Nancy Pickard - The Scent of Rain and Lightning

She had literally never noticed such beauty in the world before.

If her arms could have moved, she would have reached up to touch the amber moon and the winking stars that appeared from under the clouds as they scudded west to east. A memory from high school surprised her, because she couldn’t remember ever having paid much attention: From Missouri to the Colorado border, Kansas climbs nearly half a mile in altitude. Which teacher had said that? She couldn’t recall, and wouldn’t previously have cared, except that now the memory felt like someone kind had come to keep her company in her loneliness.

Thank you, she sent to the unremembered teacher.

Thank you, she repeated, to taste its novelty in her mouth.

But then that memory of the slant of Kansas gave her a sudden dizzying feeling of lying on a bed with her head lower than her feet.

Oh, God!

The world tilted back into flatness again, and she stopped worrying about dying by choking on her own seasick vomit.

She stared up, and felt entranced by the sky again, and soothed by the cool wind between storms. She felt embraced by the vast landscape that had previously felt so barren and dead to her. It wasn’t lifeless at all! The eighty-foot rock formations that rose beside, and above, and all around her looked like living creatures now, protectively watching over her with their sharp, cold faces.

Why did you let me fall? she asked them, sadly, but without blame.

Everybody in her county was proud of them, these Testament Rocks.

Geologists and archaeologists traveled from all over the world to study the soil or dig for fossils here, and yet she had declared these formations-these amazing, huge, natural sculptures-stupid and boring. There was a sphinx! There was a castle! Over there were towers and pyramids and eagles made of rock! At other moments those same rock formations stood out starkly on the plain like giants who had paused in a long walk; she now thought they looked wise and fascinating, like living beings who knew the secrets of the ages.

And yet the Rocks had let her feet skid, let her hands grasp air, let her plunge screaming through darkness and rain, falling through sickening yards of space, falling like a bird with oiled wings that wouldn’t fly, like an angel in a spinning dive to earth.

I’m no angel, Laurie admitted to the Rocks above her.

She had a feeling they already knew that about her.

Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

Once they would have been tears of self-pity; now they were for Jody.

She felt a pang of love so painful it made her cry out with pity and sorrow for her child. For a few moments, for her three-year-old daughter’s sake, she fought what was coming. She tried to move, to rise, to run, but it was torture, and impossible.

Her heart and thoughts continued the fight for a little while longer.

When that made no difference, she tried pleading.

Please, she feverishly begged whatever might be listening, take care of her and protect her.

She wished her daughter could know that her mom had fought hard to live.

Headlights like two distant tiny moons would soon be coming if Meryl had told her the truth, but Laurie didn’t believe their puny light would reach her in time to save her.

MERYL DROVE BACK into Rose and ran back into Hugh-Jay’s and Laurie’s home, going in again through the back door. Hugh-Jay’s boots were in their accustomed spot by the back door, and Meryl left them there. The first things he saw inside were Hugh-Jay’s yellow slicker, a straw hat, and the overturned chair on the floor.

He left them where they were.

It dawned on him the hat was Billy Crosby’s.

He walked over to the sink where he had first had sex with Laurie that night and examined it for anything linking the scene to him. He saw the bit of her blood on the metal lip of the sink, and decided it was smart to leave that alone, too. Whatever he had done, let the sheriff decide that Billy had done.

It wasn’t as if Billy wouldn’t have done it, if he could have.

Meryl knew his own fingerprints were all over the house.

Did that matter? It would seem odd if they weren’t, he decided, although the guest room and bathroom upstairs might be a problem, albeit not one he couldn’t solve with a dust rag and a can of dusting aerosol for the bedroom and cleanser and a sponge for the bathroom.

He looked at his watch and then outside at the storm.

It looked as if it would keep pouring and thundering for hours.

There was plenty of time to do all that needed doing.

His only real worry was exactly what Laurie feared, which was flooding that might keep him from getting back to her. He had to get back to her. She was an emotional unguided missile aimed directly at both of them if he didn’t stick with her and control her.

There was time, but he couldn’t afford to waste it.

He washed the bathroom first, watching out for hairs in the shower, getting rid of as much blood as he could, although he wasn’t particularly worried about that as it was only Hugh-Jay’s blood and not theirs. If someone else-Billy, for instance-had committed these acts, that person could have been expected to use the shower to wash off, too.

They had left bloody footprints on the upstairs carpets.

Meryl ran to the basement for bleach, made a solution of it with water, grabbed a scrub brush and went back upstairs. He flooded the bloody floors and carpet with the solution and rubbed at the footprints until they ran together and their outlines were indistinguishable by size or footfall.

Now the upstairs smelled hideously of acrid bleach.

He preferred that to the worse smells that it covered up.

He had told Laurie he would bring her what she needed.

But he wouldn’t do it now, and it wouldn’t include anything she owned.

It would have to be all new. She would have to have a new identity.

He felt overwhelmed by how much would be required to save both of them from here on out. She didn’t think she could do it, and Meryl wasn’t at all sure she could, either.

He would deal with that later; right now he had to prepare the bedroom.

He stripped the sheets, for fear of hair fibers. Hair from his head anywhere in the house was one thing, but pubic hair in a bed with semen stains on it was something else entirely. He wiped down all the surfaces, rather than try to remember which of them he had touched.

Meryl left the gun where it lay loose in Hugh-Jay’s right hand. He had, essentially, shot himself, which took care of the problem of fingerprints. If people didn’t jump to the conclusion that Billy Crosby had murdered him, then maybe they’d think Hugh-Jay had killed himself. But when Meryl stepped back and viewed the obvious signs of violence and struggle in the room, and those downstairs in the kitchen, he doubted that scenario would convince anyone.

All the while he stepped around his best friend’s body.

Best friend, he thought several times.

Had they been best friends? Brothers was more like it. Brothers raised at first by two different families and then merged into a single one, the better one. Everybody knew Meryl loved Hugh-Jay, and they would expect him to be incredibly upset by his friend’s death. There’d be no faking there: he was incredibly upset by this. Whoever had killed Hugh-Jay was going to be hated. Meryl had to make sure that wouldn’t be him. He worried a little over the fact that he didn’t feel very sad, that he only felt worried about what this night might mean to his own life. And then he put that behind him, because if all went well, he would have the rest of his life to make it up to the Linders-and to Hugh-Jay’s daughter-the best way he could, with attention and hard work and taking care of them and their business.