Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018

Lake Desolation by Dennis McFadden

Dennis McFaddlen’s work has appeared in a number of literary magazines, including The Missouri Review, New England Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Crazyhorse, and PRISM International. His crime stories have earned a place in three volumes of Best American Mystery Stories, and his 2016 story collection, Jimtown Road, won the 2016 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction.

Donnie was miffed when Monica called and told him she couldn’t go until after eleven. Some kid had called in sick, so Mr. Baxter had asked her to work a double. Baxter knew she never said no. They were always taking advantage of her. She worked at the Stewart’s shop up on Sacandaga Road, and anytime somebody didn’t show up, anytime they needed somebody to fill in, they always called on Monica. It bugged Donnie, not only because the more time she spent at Stewart’s the less time she had to spend with him — between that and the kid she was trying to raise — but because she never stood up for herself. He was trying to teach her, but so far he hadn’t made much progress.

He should drive up there, up to Stewart’s, make a wisecrack or two in front of Baxter, something like how tired Monica looked, or about how it seemed like she lived in the place — just to let him know he knew what was going on, and didn’t like it. That’s what he should do. But he wouldn’t. For one thing, Monica hated hassles of any kind, especially the kind that involved her. He didn’t want to embarrass her. Her face got red as a rose anytime she even thought he might. For another thing, though he might let Monica think otherwise, Donnie really wasn’t much for confrontations himself.

He killed time till eleven, then left to pick her up. A light rain had started, barely a drizzle, just enough to make the mobile-home park where he lived with his mother and sister gleam a little around the edges. It was early December, but the air was mild and still. The village was quiet, though in the shadows of the corner of the park he thought he saw someone lurking in the gazebo, a couple maybe, and a little involuntary snort of superiority came out of him — he had someplace to go with Monica, his cousin’s camp up on Lake Desolation, they didn’t have to sneak around like that, like a couple of teenagers. Across from the park, the Galway Market, a squat, cement-block building, was dark except for a night-light inside to ward off any thief who might be entertaining ideas of burgling their bread and beer. The funeral home on the other corner had an electric candle burning in every window, though the rest of the place was dark. Donnie never completely understood why Ryan decked his funeral home out like Christmas every day of the year.

Monica lived with her grandmother and her little boy on Perth Road. A small house, too small apparently, as the clutter on the porch and nearby yard seemed to have overflowed from it — an old cabinet and bookshelves, sticks of wayward furniture, even a mattress or two. She was waiting outside on the porch, amid the clutter, which didn’t surprise him. She didn’t want to go in and chance waking up Trevor, her son — she could never get him back to sleep. She could never get him to go to bed in the first place. He resisted her as though it were an obligation. Her grandmother, Nellie, on the other hand, could get him down with ease, a magical touch. Monica could never figure out what she was doing wrong. It was a mystery to her.

Donnie pulled in, got out, and watched her walking toward him, her eyes so big and wide and happy behind her glasses that he couldn’t help but feel she was surprised, as though she hadn’t really expected him to show up — as though her prayer had been answered. That’s how it had seemed in the beginning — he’d been going with her for a year now — that’s the way it still seemed, and that’s why he was still crazy about her. No one had ever looked at him that way before. Her rumpled blond bangs, the frizzy pigtail on her shoulder, glistened in the dampness. She was still wearing her Stewart’s uniform, the burgundy cap and shirt, nametag still pinned in place over her right boob.

“Hello,” he said. “You must be Monica.”

The flush of confusion lasted only a millisecond — they were getting shorter now, the longer she knew him — till she glanced down at her nametag, reached up to touch it, and smiled. Then she hugged him, her destination all along. She was a small girl, and he was tall; she didn’t come up to his chin. The drizzle seeping in, he gave her a quick squeeze and got back into the car. He loved the way she could never get enough of his hugs, but he didn’t love getting wet. When he looked up, Monica was still standing in front of the car, her face raised to the sky. “Just a minute,” she said.

“What are you doing? Praying?”

“Cleaning my glasses,” she said. “They’re so smudged I can hardly see through them.” She took them off, turned them around to wet the other side, then got into the car and started drying them on her burgundy Stewart’s shirt.

“I thought that was my job.”

“You weren’t there now, were you?” When she put them back on, she said, “Darn it.”

“What?”

“They’re smeared worse — I forgot about the milkshake on my shirt.”

He shook his head. Monica, Monica. Forgot to tighten the lid on the blender again. “Here,” he said, taking them, exhaling on the lenses, cleaning them on his own shirttail, which was more or less clean. He inspected them, holding them up, looking through at the incredible blur — incredible, but clear. She couldn’t see a thing without them. He put them back on her face.

She looked around as though seeing the world for the very first time. “You have mad cleaning skills, Mister.” She took his hand, kissed the back of it, nibbled on his knuckle.

