Amanda Stevens - The Dollmaker

“And I’m the one who didn’t come home when he was supposed to. I’m the one who wasn’t there to protect her. You might as well say it, Claire, because it’s right there in your eyes. It has been from day one. And it’s not anything I haven’t told myself at least a million times since it happened.”

“You want me to say it, then here it is. You should have come home that day. You should have been there to protect our little girl, but instead you were with her. ”

The bitterness in Claire’s voice was like a slap in the face. Dave took a step back. “I always figured you knew. Who told you?”

“ She did.”

Dave closed his eyes briefly.

“That’s right,” Claire said. “That’s the kind of woman you took up with. You chose her over your own wife and child. And it wasn’t enough that my daughter was missing and I had to go through the worst kind of agony a mother could ever face. She had to call me up and tell me where you were at the exact moment Ruby was taken.”

“God, Claire…” Dave couldn’t bear to look at her. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, so am I.”

“Not that this justifies what I did, but it didn’t mean anything—”

“Why do men always say that?” she asked in disgust. “It doesn’t make it better. It makes it so much worse, knowing that you were willing to throw away what we had over something that didn’t even mean anything to you. What kind of person does that?”

Dave didn’t answer, because he didn’t know what to say. Nothing was ever going to erase what he’d done. And nothing was ever going to change how Claire felt about him.

“You chose her over Ruby and me that day,” Claire said quietly.

“It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a conscious choice—”

“Did she hold a gun to your head?”

“Claire—”

“Then you made a choice. It’s as simple as that.”

“I made another choice that day, too. I left her to come back home to you.”

“But it was too late, wasn’t it? Ruby was already gone.”

He sat down heavily in the rocking chair and stared straight ahead. “I don’t know what to say to you. I could tell you that I’ve paid dearly for my mistakes, but somehow I don’t think that would make much difference.”

She shook her head sadly. “No, it wouldn’t. There’s nothing that will ever make things right. But even after everything I’ve said to you, I know deep down that Ruby’s kidnapping wasn’t your fault. No more than it was mine. Maybe you were right,” she said. “Maybe it is a mistake to start digging up the past. Because it seems like whatever you and I buried seven years ago still has the power to destroy us.”

The cooling air smelled like flowers and wet dirt as Dave stood at the screen door and watched Claire’s car head down the gravel road toward the highway.

Her taillights flashed briefly as she neared a bend in the road, and then the sound of the engine faded in the twilight.

He told himself he should go after her, that he couldn’t leave things this way between them. He even went out to his truck, got in, turned on the ignition and backed out of the driveway. But instead of trying to catch Claire before she reached the highway, he turned in the opposite direction, and a few minutes later pulled into the parking lot of a dilapidated icehouse that sat on the edge of the bayou.

The place was dark and seedy and nearly empty. A country and western song played on the jukebox as a few customers sat at the tables, smoking and drinking, their faces reflecting a strange, bluish glow from the neon light that flashed outside the window.

Dave walked over to the bar and sat down.

“What’ll you have?”

“Give me a draft and a couple of bourbon shots. And here.” Dave fished in his pocket for his keys. “Take these and don’t give them back to me no matter what I say.”

The bartender tossed them into an old shoe box he kept underneath the bar. “Is there somebody you want me to call so you don’t have to walk home?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll see that he gets home okay.”

Dave turned at the sound of the husky voice at his ear. Angelette sat down next to him, her dark eyes smiling, knowing. She wore a low-cut red dress that showed the tops of her breasts when she leaned over. Her lips curved when she saw Dave stare, but then he deliberately glanced away.

She tossed her dark hair over one shoulder as she turned to the bartender. “I’ll have what he’s having. And looks like you better keep ’em coming. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.”

When the drinks were in front of them, Dave drained one shot of whiskey, then took a long drink of his beer. Funny how natural it felt sitting in a smoky dive with the flicker of neon light reflecting in Angelette’s dark eyes. Dave could smell her perfume, a thick, musky scent that seemed to emanate from her hair and from her smooth, suntanned skin.

“You’re awfully quiet tonight, Dave. What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?”

He stared straight ahead, cradling his beer in both hands. “What are you doing here?”

“I came by your place earlier. I saw a car in the drive and figured you had company. So I came over here to kill a little time.”

Dave finished the second shot, and closed his eyes as the fire took hold in his belly. His fingertips and scalp tingled, and he could feel the warmth of the whiskey on his face. And already he wanted another drink.

Angelette was way ahead of him. She ordered another round, then grabbed his arm, tried to pull him up off the stool. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s take this party outside.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” But he grabbed his beer and reluctantly followed her out the door.

The music drifted outside and Angelette hummed to herself as she pulled out a chair and sat down. “At least we can hear ourselves think out here.”

A waitress brought out the fresh round, and Dave picked up a shot, drained it and picked up the next one.

Angelette stared at him through the deepening twilight. “That’s some hard-core drinking, baby doll. What brought it on?”

Dave shrugged and downed the fourth shot. The moon was just starting to rise over the bayou and he could hear the cicadas and the bullfrogs over the music. But it was all becoming a bit hazy. Angelette’s perfume mingled with the jasmine that grew around the deck, and the sounds of the swamp became indistinguishable from the murmur of voices inside the bar. It was all just noise inside Dave’s head.

A car pulled into the parking lot and a high beam caught him square in the face. He squinted and put up a hand to shield his eyes until the lights went out. A door slammed and a woman’s soft laughter drifted through the darkness.

By the time he had a few more shots, Dave started to relax. He was on familiar turf now. He’d spent more nights like this than he could remember, in icehouses and bars all up and down Highway 90. The buzz inside his head was like the comfortable chatter of an old friend.

“Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“That was Claire’s car I saw at your house, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not going to talk about Claire with you.”

He saw her smile tighten in the half-light. “All right.”

He gazed off at the water. “Why’d you do it, Angie?”

“Do what, Dave?”

“Why did you tell her about us?”

She picked up her beer and shrugged. “Because they say the wife’s always the last to find out. I thought she had a right to know.”

“Bullshit.”

Angelette drew back from the table, anger flashing in her eyes. “You walked out on me. You left me in that dump like some cheap whore that you’d bought and paid for and didn’t give a damn about. What did you think, Dave? That I was one of those women who liked being treated like shit?”