Low Tide (17 page)

Maggie looked at him for a moment. “I can’t honestly say that’s not true.”

He smiled at her.

“As hard as you might find this to believe, I genuinely like you,” he said. “And I’d like you to understand me just a little.”

He looked over at the field. The teams were lined up and high-fiving each other. Kyle’s team had won.

“Well, look at that,” Boudreaux said to Maggie, as he stood. “The underdogs prevailed.”

Maggie stood up as well.

“Why do you want me to understand you?”

He looked at her for a moment, his smile gone.

“Because one of these days, you’ll probably need to.”

They both looked as Kyle ran past them, smiling, on his way to the dugout for his things.

“I’ve got to go. Goodnight, Maggie.”

“Goodnight, Mr. Boudreaux.”

As she watched him walk away, she thought that maybe flies didn’t fly into spider webs because the webs were invisible. Maybe they flew into the webs because the spider didn’t really look so bad.

“
I
told you to quit lyin’ to me, you stupid little skank!”

Ricky had his hand wrapped so tightly around Grace’s throat that it was hard to breathe, even through her mouth. The blood in her nose was running down her throat, and she didn’t know if she was going to suffocate or drown.

She pulled at his large hand with both of hers, and she heard the pounding of blood in her ears over the sound of little Rose’s crying. The baby was in her carrier on top of the kitchen table, just out of Grace’s reach. Ricky had pushed the chair Grace was in almost to the wall when he’d grabbed her throat.

Ricky leaned over and stuck his face right up into hers. His pupils were huge, so huge that his eyes almost seemed black, and he was dripping now with the sweat, that telltale meth sweat that smelled of cat pee and rage.

“You want to keep lying to me, Grace? You wanna keep lyin’?”

She tried to speak, but there was no air. Her lips opened and closed, but nothing came out, or went in.

Suddenly he let go with a shove so hard that her chair almost tipped over backwards. She took in an involuntary gulp of air so big that it hurt her chest, and a sound came out of her that reminded her of when she was in labor with Rose. One hand went to her aching throat and she held the other up in the air. Ricky leaned over again, and put both hands on the arms of her chair.

“You got somethin’ to say, now? You got somethin’ true to say now, you ugly little tramp?”

“I didn’t do nothin’!” she gasped. “I didn’t!”

“How’d they know we was gonna be there, Grace? Huh? Explain it to me, then!”

“I don’t know!” Her voice sounded like someone had made her swallow sandpaper.

He stuck a finger in her face.

“There was only a handful of people that knew we was gonna be there.”

“I told you it wasn’t me, Ricky!” She was starting to panic, to lose control of her fear, and wished she was able to take a deep breath.

Too fast for her to even try to block it, his palm came straight at her face. He grabbed her face in his hand and pushed. Her chair tilted backwards on its back two legs, and her head and the back of the chair hit the wall.

She flailed like a crab on its back, legs kicking, trying to find solid ground in the air or to right the chair so she wouldn’t be hanging from the wall by her face. He pressed harder, and she was sure that if the walls had been more than cheap fiberboard, her skull would have collapsed on itself. She felt hot tears streaming down her face, and was surprised she had any left.

He leaned his weight into her through his hand and then pushed off. The suddenness of it, of being free, put her even more off balance, and the chair skidded out from under her. Her butt hit hard and she felt an electric shock in the base of her spine, but she scrambled to her feet as Ricky stepped closer to the table and reached out to little Rose’s carrier.

“Baby’s cryin’,” he said, smiling as he grabbed the back of the carrier and gently rocked it.

Grace took a step and he pointed at her with his free hand.

“Uh-uh,” he said, almost musically. “Don’t you move.”

Grace stopped, but it felt like her heart kept moving toward the table, like a bird fluttering to a branch, as she saw Ricky rock the carrier closer to the edge of the table. Poor Rose was just hiccupping now, gasping for air like her mama had done.

“You got something to say, Gracie?” Ricky said.

Grace tore her eyes from the carrier and looked him in the eye and the terror came up her throat and out of her mouth.

“I’ve had it!” she almost screamed. “I’ve had it with you blamin’ this on me!”

He stopped rocking the carrier, just as it reached the edge of the table, but his smile was gone instantly.

“What’d you say?”

“You’re so tweaked out you can’t even think!” she yelled, one part of her mind wondering at the fact that pure animal fear sounded just like righteous anger. “What am I supposed to do if you’re in jail? I don’t have a job, I can’t even get a job that’d pay for day care! How am I supposed to feed these kids if you’re in prison? You think I’m stupid? You’re stupid!”