Pulling out onto the road, he said, “Let’s see what this baby’ll really do,” their joke, as his old blue Toyota wouldn’t do much, and they both knew it. He told her he wanted to stop at Matson’s so she could grab him a six-pack. She had to grab his six-packs, as he’d not quite turned twenty-one yet. Monica had. She sighed, a good sigh, a relaxing sigh, the same way he felt, no bosses, no parents or grandparents, no kids or big sisters or worry. Just together time, for a little while at least. But then he remembered he had one more chore: He waited for a mile or two, until she reached across to take his hand again. “Listen,” he said. “Next time Baxter asks you to work a double, tell him to shove it up his ass.”

She squeezed his hand, sighed again, a different sigh. “I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can,” he said. “You just don’t know it yet.”

Matson’s still survived despite the crop of Stewart’s Shops sprouting up across the countryside. It was the only gas station and store for a long stretch of miles, and it was open till midnight. He pulled in, the parking lot empty except for Andrea’s car — Andrea was the clerk — parked at the end, toward the Harmony Corners Firehouse across the street. The firehouse was dark, as was a house and bam away across the pasture on the other side of the road. The black lot glistened in the dampness from the bright lights shining through Matson’s windows.

Climbing out, she asked if he wanted anything besides beer, and he said no. “I feel like something crunchy,” she said.

“Peanut butter?” he called after her. He watched her go into the store, little and lovable. He waited, fiddling with the radio. He couldn’t find a song he liked. A tractor-trailer came bleating down the highway, throwing a dark, wet wake behind it, making him feel lonely. He turned off the radio, waited. Maybe she’d gotten lost. Poor Monica.

She was in the doorway, empty-handed, grasping the doorjamb, bright light spilling out around her, making her a silhouette. Bent over, she seemed to be retching.

“What’s wrong?” He hurried toward her, up the porch steps in a bound, praying she wasn’t going to puke, afraid she was, arriving just as she did, a reluctant eruption — she’d tried her best to squelch it, to no avail. He hopped back, too late. They looked down. There was some on his jeans, a few chunks caught in the laces of his work boots. Tears of horror squirmed down her twisted face. “Five-second rule!” she cried, furiously brushing at the puke with which she’d soiled the love of her life.

Then she remembered the horror that the horror of the puke had pushed aside for only the briefest of moments: “Andrea,” she said.

The old lady was on the floor, still, near the beer cooler, behind the potato chips and candy. A bag of chips also lay still on the floor. He could tell she was dead without feeling for a pulse — he wasn’t sure exactly where you were supposed to feel for a pulse, anyhow — as her glasses were cockeyed, her eyes open. He stood chewing the back of his hand, not liking the taste of it. Monica had retreated, sitting on the top step perilously close to the puddle of puke, still shaking, rummaging through her purse. He went to her, reaching down, but she shrugged him off, still rummaging. “I can’t find my phone.” She was forever misplacing it.

“She was like that when you found her?” His mind was racing. “What happened—” He looked past the gas pumps, to the lonely wet road. “A heart attack, maybe?”

“Do you have yours?” she said, looking up at him, eyes like spotlights behind the thick lenses. “We have to call nine-one-one. We have to do something.”

Something. In a spontaneous fog of inspiration, he strode back in, around the counter, prying open the cash drawer with his pocketknife. Stuffing a fistful of bills into his pocket, he hurried back to Monica, hoisting her up by the armpits — still fumbling through her purse — walking her across the damp pavement, practically lifting her into his old blue Toyota, into the getaway car. Let’s see what this baby’ll really do.

He headed toward the camp at Lake Desolation. He’d never thought of it as a hideout before. The shock for him turned into numbness, into tears for her. She sobbed and snuffled, sobbed some more, and he reached across to touch her, to try to offer comfort, her knee, her thigh, her arm, her hand, but she remained stiff and sobbing. “Stop,” he said. “Stop.”

“Okay.” She held her breath for a second, sniffled once, then sobbed again and wailed, “Poor Andrea!”

“She was old,” he said. “Old people die.” Which only brought another anguished sob.

The drizzle was so slight he had to turn off the wipers until the windshield wetted enough for another swipe. Most of the houses they passed on the country road were dark, but for the watchful light on the porch, on the peak of the garage. Guarding against robbers and killers. They passed a modest bungalow with grand, immodest columns of brick guarding the driveway, an iron bird of prey perched atop each. After a few miles, her sobs subsided, settling into the odd snuffle now and then. After a while, she said, “What did you do?”

He looked at her, taking his eyes from the road for a moment. Even in the dim interior, he could see how red her nose was. “When you went back in,” she said.

“Oh. I wanted to make sure she was dead.” That didn’t sound right. “I wanted to make sure we didn’t have to call an ambulance.”

“And she was?”

“Deader’n a doorknob.” That didn’t sound right either.

“Poor Andrea!”

