Girl in Snow(68)

The night Lee fled, he did not go straight from the car dealership to the highway. No, Lee pulled into Russ’s driveway, hat yanked low on his forehead. Green T-shirt, cargo shorts. Flip-flops.

They stood in the front hall of Russ’s house. This was before Ines, of course; Russ had not cleaned the kitchen in months, and the mice chattered through the walls and cupboards.

Where will you go? Russ asked, when the silence had crept between them and placed one clammy hand on each of their throats. No air.

West, Lee said. Does it matter?

It did not matter.

Take care of my boy, will you? Lee said.

Okay, Russ told him. Okay.

There was nothing else to say. A hug would have been unbearable, a handshake too distant, so Lee just shrugged at Russ.

All right, then, Lee said.

And he was gone.

Only when Lee’s car had groaned out of the driveway and Russ’s house was its filthy self again—then, Russ wanted to ask. How could you do it? It wasn’t a question of whether Lee had committed the crime. No, he wanted to ask: How could you do this to me?

He wanted to know how Lee had hidden such devastating darkness, how he had allowed that darkness to briefly escape its chains. How, in this newly shifted world, Russ could understand the nature of violence. Because Lee’s specific violence—futile and needless—was something Russ could not possibly forgive.



Now, Russ does the only thing that will calm him: he gets in his squad car. Revs the engine, which sputters in the cold. Changes the radio to the local FM station, where the news reports about the investigation—substantial leads, still no arrest.

Russ’s phone rings four times in a row. His pager buzzes on the dashboard. Russ should go back to the station house, but instead he turns onto the road that will take him to the mountains.

It is Ivan Russ thinks about now, Ivan and his sermon on evil. If evil does not exist, how do you explain that broken little dove on the playground carousel—how do you explain Lee Whitley?

The mountains are cool and angular in the distance. Russ takes the highway route—he will not pass the station. Instead, his parents’ old house, just off the shoulder of Exit 265.

He thinks of Ines and the home they have tried hesitantly to build: Of the corners of their house, where balls of dust and hair have clumped and a halfhearted vacuum refuses to reach. Of the tattered T-shirt Ines sleeps in, even after Russ bought her that silk nightgown for Christmas. When she opened the package she stroked it gently, said thank you, and put it back in the box. Russ has not seen it since. Ines, and how she eats her food without looking up, scooping each bite evenly onto her fork. Ines, and their separate worlds, lived together on the couch at night in distant but companionable silence—Russ, because he wants a body near his own; Ines, because of her brother. Both, because it is easy enough.

Russ’s hands and feet steer him forward. Past the reservoir. Up into the foothills.

The mountains are on their knees, begging him home.





Cameron





Mom was in the kitchen. Through the back window, she looked like anyone else: another neighbor picking fat leaves off a potted basil plant. Through glass, she didn’t seem so sad. Just old, and very tired.

Cameron took the usual route into his bedroom: hoisted himself from the planter beneath his window until he was holding the ledge with both hands, like someone falling off a cliff. He kicked his legs against the side of the house for traction and heaved himself through the open window frame.

He took off his muddy shoes beneath the window. Creeping down the hall in browning socks, he listened to make sure Mom was still in the kitchen. She’d turned on the radio, soft jazz, and the deep grumble of a saxophone slid through the narrow hall. Mom did not sing to herself. She did not hum.

Mom’s room was messy. Floral sheets were balled up at the foot of her bed, and mugs with hardened teabags at the bottom gathered on her nightstand, where she kept her current books: The Secret About Positive Thinking and Child Psychology and Development for Dummies. Cameron knelt next to her bed and pulled the wooden box from underneath.

The .22 was in its hiding spot. It lay in its broken lockbox, buried treasure.

Cameron picked it up, careful not to touch any dangerous parts. Mom had stored a box of Aguila copper-plated bullets in the small compartment underneath the main carriage of the box. Cameron left them there—judging by the weight of the handgun and the tension on the trigger, it was still loaded.

Cameron edged the gun carefully into the back waistband of his jeans. The .22 was safe between his pants and his boxer shorts. Metal was still cold through cotton.

Before Cameron left, he checked Mom’s bathroom. If Lucinda was ever going to come back to him, he hoped she would come back now. But the bathroom was just the bathroom, with grime gathered in the sink and the cracked yellow bar of soap lying in its plastic tray.



I don’t understand how you draw from memory, Mom had said once, as Cameron spread his art supplies across the living-room floor. He’d been working on a portrait of a dancer. How do you hold on to all the details?

Cameron had shrugged and said, I guess I can’t figure out how to lose them.



Now, Mom sat at the head of the kitchen table, late-winter light falling over her in gracious yellow rays. She hovered over a rectangular sheet of paper. One feather hand was cupped over her mouth. She’d turned the stereo off, and now she was bent over the version of Lucinda smashed on the carousel.