The Moon Pool (33 page)

Colleen pressed her hand to her chest, feeling her heart pound under her palm. “And meanwhile, Elizabeth is no good to Kristine anymore because she's fallen for Paul... but at least Elizabeth tells her everything. Because she's young, and dumb, and in love. So she accidentally gives Kristine the information she needs. She knows what the boys were going to do, and when.”

“And when she let Hunter-Cole know they were about to blow the whistle, someone made sure that they never got there.”

“Oh, God,” Colleen said. She felt like she'd been punched in the gut. “How are we going to get her to admit all of this?”

“Not her. Think. We need the weakest link. We need Elizabeth.”

“She'll never talk to us. She'd never turn against Kristine... that's her cousin. Her
family.
”

“But so are you. Colleen, think about it, she can't depend on her parents. She's afraid of them. She was in love with Paul. And now you're the only person who can protect her and this baby. She
needs
you.”

IT WAS AS
easy as Shay had predicted it would be. When Colleen called Elizabeth after school, Elizabeth burst into tears. Colleen asked questions until it was clear that she was overwhelming the girl: no, she didn't know she was supposed to take prenatal vitamins; no, there wasn't a doctor anywhere in the county she could trust; no, she had no idea how she would support herself when she started to show, because she was positive her parents wouldn't let her stay in the house around her younger sisters.

When Colleen suggested they talk about finding somewhere safe for her to go to wait out the pregnancy, she hadn't meant to bring up Boston. She didn't want to scare the girl off. But when she blurted out that she and Andy would take care of her, Elizabeth seized on the thin hope she offered.“I'm just so scared, Mrs. Mitchell,” Elizabeth whispered into the phone. “I don't know how much longer I can keep all these secrets from everyone.”

“I'm not going to let you down,” Colleen said. She explained that her husband would be arriving in three days, that they would all figure it out together. “Can we meet tonight? Just to talk?”

“There's no way. Mom's already upset because I got a tardy in fourth period because I was late to class after lunch, and the office called her. I told her I was at Taco Bell with friends but she didn't believe me.”

Colleen tried to hide her dismay. She had to cement this bond, make sure Elizabeth trusted her enough to confide in her, before Kristine had a chance to intimidate her into silence. “Is there any other way for us to get together?”

“I could see you tomorrow at lunch,” Elizabeth said. “We just have to be really careful that I get back in time.”

It wasn't ideal; Colleen didn't like the idea of being constrained by the short lunch period. She was sure Elizabeth had no idea of the danger Kristine was putting workers in by reporting them to Hunter-Cole, but it was delicate; if the girl sensed that Shay and Colleen were threatening Kristine, she might not be willing to speak to them at all.

“I don't like that she's by herself tonight,” Shay said. “Now that we've made Kristine nervous, she's going to try to keep tabs on Elizabeth. She could easily decide to go to see her, make up some excuse about studying or visiting or... or anything. When Elizabeth talked to you, all she was thinking about was Paul. But what if Kristine manages to get her thinking that her loyalty is to
her
?”

“But if Elizabeth thinks that Paul is really gone—”

“Kristine won't let her think that. The only thing keeping Elizabeth from telling someone about Kristine's little scam now is that she doesn't know who to tell, because her dad's the chief of police. So Kristine is probably doing everything she can to reassure her that Paul's okay, that he got nervous and left on his own. And that's another way she might talk Elizabeth out of telling us any more—by convincing her it would be endangering Paul.”

“Well, we're not doing anything else tonight,” Colleen said. “I guess we could go over to the apartment building and keep an eye on Kristine.”

“No. Better if we watch the Weyants' house instead. That way, anyone comes to see Elizabeth
or
the chief—someone from Hunter-Cole, Kristine, whoever—we know about it. If we feel like there's any threat, we're right there.”

“You're suggesting we do... a
stakeout
? On a
cop
? Have you forgotten that we're a couple of middle-aged women with absolutely no experience?”

“That's exactly why this has to work. They'll never guess we'd do anything so stupid.”

RIG TRAFFIC NEVER
changed: weekday, weekend, holiday, it was always the same. Hitches ended and new guys came on, and the trucks rolled back and forth all day, every day.

There wasn't a lot of reservation traffic in the store because the Lucky Six, on Central Street half a block from the old folks' home, sold everything Myron stocked, cheaper in most cases. And most people planned ahead, bought their handles of rum and vodka and their cases of beer and soda at the Costco in Minot. Right now, as another moonless, cold night settled in, they were putting together dinner and turning on their TVs and preparing to get their numb on.

T.L. tried to get through his physics homework between customers, but after a while he gave up and settled for flipping through the newest ink and gaming magazines that Myron stocked. Around seven thirty a couple guys came in, headed back home after their twelve-hour shift, coveralls streaked with drilling mud. One of the men bore the imprint of his hard hat on his wiry hair. The other was much younger, with a long, bushy brown beard like some of them grew. The older one interrupted their conversation to slap down a bill on the glass counter and say, “Pack of Newports. You got any Tylenol? Just the single serve, not the bottle?”