Miles and minutes went by. They passed a cemetery with an iron gate, the kind that usually opened onto a pasture. Out of the numbness in his mind, thoughts began to form, a sculpture taking shape from a block of marble. What did he know about dying? He felt his heart echo, his blood stirring, and he began to suspect, for the first time, that maybe he wasn’t immune to that permanent stillness. Andrea’s blank, dead stare, oblivious to him and the world, the aged flesh of her body spreading, pooling, puddling like the rain outside on the asphalt. He’d seen old, dead relatives before — his grandfather only last year — but they were in caskets where they belonged, manikins instead of who they had been. In tiny Middle Grove, before the church with the red tin steeple, he turned onto Lake Desolation Road. “It must have been a heart attack or something,” he said. “I didn’t see any blood.”

“I think she hit her head on the kitty litter.”

Pails of kitty litter along the aisle. He remembered, near her head. Had one been budged, dented, dinged? For some reason, his numb brain trudged past the pails to images of the old lady suffocating facedown in a box of kitty litter, and to even grosser images, the kitty litter stinking with clumps of cat piss, sandy cat turds, poor Andrea’s face, and to him and his sister, Rosemary, letting Muddy’s box get dirtier and dirtier, arguing over whose turn it was to clean it.

Up the lonely mountain road toward Lake Desolation, barren trees in a blur the color of skeleton bones, the car seemed to move of its own accord, headlights illuminating a deer flashing across from woods to woods like an apparition. Like something he only imagined, seen by someone else. Thoughts and memories and sensations had wrapped him up, lifted him away, carried him off at a distance, and he was only watching the old blue Toyota he was allegedly driving. Her hand hot and real on his thigh was his only anchor, the only thing connecting him, holding him down. When her hand began to move, it was an electric sensation, pulsing, radiating up his thigh, causing a riot in his loins, until it settled, not there, but over the pocket of his jeans. On the lump like a malignant tumor. On the wad of cash.

“What did you do?” she said.

“I can explain that,” he said, but he couldn’t.

She slipped in her hand. “You took the money. From the cash register. Didn’t you?”

He didn’t say anything. He took a deep breath. Maybe he couldn’t explain, but he could come close. He could say they’d spent a fortune there over the years, at overinflated prices, so they were only taking back what was theirs. Only a part of what was theirs. He could say Matson, the owner, was too rich for his own good anyway, driving around in his fancy Lincoln, smoking his fancy cigars. He could say insurance would cover it anyway, that it wasn’t really all that much (he didn’t know how much, but it hadn’t seemed a lot), that it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, unpremeditated, he hadn’t thought it through, and even if he regretted it and changed his mind now, there was nothing they could do. But he didn’t have a chance to say any of those things.

“How much did you get?” Monica said.

He pulled in at the camp, on the rough mud patch where the weeds didn’t grow, illuminating the forlorn place in the headlights among the tall, naked trees. It was his cousin Roger’s place. Roger let him use it in return for keeping it up, though keeping it up amounted to little more than mowing the weeds in summer, trying to keep the mice and other critters out, fixing the odd leak or broken pane every now and then. Camp was a fancy name for two makeshift shacks slapped like mismatched bookends on either side of a small, 1950s-era trailer, a run-down, ramshackle affair — but it had a tiny kitchen, a sofa, a television that got one channel, a bed — a cozy enough hideaway. Or hideout, as the case may be. They counted the money before they got out of the car.

One hundred and forty-seven dollars. Less than he’d expected. He tried not to feel disappointed. It would seem unseemly to wish it were more.

She sighed, shook her head, rested it on his shoulder. The car was still running, the headlights still shining on the camp squatting like a hobo in the dark. She bolted up suddenly, startling him. “What about the camera?”

Like a thousand-volt surge.

The surveillance camera. He hadn’t thought about it, not once. He knew there was one there, up in the corner over the shelf with the hats and caps, he’d seen it there before — but he didn’t think it worked. It didn’t work, did it? Hadn’t Andrea told him once the damn thing was there just for show? “It doesn’t work, does it?”

“Sure it does. I think it does. Ours does.”

The moment Monica fell in love with him (it was love at first sight), he was in a tree. He wasn’t sure which tree, or even which day. Not long after he’d started working for Jesse’s Tree Service, they were trimming trees on a property at the other end of Perth Road from where she lived, though Donnie didn’t know this at the time. At the time, he didn’t even know Monica.

He thought about it later. That he was walking around in the world for three or four or five days completely unaware that there was someone, someone he didn’t remember ever having laid his eyes on, who loved him. Not often had life treated him so grandly.

