pounce the moment they see me.

I pick up David’s phone and do a search for the Hemingway Grove Police Department. I click on the number and wait for an answer.

“I need to speak with Sergeant Kyle Janowski,” I say. “This is Marcie Bowers. It’s urgent.” I stay on the outer rim of the town, opting for a route that outsiders like Blair and Silas wouldn’t know.

“Please hold.”

My stomach knotted up, my back and shoulders aching, I feel like I’m tapping my last reserve of energy. But we’re almost at the end, for better or —

“Marcie?”

“Kyle.”

“Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. Listen. Do something —”

“Don’t run, Marcie. Don’t run, okay? Whatever it is you did —”

“I’m not running, Kyle. Listen — do something for me. Check your email.”

“Check my … email?”

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