Page 3 of The Wrong Track

It was just like at the doctor’s office yesterday, with that woman saying my name and waking me up out of my dream about the ocean. This time in my sleep, I’d been a kid again, playing in the creek with Lily. I could even hear her laughing and calling to me, “Rem! Remy!” And I’d tried to call back to her because I had to warn her, but of course my voice didn’t work. Dreams sucked.

I wiped off my face, brushing away the sleepiness and tears, before I went to the window to peek out and see who was knocking. For a moment, my heart fluttered—a blue uniform at your door was always bad.

Generally bad, that was, but I knew who wore this particular uniform. It was my neighbor Hazel’s best friend, and yes, he was a police officer, but I was fairly sure that he wasn’t here to arrest me. Not today, anyway, so I opened the door and was greeted by a wall of icy air that shocked me, even if I had been living with it for a few months and shouldn’t have been surprised by now.

“Hi.” My voice sounded burred and rusty and I tried to clear my throat but I ended up coughing. I covered my mouth with the blanket and hacked for a moment, and when I looked up again, the guy at the door was frowning.

Tobin Whitaker, that was who he was. “Hi, Remy.” His words came out with steam. “Can I come in? It’s cold here on your porch.”

“Yeah. Sure.” I moved aside, then refastened the locks when he went past me. “What do you need?”

He looked around the room, his eyes taking in everything like I was sure they’d taught him at cop school or whatever they called it. He saw the groceries out on the counter: a canister of oatmeal that had been very cheap because it was so dented, a few cans of soup (also dented), chicken broth (also cheap). The mark on the wall where the rented TV had been removed and they’d damaged the paint and gouged a hole. The brown chair in the corner, adjusted into a position where I could see both the door and the window, covered in blankets and a pillow and obviously my bed.

“It’s not warm inside, either,” Tobin remarked.

“The machine is broken,” I lied, pointing to the wall where the digital thermostat clearly stated that the temperature was fifty-six. Yes, that was cold for inside a house.

Tobin, Officer Whitaker, walked to the little device and messed with it and in a moment, the heat kicked on. “You had it set really low,” he said, and I looked at the floor. I would turn it down again when he left.

“I have to go to work,” I told him. Hinted at him. I guessed that he had come for something about Hazel, like maybe he was going to ask for my help since she kept telling everyone that I was her friend. The story I’d pieced together was that this Tobin Whitaker was in love with her, even though they were supposed to be friends, too, and even though Hazel had a boyfriend. Tobin had also broken up with another woman, a different woman, just before Thanksgiving—the guy didn’t seem the steadiest, in my opinion, but I wasn’t a relationship expert, a love guru or something. Very far from that, in fact.

“I need to talk to you,” he said now. “Can you sit down?”

Oh, shit—he wasn’t here for love advice. “I don’t want to sit. What’s wrong? What happened? Please tell me. Please?” This was why you didn’t open your door to cops. Even when they weren’t there to search the premises or put your ass in handcuffs—

“Kilian Rovina is dead.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“Kilian, your husband, is dead.”

“He’s not my husband,” I said automatically, but then Tobin jumped forward and held under my elbows.

“Remy, are you breathing? Sit down.” He guided me backwards, almost carrying me even though I weighed four hundred extra pounds, until the backs of my knees met the brown chair and I shakily lowered into it.

“I’m ok,” I told him. I was, wasn’t I? “Did you say that Kilian is dead?” Had I really heard that?

Tobin knelt in front of my chair. “You know that he was extradited to South Carolina,” he said, and I did, because I had sighed in relief that he had been gone from where I was in Michigan. Maybe he wouldn’t have been able to get at me if he was incarcerated and I’d hoped that they would make him pay for what he’d done. Some of it, anyway, the parts they knew about.

“He’s in South Carolina,” I repeated.

“He was remanded until his trial and yesterday, while he was being moved to talk to his lawyer, a fight broke out between him and at least one other inmate. I don’t know too many details, like what they were arguing about or who started it.”

I was sure that Kilian would have been the instigator and any number of things could have caused it. He always started everything because everything set him off. He reacted if a stranger said something that he didn’t care for, even if it wasn’t directed at him. He was pissed if someone got too close to his car, if someone even looked at him funny. If any of us behaved in one of the million ways that rubbed him wrong, he blew up. I remembered how his face would change from bland to—

“Remy?”

“What happened to him?” I asked. My words were weak and wheezy. “Keep telling me.”

“During the fight, he was stabbed with an improvised weapon, a shank. Stabbed repeatedly,” Tobin told me. “He died on the way to the hospital.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“I’m going to get you some water.” He stood and walked to the little kitchen and I heard him filling a glass. I gulped it down when he came back to stand in front of the chair.

“He’s really dead?” I asked, and Tobin nodded. Kilian was really dead? “Could I see a picture or something? A picture of him dead?”

He looked stunned. “A picture?”

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