Redemption Road(142)

“How’s she doing?” Adrian asked.

“She’s strong.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“The therapy helps.”

Adrian glanced at the truck that sat, dusty, in the drive. Twice a week Elizabeth and Channing took it into town. They never discussed particulars with Adrian, but they both thought the therapist there was good. They were looser when they came back; the smiles came easier.

“You should go sometime,” Elizabeth said. “It helps to talk to someone.”

“I do that, already.”

“Eli doesn’t count.”

He smiled and sipped the coffee. She was wrong about Eli, but he didn’t expect her to understand. “And, how are you?” he asked.

“Same answer,” she said, but he knew better. She woke screaming at times, and he often found her outside at three in the morning. He never bothered her, but watched to make sure she was safe from coyote or mountain lion or the dreams that came with such fierce predictability. She’d find her way to the same place at the edge of the arroyo, a flat, narrow stone that held the heat of the day. She’d stand straight in a thin gown or under a blanket, and always she looked at the stars, thinking of her mother or Gideon or the horrors inflicted by her father. Adrian didn’t know and never asked. His job was to be there on the porch, to nod quietly as she returned to the house and trailed a finger across his shoulder as if to say thanks.

“Is today still the day?” he asked.

“I think it’s time. Don’t you?”

“Only if you’re ready.”

“I am.”

They sat in easy silence after that, the moment made comfortable by all the ones that had passed before it. They were good together in that easy way. Nobody pushed. Nobody took. But, something had changed in the past few weeks, and both of them felt it. An energy was there where none had been before, a spark if one’s skin brushed the other’s. They didn’t talk about it, yet—it was too small and fragile—but the time was coming and they both knew it.

She was healing.

They all were.

“Are you sure you won’t change your mind?” He waited until she looked his way. She was as tanned as he, her face leaner, the lines at her eyes a little deeper. “I can come with you.”

“Too dangerous, I think.” She brushed his hand. The lightest touch. “I’ll make sure we get back safe and sound.”

Her fingers moved away, but the charge lingered. “When will you leave?”

She kept her eyes on the girl. “When I finish this cup of coffee.”

She sipped slowly, and Adrian watched her as she rocked in the old chair that had come with the house. She wore peacefulness as if it were a blanket she’d decided to wrap around her shoulders. Even now that couldn’t be easy, not with her father a monster and the story out there for everyone to see. Both had followed the news as events played out after the church. Dyer used two bloody fingerprints found on the dash of the old car to tie Reverend Black to the murdered women. They were Ramona Morgan’s prints, and reporters speculated she’d left them there after tearing skin trying to claw her way out of some dark and lonely place. Nothing yet tied him to the other victims, but there was little doubt, official or otherwise. Liz lost sleep, at times, thinking she should go back and fill in the blanks. But, nights like that were growing less frequent. What further insight could she offer? The victims would be just as gone. Their families would have the same person to blame.

Besides, her father was dead.

The story of the warden and his corrupt guards was the one that lingered. The fury over why they were dead in the church soon gave way to larger questions. What were they doing there? Why did they die? An old man came forward a few days later, an ex-con with an almost unbelievable story of how he’d been tortured, once, and how others had died hard deaths in the warden’s care. He was not the most credible person, though, and the story almost ended with him. But, two more convicts came forward, then a guard who’d seen things he should have talked about sooner. That was the crack that blew the story wide open.

Torture. Murder.

The attorney general had ordered a full review.

Charges still stood against Adrian, and he’d go down if the authorities ever found him. They stood against Liz, too, but no one was looking for her, and she had no plans to make a life anywhere but the desert. She liked the heat of it, she said, its emptiness and unchanging nature. Plus, Channing and Adrian were in the desert. No one said it out loud, but the words hung like a shimmer far out on the valley floor.

Family.

Future.

Adrian stood and leaned against the rail. He wanted her to see his face, so she’d think about it as she drove. “Will you be okay if he says no?”

“Gideon?” The look in her eyes was gentle, the smile easy and slow. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

*

Elizabeth took the truck and drove ten-hour stretches. Sunglasses covered her eyes. A white Stetson rode her head. She stayed in inexpensive motels, though money was not a problem. On the eighth hour of the third day, she crossed the county line and was back. Nothing had changed, but an ill wind pressed against her as if she were somehow different and every living creature in the county sensed it.

She drove the side streets, then went to her mother’s house, stopping first at the boarded-up church. The clapboards were dirty and peeling. Windows were broken, and someone had used black paint on the walls, spelling words such as killer and sinner and devil. Circling to the back, she found the parsonage little different than the church. Shattered glass. The same paint. The door was locked, but she took the tire iron from the truck and forced it. Inside, she found bare floors and dust and difficult memories. She stood for a while at the kitchen window, thinking of the last time she’d had a drink there with her mother. Had she known, then, the depth of her husband’s evil? Had she ever sensed it? Elizabeth wanted an answer and found it on the mantelpiece above the small fireplace in the empty living room. The envelope was yellowed and dry. The name Elizabeth was written in her mother’s hand.