Backseat Saints (27 page)

“Derek and James can help,” Thom said. “I need a minute. I’ve yet to say a proper hello to my wife.”

Joe pushed his lips into a down pout, but he went. Thom didn’t come toward me, though. He leaned in the doorway and crossed
one foot over the other. “So. What
has
your Catholic vagina been up to while I was gone, Ro?” The words were right. It was a Thom-style line, and it should have
made me grin, but the tone was all wrong.

I stared at him, wary. “Just hanging out in my underpants, like always.”

“Is our home phone fixed?” he asked, and with such purpose behind the question that I felt myself go very, very still inside.

“The guy is coming tomorrow morning,” I said.

“Mmm-hmm. Here’s a funny thing, Ro. I already know what’s wrong with it.”

“You do?” I said. I swallowed, way too loud. I was suddenly pleased to have Joe and two sales guys in the store. I did not
want to be alone with whoever the hell this was.

He nodded. “I was worried about you, sugar. Alone in the night with no working telephone. I called Larry from Houston and
had him go by the house, check on things. He said the phone line had been cut. Deliberate. Now, who would do that.”

It didn’t tilt up at the end like a question, but I answered it like one anyhow. My voice came out high and breathless. “Kids,
maybe? Teenagers?”

“I don’t think so,” Thom said.

My fingers moved up to press my forehead, and I don’t think I’d ever hated Larry Grandee more than I did at this moment. That
chinless bastard must have been delighted to check up on his brother’s wife.

“Larry said you weren’t home,” Thom went on.

“Oh,” I said, faint. “I had some errands.”

“Yeah,” Thom said. “So I had him go back again, late.”

“Oh,” I said again. I couldn’t look away.

“You never came home last night, Ro.”

Who is he
?

I felt my face flush, deep and hot, obvious, a confession. He was still and so controlled, but any second I felt that he could
calmly put his clenched hand through my face, all the way into my brain. His eyes had never been so cold on me before, or
so at peace.

This wasn’t temper. This was a fundamental shift. He believed I’d stepped out. He’d added up my strangeness over the last
ten days, my new wayward bedroom tactics, my overnight absence, and drawn an inevitable conclusion. He would end the game
for good now, no winners.

Ro Grandee’s husband had been peeled away, and I was seeing the thing that lived underneath. I stood in the middle of Grand
Guns eye to eye with the hanged man, and his face was smooth and rested. A muscle jumped in his cheek, twice, and the rest
of his face stayed as still as a corpse’s. I could see my own death reflected there.

“I think you should drive me home now,” he said. “This is something we should talk about alone. You and me.”

“I have another two hours on my shift, baby,” I said. I let my body shift into Ro’s good-girl posture. No danger in being
her now. Looking at him, I knew that there was no Thom left for Ro to go back to.

The new Thom had one thing in common with my husband: He did not know who he was looking at. He had sensed a difference in
the hospital and while I looked for Jim, but he’d never understood his Ro was gone. It was the only advantage I had, and I
smiled Ro’s guileless smile at him, because I was damn well keeping it.

“James and Derek can handle it,” Thom said.

“I better wait until Janine gets here. I was a couple minutes late and Derek was already being a dick about it.” I could not
get in the car and leave with him. If I went off with this man alone, it was the last thing I would ever do.

He shrugged, but his expression did not change. He didn’t even have one to change. He was blank and still with cold, black
purpose. “Derek will get over it. Get your purse.” He stepped forward and closed one hand around my wrist like a manacle.

“Thom!” Joe called from the back. I jumped, but Thom stayed still.

Thom didn’t answer. We looked at each other. He was thinking snake and bird, but it was snake and snake, and I was not done
yet.

“You better see what your daddy wants,” I said. “Sugar.”

Joe appeared in the doorway. “Thom, boy, get your ass back here. I can’t find that Mauser.”

Slowly Thom’s neck turned, his focus leaving me. Joe’s influence held, even with this creature.