For a moment, there was no sound in the room but that of the baby wheezing and coughing. Ricky went very still, and his eyes, boring into Grace’s, were filled with violence.

Then his cell phone came to life in his shirt pocket. It was the Metallica ringtone that he used for Joey Truman.

Ricky pulled it out and stared at it a moment, then answered the call without speaking. After a moment, Grace could hear Joey speaking rapidly, his voice tinny through the phone.

“Where you at?” Ricky asked, looking confused. He listened as Joey spoke again, but Grace couldn’t make out the words. “What do you mean they let you go?

Ricky listened for a minute as Joey talked, and then Grace heard Joey laughing. Ricky wasn’t laughing.

“I’m not goin’ to no bar. Just come over here,” Ricky said. Grace heard Joey say something. “Walk. You got legs.”

He disconnected the call and looked at Grace for a moment, then headed for the kitchen door behind her. As he came abreast of her, his hand shot out and he slapped the side of her head hard enough to make her neck hurt.

“Don’t you ever call me stupid again,” he said, and walked out to the living room.

Kyle was out of the Jeep first and ran toward the house, his baseball bag in hand. He patted Coco as she deteriorated at his feet, sidestepped Stoopid, who was running some kind of figure eight between him and the Jeep, and ran up the stairs.

Maggie reached back into the Jeep and grabbed the mail off the console, then slammed the door.

“Hey, baby,” she said to Coco, and scratched her neck before heading for the house. “Shoo, Stoopid! Go to bed.”

The rooster ran toward the chicken yard and Maggie walked up the stairs, Coco on her heels. Maggie flipped through the mail and stopped at the top step. Coco bumped into her, then went around her, as Maggie looked at the envelope.

There was no return address, just her name and address printed in the center. It had a local postmark. Maggie flipped it over, ripped it open with her thumb, and pulled out the single, folded sheet of paper.

It was just one paragraph, and looked like it was printed from a computer.

Maggie,

I wanted to write you and tell you that I’m sorry for what happened back then. I was young and I was messed up. Maybe I’m still messed up. You won’t have to see me around town anymore, but I wanted to tell you I was sorry before I go.

Gregory Boudreaux

Maggie swallowed a sudden nausea as she stared at the letter. Then she flipped the envelope over again. It had been postmarked yesterday. She looked back at the letter, even though she wanted to throw it far away.

The letter was printed, not handwritten. It could have been written by Gregory Boudreaux, or it could have been written by someone else. But Gregory wasn’t the one that mailed it. He’d been at his funeral.

Maggie looked toward the living room window as she heard Kyle moving around inside, and her hands shook as she stuffed the letter back into the envelope. She didn’t want to take it inside, didn’t want it tainting her home.

She dropped her purse on the deck and hurried back to the Jeep, opened the door and leaned in. She shoved the envelope inside the glove compartment. She had to slam it three times to make it shut. Then she locked the Jeep and made herself walk, not run, back up the stairs.

Less than five minutes later, she was standing in the shower, her face pointed into the spray.

She thought of Bennett Boudreaux. She knew he knew what Gregory had done. But somehow, she could see Boudreaux as a criminal, but she couldn’t quite picture him being cruel. Then she thought about her dream the other night. She thought about someone else, there in the woods.

She turned around and grabbed the soap and her scrubby and began washing herself. She went over every inch of her body at least three times, even after the water had turned ice cold.

Layered somewhere above or beneath the scent of coconut and Kukui was the faint odor of molding leaves.

B
ack in town, Bennett Boudreaux sat at his desk in his office at the Sea-Fair plant.

He preferred to work in the evenings these days; the place was quiet and he could think. The older he got, the fewer people he liked, and the less he liked even them. Working at night was also an excellent way to absent himself from his wife’s incessant dinner or cocktail parties, all of which featured a lot of discussion on topics that held no interest for him. He could write a check to save the Web-footed, Ass-faced Crane without having to know what he was saving it from.

At a few minutes before seven, there was a knock on the metal back door, and Boudreaux went out to the hall and opened it. Sport stood there, looking agitated and nervous.

“Sport,” Boudreaux said, stepping back.

Sport stepped in. “Mr. Boudreaux. Thank you for seeing me, sir.”

“No trouble, son,” Boudreaux said. He closed and locked the door, then held out a hand. “Let’s walk back to my office, alright?”

He followed Sport down the short hallway and indicated he should sit in the old vinyl armchair in front of his desk. Boudreaux had a fancier office out front, but that was for impressing people he cared to impress.