The Bargaining (31 page)

“Besides,” I say, “it'll give you some time to say good-bye or whatever. You know, closure.”

I look around at the house she's tried to give the love and attention she hoped it deserved. It doesn't occur to me until now that she might be afraid to be in the house alone. I consider the likelihood that she's in danger, that we both are the longer we stay. But my plan works before I can form the rest of my thought.

“Just hurry back. There's more to pack than you might think, and I'll need your help loading it into the car,” she says. She's already looking around her brand new living room, beginning her silent good-byes to the Carver House. A place that has meant such different things for her than it has for me.

I'm out the door faster than she can tell me to be careful, and I take the dirt road out of the North Woods far too carelessly, my mind everywhere but the unpaved road ahead. I hit a significant hole and set April's jeep bouncing on its already tenuous tires, the struts feeling a little far south of healthy, too.

Just as long as it can get us out of here tonight,
I think. What I wouldn't give to see Alfredo rolling up, all eighties paint and howling wolf, new transmission running him as smoothly as ever. What I wouldn't give to see Rob behind the wheel.

I realize I've come to associate the smell of gasoline with sanctuary as I roll April's jeep into the parking lot, a strangeness I stack against the rest I've accumulated over the past month. The feeling is only slightly diminished by the incessant, mechanical jingle crawling out of the speakers the minute I step foot in the convenience store.

I find the coolant and pay the attendant quickly, but I only make it three steps toward the door before a familiar
crew cut pops up from a crouch in the snack aisle.

Ripp lifts his head from his candy bar, his usual discomfort at seeing me almost comfortable by this point.

“So, I guess this is good-bye,” I tell him from the end of the aisle.

If it's possible to look relieved and surprised in the same intake of a breath, Ripp does. He holds that breath for a second, maybe to see if it's real, to see if I mean what I say.

“The house won't pass inspection,” I say so he can exhale.

He goes back to examining his candy bar, but he does so a little more slowly now, like he can take his time doing it.

“Sorry to hear that,” he says, and I think I may have just found a worse liar than Rob.

“No, you're not,” I say, but I try a smile with it.

“No,” he says. “No, you're right about that. But you may not have the whole story,” he says.

I know that's what he must think.

“I've gathered enough of it,” I say. We lock eyes from our respective stances across candy bars. “And I'm sorry. For all you've been through. I'm sorry about that.”

Ripp's eyes fall to the shelf, and for a moment I think he might tell me to leave him the hell alone. But he pushes away from the rows of chocolate instead and ambles toward me slowly. He never looked as young as the newspaper
clipping on the wall in his shop seemed to indicate he was at some stage, but he never looked quite this old, either. Maybe it's just that I'm seeing him out of context now. His brow is heavy with wrinkles and the weight of so much more than I'd ever be able to see, even if I knew him for twenty more years.

“There's a whole range of mistakes out there to make,” he says, his eyes growing red and damp. His voice is gravelly, and I wave away the potent memory of a different kind of gravelly voice. “The worst ones are the kinds that stick to you like barnacles. That cover you up so you can barely see your own skin anymore. The worst mistake I ever made was something I didn't have to lift a finger to do. I just . . . let it happen,” he says. “But some things can't be papered over.”

My memory conjures the hastily hung wallpaper strips that couldn't manage to conceal Miller's mural of Danny.

My breath catches, a tiny punch to the gut.

“He wasn't a bad kid, D—” Ripp starts to say, but to even put it in words—to put a name to the horror that followed him—is something neither of us wants Ripp to do.

“It should never have happened. Nobody deserves it,” he says, letting the generality coat the awful taste of what he has to confess.

Then he says, “I could live the rest of my life trying to
change something that ain't never gonna change, or I could make sure that everything I do for the rest of my sorry life is better than what I didn't do in that moment.”

I know he's saying this for me. Even though he has no idea what happened that night in the desert or the years before it or the months after it, he knows that I've been looking for something. He knows because he probably tried looking for something of his own. So he recites a mantra he outlived long ago, and he does it just for me.

For me, and for Miller.

I start to back away, but slowly enough to say, “It was nice to meet you, Ripp.” Because there's really nothing else to say after the strange moments we've shared.

“Dominic,” he says. “People who know me call me Dom.”

I hear the door to the restroom swing open behind me, and just before I turn to excuse myself, a familiar voice soaked in bemusement says, “You know, I know a guy who sells candy bars not too far from your shop, Uncle Dom.”

I watch Ripp's face light at the sight of his nephew, and it occurs to me I've never seen the two of them in the same place together.

Yes you have. Danny showed you.

And when I turn to face a surprised Miller, I'm startled to see an eight-year-old boy with burnt red hair and pleading
green eyes, standing in the doorway of his bedroom, hands empty at his sides.

“You don't sell these,” Ripp—Dominic—says from behind me, but Miller isn't paying attention to him anymore. “I'll wait in the car,” Dom says. And his uncle pays for his candy and leaves us.

I watch Ripp as he ambles out of the shop and to the curb, his head turning for a moment to study the same boy who has sat in the same place for so long, I wonder if he was simply built along with this sparkly new gas station, a mistake in the plans.

I watch to see if Ripp looks at him like a mistake. But he doesn't. Instead, he looks like a man who has just been reminded for the millionth time that he has a new job in this life, one that won't allow him to stand by idly.

I watch him drop a dollar into the boy's cup before opening the door to Miller's car.

“I think your stepmom might put a hit out on me,” Miller says, bringing me back to the shop. His hands are looking for a place to rest. They're as empty as ever.

“Yeah, about that,” I say.

“Yeah, about that,” he says, and I guess I hadn't considered the possibility that he'd be pissed at me now that he's had ample time to think about what he probably wished he'd said to April.

