Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)(51)
“And how’d that go?”
“About like I expected,” I say. “So I have a big decision to make. Run or stay. I want to stay, Sam. But . . .”
“But it’d be a whole lot smarter to go,” he says. “Look, I have no idea what you’re going through, but I wouldn’t be as worried about an ex in prison as I would . . . relatives of the victims. They lost a family member. Maybe they think if he loses one, that’s justice.”
I do worry about that. I worry about real, righteous grief and anger. I worry about the sterile, uncaring malice of the Sicko Patrol, for whom it’s just an exercise in sociopathy. I worry about everyone. “Maybe,” I tell him. “God. I can’t even say I don’t understand that, because I do.” I stop and take another pull of my beer, just to rid myself of the bad taste. “Mel’s on death row, but it’ll be a long time before they ever strap him to a table, and I think he’ll kill himself just before that happens. He won’t want to give up that control.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t run,” Sam says. “That’s what he expects, to keep you scared and on the move.” He pauses and finally puts the bottle down on the floor of the porch. “Are you? Scared?”
“Out of my mind,” I tell him. With Mel, I’d have said, Out of my fucking mind. It’s odd. I cursed like a sailor in Mel’s presence, because he’d brought out the rage bottled inside me, but I have no wish to use that language around Sam. I don’t feel so defensive. I don’t need the shield. “I won’t say I don’t care what happens to me; of course I do. But my kids. They have enough to deal with, just being the children of someone like . . . him. I know it’s better for them to stay, but how do I take that risk?”
“Do they know? About their father?”
“Yeah. Most of it. I try to keep the horrible details from them, but . . .” I shrug helplessly. “Age of the Internet. Lanny probably knows almost everything by now. Connor—God, I hope not. It’s hard enough for an adult to handle knowing the worst. I can’t imagine what it would do to someone his age.”
“Kids are stronger than you think. Morbid, too,” Sam says. “I was. I poked around dead things. Told gory stories. But there’s a difference between imagination and reality. Just never let them see the pictures.”
I remember he was in Afghanistan. I wonder what he saw there, to give him that dark tone. More than I had, most likely, even though I’d had to be faced with all the horrible pictures, the horror and rage of the victims’ families at my trial. Those who had the stomach to come, which by that time wasn’t nearly as many. When I’d been acquitted, there had only been about four of them who’d stayed for the verdict.
Three of them had threatened to kill me.
Most of the families had been there for Mel’s trial, or so I’d heard, and they’d been destroyed by it. He’d found it all very boring. He’d yawned, fallen asleep. He’d even laughed when a mother fainted on seeing for the first time a picture of the decaying face of her child floating under the water. I’d read the accounts of it.
He’d thought that woman’s pain—that mother’s pain—was the shit.
“Sam . . .” I don’t know what I want to say to him. I know what I want him to say: that it’ll be all right. That he forgives me. That the peace we’d formed between us, the fragile, unnamed relationship, hasn’t just been murdered by my words.
He stands up, still facing toward the lake, and puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans. I don’t need to be a psychologist to know that’s a withdrawal.
“I know how hard this was for you to talk about. And I’m not saying I don’t value your trust, but . . . I have to think about this,” he tells me. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anybody. Promise you that.”
“I’d never have told you if I’d thought you would,” I say. The hard part, I realize, isn’t letting him know the truth; it’s this ripping fear inside now that he’ll turn his back on me, that this is the last moment we’ll be friends, or even friendly. I never thought that would hurt, but it does. The fragile little roots I’d been putting down, ripping away. Maybe it’s for the best, I try to tell myself, but all I feel is grief.
“Good night, Gwen,” he says as he starts down the steps . . . but he doesn’t go quite all the way. He hesitates, and finally he looks back at me. I can’t read his expression well, but it isn’t angry, at least. “You going to be okay?”
It sounds, to my mind, like good-bye. I nod and say nothing, because nothing I can say will help. Paranoia bursts out of its shell and starts to wind tendrils around me. What if he doesn’t keep his word? What if he gossips? Goes online and talks about this? What if he posts who we are?
In a way, I realize, I’ve made the decision without making any decision. I’ve closed off options with this conversation. Mel knows where we are. Now Sam Cade knows everything, too. Friend or not, ally or not, I can’t trust him. I can’t trust anyone. I never could. I’ve been fooling myself for months now, but the dream is over. It might set my kids back, but I need to protect their bodies first, their minds second.
I watch him walk away into the dark, and then I take out my cell and text Absalom.
Last msg for a while, I send. Leaving soon. Have to burn idents & phones, will need new packet on the fly. Can use standby docs for now.