Page 48 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

“What do you mean why not? Because I can’t just take that kind of money from someone,” I manage to splutter.

“I’m not someone. I’m a longtime friend, and you need money and I have it sitting in a savings account that made approximately six cents in interest last year. You can pay it back if it will make you feel better, but just…down the line when you feel like you’re in a good spot,” he says earnestly, and I’m so utterly shocked and moved by this gesture that I don’t know what to say. I feel tears threatening to form behind my eyes, so I get up and walk over to the pups. I perch on the edge of the ottoman and pet Linus.

“That’s…probably the nicest thing anyone has ever offered,” I say, my back still to him. “But I just wouldn’t feel right about that.”

“You deserve someone to give you a freakin’ break,” he says. I turn to him and we look at one another for a long moment, then I stand and I think he takes that as a sign to leave, because he stands too, but I really don’t want him to leave.

“How about this. Say you’ll think about it, and offer’s open,” he says. I smile at him and nod.

He makes his way to the front door and starts to pull on his boots.

“I said I’d be out looking for Bernie, so I should shove off.” Before he can pull on his coat, I move closer to him and wrap my arms around his shoulders.

“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it with every bit of my soul. I needed so desperately to feel listened to and heard, and…not like an extension of Leo. Not like someone who is either a victim or might also be guilty, but just to feel like myself again for an hour. I don’t want it to end, and I find myself kissing him. Lord help me.Kissing him.Right on the lips. He pulls back with a look of surprise on his face, his eyes wide, and then, before I can be mortified at my actions or even apologize, he kisses me back.

For a few moments it’s all a blur as I end up with my back pushed against the wall and my hands up the back of his shirt, feeling the warmth of his skin, his breath, his hands on my hips. Exhilaration mixes with profound guilt and the comfort of being so close to another person after all this time fights with shame because I’m still married and the world seems to be falling apart around me and this is the last thing I should be thinking about.

I stop.I catch my breath and look at him as he steps back in the glare of the overhead kitchen light and adjusts his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“No, I’m sorry. I…” He hesitates and I think about it for a second—about just saying fuck it and inviting him up to my room, but something stops me.

“You should be out looking for Bernie. Sorry,” I say instead.

“Right. I should go,” he says, pulling on his coat.

“I’ll come with you. If that’s okay,” I say, because as exhausted and devastated as I feel right now, I think a distraction and being of some use will be the best thing so I don’t lose my shit completely. He smiles and hands me my coat.

“I’d love that,” he says.

We drive the quiet, snowy roads with the heat piping into the truck cab and the radio humming a barely audible Bob Dylan song in the background, and we don’t say much to one another. We stop for Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate at the Speedway and wind through the lonely back roads of town, trying to find places we haven’t already been. It’s solemn business, looking for a missing, elderly man who everyone fears has frozen to death somewhere, alone without his phone or a coat. I feel nauseated even thinking about it. Poor Bernie.

We pull onto a narrow road that hasn’t been plowed since last night’s snowfall. Billy shifts into four-wheel drive and we rock and sway over uneven ice and fresh snow. I’m looking out the passenger’s window into a thicket of pines when I hear Billy take in a sharp breath.

“Holy shit,” he says, and I look to where he’s looking.

“Oh God,” I say, putting my cup in the console and leaning over the dash to get a better look.It’s his car. It’s the Firebird they showed on the news. “Oh no, oh my God.”

We put the truck in Park maybe thirty feet from where the car is, and can see that it’s backed up against a snowbank, and there are footprints in the snow.

19

SHELBY

Clay doesn’t know how the security equipment got into the back of his truck. He swears to God. He swears up and down and on the girls’ lives that he can’t imagine how it could have materialized in his possession. He tells me I have to believe him.

I said I did. And then I went to work and brought the bag with me to see if I could cobble any of it back together to work again, because I can’t afford a new system, even though we have no choice. But now, a day later, I don’t know what I believe. I never thought I would doubt my husband for any reason, but I can’t stop thinking about it. One minute I hate myself for even considering he would have any involvement in…what? Terrorizing me? Of course not. That’s so absurd. And then the next minute, I cannot think of any way someone else could have accessed all the cameras. And why put them in his truck? Whoever is doing all this is smart, and probably wants me to suspect him.Or maybethat’sthe absurd thought, and I’m blind for not suspecting him earlier.

My mind whirls and my body aches from the ceaseless stress of it all. Early this morning I got news that Bernie’s car was found. Mack called to tell me that they found it in a snowbank behind a cluster of pines off a back road while on a search shift last night, and when they called the police, they were told to go home and haven’t been given any updates yet. So now, we all wait. Always waiting—waiting tips, waiting on the blood DNA from the snow outside my house, waiting for the psychopath to make contact again. Waiting.

By evening we still haven’t heard anything, so when Clay comes home from the bait shop, I ask him to take the girls to my mother’s. I say that they should stay with her for a few days because there’s too much happening around here and they shouldn’t be around it. I just need to know they’re safe, and until the new security system is connected tomorrow, and maybe even until things settle down in general and we feel some safety again, they should probably just be there.

My mother gleefully agreed when I called her this morning about it, and she offered to take them to school and back and listed all the cookies they’d make, and snowmen, and crafts, and I stopped her, out of instinct I guess and lied, telling her they have a winter break scheduled so no school, they’re all hers. Even better, she said, and when we hung up I called the school and said the girls had some sort of bug and would be out for a few days.

I just can’t get past the thought that they aren’t safe there—that whoever is doing this tried once to kill our whole family on the ice. Or was I the only target, and it didn’t matter who else got hurt? Whoever it is knows where they go to school and where their bus stop is, and when they have recess, and lunch hour, but they won’t know they’re at my mother’s, and she’s agreed not to tell anyone they’re there,even though I know I’ve scared her. But she was already scared. All of us are.

My mother still lives in the house I grew up in on a massive plot of land up north that even has a small lake on the property. It’s such a good fishing lake that she’s always kept it open to fishermen and loves seeing the ice huts dotting the frozen lake top in the winter. As a kid I’d make hot chocolate and set up my stand at the edge of the lake and sell hot cups for fifty cents each. It’s the girls’ favorite thing to do at their grandma’s, so they’ll be excited, and that’s what I need for them right now—to be completely shielded from all this horror and just happy making pots of cocoa at grandma’s.

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