Riptide (19 page)

“Tell me you love me!” he insisted again. She felt another sharp pain and her mouth flew open. She intended to tell him what he wanted to hear, but suddenly her throat felt like someone had scraped it with a nail file. She didn’t hear, didn’t even realize she was screaming, until the weight came off of her and she heard him yell “Shut up!”

He flipped her over roughly and she felt herself getting ready to scream again, against her own will. The sight of him stopped her. His shirt was hanging open, his pants around his thighs, and he was holding a rock the size of a basketball over his head.

She was fifteen and nobody knew she was way back in the woods. She was going to die in the dirt and the moldy leaves, and Daddy’s heart was going to break.
 

She clamped a hand over her own mouth and willed herself not to scream anymore.

Gregory Boudreaux slammed the rock down right next to her head and laughed. Then he leaned down to kiss her neck.

She clamped her hand so tightly over her mouth that she could feel the outline of every one of her upper teeth on her lip. In her left hand, she squeezed a clump of rocks and twigs.

 
She couldn’t seem to breathe fast or deeply enough and the air whistled out of her nostrils with every exhale.

He was kissing her neck sloppily as he crushed her spine into the dirt and rocks, and she kept herself from retching by staring up at the treetops. It was dark down there on the ground, but the late afternoon autumn sky was brilliant blue and cloudless, as though everything was alright everywhere else.

Gregory raised up onto his knees and blocked her view of the real world. He looked off to the left and smiled.

“You want some?” he asked.

Maggie turned her head to the right, and there, standing beneath the trees, was Brandon Wilmette, holding his own decayed and swollen foot.

Maggie bolted upright in bed, her chest heaving, her tank top covered in sweat. Coco jumped down as Maggie threw off the covers and put her feet on the floor. She took a few deep breaths, then grabbed her cell phone and her service weapon from the nightstand, and walked out into the living room. Coco’s tags jingled as she followed.

Maggie took a quick look around the living room, checked the locks on the windows and made sure the deadbolt was locked. She did these things, even though she’d done them before she’d gone to bed, because that was what she did when she had the nightmares. Fear didn’t require things to make sense.

She walked into the kitchen, got a glass of water from the tap, and drank it down. Then she got another. She made a point of not catching her reflection in the window over the sink. Then she rinsed out the glass, walked back to the main room, and sat down at the cypress table.
 

Before the day Gregory Boudreaux’s body had been found on the beach, she hadn’t had a nightmare in two years. She’d never had one in which she saw Brandon Wilmette, and she knew that it was dream, not memory. She had never looked into the trees. In fact, until two weeks ago, she’d never even remembered that Gregory had spoken to someone else that day.

Maggie absently stroked Coco’s neck and looked at her cell phone. Wyatt had called just before she’d gone to bed, and she was tempted to call him back, tempted to tell him she was on her way. She just couldn’t.

She would have no problem going to Wyatt’s or her parents if she’d been worried about Fain or whoever it was that had hurt David. But she would not run one inch for Gregory Boudreaux.

M
aggie woke late for her. It was her day off, according to the monthly schedule, though she was still technically on bereavement leave.
 

She had her first cup of coffee in the shower, willing the steaming water to ease her muscles, cramped from stress and lack of sleep, while the caffeine cleared the dust from her neurons.

After she got dressed, she fed the chickens and let Coco run around to do her business, then she filled Coco’s bowls on the front deck, leaned on the railing, and stared at David’s truck as she drank her second cup of coffee.

She found several things to do instead of the things that she knew needed to be done. She cleaned the chicken coop. She picked cucumbers, beans, and overgrown zucchinis from her raised beds, throwing much of the produce into the chicken yard because it was past its prime. She mopped her floors and did some laundry.

In between all of these chores, she stood at the deck rail, drinking more coffee or a glass of tea, and stared at David’s truck while Coco sat beside her.

Finally, late in the afternoon, she grabbed David’s keys from a hook by the door, left Coco on the deck with an apology, and climbed into David’s truck.
 

There was still a trace of Jovan Musk in the cab, and the indentation in the worn driver’s seat made Maggie unbearably sad. She shifted herself into it, settled her backside into the dip that David had created over the years, moved her right leg so that her legs fit inside the two slight grooves. Then she took a deep breath and let it go ahead and tear at her. She gave the pain a few moments to roam freely, then adjusted the seat forward with a jerk, started the truck, adjusted the mirror, and headed up her dirt road.

Maggie pulled into Stephenson’s Funeral Home, shut off the truck, and sat there for a moment. Off to the west, the sky looked like someone had decided to put a tin roof over the bay, and Maggie heard a short succession of thunderclaps in the distance. Outside David’s open window, a palmetto’s dry, fan-like fronds rustled in the breeze, sounding like elderly ladies dressed in stiff old crinolines, hurrying away from inclement weather.

