Breathe (3 page)

By lunchtime, the school was buzzing. Not about the Garrett/Nolan scuffle, or who was going with whom to the Homecoming dance the following weekend, or even the fact that Garrett and I ate lunch together while Zoe shot daggers at us from across the cafeteria.

Everyone, it seemed, was talking about the body that had been found down by the river. Nothing like that had ever happened in Little Bend before. Sure, we had our share of scandal—cheating spouses, an overwrought mother who left her kids in the car while she picked up groceries at Howell’s just so she could have a moment’s peace. Then of course there was Maggie’s story—an affair with a young teacher, an unexpected pregnancy, a man run out of town and a teenage mother with a baby she had no business having. But a dead body—outside of a funeral—was something new. Almost exciting.

At the end of the day, Garrett and I exited the main building side by side and headed for the pool. We were so close, I could smell his familiar scent of chlorine and wintergreen mint, and I wondered if he wanted to take my hand as much as I wanted him to reach for it. I craved the quiet comfort of his touch, the strength that radiated from his hands. I wanted it to rub off on me, invade me the way that water did.

There wasn’t time for any of that though. Up ahead, I spotted a figure I recognized. Of course, in this town everybody knew everybody else’s name, date of birth, and blood type. But this figure was different from the others scurrying about the school grounds. He stood in front of the large, metal double doors of the pool building. A sentinel standing watch, his thumbs linked through his belt loops, and his short, dark hair hidden beneath his large, gray hat. He watched the entire crowd but I knew he was waiting for me. Spotting us, he headed in our direction. Garrett greeted him with a polite smile and a quick, “Sheriff.”

“Mr. Scott,” Sheriff Wilson replied with a nod. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at Garrett’s truck. “You can head on home now. I need to have a word with Miss Rhoades.”

“What about?”

The ill-advised question slipped through Garrett’s lips before he could stop himself. Inwardly, I grimaced as Sheriff Wilson’s eyebrows met above his nose. “None of your damn business is what,” he snapped, his tone sharp and cold. “Now I said to get on out of here.”

Garrett glanced at me, an unspoken apology upon his lips, and though my heart was in my throat and I had this gnawing feeling growing in my gut, I nodded to let him know I’d be okay. He gave me an uneasy smile and walked away, leaving me alone with Sheriff Wilson’s intimidating stare.

“Tom Ford’s body’s been found,” was the only thing the sheriff said before leading me toward the Dodge Charger parked and waiting in the fire lane.

Chapter Two

Abby

Lyle MacNamera, Little Bend’s resident drunk, discovered the body earlier that morning on the bank of the river when he’d attempted to stumble home at four am and stopped to take a piss in the woods.

As Sheriff Wilson spoke, pacing back and forth on the other side of the table between us, I pictured the scene in my mind. The river would be just about the only thing moving that time of day, its routine unabated by the scene growing along its bank. Undaunted by the police officers and the flashing lights. Continuing to flow as if nothing had happened.

And I pictured Tom lying there, the bugs perusing his flesh, the birds beginning to peck at his lifeless eyes. It was easy for me to imagine him dead. After all, I’d wished it upon him.

“I spoke to your mother a bit ago,” Sheriff Wilson told me. “Way I understand it she hasn’t seen Tom in nearly four days. Sound ‘bout right to you?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I replied. “It’s not like Maggie and I sit up at night and talk about boys.”

Both Sheriff Wilson and Maggie had grown up in Little Bend. They’d gone to school together. Hell, they’d probably slept together. Maybe after prom or a drunken one-night-stand when I was still a baby and Maggie was still considered hot. Point being, Sheriff Wilson knew good and well that Maggie would never have discussed with me when she’d last seen Tom Ford. All I knew was what I could figure from Maggie’s moods. About four days ago she’d seemed worried, then pissed, and then last night she’d taken a razor to her wrist. So, I suppose four days was ‘bout right.

I wasn’t about to tell Sheriff Wilson that though. I couldn’t be sure why he’d dragged me into the station, and until I knew that, I’d decided to keep my mouth tightly clamped. People could say what they wanted about me, and most did, but I certainly wasn’t stupid.

The room they’d stashed me in was much like the town itself—nondescript and uninteresting. White walls, gray concrete floor, a long wooden table in the center. Sheriff Wilson and I were on either side, staring each other down. He took a seat and looked down the bridge of his large, crooked nose at me, unfazed by my lack of cooperation. “Well then,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me when it was
you
last saw Tom?”

I concentrated on inhaling and exhaling slowly, deliberately. Like I’d been taught for swimming. “It’s all about control, Abby,” Coach Scott had once told me. “If you control your breathing, your pace, you control the race.” Controlling my emotions, hiding the way I really felt, these were things I’d mastered long before Coach Scott came into my life. Long before Tom Ford.

