The Devil You Know (22 page)

“Yeah?” he asks.

I nod. “Where's Molly?”

“I told her she should probably wait in the truck.”

“Let her in.”

He pushes the door open and gives a whistle. Molly's nails click on the wood floor as she runs into the shop. She leaps right up off the ground and licks the underside of my chin.

“You know, I've had so many things I've wanted to talk about with you over the past year,” Noah says. “But I wouldn't have predicted the first thing would be the dog.”

After Flamingo, Duane dropped the U-Haul pickup in Arcadia. But when he called the lady who was keeping Molly, she said Noah had already arranged to come get her. I hoped he might stop in High Springs on his way home, but he never came. My therapist suggested Noah's method of dealing might be to box up everything associated with the traumatic event and put it away. I got that. I did. But it still hurt that he never said good-bye. I push that aside to ask, “What would you have predicted?”

“I don't know.” Noah closes the distance from the door to where I'm standing, but doesn't come as close as we've been. “I left Florida feeling pretty beat up. The physical aside, I was embarrassed that I didn't see Matt clearly when my own father is exactly like him. I was useless to you in Flamingo. Helpless. You saved my life, and afterward I just felt completely … unworthy.”

“If you're going to feel embarrassed about anything, it should probably be for all the words that just came out of your mouth,” I say, and the corner of his mouth hitches up in a grin. “I saved you because it never occurred to me that there was any other choice. But here's the thing … I would do it again if it meant keeping you in the same world as me, so spare me this unworthy crap. I care about you.”

Noah reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. It's back to blond now, my hair, and I wonder what
he thinks about it. As his fingertips graze my skin, a shiver skims down my back. After all this time, he still has that effect. “It's fucked-up that I've missed you, isn't it?”

“Absolutely,” I say, and he laughs in that low Noah way that's been burned into my brain since the first time I heard it. “But I've missed you, too.”

We are standing so close that a breeze could barely fit between us—and I have reason to believe I'm about to kiss him—when the bells go off once more and Rhea comes into the shop for her afternoon shift. “Sorry I'm late,” she says. “Traffic was crazy.”

I step away from Noah, laughing, because there's hardly ever traffic in High Springs. “I'm going to have to take that fifteen cents from your next paycheck,” I say, as she pulls me into a good-bye hug. “I'm sorry.”

“Go home, silly girl,” she says. “And have a happy summer.”

“You, too.”

Noah and Molly follow me out of the shop onto the sidewalk outside. “Do you have time for a walk?”

I still have to finish packing, cook dinner, and give Danny a bath, but I am officially on vacation so I guess there's no rush. “Yep.” We head up Main Street toward the railroad tracks and the dueling hardware stores that sit across the street from each other. Beyond the tracks, the water tower declares this the City of High Springs. After
spending so many years wanting to leave, I've finally made peace with this place. That doesn't mean I'm going to stay, but I'm okay with it being where I'm from and where I can always come home.

“How, um—you doing okay?” Noah's question is casual, but I know what he's really asking.

“I don't know.” I shrug. “I have nightmares every once in a while, and I'm seeing a therapist who has to remind me weekly that I am not the monster. And I
know
that, but it's easy to forget.”

Noah nods. “I understand.”

“I knew you would.”

“Lindsey's parents say they don't blame me,” I continue. “But sometimes I catch Mrs. Buck staring at me in church on Sunday, and I wonder if she's thinking how unfair it is that her daughter is dead and I'm not. She probably is thinking that. I do all the time.”

“I thought being alone might help me forget.” Noah's voice goes husky for a moment, but after he clears his throat, he's back to normal. “But there's such a thing as too much solitude. Too much time to think.”

“Do you still have the Cougar?”

“No,” he says. “Keeping it didn't feel right.”

“I'm sorry.”

He shrugs a little. “It was just a car.”

We walk a bit farther.

“I wrestled a long time over whether I should come,” Noah says. “I wasn't sure if you'd even want to see me again, considering … but I regretted not saying goodbye and I figured it was probably time I said thank you.”

I stop him right there in the middle of the sidewalk and kiss him. It is a kiss made of absolution and hope, sorrow and promise. And as he kisses me back, he grants me the same. His hands bury themselves in my hair, and when it ends, the back of his T-shirt is clenched tight in my fists.

“You're welcome.”

“Jesus,” Noah whispers into my hair, raising goose bumps on my arms and making my toes feel as if they've melted inside my boots. “Now I wish I'd come here sooner.”

“Me, too.”

“I was wondering,” he says, as we start walking again. “Do you think we can have a do-over? Maybe slow it down. Go on an actual date and figure out if this”—Noah gestures from himself to me and back again—“is really something.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“How does August look for you?”

“Too far from now.”

“We're leaving tonight to spend the summer camping,” I say. “We, um—my family was kind of broken when I met
you. All I had was a head full of unfocused dreams and a desperate desire to escape my life. We both know how that turned out.”