When he went into Stewart’s for his coffee one morning, she said, “I saw you up in that tree over at Gilday’s — my God, you’re brave.” Her shy smile, her adoring eyes — what he could see of them behind the smeared lenses — made it love at first sight on his part too. He was nineteen. He had skin like sandpaper and a lopsided face, as if God couldn’t decide where to put his second cheekbone and had just slapped it on any old place. Rosemary, his sister, had long since convinced him how ugly he was. She’d also brought up his bravery (foolhardiness, she called it) in trees, though without an ounce of admiration. Live fast, die young, be a pretty corpse, he’d told her. She’d corrected him: Live dumb, die stupid, be an ugly corpse, in your case. Jesse, his boss, had chided him too for taking too many chances up high, and Donnie had told him he was part monkey. Truth was, he didn’t feel particularly brave, nor that he was taking risks. He felt natural up there. It was easy. Of course he wasn’t about to tell Rosemary he was part monkey, and give her more fodder.

Nor would he tell Monica. He was content to let her believe he was the bravest man in the world, which was the way she made him feel. In fact, he’d begun to believe it himself, though that particular belief took a hit that night in his dream.

Even after they’d made love, distracted and unreal given the circumstances, he had trouble falling asleep — given the circumstances. Random raindrops falling from the trees onto the tin roof of the trailer soothed him some, and he’d finally fallen into a deep sleep, where he’d dreamed he was watching a surveillance video. The video was playing on a screen in a darkened room, and other men were watching with him — cops, detectives, he imagined, inspired by Law & Order or any of the hundreds of cops shows he’d seen in his life. It was a grainy picture, dim and murky, hard to make out. It was apparently the interior of a store (Matson’s no doubt, though nothing looked familiar), a figure milling suspiciously about the aisles, a tall figure. He and the detectives stared hard, transfixed, trying to make out the identity of the mysterious man, Donnie holding his breath, looking for the telltale cheekbone, waiting for the detectives to recognize him, turn around, see him there. But it didn’t happen. They stared and stared, to no avail, staring even harder, Donnie staring right along with them, face glued to the screen, holding his breath, feeling a cold sweat. It was almost boring. They were starting to lose interest, drift away, then, just before that could happen, up popped the scary face, a horrible, dead, zombie face suddenly filling the screen. But in this case, unlike the other scary-face pop-ups he’d seen in real life, the dead, horrible face was entirely recognizable: Andrea.

Monica’s scream woke him. “Donnie!” Why was she on the floor?

“What? What happened?”

“You pushed me out of bed!”

“I did not!”

“You did! You screamed and pushed me!”

“I did?”

“Hard! You kicked me too!”

He scrambled down beside her, his heart scrambling even faster. He reached for her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t, I don’t... I was dreaming. Are you hurt?”

He held her for a long time, there on the floor, while she cried. They climbed back into bed. So small, she nestled into him until he seemed to surround her. She found his hand, kissed the back of it, nibbled on his knuckle. His stomach tumbled, a wave of nausea passing through him at the thought that he could hurt her. In any way. Ever. He held her that way for a long time, found himself cooing, there, there, comforting himself as much as her, there, there, until finally they drifted off again into a restless sleep.

Next morning the sky had cleared, the temperature had dropped, and the rain had frozen on the bare branches, sparkling like crystal all across the countryside on the trip back down the mountain. The view opened up across a field and valley, looking down toward the blue mountains near Albany. Monica was still sleepy. She held his hand and dozed. Donnie needed coffee. The Mr. Coffee in the camp was broken, and they didn’t have time to stop; she wanted to be home before Trevor woke up. He tried to soak up the glory of the morning, but the ticking of his heart so high in his chest, so close to his skin, refused to leave him alone.

Like returning to the scene of the crime, he held his breath walking into her house.

Nothing, it seemed, had changed. What had he expected? Commotion, excitement? Sirens? His dream was still with him. The green, overstuffed chair that tended to swallow Nellie whole when she watched Jeopardy! in the evening was sitting in a pool of morning sun. The aroma of coffee, the sound of a spoon clinking on a cup came from the kitchen, and Donnie sat in the big green chair, putting his head back — he had to slide well down in the chair to do so with his lanky frame, his legs protruding to the coffee table — and tried to relax, tried to let the sawdust flow out of the teddy bear. He closed his eyes and listened to Monica ask if Trevor was awake yet. Her grandmother said she thought she’d heard him stirring. Nellie’s real name was Juanita, and Donnie found it completely understandable that she chose to go by Nellie instead. As for the mother who’d named her baby girl Juanita in the first place, all he’d ever heard was that she was a little bit crazy: a clerk at the five-and-ten who kept a pet lizard and sang in the church choir until, she claimed, Jesus came to her in a dream and told her to stop it. Told her she couldn’t sing worth shit. The crazy gene seemed to have passed Nellie by, though the overpacked clutter of her home might have been a symptom of something. She doted on her great-grandson. She worked for Nationwide, and painted — Donnie opened his eyes to see five or six of her paintings hanging on the wall in an untidy group, bright greens and reds and yellows and blues, primitive flower shapes. He knew nothing about art, but he was pretty sure they were bad. Monica brought him coffee. Nellie went to get Trevor. When he spied Donnie, he came running through the clutter in his footed jammies, past his mother, jumping on Donnie’s lap, joy on his small, dirty face. How he loved his Uncle Donnie. His mother, he ignored. She might as well not have been there, and Donnie saw the hurt, resigned look on her face; she was used to it.

