Susan Phillips - The Great Escape

“Seen any kids today?” He shifted his weight slightly on the seat. “You’re making me sorry I lost my favorite one.”

She turned back to the bow. “I don’t want to hear.”

“It says, ‘I’m all for gay marriage as long as both bitches are hot.’”

Her temper sparked, and the canoe wobbled as she twisted back around. “Political correctness is obviously a big joke to you, but it isn’t to me. Call me old-fashioned, but I think there’s value in honoring the dignity of everyone.”

He pulled his paddle out of the murky water. “Damn, I wish I’d brought the one I got a coupla weeks ago.”

“A terrible loss, I’m sure.”

“Want to know what it said?”

“No.”

“It said…”-he leaned toward her and spoke in a slow whisper that carried over the water-“‘If I’d shot you when I wanted to, I’d be out by now.’”

So much for conversation.

When they returned to the house, she made herself a sandwich from the groceries they’d picked up, claimed an old paperback someone had left behind, and closed herself in the bedroom. Loneliness wrapped around her like a too-heavy overcoat. Had Ted done anything to find her? Apparently not, considering that he hadn’t tried to stop her from leaving the church. And what about her parents? She’d called Meg twice from Panda’s phone, so it couldn’t be that hard for the Secret Service to locate her.

What if Mat and Nealy had written her off? She told herself they wouldn’t do that.

Unless they were so disgusted with her that they didn’t want to see her for a while.

She couldn’t blame them.

SOMETHING ODD HAPPENED OVER THE next few days. Panda’s manners underwent a marked improvement. At first she didn’t notice the absence of all those belches, slurps, and scratching. It was only when she saw him cut a piece of chicken neatly from the bone and carefully swallow his first bite before he asked her to pass the pepper that she became thoroughly confused. What had happened to that open-mouth chewing and using the back of his hand as a napkin? As for any suggestions of sexual violence… He barely seemed to notice she was female.

They went into the town of Marshall for groceries and supplies. She bought sunglasses, kept her hat pulled low, the baby bump she’d grown to detest in place, and with Panda close by, no one noticed her.

He worked on his bike, taking things apart, reassembling. Bare chested, and with a blue bandanna wrapped around his forehead, he lubed and polished, checked fluid levels and changed brake pads. He set a radio in an open window and listened to hip-hop, except once she’d gone outside and heard an aria from The Magic Flute. When she’d commented on it, he accused her of messing around with his radio and ordered her to change the damn station. Occasionally she’d catch him talking to someone on his cell, but he never left his phone around, so she had no opportunity to check his call records.

At night, she sealed herself in her bedroom while he sat up, sometimes watching a baseball game on television, but more frequently sitting on the deck, staring out at the water. The numbness from the first few days began to fade, and she found herself watching him.

PANDA DRAGGED THE MUSKY SCENT of the bayou into his lungs. He had too much time to think-too many memories crowding in-and each day his resentment burrowed deeper.

He hadn’t expected her to last more than a few hours, yet here she still was, seven days after he’d picked her up. Why couldn’t she do what she was supposed to? Go back to Wynette or run home to Virginia. He didn’t give a damn where she went, as long as she was gone.

He couldn’t understand her. She’d seen right through that stomach-churning bogus rape he’d staged their second night out, and she acted as if she didn’t hear half the insults he hurled at her. She was so controlled, so disciplined. What she’d done on her wedding day was clearly out of character. And yet… Beneath those good manners, he kept catching glimpses of something-someone-more complicated. She was smart, maddeningly perceptive, and stubborn as hell. Shadows didn’t cling to her like they did to him. He’d bet anything she’d never woken up screaming. Or drunk until she blacked out. And when she’d been a kid…

When she’d been a kid, she’d been able to do what he couldn’t.

Five hundred dollars. That’s all his kid brother had been worth.

Through the cry of a swamp creature, he heard his eight-year-old brother’s voice as they’d walked up the broken sidewalk to still another foster home, their current social worker climbing the creaking porch steps in front of them. “ What if I pee the bed again?” Curtis whispered. “That’s what got us kicked out of the last house. ”

Panda hid his own fear beneath a fifteen-year-old’s swagger. “Don’t worry about it, jerkface.” He delivered a sucker punch to Curtis’s scrawny arm. “I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and take you to the bathroom. ”

But what if he didn’t wake up like he hadn’t last week? He’d promised himself he wouldn’t fall asleep until he got Curtis up to pee, but he’d dozed off anyway, and the next day old lady Gilbert had told Social Services they had to find someplace else for Curtis.

Panda wouldn’t let anything separate him from his kid brother, and he told their social worker he’d run away if the two of them got split up. She must have believed him because she found a new house for them. But she warned him there weren’t any more families willing to take them both.

“ I’m scared,” Curtis whispered as they reached the porch. “Are you scared? ”

“ I’m never scared,” he lied. “Nothing to be scared of. ”

He’d been so wrong.

Panda gazed out at the dark water. Lucy had been fourteen when her mother had died. If he and Curtis had fallen in with Mat and Nealy Jorik, his brother would still be alive. Lucy had accomplished what he couldn’t pull off-she’d kept her sister safe-and now Curtis lay in a grave while the sister Lucy had protected prepared for her first year of college.

Curtis had hooked up with a gang when he was only ten, something Panda could have prevented if he hadn’t been in juvie. They’d let him out long enough to go to his little brother’s funeral.

He blinked his eyes hard. Memories of Curtis only led to other memories. It would be easier not to think if he had music to distract him, but he couldn’t listen to the heavy drama of Otello, Boris Godunov , or a dozen other operas with Lucy around. With anybody around.

He wished she’d come out and talk to him. He wanted her close; he wanted her farther away. He wanted her to leave, to stay, to take off her clothes-he couldn’t help that. Being with her all day would test any man, especially a horny bastard like himself.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, pulled his cell from his pocket, and carried it around to the side of the house where he couldn’t be overheard.

PANDA KEPT GOADING HER INTO going for morning runs, and even though she held him back, he refused to run ahead. “The second I’m out of sight, you’ll start walking,” he said.

True. She walked for exercise and had a gym membership she used semi-semi-regularly, but she wasn’t a running enthusiast. “When did you make yourself my personal trainer?”

He punished her by kicking up the pace. Eventually, however, he took pity and slowed.

Her conviction that he wasn’t entirely the Neanderthal he wanted her to believe had grown along with her curiosity about him, and she embarked on a fishing expedition. “Have you talked to your girlfriend since you’ve been gone from wherever you’re gone from?”