“Yeah.”

“I have an online shop now.” It feels strange to have a fond memory of Matt MacNeal, but if I have to have one, I'm glad it's this. I'm nowhere near my first million, but this fall, after Danny starts kindergarten, I will have enough money to plan my first solo trip. Maybe nothing as grand as Machu Picchu or Fiji, maybe somewhere a little closer to home.

“I've seen your website,” Noah says. “It looks good.”

“It feels good to be doing instead of dreaming,” I say. “And this vacation—it's the first we've taken together as a family since my mom died, so I need to be with them. I want to be with them.”

Noah looks disappointed, but there is an understanding in the way he nods and in the brown warmth of his eyes. “So, okay. August. I guess that will have to do.”

It takes all my self-control not to tell him how—when I pulled the pins from the map on my bedroom wall—I found the pin he'd moved from New York to Montana. How I phoned several dozen state parks, trying to track him down, before I reached the one where Noah works. The guy who answered told me Noah was leading a hike and offered to take a message. Instead, I made a reservation.

Noah's fingers twine through mine, and my brain and mouth go on a rogue mission, breaking free from my resolve to keep it a surprise. “Or maybe I'll see you in three weeks at Thompson Falls.”

The light comes up in his eyes as he figures it out, and when he smiles, huge and wide like a little kid on Christmas morning, I have to smile back in order to release some of the too-big-for-my-body feelings I've been carrying around. And as we walk up Main Street, wearing our hearts on our faces, I can't help thinking that maybe, finally, this is the pearl.

Maybe it's not.

Time will tell, I guess.

But, either way, it's good to have a plan.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that books don't just spring fully formed from a writer's head. Hemingway (who shared an editor with Fitzgerald, by the way) is credited with saying that “the first draft of anything is shit,” and he was probably right about that. Which is why I am so grateful for Brett Wright, who pulled on the tall boots and waded in with me on this one.

My it-takes-a-village village includes the whole Bloomsbury team, Victoria Wells Arms, Kate Schafer Testerman, Suzanne Young, Cristin Bishara, Miranda Kenneally, Tara Kelly, Veronica Rossi, Kelly Jensen, Carla Black, Ginger Phillips, Anna Hutchinson, Gail Yates, the staff of Barnes & Noble #2711 in Fort Myers, and the whole B&N family, including Tracy Vidakovich, Billy McKay,
and Brian Monahan. I couldn't have done it without any of you. Thank you.

Special thanks to Lee County sheriff deputy Todd Olmer and Florida Wildlife officer Guy Carpenter for the nuts and bolts of murder, jurisdiction, and the eating habits of alligators and crocodiles. Thanks for grossing me out, Todd. And I hope my portrayal of Naked Ed Watts will be seen in the light of respect and good nature that was intended.

Mom, Jack, Caroline, and Scott, I love you all.

And Phil … I love you best.

During a freshman literature course I did in college, we were tasked with reading short stories by American authors, including giants like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I loved reading the stories but was notoriously awful at interpreting the meaning behind them. (The Internet was just a baby back then, so there weren't whole websites devoted to doing that job for me.) After reading we would discuss the text in class, and I was usually surprised (and sometimes confused) by what I'd missed that the other students had caught.

One of my favorites—and one that has stuck with me all these years—was Fitzgerald's “The Ice Palace,” which was originally published in 1920 in
The Saturday Evening Post.
I was charmed by how the story bookends itself (a
device I've used more than once in my own professional writing life), but, more importantly, I loved that Sally Carrol Happer's struggle to find her place as a young woman in a changing world was as relevant in 1986 as it was in 1920. It's still relevant today.

The Devil You Know
was heavily inspired by “The Ice Palace.” Cadie and Sally Carrol have nearly a hundred years separating them, but their lives are pretty similar. Both girls want something more for themselves, get a little lost on their quests to find it, and ultimately make their way back home. Fitzgerald knew in 1920 what we know today: that it's hard to be a woman in a world filled with real and imaginary monsters.

And that there's usually more to a story than meets the eye.

Something Like Normal
Where the Stars Still Shine

Copyright © 2015 by Trish Doller

All rights reserved.
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First published in the United States of America in June 2015
by Bloomsbury Children's Books
This electronic edition published in June 2015
www.bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Bloomsbury Children's Books, 1385 Broadway, New York, New York 10018

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doller, Trish.
The devil you know / by Trish Doller. pages cm
Summary: Exhausted and rebellious after three years of working for her father and mothering her brother, eighteen-year-old Arcadia “Cadie” Wells joins two cousins who are camping their way through Florida.
[1. Psychopaths—Fiction. 2. Murder—Fiction. 3. Camping—Fiction. 4. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 5. Single-parent families—Fiction. 6. Florida—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.D7055Dev 2015   [Fic]—dc23   2014023032

eISBN: 978-1-61963-417-6

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