“Not sure,” I told Sheriff Wilson.

“So it wasn’t you Loralie Baker saw arguing with Tom outside your uncle’s bar on Monday night?”

“I didn’t say that,” I managed to choke out around the lump forming in my throat. “Just can’t be sure that’s the last time I saw him, that’s all.”

“And what were you two arguing about?”

“Politics. Religion. Who’s gonna win on Sunday. You know, the usual.”

Sheriff Wilson’s gaze fell and I realized that I was wringing my hands. I wasn’t intentionally trying to draw attention to them, but he stared hard, like he already knew what had happened. “What happened there?” he asked anyway.

I peered at the skin. It was raw and scratched where it had shredded against the gravel. I could still feel the skin tearing. I folded my arms across my chest and buried my hands beneath my armpits. “I fell. Scraped ‘em on the sidewalk.”

“Hmm…And where exactly did this happen?”

“Behind my uncle’s bar.”

Sheriff Wilson looked down and began jotting down notes on the yellow legal pad in front of him. “And when was this?” he asked.

“I don’t know. A day or two ago.” I wondered what he was writing. Was there something significant about my injuries? Something that told Sheriff Wilson all my secrets? Something that told him what happened between Tom and I that night?

“You know, nothing good’s ever come from lying, Abby,” he warned and my heart stilled.

“And why exactly would I lie about scraping my hands? Happens to me all the time. I’m a bit of a klutz, just ask my uncle.”

Sheriff Wilson’s lips quirked and he chewed on the inside of his cheek, taking his time before he spoke again. Like he was choosing his words with caution. “And what exactly was the nature of your relationship with Tom Ford?” he finally asked.

“He was my mother’s boyfriend.”

“And how long have you known him?”

Was it me or was the room growing warmer? The top sheet of yellow paper in front of Sheriff Wilson shrank away from the air sputtering from the ancient air conditioning unit jammed in the room’s only window. It was definitely me.

“About a year,” I admitted. “Don’t you know this already?” I rolled my eyes in an unconvincing show of exasperation and boredom, and Sheriff Wilson smiled. Not a happy smile, just a knowing one. As if he thought he could see right through me.

“I know a lot more than you might think, Abby,” he replied. “But I wanna hear it from you.”

“Cody!” I heard my uncle’s voice, loud and angry, as it resounded through the station. “Cody Wilson!”

A silent moment passed before the door to the closet-sized room flew open and crashed with a thud against the wall. “Sorry Sheriff,” a woman apologized as she tried in vain to block the doorway and prevent my Uncle Jim from entering. It was useless. My uncle was a massive man. All gristle and brawn. He dwarfed the deputy and she was far from a tiny woman.

As Sheriff Wilson stood the metal feet of his chair scraped against the floor and emitted an anguished wail. ““It’s okay Karen,” he assured her. “Let him in.”

Karen moved out of the way and allowed my uncle to enter. He engulfed the space behind the sheriff, filling the tiny room with his formidable presence. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing Cody?” he demanded to know.

Sheriff Wilson sighed and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “My job, Jim. Abby here’s a witness.”

“Don’t give me that shit, Cody. This about Tom?” So everyone already knew. It shouldn’t have shocked me. The smallest towns are filled with biggest mouths.

“You know she ain’t got nothing of use to tell you,” Uncle Jim shouted then looked at me, his brown-green eyes hard, unreadable. He nodded his head toward the door. “Go get your things. You’re done here,” he told me.

“Now wait just a second, Jim—,” Sheriff Wilson started.

My uncle whipped around to face the sheriff so fast the man reached down and placed his hand on the butt of his holstered gun while my uncle pointed a large finger in his face. “Next time you wanna talk to Abby,” Uncle Jim ordered. “You come see me first.”

“I had permission from her mother,” Sheriff Wilson tried to argue but Uncle Jim was having none of it and cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand.

“You know Maggie’s not right in the head. She doesn’t give a shit about—

Go ahead. Say it
, I wanted to shout. It’s not like I didn’t already know. Maggie didn’t care about me. I’d realized that basic fact of life years ago. Why was it so hard for everyone else to admit?

Maggie had never wanted children. She certainly didn’t want to find herself pregnant, alone, and the subject of scandal a few months before high school graduation. I was a mistake. A problem. Born in the bathroom of a Greyhound bus depot to a mother who lacked the capacity to love me.

“Just come see me first,” Uncle Jim tried again, lowering his voice. “You owe me that much, Cody.”

Grabbing my bag, I followed my uncle from the room and wondered about the history between him and the sheriff. What exactly could Sheriff Wilson owe him? It was weird to think of the adults in my life that way. Hard to imagine them as anything other than entities that existed only as related to me. But if I really thought about it they were whole people long before I ever came into the picture. They had lives. Thoughts and dreams of their own that had nothing to do with me or my happiness.

