California(116)

“What happened?” Frida asked.

August took off his sunglasses so that he could look right at Frida. His eyes were gentle for a moment. “They weren’t cooperative.”

“What does that mean?” Cal asked.

“It means they wouldn’t leave, and Micah did what he had to do.” August put his sunglasses back on. “Bo was strong, but not against two men, and not with his family watching. He didn’t put up much of a fight because Sandy and the kids were there, and we hadn’t touched them. Finally, he agreed to follow us outside.” August paused. “Micah had brought the poison with him. I had no idea he had it. He wanted Bo to take it, and when Bo refused, there was a struggle. Micah held him down.” He stopped speaking again, and Cal leaned forward. “To find signs of suffocation, you’d have to be looking for them.”

“Jesus,” Cal said.

“Afterward, Micah threw up right by the cart. He wiped his mouth and told me to wait with the mare while he went inside.”

“Sandy didn’t try to escape with the kids?” Cal asked.

“I thought she would have. I was praying she wouldn’t. I didn’t want to witness Micah chasing her, doing God knows what.”

“You sat back and watched?” Frida said. “How could you?”

“I saw nothing,” August replied coldly. “Sandy didn’t scream or anything, either. It was quiet. She agreed to take the poison and give it to the children. She told them it was medicine. Later, Micah said she was just sitting on the bed with the kids, singing a song about birds, trying to keep them calm. It was all she could do, I guess, to get out of this mess.” August paused.

“Why didn’t he just let them leave?” Cal asked.

“Would she have wanted to go? She’d be out there in the woods, alone with her kids.”

Frida wasn’t crying, and the way her body felt next to his, Cal knew she was beyond crying, that sorrow had leached even that from her. Cal thought about his conversation with Bo about the Spikes. He must have been warning him away from this place.

When August started talking again, his voice was careful, measured, as if he’d reported this very procedure at the Land’s next morning meeting.

“Frida…You should know that Micah wanted the Millers to vacate the house for another reason. He wanted you to live there.”

Frida began trembling slightly. “Micah knew I was out here?” Her voice was higher than usual, almost squeaky. “Before I told you?” She was trying to catch her breath.

“As soon as I met you and reported your settlement to him, he knew.”

“And he never came to see me?” Frida said.

Cal brought his arms around her.

“Micah wanted you out of the shed, and as quickly as possible,” August said. “The shed was too small, he said, too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. It was tiny. He knew you’d take the house.” August paused. “He wanted you guys to have a better life.”

Frida didn’t answer.

“Micah didn’t want me to bury the Millers’ bodies,” August continued. “He said that you”—here August looked at Cal—“would see the bodies and they’d scare you. That you’d never let Frida leave. That you’d stick to routine as a way to survive. He said it’s what you did in school, after your mom died.”

Micah was right. He’d known that Cal would be a coward and that it would be Cal’s job to hold back his wife.

Frida leaned into him. “It’s okay,” she whispered. Then to August, she said, “Why didn’t you want us to think they’d been killed? That would have really scared us.”

“That’s what I said. But Micah was really freaked out, like I’ve never seen him. He didn’t want you to be afraid, and he definitely didn’t want you running away where he couldn’t find you or heading here, looking for answers. He was panicked. I had to tell him to wait with Sue while I dragged Bo’s body inside.”

“You did it for him?” Frida asked bitterly.

Even though Cal understood why she was angry, he didn’t want her to say anything more. She didn’t get it; she couldn’t. Micah might have committed the murders, but it had been August and Cal who had to go in afterward and face those deaths. Whatever had motivated August—loyalty or self-interest, desperation or fear, or even the same metallic coldness that ran through Micah—Cal couldn’t blame him for following Micah, for tidying up the situation, for trying to resolve it in whatever way he could. Maybe what August had done was wrong, but it was human, too. Maybe it was compassion that had led August back into that house. He’d wanted to return Bo to his family.

No one said anything. Cal thought August looked tired, as if telling that story had been too much for him.

After a moment, August said, “Let’s eat. It’ll take us a while to get to Pines.”





23



They’d left when it was still dark. Through the night and into the next day, they’d ridden over a road so rough that even Cal had thrown up twice into an old wastebasket August kept for such purposes. They kept stopping to move fallen trees out of the way. Once August had braked for a deer running across the road; at first he thought it was an Illegal. That’s what they called them in Pines, he said. “Poor people, trying to get inside.”