She took a deep breath and opened the truck door, cringing just a little at the familiar, metallic whine of rusty hinges. Then she slammed it shut and headed inside.

She was only in the red-carpeted lobby for a few seconds before she was greeted by a tall man with the build of someone who had played football long ago. His graying blond hair was molded into place, his gray pinstripe suit was perfectly pressed, and he wore what could only be described as a smile of perpetual sympathy.

“Good afternoon,” he said smoothly as he walked into the reception area.

“Hello,” Maggie said. “I’m Maggie Redmond. I’m here to, uh…pick up my ex-husband’s remains.”

“Yes, yes,” he said softly, and held out a hand. Maggie took it. It was large, but plump and soft and overly warm. “I’m Benjamin Stephenson. We’ve met a few times over the years. Please accept my condolences on your husband’s passing.”

“Thank you,” she said.
 

He spread an arm in the direction from which he had come. “Please come this way,” he said, and Maggie followed him down a thickly carpeted hall to an expensively furnished, overly decorated office.

He indicated one of the maroon velvet armchairs that sat in front of a large cherry desk. “If you’ll just have a seat, it won’t take but a moment.”

Maggie sat down, and Stephenson walked around the desk and sat down in the brown leather desk chair. Maggie read a small enamel plaque that promised eventual peace for those in grief while Stephenson opened a file drawer and rifled through a few manila folders.

“Yes, here we are,” he said, pulling out one of the file folders. Maggie saw, as he laid it down, that it was labeled
Seward
. She thought about slapping the enamel plaque, but inspected a landscape on the wall instead.

Stephenson opened the folder and slipped out a white form with both yellow and pink copies attached in back. “I’ll just need you to sign here, above your name. And also initial here. This is just a form accepting possession of your loved one’s remains.”

He handed Maggie a pen, and she glanced over the form, then signed and initialed as asked. He slid the form back to his side of the desk and slipped another out of the file, a stiff white card. “And here as well. And, although I know who you are, I will need to see your Driver’s License. I apologize.”

Maggie pulled her wallet out of her purse, and struggled to remove her license from the clear plastic window. As she did, she couldn’t help noticing that the issue date was almost exactly five years ago. She had just gotten her divorce decree, and had gotten a new license with her old name. Now she wondered why that had seemed important.

She passed the license over to Stephenson, signed the card, and handed it to him, too. He gave her a warm smile, then copied her license number down on the first form, gently tore off the pink copy, and handed it to her.

“I’ll be just a moment,” he said as he stood. “Would you care for a bottled water or a cup of coffee?”

“No, thank you,” Maggie said, twisting her hands in her lap.

He nodded and headed around his desk. “Please make yourself comfortable and I’ll be right back with you.”

After he’d gone, Maggie looked around the room. She supposed that the oil landscapes, simple floral arrangements, and vanilla oil candle were meant to comfort and calm. All they did was make her feel like she was exactly where she was, and had lost exactly what was gone.

She had just had the slightly panicked thought that, if she ran out to the truck and left, she could somehow postpone reality, when Stephenson came back into the room, cradling a squat, dark blue jar in both hands.
 

Seeing it, seeing her husband being carried in the palms of another human being, was jarring, and she stood out of reflex, or maybe a desire to flee. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the jar, as Stephenson came to stand in front of her.
 

“As per your and your husband’s request, it’s completely bio-degradable. It looks like pottery, but it’s actually made of gelatin and sand. It will biodegrade in just a few weeks in soil, or about three days in water.”

Maggie swallowed and nodded.
 

“The lid does remove easily, if you wish to scatter your loved one’s ashes. You’ll find, when you remove the lid, that there’s a tab inside that will reveal a perforated cap for that purpose.”

“Thank you,” Maggie said, but barely.

“Is there anything else that I can do for you, Ms. Redmond?”

“No. Thank you.”

“Very well.” He extended his arms a bit, handed the jar out to her. “Again, you have my deepest sympathies, and the prayers of all of us at Stephenson’s Funeral Home.”
 

Maggie reached out and took the jar in both hands. It was impossible for her to comprehend, that David had been reduced to something that weighed fewer than five pounds, and took up less space than a gallon of milk.
 

“Thank you,” she said for the third time, resting the jar against her stomach. Then she walked away from Stephenson’s gentle smile without another word.

It took Maggie a few minutes to figure out what to do with the urn once she had gotten into the truck. She’d never even seen a cremation urn before, and it had all seemed so abstract when she and David had paid for the arrangements so long ago. She had thought that she would be elderly when she did see it, and that she would somehow know what to do with it, as though advanced age imparted secrets the young couldn’t know.