Nothing, it seemed, had changed. The sun slanting in warm on his cheek, he savored a sip of coffee. Trevor nestled into his lap, watching Sesame Street. Then Monica asked her grandmother if she knew whether or not the surveillance camera at Matson’s worked, Trevor kneed him in the balls, and Donnie snorted coffee through his nose.

Everything, it seemed, had changed. Rosemary and his mother were sitting at the table in front of the sliding-glass door when he got home, and they both looked up at him with big eyes. “Did you hear about Andrea down at Matson’s?” his sister said. They were eating waffles.

“What?” He hoped they couldn’t see his heart ticking at his throat.

Found dead. They told him what they’d heard so far, which wasn’t much. Just that she was found on the floor by Fred Johnston, who noticed the lights still on and the door open at two in the morning. The state police were still there, the sheriff too, the yellow tape was still up — Rosemary had driven down to see — they were still investigating. The urge to ask them whether or not the surveillance camera still worked had hooked Donnie by the mouth and was reeling him in, but he resisted, wriggling and splashing and fighting for all he was worth. He was determined not to make the same mistake Monica had made, though when they’d talked in whispers walking out to the car, Monica saw nothing wrong with her question, futile though it had been. Nellie hadn’t even known there was a camera in the store. And no — she didn’t think it should have made Nellie suspicious, not at all.

“What happened? Do they know? Was it an accident, or what?”

“I don’t know why they’d be there all night if it was an accident,” Rosemary said.

“Well, they have to be thorough,” said their mother.

“Yes, Mother,” Rosemary said. Through the sliding-glass door, Donnie could see a pair of neighbors talking between their mobile homes, then, down the other way, three more on a stoop engaged in eager chatter. Rosemary and Mother both took large bites of waffles, as if they were in a hurry to get the chore out of the way. They offered none to Donnie.

“Well, if it was a robbery or something, they must have it on the surveillance camera.” Damn! Reeled in!

“Shit, that camera—” Rosemary said.

“Rosemary!” said Mother.

“Pardon me, Mother,” she said. “That camera hasn’t worked in years, if it ever did. It was only there for show. Andrea used to dance in front of it, the old soft-shoe — auditioning for Ed Sullivan, she said. She thought it was a riot.”

Donnie grasped the back of a chair to steady himself. “Oh. Well, that’s too bad. I guess they’ll never know then.”

“Oh, they’ll know,” his mother said. “They always get their man. Crime doesn’t pay.”

“Mother,” Rosemary said, stabbing another waffle chunk. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. They get away with it all the time.”

“Who? When?” said Mother, indignantly. Indignancy was part and parcel of her personality, a proud part and parcel. “Name one time.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Mother,” said Rosemary, which was what she always said as a prelude to arguing with her mother. Donnie made his way to the sofa and sat, leaving them to argue the efficiency of law enforcement, the history of crime and punishment. He closed his eyes again. He was tired, there’d been little sleep, his mind was buzzing, his skin tingling, buoyed up to the clouds and beyond by relief. Down below, he was a tiny speck, him, the trailer park, the whole village, Matson’s. And Andrea lying there dead. “What’s the matter with you?” It was Rosemary, standing before him.

“Me? Nothing. Why?”

“You got white as a ghost.”

“I did not.”

“The hell you didn’t.” It wasn’t concern. It was an accusation.

“Fuck off.”

“Donnie!” His mother from the kitchen.

“Sorry, Mom.”

“You kids. I swear.”

“Actually, Mom, we swear — you don’t,” Rosemary said.

He watched her walk away in her bib overalls — she worked at Curtis Lumber, no Saturdays off for her — wide hips, narrow shoulders, black, bouncy ponytails on either side of her head. Round-bottom Rosemary, was how he’d come to think of his older sister. He was only now coming to the realization she was no longer his boss. As a kid, he’d always been confounded at how she always seemed to know the question he was going to ask before he asked it, but now the question she thought she knew was not the one he was going to ask.

He sprawled back on the sofa, closed his eyes again, immediately drifted off, then woke up in a matter of seconds... or minutes? It was oddly quiet. He couldn’t feel his body. Something like last night, driving up the mountain, when the deer dashing across the road hadn’t seemed the least bit real. Only now, with his eyes closed, it was even more intense. It was as though he was a mind only, thoughts only, and he thought about Andrea. Pondered this thing called being dead. Was there such a thing as a soul? Was it like this, nothing but thoughts, no sensation, no feeling, no body? A woman once told him he had an old soul. Thanksgiving at Grandma Shannon’s, years ago, he was only a kid. A woman with a round face, curly red hair, and big eyes, some cousin’s wife or sister-in-law or something. She said, let me see your hand — he’d been sitting alone in a corner reading a comic book — and traced the lines on his palm with a long painted fingernail, and told him he had a very old soul. Rosemary, standing nearby with a celery stick, began to laugh. Yeah, she said, an old, ugly soul.

