Page 4 of The Wrong Track

“Just some—if there’s any proof. I need some proof.”

Now he looked at me steadily for a moment. “I’ll see what I can do.” His gaze shifted to my stomach. “I don’t know if he left anything, any assets, but you would be his heir.”

“No, I’m sure he didn’t have anything to leave.” He spent everything as fast as it came in. And as I kept explaining to everyone, I hadn’t really been his wife. I’d used his name, but it hadn’t meant anything except that we were both liars. “I don’t want anything of his anyway.”

“For the baby,” Tobin suggested. “It’s his baby.”

It had sounded a lot like he was asking me, was this Kilian’s baby? “I don’t want anything of his,” I answered.

“Do you need some more water?”

I shook my head. “Do you think it’s on the news? Can you check your phone?”

“You don’t have one?”

I shook my head again. Kilian had never allowed it when we were together and I hadn’t made any venture to connect with the outside world once he was gone, once he’d been caught and hauled off to the little jail they had here. They’d arrested him for an assault on me, actually, because he’d been careless enough to do it outside on the pathway right in front of this house. But then, while they’d been holding him, they’d checked on outstanding warrants, and he’d been shipped right back to South Carolina to face much tougher music. Not just assault, a lot more. I thought about that, about everything that had happened there.

“Here.” Tobin stopped typing on his phone and showed me the screen. I tried to read it but it seemed blurry. “There’s your proof, an article about a prisoner dying of multiple stab wounds. They use his name but there are no pictures.” He bent down to kneel again. “Hey. Remy, are you all right?”

“I have an inhaler,” I managed to say, and pointed to the kitchen where I’d left my backpack. Tobin poured out the contents onto the counter and brought the medicine over to me. I shook the familiar blue device and knew it was low, which was potentially a big problem.

He watched me as I sucked at it, then kept watching as I breathed in and out. “You better?” he asked, and I nodded. I was great. “I saw your knife. You can’t keep it in your bag,” he told me. “Carrying it like that is illegal in this state.”

For a moment and despite the uniform, I’d kind of forgotten that he was a police officer. “I won’t bring it with me anymore.”

“I can take it for you.”

“No, because I’m moving to a place where it is allowed,” I said. Arizona? It was warm there, I was fairly sure, but I wasn’t sure at all about their laws surrounding concealed weapons.

“Where are you going?” he asked, and when I didn’t answer, he said, “Does Hazel know?”

“Please don’t tell her.” She would say more things like she already had, that she was so glad I was here in Michigan where I had people to support me, how lucky she felt that I’d moved next door so we could be friends. She really was just a nice girl and it made me sigh. “I don’t want her to worry about me leaving.” I didn’t want to argue about it every time I saw her, either.

Tobin nodded like he got it. “I won’t mention it to her.” He stood then. “Are you feeling better?”

“I’m just fine.” I stood too, because I knew I had to get myself ready for work, and also, I needed to turn off the heat again. The bill was already going to be more than I could afford. “Did they make you come over here to report the news about Kilian to his victim?”

He stopped at the door. “No, I saw it come in and I wanted to tell you. I thought you’d…I don’t know, I thought you’d sleep better, I guess.” His eyes went back to the chair that I’d been using for my bed.

“It’s better that he’s dead,” I said.

“Better for you and better for the baby.”

I’d been thinking about the people of South Carolina who would have had to pay to support him as he was in their penal system, and I was also thinking about the women who he would have hurt the minute he got out. That list definitely included me.

Tobin said something else but I didn’t pay attention because my mind had snagged on what Kilian would have done when he was freed from prison in five or ten or twenty years, however long they could have held him for all the things he’d done. There wouldn’t have been any rehabilitation that could have helped him, no programs or groups or therapists who could have turned his life around. He would have immediately returned to what he’d been up to before but he would have been even smarter about it, even more careful. He would have become even more of a monster.

“It’s better that he’s dead,” I repeated, but I realized that Tobin had gone and now I was alone in the house. I locked the door securely and then I turned down the heat to fifty this time, and when I got dressed, I put on an extra sweater. Or two.

∞

“Remy!”

I made myself smile, although it was the last expression I wanted to have on my face. My feet were literally dragging as I walked down the pathway towards my house. I hadn’t been able to sleep the previous night, like so many others. “Hi, Miss Monica,” I said. I slowed but didn’t stop.

“Just Monica,” Hazel’s mom told me, which she’d told me before, too. There were still little bits of polite behavior somewhere inside me that forced me to call her “miss.” She shivered and started to walk next to me. “January is always so cold,” she mentioned. “And with the holidays over, winter starts to feel long.” Her face got very sober. “I heard about your husband.”

“He wasn’t my husband.”

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