Redemption Road(2)

“That explains it, then.”

She meant the smell and the dirt; but she was laughing now, so he laughed, too. “Kids,” he said.

“Yeah, right.”

He made a mock bow and said something about chariots. She laughed, but he was no longer paying attention.

She was already in the car.

“I enjoy a Sunday.” She sat straight as he slid behind the wheel. “The stillness and the quiet. No expectations.” She smoothed the skirt and showed the eyes. “Don’t you love a Sunday?”

“Of course,” he said, but couldn’t care less. “Did you tell your mother we were meeting?”

“Not a chance,” the girl said. “There’d be a million questions. She’d say I was needy or irresponsible, that I should have called her instead.”

“Perhaps you underestimate her.”

“Not my mother, no.”

He nodded as if he understood her isolation. The mother was overbearing, the father distant or dead. He turned the key and liked the way she sat—back straight, both hands folded neatly in her lap. “The people who love us tend to see what they want to see, and not what we really are. Your mother should look more closely. I think she’d be pleasantly surprised.”

The comment made her happy.

He pulled away from the curb and talked enough to keep her that way. “What about your friends?” he asked. “The people you work with? Do they know?”

“Only that I’m meeting someone today, and that it’s personal.” She smiled and showed the warm, rich eyes that had drawn him in the first place. “They’re very curious.”

“I’m sure they are,” he said; and she smiled a second time.

It took a dozen minutes for her to ask the first meaningful question. “Wait a minute. I thought we were having coffee.”

“I’m taking you somewhere else first.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a surprise.’

She craned her neck as the city sank behind them. Fields and woods ran off in either direction. The empty road seemed to take new meaning as her fingers touched her throat, her cheek. “My friends will expect me back.”

“I thought you didn’t tell them.”

“Did I say that?”

He gave her a look, but didn’t respond. The sky outside was purple, the sun an orange push through the trees. They were far past the edge of town, an abandoned church settling quietly on a distant hill, its steeple broken as if by the weight of the darkening sky. “I love a ruined church,” he said.

“What?”

“Don’t you see it?”

He pointed, and she stared at the ancient stone, the twisted cross. “I don’t understand.”

She was worried; trying to convince herself everything was normal. He watched blackbirds settle on the ruins. A few minutes later, she asked him to take her home.

“I’m not feeling well.”

“We’re almost there.”

She was scared now—he could tell—frightened of his words and the church and the strange, flat whistle that hissed between his lips.

“You have very expressive eyes,” he said. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“You’ll be fine.”

He turned the car onto a gravel road, the world defined by trees and dusk and the heat of her skin. When they passed an open gate in a rusted fence, the girl began to cry. It was quiet, at first, then less so.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

She cried harder, but didn’t move. The car rolled out of the trees and into a clearing choked with weeds and old equipment and bits of rusted metal. An empty silo rose, round and streaked, its pinnacle stained pink by the falling sun. At its base a small door gaped, the space beyond it black and still. She stared up at the silo and, when she looked back down, saw handcuffs in his hand.

“Put these on.”

He dropped the cuffs in her lap, and a warm, wet stain spread beneath them. He watched her stare desperately through the windows, looking for people or sunlight or reasons to hope.

“Pretend it’s not real,” he said.

She put on the cuffs, the metal clinking like tiny bells. “Why are you doing this?”

It was the same question, but he didn’t blame her. He turned off the engine and listened to it tick in the stillness. It was hot in the clearing. The car smelled of urine, but he didn’t mind. “We were supposed to do this tomorrow.” He pushed a stun gun against her ribs and watched her twitch as he pulled the trigger. “I don’t need you till then.”





1

Gideon Strange opened his eyes to dark and heat and the sound of his father weeping. He held very still, though the sobbing was neither new nor unexpected. His father often ended up in the corner—huddled as if his son’s bedroom were the world’s last good place—and Gideon thought about asking why, after all these years, his father was still so sad and weak and broken. It would be a simple question, and if his father were any kind of man, he’d probably answer it. But Gideon knew what his father would say and so kept his head on the pillow and watched the dark corner until his father pulled himself up and crossed the room. For long minutes he stood silently, looking down; then he touched Gideon’s hair and tried to whisper himself strong, saying, Please, God, please, then asking strength from his long-dead wife, so that Please, God turned into Help me, Julia.