Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(71)

Everything hurts. There is nothing safe, nothing good, nothing kind anymore. If I fall, it won’t hurt me. If Melvin cuts me, I won’t bleed. I’m not here. I’m not here.

When Sam puts his arms around me from behind, I fight. I struggle. From the passing cars and trucks, it must look like he’s attacking me, but no one stops. No one cares.

Everything hurts.

I scream. It goes up and into the misty air and is swallowed up like it never existed, and everything crashes in and down, and I am crushed under the weight of a grief so large that it’s the earth itself.

I have a wild desire to run into the constant traffic, and I should. I should just end it in a blare of horns and lights and squealing brakes and blood, but that doesn’t save my kids.

“Easy,” Sam is saying, his lips close to my ear. He’s holding me too tight for me to break free. “Easy, Gwen. Breathe.”

I’m breathing, but it’s too fast. I feel light-headed. Sick. The world is gray and nothing matters, but his body is warm and solid and holding me here, to life. To pain.

I hate him for it.

And then the hate melts, and what’s underneath is something raw and hurt and desperately grateful. My panting slows. I stop fighting him.

The tears start slowly, just a trickle, and then a flood, and then he loosens his grip enough to let me turn and lean on him. He’s always let me lean on him, and I have never deserved that grace. I don’t deserve it now. His presence is the only thing that’s real in this mist, fog, pain, ice.

“I’ve lost my kids,” I gasp out between sobs. “Oh God, my kids.” The pain is in my heart, in the empty space of my womb where they grew, and it’s so primal that I don’t know how to live through it.

“No, you haven’t,” he tells me, and I feel the scrape of his beard stubble as he presses his cheek against mine. “You haven’t lost anybody. But do you really want their mom killed by their dad? Do you think that saves them? I know what it feels like to be the survivor, and it turned me inside out. Don’t do that to them.” I feel him swallow. “Don’t do it to me.”

We stand there in the cold, buffeted by traffic and smothered by mist, for a very long time, and then I say, “I’ll try.” I mean, I’ll try to live.

I almost believe it.



Just because Sam doesn’t want me to fling myself into traffic, or give myself up to Melvin, doesn’t mean our friendship is healed. I don’t know if there is anything between us anymore. The bridges we’d built, out of time and care and kindness . . . those are ruins, and the rapids run deep.

We drive for about an hour, and the silence hangs heavy, until Sam says, “We need gas. Food wouldn’t hurt, either.”

I can’t imagine eating, but I nod. I don’t want to argue. I’m afraid the slightest disagreement will send us both tumbling down the river, out of control.

He pulls off at a truck stop, one of the big chain affairs that accommodates dozens of cars and features extravagant convenience-store selections, plus a sit-down restaurant and showers for tired long-haulers. We take a booth in the diner and eat chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes, and the food revives me a little.

“Are you going back to Stillhouse Lake?” I finally ask him. “Or . . . home?” I don’t know where his home is, I realize. We’ve never really talked about where he’s from.

“I haven’t decided,” he says. “I’m thinking about it.” I get a glance that’s so fast I barely register it as a look. “If you didn’t do what those tapes show you did—”

“I didn’t.” Somehow, I manage to say it quietly. I want to shout it. To smash my fists into the table until they bleed.

“If you didn’t,” he repeats, without any emphasis at all, “then I can’t let you put yourself in danger without someone to watch your back.”

I’m biting the inside of my cheek, I realize, to keep myself from doing something stupid. I taste copper and realize I’ve drawn blood. I have a mad, stupid urge to tell him that I did do those things, and to just fuck off and let me go, because I know right now that it would be the kinder thing to do. This is tearing him apart. I can tell from the careful way he moves, as if he has to think out everything he does, no matter how normal. We seduced each other into the idea that we could overcome all this, and now . . . now we can’t.

“Someone you can recommend?” I ask him.

Sam puts his fork down and leans back against the worn vinyl of the seat. For the first time, he looks me square in the eyes, and I can’t read him at all. All control, nothing on the surface. “Lots of people,” he says. “But nobody I’d trust you not to screw over.”

“Sam—”

“Don’t.” It’s a soft, sharp cut, and I see the flicker in his eyes to go with it. Violence, suppressed. “If you’re lying to me, swear to God, I will walk away and leave you to die, because you will deserve what you get. Do you understand me?”

I should tell him to just drive away, right now. I know I should. Sam is a good man who’s had a hard road to this point. But I can either be honest and cruel, or I can be kind and a liar.

He wouldn’t thank me for being kind. And the truth is, I need him.

“I won’t lie to you,” I say. I mean it. “I never helped him. I never will. I want him dead. And you can help me get there.”