“How’d you know I was here?” I asked as soon as my feet hit the pavement outside.

“Your friend Garrett called the bar. Said Cody picked you up at school.” He paused mid-stride and rounded upon me. “If there’s something you gotta tell me, I need ya to do it now. Am I clear?”

I shook my head. There was nothing I could honestly tell him about Tom’s death.

“Good,” he nodded and continued to lead the way back to the bar. “That Garrett’s a decent boy. Always looking out for you. You make sure you keep friends like that, you hear?”

I laughed and Uncle Jim turned his head again, narrowing his eyes at me. His light brown hair swung into his eyes ever so slightly and he smashed his lips together, forming a hard, straight line.

My uncle had been a handsome man in his younger years. I’d seen pictures of him from high school. Stared at his kind, smiling eyes and thought that he must have been a heartbreaker. Now, even though he was good-looking in a nearly forty kind of way, his eyes were intense and lined from years of Maggie-related stress. I knew that look well. I was pretty sure I wore the same one most of the time.

“I’m serious,” he urged. “You may think you can take care of yourself, and I don’t doubt it, darling. But life’s hard when you try to go it alone.”

Life’s hard either way
, I thought. People make it harder. They tether you to them. Make it difficult to breathe and damn-near impossible to leave.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I let my head sink beneath the water, enjoying the feeling of complete submersion. There’s a sensation that I would get right before my body’s instinct to survive kicked in and forced me to surface. A disconnect from real life, as if I belonged there in the water’s depths. As if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Uncle Jim always told everyone that I’d taken to the water like a fish desperate to return to its home. Called me his little mermaid. He thought it was natural talent. Some innate athletic ability passed down from his side of the family. Uncle Jim had been an athlete himself from an early age and a tight end for the high school football team. He didn’t know about the accident. About Maggie driving us into the river. That I’d only learned to swim because my life had depended on it. He’d have never forgiven her if he had.

My lungs screamed for air and I knew I could just let go. It would have been so easy. Open my mouth. Breathe in.

Startled by my own thoughts, I sat up and allowed the water to pour down my body back into the bathtub. Then I stood and stepped out onto the tile floor. In the large mirror that hung above the sink, I caught sight of the bruises that ran the length of my torso. They were beginning to heal, turning a mustardy color with bright, purple edges. They were grotesque. Flagrant reminders of a night I would rather have forgotten.

A wave of nausea threatened to knock me on my ass as my stomach began to churn. I sat down on the edge of the tub and hung my head between my knees. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t a weeper. It wasn’t something Maggie allowed after she’d decided I was too old to act like a child. In fact, the last time I’d cried was nine years prior, on the day I‘d turned eight years old. 

The candles had blazed atop my birthday cake and all around me eager eyes waited. They’d already sung an obligatory round of ‘Happy Birthday’. It was my turn to act. Strangers filled my uncle’s bar. Some family members. Some regular customers. But the one person I’d wanted to be there was noticeably absent. I scanned the crowd for her anyway, for probably the hundredth time, giving her one last chance to avoid disappointing me.

“What are you waiting for?” Uncle Jim had asked me from the other side of the round table. “Go on, blow ‘em out.”

Another minute passed and I looked up to meet my uncle’s eyes. They were kinder, less tired back then. But they were sad eyes, sunken and lifeless, mirroring all the pain I felt. He’d nodded encouragement and I leaned over the cake, whistling at the flames.

As the last one had extinguished, Maggie stumbled through the door, a bottle of Jack Daniels hanging from one hand and the other slung round the neck of an equally intoxicated man. She giggled, tucked a strand of her long bottle-blond hair behind one ear, and turned her body into his, wrapping one leg around his thighs.

With a wink in my direction, Uncle Jim turned and walked toward the happy couple. I watched him grip her upper arm in one of his massive hands and yank her away from the drunken man. They spoke in harsh, hushed tones but I caught snippets of their conversation. They were talking about me. At one point Uncle Jim called Maggie a whore. It was the first time I’d heard the word and although I had no idea what it meant, I knew it had to be bad. Knew it from the way Maggie recoiled when he’d said it.

She’d wrenched her arm back, pressed her palms against his chest and pushed him away. If Maggie had been drunk, there was no longer any sign of it. All that had remained was rage. White hot burning fury. I’d never before heard Uncle Jim speak a foul word toward Maggie, let alone raise a hand to her, but the way his eyes flashed that day, I would’ve sworn then that he was tempted to strike her.

I’d slid from my seat. Moved to wrap my arms around my mother’s waist. She never took her eyes off Uncle Jim, she just pushed me away, almost absentmindedly, with one arm. I’m sure it was harder than she intended but my rear end hit the floor and my back crashed against the table. The cake plate teetered a moment on the edge before falling and shattering against the floor.