Late One Night

28

Ronnie didn’t bother to knock. He just opened the door and walked in. Brandi was sitting on the couch, facing the front door, every light in the house turned on as if she were waiting for him.

She didn’t even move when she saw him. “Where have you been?”

Her voice was all flattened out, not soft and sweet the way it was the night she came into the bedroom and told him Pat Wade was there and he’d better come out to hear what he had to say. Ronnie remembered the way her fingers trembled when she buttoned his shirt for him and how later, once Pat had told him about the fire — once Ronnie understood that Della and Emily and Gracie and the baby were gone and he knew he needed to get to the ones who were left — Brandi said she’d be there waiting for him. She’d made it plain she wasn’t going anywhere. Her heart was tied up with his. Then, now, forever.

“I’ve been driving,” he said

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that he’d gone to the river, walked out on the ice, got down on his knees, and looked up at the stars and the crescent moon. He couldn’t tell her about opening the blade of his knife and thinking long and hard about what he might do with it before giving up on that idea. Most of all, he couldn’t tell her what he’d just done out there on the blacktop. He couldn’t say that he’d been so angry about Missy and Pat taking his girls, he’d been a crazy man. He’d tried to chase them down. He’d bumped their van, and if they’d been driving any faster, or if Pat hadn’t been on the lookout — well, Ronnie didn’t like to think about what might have happened. He couldn’t get the picture out of his head, the one he’d manufactured, of that van leaving the blacktop and going airborne, turning over and over, his daughters — the people who mattered most to him in this world — at the mercy of another one of his hotheaded decisions.

His life was out of control, but all he could offer Brandi was this: “That night,” he said. “The night the trailer burned.” He got down on his knees in front of her, and he gathered her up, his arms easing in between her back and the couch. He lay his head on her swollen stomach. He listened for the baby moving about. Then he said the rest. “I didn’t go out for a drive because I was antsy. I knew I was going out there to the trailer.”

He closed his eyes and held onto her. He needed to know what she’d say next, but he was afraid to hear it.

“Ronnie,” she finally said in a shaky voice. “Did you—”

He wouldn’t let her say the words. He’d save her from that. “Please,” he said before she had to finish her question. “Baby, please don’t think that of me.”

She let the minutes stretch on, willing to do that, wishing that she and Ronnie could stay where they were for a good long while. Just the two of them in the brightly lit house, his head on her stomach, her hand stroking his hair again. She’d feared when Laverne had gone and Missy and Pat had driven away with the girls that she’d turned a corner into a dark room and she’d never be able to see her way out of it. Then Ronnie came back. Here he was, holding onto her, and she’d asked the question she’d had to ask. Had he set that trailer on fire? He’d asked her to please not think that of him, and she was trying. She was doing her best to believe he was innocent. She let that belief build from the way his hands fit into the small of her back and cradled her, the way he lay against her now, his eyes closed as if there on his knees he was giving himself to her. Broken down as he was, he was still hers. She’d loved him long and hard and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him and then being alone when their baby came.

“That knife,” she finally said, though really she didn’t want to say anything at all. She just wanted the closeness of him with no need for words. She wanted this story that they were in the midst of to stop and for there to only be the story of their love. But there were still questions that needed answers, and she forced herself forward. “Your pocketknife. When I was pushing you out the door last night, you looked like you wanted to hurt me with it.”

“No, baby. Not for a minute.” He opened his eyes and raised his head. “Oh, baby. I’d never hurt you like that.”

It was then that Brandi told him that Laverne Ott had gone to Sheriff Biggs and the sheriff was looking for him. She scooted to the edge of the couch and tried to get to her feet. He got up from his knees, and he took her hands and helped her.

“Wait here,” she said.

He did as she asked. He watched her go down the hall and turn left into their bedroom. He heard a dresser drawer open, the drawer that screeched on its runners every time he opened it. The bottom drawer, which was his.

As soon as she came back into the hallway, he knew what she had: his Sun Records T-shirt. He didn’t know how she’d found it in his car, but she had, and now he knew she’d have another question and it wouldn’t be one he’d want to answer.

“How’d your shirt get ripped?” She held it up and showed him where the cloth had been stripped away. “Ronnie, it smells like gas. Why? Did you spill some on you when you poured it into my car that morning?”

“I can’t get that smell out of my nose.”

“So you did? You spilled some?” When he didn’t answer, she remembered again that he’d called Della that night and she hadn’t answered. Brandi said, “Ronnie, why did you go out to the trailer that night if you thought no one was there?”

He waited, barely able to look her in the eyes. “You’re not going to want to hear everything there is to say.”

“Maybe not.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “But it’s too late for secrets now. Tell me.”

So first there was the telling, and then before Brandi could decide what she believed and what she didn’t, she heard footsteps on the porch and a sharp knock on the front door.

Ronnie squeezed her hand — he’d held it the whole time he told his story — and she had to tug hard to get free from it.

She opened the door, and there was Biggs and two deputies. Biggs didn’t say a word, didn’t acknowledge her at all. He just stepped into her house and said to Ronnie, “I’ve got enough evidence to arrest you, and we’re going to search this property.”

Ronnie said, “Then do it.”

“Ma’am,” the tall deputy said to Brandi. He had a long neck, and there was static electricity in his thin hair, making it stand on end. “We’ve come with a warrant.”

The shorter deputy handed it to her. He was red in the face from the cold. He moved his feet about on the front porch.

“What’s this mean?” she said.

“Means we’re here to search the premises,” said the tall deputy. “We’re here to remove any items that might serve as evidence in the matter of the arson at Della Black’s trailer on the night of January tenth.”

She looked at them, still not quite understanding.

“Ma’am,” said the shorter deputy, “you really don’t have any choice.”

She understood that. She stepped aside and let them in.