We Begin at the End(49)
Hal got out and she followed.
He threaded the trees and she kept pace, the faintest of gaps but Hal navigated like he knew the trail and where each of its branches would carry.
Montana unfolded in front, a thousand miles of natural shades, water and land. She caught pine scent, watched men in waders fishing the clearest water a mile up. Beside her Hal lit a cigar.
“Trout streams.” He pointed toward breaks, the fishermen like dots on a mighty canvas. “There’s a canyon fifty miles in, so deep people say it doesn’t bottom out till red rock. Take any trail, the backcountry, you won’t see another person again. A million acres free.”
“Is that why you ran here? Hide from the world?” She kicked a rock and watched it fall.
“You want to call a truce?”
“Not even a little.”
He smiled at that.
“Your brother tells me you like to sing.”
“There’s nothing I like.”
Ash fell to the dirt.
“The natives called this the backbone of the world. There’s water a shade of teal you’ve never seen. It’s so cold … the glacial melt and silt, nothing can grow beneath. It just stays clear for all time, no clouding, nothing hiding. There’s something special about that, don’t you think?”
She stayed silent.
“And that reflection, so true it’s like the world is nothing but sky, flipped on its head. I’ll take Robin out when he’s a little older, on the Jammer, maybe a boat trip if he wants to fish. I’d like you to come along too.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Talk about tomorrow like it’s real, like you’ll be here and we’ll be here.” She did not want to scream again, to shake up the still.
On the side were flat leaves, berries the darkest purple.
He picked one and ate it.
“Huckleberries.” He held one out. She did not take it, instead pulling her own free. It was good, sweeter than she thought. She ate a handful, then filled her pockets for Robin.
“Bears like them too.” Hal bent to pick them and she saw he carried the gun, the same one she’d shot with.
She took a breath. “You didn’t come back.”
He stopped then, straightened up and turned to her.
“You didn’t come back. You knew my mother. You knew what she was like and what life might’ve been like for us. You knew she could barely look out for herself. You’re bigger than me. You’re tall and tough and we needed—”
She broke off, fiddled with her bow, kept her voice even because she would not show him how deep the pain ran.
“So when you point it out, all this beauty, all this that you see and you think I see too. You should know it pales beside what I saw before. This purple—” She waved a hand at the huckleberries beside. “This makes me think of her ribs, beat dark like that. The blue water, that’s her eyes, clear enough to see there’s no soul behind them anymore. You breathe the air and you think it’s fresh, but I can’t even take a breath without feeling that stab.” She beat her chest hard. “I am alone. I will look after my brother and you will leave us because you don’t really care. And you can say what you like, what you think will make me feel better. But fuck you, Hal. Fuck Montana, and the acres and the animals and the …” Her voice shook so she stopped it there.
The moment stretched between them and out over the pines. It swept the sky and the clouds, buried the promise of new so totally. It reduced them to the nothing they were, so small against a backdrop endless in its beauty. He held his cigar but did not smoke, held the berries but did not eat them. She hoped to God she had shattered all the certainty he saw for them.
She turned and closed her eyes tight to the tears, forcing them back. She would not cry.
20
WALK FELT THE GRACE SLIP from Cape Haven as the summer finally began to dim.
It began the morning after Star, when reporters blocked Ivy Ranch Road and police tape streaked alien across the Radley home. He felt it then, the streets a degree cooler, the vista a shade off bright. Mothers ushering their kids, shutting big gates and smothering warmth from within. He shouldered it as best he could, offers rescinded, the cop that was friends with the killer. He spent lazy summer evenings walking every street in the Cape, from the pillared mansions on Calen Place to the small clapboard homes on the highest roads. He knocked doors, hat in hand, beard there but trimmed a little neater, and he offered a tight smile as the desperation seeped from him. He asked, implored, leaned and probed and led memories places they never had been. No one saw anything that night. No cars or trucks or anything out of the pristine normality of their summer.
He watched security tapes from every store on Main. The quality was shitty so he could not skip forward. Instead he viewed in real time, ten hours, sun down to up, his eyes propped open only by the torment that fell when he closed them.
He looked at Darke, tentative, no interview could be called without raising the interest of Darke’s lawyer, and, in turn, Boyd and the state cops. He made a couple of calls, spoke with a Sutler cop and ran FasTrak tolls, hoping to catch an easy lie. He got nothing.
Martha had still not agreed to formally represent Vincent, though Walk picked up the phone most evenings and filled her in on what he’d got, which was mostly nothing. One Sunday morning he drove her to Fairmont, and the two sat with Vincent and reminisced about old times. When talk turned to mounting a defense Vincent signaled the guard.