That night in the camp at Lake Desolation, nestled in bed, a cold draft whistling through the cracks and crevices, Monica confessed. She’d confessed before, many times to many sins, once to taking the last cupcake — red satin, Donnie’s favorite — once to secretly sneaking a cherry Coke at work without paying for it, once to feigning nausea in order to get Nellie to clean up Trevor’s vomit. This time she confessed to killing Andrea.

“What?”

“I pushed her. She said it wasn’t for me, the beer, she said I didn’t drink beer.”

“You pushed her?”

“She said I was buying it for you. She tried to grab it out of my hands.”

“And you pushed her?”

“Yes. I pushed her.” She was impatient with him. “She hit her head.”

Donnie said nothing. When his hug relaxed, hers snuggled in tighter.

“I was standing up for myself,” she said.

“Good girl,” he cooed, but his heart wasn’t in it, his mind in a slow, numb whirl.

“Then I forgot your beer anyhow. Duh.”

He squeezed her. So warm. It was dark and he could see only a patch on the wall where the night through the window was lighter than the room, and he could feel her hair on his chin where it nestled. “It was still an accident, kind of. You didn’t mean to hurt her.”

Her hair pulled away from his chin. “I didn’t?”

He assured her she didn’t.

She snuggled in again. “Poor Andrea,” she said. She seemed to relax, unburdened, cuddling close, and he was surprised when he opened his eyes to see a bright morning beaming in through the window. Surprised at how quickly he’d fallen asleep after her confession, how deeply he’d slept, how long. Beside him, she slumbered on, not a bone in her body, a damp spot of drool by her mouth. It was getting late. He tickled her cheek and she came awake, slowly. Her eyes, big even without her glasses, took some time to focus him into her world. When he asked her, “How did you sleep, Killer?” the focus faltered again.

“That’s not very funny, you know,” she said.

He kissed her forehead, climbing out of bed around her. He said, “Someday we’ll look back on this and laugh” — one of his mother’s favorite expressions. He wasn’t sure he believed it.

“Do you really think so?”

“Trust me,” he said. “I have a very old soul.”

From the kitchen, trying to coax the Mr. Coffee into submission, he heard her singing under her breath as she dressed: Old King Cole was a very old soul, and a very old soul was he...

Monica wanted to go to the funeral. Donnie didn’t think it was a good idea. He said they didn’t really know Andrea all that well — why would they go? It might look suspicious. He told her cops might be there, looking for something just like that, someone returning to the scene of the crime, as it were, someone who didn’t really know her, but who showed up anyhow, looking guilty — at least that’s just the sort of thing they did on Law & Order or any one of the hundreds of cop shows he’d seen. But Monica insisted. She said she’d go alone if he didn’t go with her. She stood up for herself.

The cars overflowed Ryan’s small lot by the road, many parked across the street in the Galway Market lot, more cars than he’d ever seen for a funeral. December twilight, the air turning cold. Candle lights in the windows of Ryan’s, people going in and out, Donnie glad for the twilight that hid, he hoped, the worry on his face. And on Monica’s, the frightened frown beneath the messy bangs. Her hand holding his was sweaty. Inside, she started to sign the book, but he warned her off with a frown and a shake of his head; catching his meaning, she took a sharp breath, put down the pen. The place was crowded, mourners talking in solemn groups of threes and fours, a quiet hymn in the air. Near the casket in the front of the room stood the family, two middle-aged ladies, daughters maybe, younger kids, grandchildren, and there was one older man, a son, perhaps. Donnie felt conspicuous, taller than just about everyone else there, less dressed up, more guilty. Monica whispered, “I don’t see anybody who looks like a cop.”

Donnie whispered, “Let’s hurry up and get the hell out of here.”

Making their way toward the front of the room, toward the casket, through the milling mourners, including Mr. Matson, he overheard bits of conversations: Did they arrest anybody yet? They got any leads? Probably somebody passing by on the highway, probably in North Dakota by now. I’m thinking it was somebody from around here, somebody who knew she’d be there alone. Somebody who knew the camera didn’t work. Did they ever find a weapon?

Do they know how much money was stolen?

Not until this moment did it hit him: If he hadn’t taken the money, it might have all blown over. They probably would have thought it was an accident.

Andrea came into view. She looked to be made out of plastic.

“What are we doing?” he urged from the side of his mouth. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We have to pay our condolences,” she said, from the side of her mouth as well. She headed for the family. Donnie followed. She mumbled something else. He wasn’t sure what, but it might have been, I should tell them, and this was when he panicked a little, when he grabbed her shoulder and stopped her, when people began glancing their way.