He said to his father, “Okay. I’ll find it, but then I think I’m
going to grab Ro and cut out early. I’m tired and I want to take my best girl out to dinner.”

“Sure.” Joe shrugged. “It’s been slow, Derek said.”

Thom looked at me, his lips curving into a smile. This was chess, and he’d just hemmed my king. His goal was to get me off
alone, and I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t win in a straight-up fight. He was so much bigger. A gun could level the
playing field, and guns were all around me, but Thom was as good with one as I was, maybe better. Him or me. If he took me
off alone in the car, armed or not, it would be me.

“That sounds great,” I said, working Ro’s best perky. “We should go to Rollo’s and have crab legs.” They were Joe’s favorite.
“You want to come eat with us, Joe?”

Joe paused, tempted, but the ploy failed. “Too much to do. Plus you kids need to get working on that other project we’ve been
discussing.” He waggled his eyebrows at my belly in that same too interested, pervy way. “Come on, Thom.”

“Just a sec,” Thom said to his daddy. I smiled, trying to look sweet and clueless, but Thom had been hunting with his daddy
since he was six. He lifted his head and breathed in a huff of air, smelling fear. If he walked out of this room now, he suspected
I’d run like a deer. He was dead damn right.

“Give me your keys,” Thom said to me. “I’ll grab my bags out of the truck and move ’em to your car after I find this gun.”
Check.

“Sure, baby,” I said, no hesitation. I dug my keys out of my purse and handed them over. That threw him off balance. He wasn’t
expecting me to give up my escape route. I smiled as I handed them over, Ro’s smile, pleased to be getting off work early
and taken out for seafood.

His hand closed around my keys. He hesitated, not sure what he was missing.

“Thom,” Joe said, impatient.

“All right, then,” Thom said. He turned away.

Ro’s expression dropped off my face and shattered on the floor.
This was my one advantage: I knew what I was dealing with, and he did not. I was Rose Mae fucking Lolley, and I wouldn’t go
trotting off like a lambkin to my death.

He was barely out of sight before I was moving, grabbing Joe Grandee’s jumbo-manly key ring out of the drawer by the register.
The Buick had been Charlotte’s before it was mine, so of course Joe still had a key. He had a key to our goddamn house, too.
For once the fact that Joe’s big sniffer was jammed hard into every crack of my life was working for me. I fisted my hand
hard around the keys to keep them from jingling and ran, light and soundless, toward the front door.

I pushed it open and the bell chimed.

“Welcome to Grand Guns!” I cried out, loud and cheery to the empty store. “What can I help you find today?”

I slipped out the door and crossed the parking lot at a sprint, trying to find the Buick key on the overloaded ring as I fled.
I barreled into the side of the car. My hands were so sweaty, shaking, I could hardly get the key in the lock.

I fumbled and twisted and got the car door open. I jumped in and started the engine. I risked a glance at the store. The front
door was still closed. I threw the car into drive and floored it.

As I turned out of the parking lot, I saw Thom come out. He moved slow and deliberate, staring after me, implacable. He knew
I had no place to go. I took the first turn I came to to get away from his gaze. Then I drove for home as fast as I dared.

I wasn’t sure how big my lead would be. I had Joe’s truck key on the ring, and that would buy me time. Joe would hold him
back some, asking petulant questions about why his wife had taken off like a gazelle with his key ring. James lived close
and usually didn’t drive to work, and Derek was an asshole. If Thom couldn’t borrow one of their cars, he’d have to wait for
Larry to come get him or for Charlotte to bring Joe’s spare keys over.

I drove like the very devil back to our house. It would cut my lead to stop at home, but I didn’t have a choice. Gretel was
there,
and the first thing he would do would be to snap her neck for the crime of being something I loved.