“The one's from Massachusetts, is what I heard,” the other one said as T.L. got the items from the racks. “I ain't ever met anyone from out east up here.” “I met the other one,” the wiry-haired man said. He was old enough to be his friend's father. “When I was on the Hunter-Cole job. California boy. Nice kid.”

“Can't figure where the fuck they went. I mean... sure, you think about it. Ditching. Like, if he didn't have anyone?”

T.L.'s fingers tightened on the pack of Newports, denting the cardboard. He forced himself to relax his grip and smoothed out the dent while his heart thudded in his chest.

“Everybody's got someone somewhere,” the older man said. “Eventually, people notice when you don't come home.”

“What do you think happened?”

There was a tremor in his voice, and—beard or no—he suddenly seemed even younger, too young to be so far from home, wherever home was. T.L. pushed the cigarettes across the counter and rang up the purchase. He fished two quarters and two pennies from the cash register, not looking at their faces.

The older man shrugged. “Pissed off the wrong guys on the job,” he said, ticking off the options on his fingers. “Took off for Mexico for an early spring break. Or maybe they run into a couple of radishes up here and got scalped.”

T.L. froze, hand extended across the counter with the man's change. As slurs went,
radish
—red on the outside, white on the inside—was hardly the worst. The man looked past him in the direction of the road, then back. “Hey,” he said. “Hey.”

T.L. dropped the coins into the man's hand, laid two dollar bills on top.

“I didn't mean nothin'.” The young kid was snickering, headed for the doors. But his friend stood his ground, clearing his throat and looking at his change like he was going to give it back.

T.L. shrugged. He could feel the heat on his face and didn't trust himself to speak. A memory came to him, one that had escaped him before: the taller one—he'd had something around his neck that glinted in the sun.

“Look, I'm sorry,” the man insisted. “That was... I had no call.”

“It's okay,” T.L. managed.

“I mean, I got no issues with you people. Guy on my rig... maybe you know him. David Youngbird. He's from here, right? Good guy.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks.” T.L. just needed the guy to go. He'd get Myron's folding chair, the one he kept around for when his back was acting up, and he'd sit down until the next customer came in. Maybe watch the little TV Myron kept under the counter. Pretend to watch it, anyway.

The man turned and followed his friend out. He had a slight limp, favoring one leg and coming down heavy on the other one. A moment later the lights from their truck cut across the doors as they made the tight turn.

Silver chain. Dog tags, like a soldier would wear.

T.L. felt like he was losing his mind. At least Myron knew now. Not being alone with it anymore—that was a comfort.

But there was at least one other person who knew. Which was why he had been trying so hard to get Kristine to talk to him. Because the only way to get to Elizabeth was through her. After Chief Weyant found out that T.L. was dating his daughter, he took away her phone and forbade her to go out. For a while they'd been able to communicate through a Hotmail account she set up and used at school, so that they'd arranged to see each other at football games and outings with her friends. And there were those four times she'd pretended to be at sleepovers, and instead they'd gone for drives in his truck.

Around Halloween, Elizabeth seemed distracted, too busy to see him. She stopped answering his emails. Then right before winter break, he got the news about the scholarship. A full ride to UCLA—a way for them to be together, far from North Dakota, far from her family, her parents' crazy rules. It was what she wanted most in the world—to be somewhere else. To put North Dakota in her rearview mirror and light out for the coast, any coast. And California! When she found out he was applying, she'd been so excited that he felt bad about telling her the odds, telling her that UCLA was nothing but a dream.

A dream that had somehow come true, and she was the first person he texted. That night she snuck out and met him with news of her own: she was pregnant—that was why she'd been so scarce. She'd waited until she was sure, she said, evading his eyes.

They'd cried together; this wasn't what they had planned. It would be all right, Elizabeth promised through her tears. They'd get a tiny apartment near campus, and she'd find a job. They'd take turns watching the baby, and he would study and she would work, and they'd go to the beach on weekends. After all, the beach was free—and it was worlds away from the rolling hills, the endless frigid nothing she'd grown up in.

T.L. was dismayed. They couldn't raise a baby that way. A baby needed family, stability, tradition—everything his mother had denied him and that Myron had provided. There was no way he was starting a family far away from home. He'd never wanted to go to California anyway—he had only been trying to please Myron, but he always intended to come back once he got his degree. T.L. wanted to draw and paint, to work hard and create the family he always wished he had, and he didn't want to do it far from the wide-open sky he'd grown up under.

It was an uneasy parting. Elizabeth had made him promise he'd think about it. That he'd consider L.A. She said she could never be happy living in Fort Mercer, especially since it would be the last nail in the coffin of her relationship with her parents. She'd hinted before that her father was racist, but now she was adamant:
He'll never accept you.
He won't let us go anywhere near the reservation.

T.L. had marshaled his arguments. He'd planned exactly how he would convince her. But he never got the chance, because the next email she sent was to break up with him.

He wrote increasingly frantic emails back. She couldn't do this to him. There was no way he would turn his back on a child he had fathered. He couldn't make Elizabeth love him, but he could make her share custody. He researched it online, sent her the links. The Department of Children and Family Services had a whole program that would help establish paternity—he could force her to take a test, if it came to that. Just hear me out, he begged. He even offered to reconsider the scholarship in California. But he got no response.