He whispered, “What did you say?” surprised at how damp her eyes were.

“I said we should tell them how sorry we are.”

“For what?”

“That she’s dead. Duh.”

“Oh. Jesus. You’re making me nervous.”

He followed her up to the family. They shook hands and hugged in turn, mumbling condolences and gratitudes, and after the last hug, confronted with Andrea in her coffin, puffed up and plastic and peaceful, a far cry from the last time they’d seen her, Monica broke down. She began to cry, to sob, and the younger of the two ladies, a daughter, hugged her again. People stared, and the man Donnie thought to be a son, a man too cleanshaven and smelling of too much cologne, said to him, “Tell me, how did you know Mrs. Mills?”

Not Mother. Not even Andrea. Mrs. Mills.

When the weather turned cold he was always more careful in the trees, when his hands were numb in his gloves, his feet in his boots as well. Nevertheless, high in a half-rotted oak overlooking a half-frozen pond and a barren pasture in the town of Providence, he slipped. His harness started slipping too on the barkless shaft, before it caught and he slammed against the trunk and hung there for a moment, a long, long moment during which Andrea’s blank, dead stare burned into his brain and lingered.

And along with that mortal image, the words so gruff and friendly: Tell me, how did you know Mrs. Mills?

Jesse, manning the ropes from below, called up to him — was he all right? Donnie dug his spikes in. Something in him had changed. He was quietly terrified. It wasn’t the cop — for that’s what he took the man to be, though no one had said it for sure — he thought he’d handled him well enough, telling him he knew Andrea only from Matson’s, but he knew her well, he’d been in often, she was always so friendly, he would really miss her. He’d never forget her dancing in front of the camera, auditioning for Ed Sullivan — he’d been proud of that detail, how quickly he recalled Rosemary’s telling him that, how smoothly he delivered it to the cop, how convincingly. Until Monica, her face knotted in a familiar puzzle, had asked him: But... wouldn’t that mean you knew the camera didn’t work?

Of course it would.

It began to snow, flurries tickling his cheeks in the treetop. A knot tightened in his chest, heaviness creeping down his arms. The chain-saw trembled in his grip.

When they knocked off, it was still early. The flurries were thicker, fussier. He called Monica. “Let’s go do something fun,” he said. “I got a hundred and forty-seven dollars burning a hole in my pocket.”

“I have to go in to work, Donnie. I’m closing.”

“Call in sick.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can. They do it all the time to you.”

He could picture her trying to frown her way through it. “Mr. Baxter will have a fit.”

“Want me to call him for you? I’ll be happy to.”

She thought it over. “Maybe I ought to go in and knock him over the head with a bucket of kitty litter.”

He smiled. “That’s the spirit.”

“And you can rob the place.”

“Bonnie and Clyde,” he said.

“Who?”

For a moment, everything was warm and good. “I’ll tell you later, Sweetie.”

They went to the Wilton Mall. A light snow was falling. The Christmas lights adorning every corner seemed more likely now than they had in the warm early fall when they’d first been put up, but they did little to lift their spirits. During the previews before the movie, he cleaned her glasses for her, and she took his hand, kissed the back of it, nibbled on his knuckle. The movie was Tropic Thunder, and he almost laughed a few times, felt as though he should, almost rose to the occasion. Any other time, he figured he’d have been rolling in the aisle. Monica didn’t laugh much either, though now and then she seemed to be on the verge and looked at him, then held back when she saw he wasn’t. As if she needed his permission. His arm around her, she nestled as close as she could, and when his arm started to fall asleep he put it on her lap, squeezed her knee, and she would hold his hand with both of hers, kissing and nibbling frequently, almost absent-mindedly, leaning on his shoulder until he put his arm around her again. It never ceased to amaze him, how well they fit together, like two pieces of a puzzle, two spoons, just the right size — and not only the sex, all the time, every time, which was often, every chance they got. Cuddling was their favorite pastime. It might have been because she was new to the game, lacking experience, her mother being a meth-head, her father a jailbird, and maybe the same was true for Donnie too; he couldn’t remember ever being held when he was little. Mostly he remembered Rosemary teasing and taunting. He remembered, one of his first memories, peeking out from behind Rosemary’s legs, he must have been hiding behind her, peering out trying to catch a glimpse of the man their mother was confronting down across the fairgrounds, the mean gestures they made at one another near the entrance to the bam, the man he thinks was his father, his only glimpse of him.

After the movie he thought they should splurge on a fancy dinner. Ruby Tuesday. Sky’s the limit, he told her, whatever your heart desires. He ordered the most expensive steak on the menu, a rib-eye, well done, he told the waitress, and she frowned writing it down as if her pen had run out of ink. When Monica ordered a bacon cheeseburger, it was his turn to frown. He ordered appetizers too, and a pitcher of Pepsi. He’d have preferred a mug of beer, but he wasn’t about to give the bitchy waitress a chance to ask to see his ID. When she left, Monica said, “Boy, she sure is grumpy.”