The weather had been fine, so I’d left her in the backyard with triple rations by her doghouse for the thirty hours I’d been
in Chicago. That made it go faster. I left the Buick running on the curb with the door open and ran across the yard to the
back gate. I called her and she came slow-trotting over, wagging, pleased to see me. When she reached the fence, she stopped,
puzzled, sensing my agitation.

I flung open the gate.

“Take a walk? Take a walk?” I said, trying to sound cheery. I failed, and her eyebrows stayed worried, but the words were
familiar. She came through the gate and stood panting up at me as I peeled the Buick key off Joe’s ring and dropped the rest
of them onto the lawn.

I didn’t dare take time to pack. I didn’t even go inside my mint green house. Instead I ran fast to Mrs. Fancy’s, Gretel trotting
close on my heels, and pounded on her door. No answer.

She was not home, and Thom had my keys, including the one that unlocked her front door. I paced the porch, twice. I should
leave. Who knew when she’d come back? I couldn’t afford to wait. I started down the stairs, then paused. Gretel whined, nervous.

“Let’s take a ride? Take a ride? Let’s go!” I said. Gretel knew these words, too. She turned and ran to the Buick and hopped
into the open door, taking up her rightful spot on the passenger seat.

Meanwhile, I peeled a paving stone out of Mrs. Fancy’s front flower bed and toted it back to the porch. I lifted it, shoulder
high, and smashed it through the narrow window by her front door. It shattered the glass and fell through, landing on the
square of parquet flooring with a clap. I saw a yellow streak as Phil ran to hide. I reached through the hole and unlocked
the door.

It cost me two precious minutes to run to the guest room closet and snatch Pawpy’s gun and my real wallet out of the shoebox,
but I felt better once I had the gun. I grabbed my mother’s library book, too.

Mrs. Fancy had a place for Gretel at her son’s, she’d said. She knew a shelter that could hide me. But I couldn’t wait for
her, and anyway, everything in me said it was too damn close. There was no place in this city, in this state, where Thom Grandee
couldn’t find me. He was coming toward me now. He’d keep coming. He always had, since the day I’d seen him through the window
at Duff’s Diner, walking jaunty and confident back to claim me. The only thing that had changed was his purpose.

I got in the car and started driving, away from my Crest-colored house and from all the roads Thom might be driving down if
he was coming toward me from the gun store. Gretel whined, wanting me to open the passenger-side window, but my car was easy
enough to spot without her big head hanging out, licking wind.

“Shush now, Gretel-fat,” I said.

I drove as quickly as I dared for Highway 40. A red light paused me at the turn. Highway 40 stretched all the way across the
country. If I turned west, it would take me to California, where my mother waited for her book.

At the airport, she had told me I was welcome. Ever since, I’d been flat haunted by images of Ivy Wheeler in a lemon grove,
of living in a cool and hilly place. Ivy would be safe and new, just born, a creature with no husband and no history.

I found myself staring down the highway to the west. My mother had been offering me a place, but it was not a place she’d
made for me. She’d saved money in her flowered shoe, planning all the while to leave me behind. She’d made plans that did
not include me. She’d packed my regular brown bag lunch and sent me off to school with her regular quick kiss on my cheek.
Then she’d left, and I’d come home to find the world had changed.

She’d remade herself, rebirthed herself as a gypsy, but she hadn’t brought me with her and showed me how. Ivy Wheeler was
only a haircut, some borrowed clothes, and a pair of steel-toed boots.
I faced west and said, “Fuck you,” to my mother. “Y
ou
aren’t welcome.”

The light went green and my hands were on the wheel, turning it. My foot jammed the gas pedal down. The car lurched forward
with a screech, turning away from her, leaving two lines of burnt rubber, curving toward the east. I knew the South. I could
go to ground there. Scared, yes. But too damn mad to lie down like Thom’s good girl and die.

I ran home.

I
POINTED THE BUICK EAST, and I took all fifteen hours of driving straight up, neat, like a shot of Jack. The wind was behind
me, and I felt it as wolf breath, hot and stinking of old meat, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.