Laura McHugh - The Weight of Blood

Uncle Crete and I ate lunch together on the patio, and then he stepped out for a while, leaving me at the register. I had trouble keeping my eyes open during the afternoon lull, and I was reminded of all the times I’d napped behind the counter when I was little and Crete was babysitting me. I used to make him to sing “Old Dan Tucker” over and over, and he sang it at the top of his lungs every time and danced a little jig to make me laugh.

Arleigh Snell pulled me out of my reverie when she came in for a can of Skoal, the last thing she needed after losing most of her lower lip to cancer. She now had a permanent grimace and kept her chew in her upper lip, which was neither easy nor attractive. We were related by a marriage of cousins, and every time she saw me, she had to work her way through the family tree trying to figure it out.

I rushed Arleigh through the tangled mess of Juniors and Buddys who filled every branch of the family and rang up the tobacco. I had just shut the register when Daniel appeared, holding the door for Arleigh. He wore a fresh white T-shirt and faded jeans, and my pulse instinctively ratcheted up a few notches as he approached the counter.

“Hey,” I said, trying to sound normal. “If you’re looking for my uncle, he’s not here.”

“Nope,” he said. “Just need to pay for my gas.”

“Oh.” I rang him up and waited for him to leave, but his hands lingered on the counter.

“You seemed a bit off after lunch yesterday,” he said. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” I forced a smile.

“Not trying to pry,” he said, leaning closer. His fresh-laundry scent was tempered with sweat. “It’s just… you had this look on your face.”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t feeling very well, I guess.”

“Doing better today?”

I nodded. “I better get back to work.”

He stared at me, hesitating. I wanted him to stare hard enough to see what was wrong without me having to say it. “Maybe we can talk more later,” he said, gesturing to the empty store. “When you’re not so busy.”

“Sure,” I said. Maybe later . It was one of those vague commitments you didn’t follow up on. The door closed behind him with a jingle of the bell, and I was alone again. I tidied up the counter and neatly stacked the day’s rental receipts. There was nothing else to do, so I thought I’d save Uncle Crete some time and file the paperwork for him. I used to help with the filing all the time when I was little, in exchange for an ice cream bar.

I walked into his office and tugged on one of the file drawers, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried the others; they were all locked. I stepped around his desk and rolled the chair out of the way, figuring I’d find the key in a drawer, but the desk was locked up, too. Apparently, filing would not be one of my duties. I dropped the papers in his in-box. Then, as I shoved the chair back into position, it caught on the edge of the rug, wrinkling it up under the desk. I knelt to straighten the rug and saw the outline of a safe built in to the floor. It wasn’t so unusual that he had a safe—most stores probably did—but I hadn’t known about it. For some reason, seeing it hidden there for the first time gave me the feeling of pins and needles, as though my whole body had been asleep and was just now waking up.

As I thought more about it, I knew I had to go back to the trailer. Maybe I’d missed something that would tell me for sure whether Cheri had been there. But I didn’t want to go alone. When I finally told Bess about everything I had seen in the trailer—the magazines, the stained floor, the necklace—she agreed to drive out with me and take a look. She told her mom she was spending the night with me, and Gabby let her take the car. I had to lie to Gabby, promising we’d be home before dark and lock the doors, which was impossible because our doors didn’t have working locks. I’d never worried about unlocked doors, and neither had Gabby before Cheri’s body was found. My dad believed shotguns worked better than deadbolts, so he kept our guns loaded on a rack in the hallway. I’d heard him and Birdie talking on the porch one evening, and Birdie, too, scoffed at locking doors. She gave the same warning she always gave when I was little, after reading “The Three Little Pigs”: If the wolf wants in, he’ll find a way.

“I feel like we should be wearing all black,” Bess said as we headed down Toad Holler Road with the headlights off. It was two in the morning, and we were fueled by nerves and Mountain Dew.

“It wouldn’t matter,” I said. “If anyone’s out there, they’ll see the car. But probably the only person out there’d be Uncle Crete.”

“We should at least think of something to say if we get caught.”

“We’ll say we were going to meet up with some boys. Crete won’t like it, but he’ll probably believe it.”

“Won’t he tell your dad?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Remember in sixth grade, when you talked me into skipping school to watch that stupid Days of Our Lives wedding episode with you, and then I was too chicken to forge a note?” I’d called my uncle, bawling, scared my dad would find out. Crete was way more open-minded than my dad when it came to following rules, and it didn’t hurt that he hated to see me cry. He had come right over and written the note, laughing as he expertly copied my dad’s signature. Dry those tears, sweetheart, he’d said, squeezing my hand. What Carl don’t know won’t hurt him.

“Back to something more interesting,” Bess said, digging around in the console for a lighter. “Are you coming down to the river on Friday?” She’d been bugging me all night about a party I knew my dad wouldn’t want me to go to. A bunch of guys we barely knew from school would be there, some of them now graduated or dropped out.

“If I can,” I said.

“Tell your dad you’re staying the night with me.”

“And your mom’s letting you go?”

“Texas blackout bingo down in Mountain Home. She’ll be out late.”

“Fine,” I said. I didn’t have anything better to do. It might at least take my mind off Cheri.

“You’ll have fun, I swear,” Bess said. “So where do you think we should ditch the car?” We were on the dirt road approaching the turnoff to the homestead.

“Might as well drive right on up to the trailer,” I said. “It’s hidden from the road.”

The moon cast the ruins in silhouette, featureless shadows hunched on the sloping hill. We drove around the dark outline of the barn and parked. This was where the trailer had been. But it was gone. In its place was a rectangle of bare earth edged with weeds, like the imprint of a grave. My heart seized and I scrambled out of the car, Bess behind me. When I got closer, I could see tracks where the trailer had been hauled out. Uncle Crete hadn’t wasted any time.

“Well, where is it?” Bess asked, waving her flashlight in my face. “Let’s hurry it up. This place is creepy.”

“We’re too late,” I said, gesturing to the void. “It’s gone.” I took the flashlight and kicked through the weeds along the perimeter, looking for anything that might’ve been left behind. Barred owls called to each other in the trees, a conversation of unanswered questions. Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you-all?

“Sorry, Luce,” Bess said, catching up to me. “We better get out of here.”

She took my hand and pulled me back to the car, away from the trailer’s footprint. I wondered how long it would take before saplings and briars and weeds filled it in. Another piece of Cheri swallowed up and gone. Disappointment rooted in my stomach.

Bess peeled out and didn’t slow down until we were back on my road, creeping past Birdie’s house before turning on the headlights and lighting a cigarette. “Hey,” she said, glancing over at me. “You should look happier that nobody caught us. And you still have the necklace, right? That’s something.”