“Look, she obviously doesn't know why you did it. She thinks it was because she offended your uncle or something. And . . . seriously, it's all the money she had in the world.”

“Yeah, well, you know me. I just love ruining people's lives and stealing their money,” he says. “It's better than getting drunk and watching the game on TV. It's live action.”

It's the first time I've heard sarcasm from Miller. It sounds horrible on him.

“I'm not trying to pick up where she left off,” I say. “But I'm starting to regret feeling the urge to thank you for any of this.”

This seems to break through because he sighs, his shoulders slumping. He runs a hand through his hair, and when he looks up, I think that maybe I've never seen his eyes look quite this green. My heart pulses a little too hard in my chest, and the rhythm of it brings to mind a ticking clock. It's time to get back to April.

But just as I think that, Miller takes three steps toward me and deflates our distance.

“So you know why I did it then,” he says, his eyes searching mine.

“I was planning to call you from here,” I say, not stepping back. “I wanted to make sure you knew that I knew.”

He nods, and there it is. The dimple in the corner of his
pressed lips, the one that appears when just enough of a smile manages to break through. My heart ticks.

“I'm sorry for what I did. I really am,” he says. “All that money. It's not her fault, and she didn't deserve to lose all that. I just . . . I couldn't let you stay there,” he says, leaning back on one foot, putting some distance between us again.

“I know that,” I say. He doesn't need to tell me why. I already know why. All I want now is to knot that thread, the one that snapped the other night. I think if I can get close enough to him, I might be able to find the end that broke loose.

“And it's not that I don't want you here,” he says, edging closer, then backing away again, his hands moving excitedly through his hair.

“I'm glad,” I say. I can almost see the thread. If I could just get close enough.

“But it's too dangerous, you guys being out there.”

“Miller, I know.”

“And I'm almost done. I've almost finished,” he says, his eyes locking on mine, his dimple deep and irresistible, and I want to feel what his hands feel like in my hair, too.

“You're almost done with what?”

“My last painting,” he says. He's a foot from my face now, and this is the moment. This is when I should be able to see
the loose end of the thread. But all I see are those pine green eyes searching my face, wondering why I can't find what he's seeing.

Because he's clearly found whatever it is he's looking for.

Then it dawns on me.

“Painting? You mean a new canvas?”

“I'm almost done. And when I finish, he'll come back,” Miller says, but his smile is gone. In fact, everything is gone. The color behind his eyes. The fire above them. The warmth of the store. Everything I thought I recognized in Miller is gone, replaced by the same feeling I had the other night.

“How can you be sure of that? How can you really know, Miller?”

And now he sees, too. He sees that he's been wrong about me the whole time.

“After everything you know now, how can
you
doubt it?” he asks, his voice pleading, but I know he's already giving up on me. “When I paint, things happen. All I need to do is repaint the picture.”

We're miles apart. We're years apart. We live in different galaxies. If I'm a satellite drifting, Miller's just the planet I keep bumping into.

I picture the mural in the last room at the end of the hall and its smaller cousins stacked in the gallery Miller keeps
in a tower. I've already heard so many awful truths. What's so wrong with believing this could be true, too? This hunch that Miller's molded to gospel, his uncle's lessons for coping warped into a new reality. What's so wrong with thinking it could actually happen? After everything I've seen for myself? That the woods are only as bad as the horrible deeds we bring to them?

“So finish it then.”

I think back to one of my first conversations with Miller. It feels like an eternity ago.
“If you had a chance to right a wrong, something truly awful. You'd do it, wouldn't you?”

“Maybe some wrongs are just too awful to try to make right,” I say, knowing that this is the end. “Maybe the best thing you can do is try to build something new out of the pieces. Maybe you just try not to let the rubble suffocate you.”

Miller looks at me like he's never known me. I've seen that look before. Rae gave it to me. That night in the desert, as she held my notepad over the flames, the consequences of our shared actions too great for any one person to suffer.

Maybe it's not the consequences I've been so afraid of. Maybe it's the randomness with which they're doled out.

“Then you really don't get it,” Miller says, and it kills me to know these are the last things we'll say to each other.

“Maybe I don't.”

I take a step back from Miller. “Good luck,” I say. And I genuinely mean it.

For a moment, I think he's going to close the gap between us. I think he's searching out the same thread I was looking for a second ago. Then I realize he's looking at my hand. The same hand he held that night in the car as we escaped the rain and I broke my soul open and he didn't ask me for anything in return.

In a million different worlds, in a million different ways, this would be the moment when we kiss. I almost lean in. I almost cast the broken thread aside, put his hand on my heart so he can feel it pound out the words I can't form, and press my lips onto his. I want to feel that space between our lives shatter apart and fall to the floor, even if I cut my feet on the pieces. I want to tell him to tie himself to something other than this wretched past he can't escape.

But he won't do that, and if I'm really honest, I would never forgive myself for asking him to do it.

So I take another step away from him. I widen the distance between us and feel the thread fall away. The tinny jingle sings me good-bye.

Beside the jeep, I pull out my phone and send a text to Rob.
Leaving tonight.
His response is immediate.
Good.

I add the coolant and get in the car, taking one last look
at the concrete sanctuary, its bright pumps and smooth driveway beckoning me to stay. I look to the boy who sits off to the side of the entrance, his cardboard sign covering his face. His foot taps out the rhythm I can't hear anymore.

I pull back onto the road, still not certain what needs to be done, but I know one thing for sure: Miller is the only one who can repaint his own past, and April and I don't need to be around when it happens. If Miller can really do what he thinks he can do, I don't want to be anywhere near the North Woods when he tries to take one of the children that it's held on to for all these years.