Laura McHugh - The Weight of Blood

“It doesn’t prove anything,” I mumbled.

“Well, what exactly did you think we’d find? Some body part the killer left behind?”

“You think she was killed there?” I said.

Bess sucked so hard on her cigarette that I could hear it crackling in the dark. “I dunno, maybe. She had to get chopped up somewhere.” She shrugged and dropped her cigarette butt into an empty Mountain Dew can.

She was right. Cheri wasn’t killed where her body was found, and it had to have happened somewhere. I just didn’t want to think it had happened on my uncle’s land.

We slept in my bed with the fan blowing on us, Bess murmuring incomprehensible words whenever she changed position. I didn’t sleep well. My brain was churning. I was thinking about the stains on the floor of the empty bedroom, trying to remember exactly what they’d looked like. I wondered if Daniel had been there when the trailer was hauled away. Maybe he knew where it went.

I was making breakfast when Bess came downstairs the next morning. “Can I just move in with you?” she asked, pulling a pitcher of apple juice out of the fridge. “I love waking up and not smelling cat piss.”

“I wish,” I said, grinning. “But I’m pretty sure our parents wouldn’t go for it.” I handed her a plate of pancakes.

“What the hell?” Bess laughed. I’d made the pancakes into shapes, like Birdie used to do when she watched me on the weekends. Birdie never made anything cutesy like a rabbit or a snowman; her pancake shapes were practical at best. A cross. A shovel.

“They’re baby possums,” I said, pointing with the spatula.

“Are those chocolate-chip eyes? That’s just creepy.” Bess flooded her plate with syrup. “So when should I pick you up Friday night?”

I sat down at the table to eat with her. “I dunno. I’ll call you after my dad gets back.” I’d forgotten about the party. I knew Dad would let me spend the night with Bess—unaware of our plan to sneak down to the river—but it was hardly worth the risk of getting caught, since I doubted that there would be anyone at the party I cared to see besides Bess.

Carl started coming to the restaurant earlier in the evening and sticking around until closing. Sometimes Crete showed up to eat with him, but usually he was alone, and every time I came by to refill his tea, he’d try to start a conversation. He gave up pretty quickly on asking personal questions when I repeated the same vague answers, and instead he started telling me about everybody who came in. Darrell, the crippled guy with the comb-over, supposedly was left as a baby on the steps of the old rooming house and taken in by the owner, but everyone knew he was really the owner’s illegitimate son. Jacob Deary, the redhead with the pockmarked skin, had been caught screwing his neighbor’s horse. Apparently, no one in Henbane could keep a secret. Their dirty laundry flapped around out in the open for all to see.

It was nice to have one familiar face at the counter every night, especially since the rest of the customers continued to whisper and stare. One guy started muttering prayers whenever I came near him. There were a couple of greasy-haired ladies who didn’t want me touching their trays, and Gabby had to serve them. She apologized like crazy, but there was nothing she could do about it. I considered spitting in their burgers, but every time I had a thought like that, I reminded myself that I couldn’t afford to get fired. I had nowhere else to go.

Crete arranged for Carl to drive me home when he couldn’t do it himself. “Seems like you’re working a lot of hours,” Carl said one evening as we pulled up to the garage. “Days at the farm, nights at Dane’s? You getting along all right?”

“It’ll even out,” I said. Crete had promised the winter was slow as molasses and I’d have more time off, but I didn’t really mind working. I had nothing else to do, and it kept me too busy to think about other things. I slept so hard I didn’t remember my dreams, and I liked it that way.

“I’ve noticed some folks at the restaurant not treating you right,” he said.

“They’re not quite as friendly as I expected small-town people to be.”

“It just takes folks around here a while to warm up to strangers,” he said. “Don’t let it get to you.”

“It didn’t take you long,” I said.

He glanced at me sideways and looked away. “You never felt like a stranger to me.”

Ransome treated me well enough, though she didn’t seem to have any interest in getting to know me better. She never asked any questions about my past, and that was fine by me. Crete came out to see us in the field some mornings before work, and Ransome always had a worried look when he showed up. I got the feeling he wasn’t normally so hands-on at the farm, at least not before I started working there. He took pains to make sure I was getting settled in. He stocked my fridge one night while I was at Dane’s, and set up a little oscillating fan. He hadn’t come through with the air conditioner he’d promised, though, and it was getting hotter by the day. Nights weren’t much better; the air was so humid, it felt stifling even when the temperature dropped.

One night after work, when I’d been in Henbane about a month, I got in Crete’s truck, turned the air on high, and stuck my face right in the vent. Crete laughed at me. “Still ain’t used to the weather?”

“Tell me you’re not hot, too,” I said. “It’s like walking around inside a sponge.”

He rubbed his hand over his stubble. I liked how he always looked like he needed a shave but never actually had a beard. “Well,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “There’s one way to fix that. Wanna go for a swim?”

“In the river?” I asked. I’d been eyeing it every day when I left Dane’s, though I hadn’t taken a dip. The rivers I’d swum in back in Iowa were brown and murky, but the North Fork was perfectly clear, and you could see all the way to the bottom. “I’d love to. But I don’t have a suit.”

“Hell,” he said, grinning, “you don’t need one. It’s hot enough to jump in in our clothes.”

“Let’s do it,” I said. It would be the first truly impulsive thing I’d done since I got to Henbane, and I considered that pretty good.

He drove us out to a quiet spot on the river not far from his house and opened up a cooler on the tailgate. He cracked open a can of Budweiser and dug a second one out of the ice. “I know you’re not twenty-one,” he said, weighing the can in his hand. “But you’re old enough to vote, so I figure you can handle a beer.”

He opened it for me, and I licked the foam that bubbled out. We sat together on the tailgate, sipping our drinks. The river was calm and flat on our side and made a shushing noise on the far side where it slid over the rocks. Trees crowded the opposite bank, thick with fireflies and the unceasing insect songs, which I was starting to get used to. Crete set down his beer and pulled his shirt off over his head, and I couldn’t help admiring his chest, the bands of muscle tapering to his waist. He caught me looking at him and gave me a crooked smile. “Okay with you if I get down to my skivvies?”

I blushed in the darkness and nodded, remembering how I’d felt that first day when he called me beautiful. He hadn’t said anything like that since, though I did notice him watching me at times. He was charming and friendly, but for the most part, he kept things businesslike. He was my boss, after all. He stripped to his boxers and stepped to the water’s edge. “You coming?” he asked.

I hopped down from the tailgate and unzipped my shorts, stepping out of them as they fell. I left my T-shirt on and tentatively stuck one foot in the water. “Yikes!” I said. “That’s cold.”