Dear Wife(82)

I pause at an uptick in chatter on the scanner, a break in the drone of the mundane shoplifting and suspicious person sightings, suddenly shifting to something much more frenetic. Another body found, a man shot in the head in a downtown alleyway, according to one of the voices a drug deal gone bad. I relax somewhat, carrying the laptop into the bathroom, balancing it on the edge of the sink and turn on the shower.

I’m smearing conditioner through my overprocessed hair when I hear it, your name and badge number, the dispatcher calling you to the scene, and my hands pause on my hair. I swipe the curtain aside and stick my head out, listening for your voice, but it’s another one that crackles on the scanner. That cop buddy of yours, jumping in on your call.

I rinse and towel off in a hurry.

I knew when I left Pine Bluff you would find me eventually. Finding people is what you do, and I’ve left enough clues to make it—well, if not easy, then definitely enjoyable. I picture you speeding in your car east to Atlanta, congratulating yourself on hunting me down like I knew you would. As long as I’m alive, you’ll never let me go.

I sling my bag over a shoulder and take a peek outside. All clear.

You told me I was stupid, that I was helpless without you, and for a long time, I believed you. But I’m a lot smarter than you think I am. Sabine taught me that. I know that every check-in to a website leaves a ping for Jade to find. I know as kind and forgiving as the Reverend is, he has reported the stolen money by now. Police reports mean clues, charges involving a woman with a fake name, a fake ID with a picture of me, yet another ping. And I suspect you’re no longer in Pine Bluff, at least according to the scanner. You might even be here already. If I close my eyes, I can feel your breath on my neck and your teeth snapping at my back.

And when you get here, I’ll be ready.

With my new phone, I navigate eighteen miles to the north, to a park overlooking a bend in the Chattahoochee River. I walk to the edge and stare out over the water, and the sight is both familiar and disappointing. The river you and I grew up on is a wild thing, with dangerous, unpredictable currents and banks that encroach on yards and farms at the slightest hint of rain. Unlike that one, this river is lazy, a gentle stretch of brown water trickling across rocks and lapping at the red clay shores. A fallen tree angles across the stones, stretching almost to the other side.

I slide my old cell, the last of the burners I bought in Pine Bluff, from my bag, look down at the dark screen. I didn’t have to come all this way. I could have tossed it in a dumpster on the opposite side of town, or handed it over to a bum like I did with the other three. I kind of liked the thought of sending whoever’s tracking it on a wild-goose chase, but just like insisting on a McDonald’s for my meeting with Nick, it seemed fitting to give it a watery grave. This chase started along the banks of a river, and it will end at one. Symmetry.

I rear back with an arm, but an unexpected wave of nostalgia sticks my cell to my fingers. This device is the last thing tying me to the people I’ve met here, Miss Sally and the Reverend and Martina. If they’ve tried to reach me, it will have been on this device.

I power it up one last time, my heart kicking when it catches a cell tower, even though by the time anyone tracks it here, I’ll be long gone. The phone beeps, and the messages roll in. Missed calls, unanswered texts from the church, from the Reverend, from a bunch of numbers I don’t recognize. I spot the one I’m looking for, tap it with a thumb.

Two unread messages from Martina, plus a photo.

The picture comes first, and the sight of it catches in my throat. It’s you, back to the camera, walking down the steps of the church. She took it from an awkward angle, through a window in the executive offices, but I recognize your hair, the shape of your ear, the shirt I got you last Christmas. The sight of you rattles my heart.

You’re here.

I scroll down, find the following message:

Is this who you’re running from? Because he was here, looking for you.
And then:

Rosa and Stefan are my babies. Twins I left with my mother back in Mexico. Now you.
  Not all that long ago, you told your brother Duke that I was the worst shot to ever pull a trigger. We’d just come from one of our monthly sessions at the gun range, which I always pretended to hate even though they filled me with hope. With power.

“No, the bull’s-eye,” you’d say, berating me for my shaking hands and shoddy aim. “You’re supposed to aim for the bull’s-eye.”

I’d nod and clip an upper corner, folding the paper like a dog ear.

Sometimes, the guys at the range took pity on me. “Keep your body balanced across both feet,” they’d suggest, encouraging my improved stance with a nod. “Keep both eyes focused on the target, and try not to blink at the recoil.”

I’d smile and tell them thanks, my eyes stinging with the stink of gunpowder and disapproval—for the record, yours, not theirs. The more you criticized, the more my shots went wild.

“You are the wife of a police detective,” you’d say after I squeezed out yet another bullet that missed the target entirely. “That paper’s just hanging there. It’s not even moving. How hard can it be?”

I hear your words as clearly as I did all those times you hissed them in my ear, and I wonder what you would say if you were standing beside me now, on this street pocked with potholes on the south side of Atlanta. With a man who calls himself Clyde and a van full of weapons, laid out like prime merchandise across the ratty carpet. A tip from the owner of a downtown pawnshop, after I convinced him I was serious about getting armed.