“Well, she’s not getting a tip,” he said. He didn’t tell her the waitress was probably grumpy because she didn’t expect a tip in the first place, because they looked too young and too cheap, not the kind who tipped well. If at all. Rosemary, who used to wait tables in Ballston Spa, had told him: Anytime she saw someone like him heading for her station, she’d try to switch with another server. She said they did that all the time.

In the middle of the food court was a carousel that used to be in the park, and after dinner, wandering through the nearly empty mall, he thought taking it for a spin might be fun, just the thing to lend a more festive air to their evening. She was reluctant. “I don’t like that thing,” she said. “I lost Trevor on it once.”

He remembered. Trevor had sat on the bench, and she’d never thought to look there, looking on every animal, every horse and monkey and elephant and giraffe instead, in a panic. “C’mon,” Donnie said. “The best thing to do is get right back up on that horse.” He smiled at his joke, even though she didn’t. She looked grim waiting at the little gate for the ride to stop. There was only one kid on it, and he and Monica were the only ones waiting, but the operator, a bony, older man, unshaven, with dark, frosted whiskers, was bound to give the kid his full allotment of time.

The bony old man wore a railroad engineer’s cap. They watched the creaky contraption go round and round, listened to the squeaky tune. “Did you ever have a dog?” the man said.

Donnie looked around to make sure he was talking to them. “Naw,” he said. “We live in a trailer park.” Muddy, their cat, he didn’t bother mentioning.

“Good for you,” the man said. “Never get one. They’ll just break your heart.”

“How?” Monica said. A frown of deep concern.

“Just take my word for it,” he said with an all-knowing nod, stopping the carousel.

The kid got off, Donnie and Monica got on. Round and round they rode, up and down, circling and circling, for what seemed a very long time, longer than it should have been. The operator must have liked them. Or maybe he didn’t — maybe it was the opposite. Donnie couldn’t tell which. No one else was waiting for a ride. Monica tried without much success to reach across the void and hold his hand, but all in all, the ride was without much joy. Across the food court, in front of the Taco Bell, a little boy pointed at them in wonder, though whatever he exclaimed to his mother never made it through to their ears.

Outside, the snow fell steadily, drifting through the glow of the parking-lot lights, making ghosts of the few cars still parked here and there. Donnie wasn’t worried. His tires were good, his driving was excellent. He headed for the camp at Lake Desolation. On the way, Nellie called Monica. Where was she? She’d tried to reach her at Stewart’s but they said she’d called in sick. Trevor had fallen and cut his lip. He needed his mother. While Monica was talking to her grandmother, Rosemary texted Donnie. State police had been there. They wanted to talk to him. Someone driving by had seen his old blue Toyota at Matson’s around the time Andrea had been killed. Rosemary told the cops she didn’t know where he was. She didn’t tell them about the camp at Lake Desolation. Where the hell was he? What the hell had he done?

Where could they go? Long into the night they talked, huddled close in the bed at the camp, dread in the air as thick as the dark. All the talk, all the declarations, fears, and doubts were spun out. She was an unfit mother. That much was clear. Trevor would be better off without her. But where could they go? What could they do? Prison was not an option, even if only for a year or two — a single day without each other was not an option. His fortune consisted of less than a hundred dollars now, her bank account under three hundred. Not enough to start a new life. He didn’t want to go up in the trees anymore. After last time, he’d lost his enthusiasm for heights — this was how he put it; actually, he was afraid. He didn’t want her to find out that he was not the bravest man in the world after all. Florida was a fine and crowded place, but his old blue Toyota would never make it so far. Where could they go? What could they do? By the time they awoke in the camp after pitifully fitful sleep to a brilliant sun and strong breezes sweeping the fresh snow up in swirls and eddies, all the talking was over. When it was all said and done, whose idea was it?

Roger had a snowmobile. Donnie gassed it up. It started fine. He kept it in good shape, one of his chores in return for camp privileges. Monica climbed on behind him, her arms around his waist.

“What do you think?” he said.

“Oh, I don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to.”

He maneuvered the thing up the little dirt road, then down the trail through the pines, a filter of fresh snow falling from the limbs, swirling in the morning light. He stopped at the edge of the lake, Lake Desolation. In the middle was a little island with three tall trees, and a large boulder jutting out from the shore into the half-frozen waters. He took her glasses and cleaned them. She took his hand, kissed the back of it, nibbled the knuckle. He put her glasses in his shirt pocket, and she pressed her cheek into his back, holding him as close as she could. Eyeing the boulder, he gunned the machine, once, twice. Let’s see what this baby’ll really do, he might have said.

© 2018 by Dennis McFadden