Caleb crouches beside her, hair falling over his face. Her heart lurches at how humbled and weary he appears. He didn’t have time to shave today, and the stubble only emphasizes the deep planes of his face.
“Hi,” he says. He glances at Elijah, who’s mixing yet another shade of black. Elijah doesn’t seem to notice him, nor the frown that briefly creases his brow. “Want to help me with dinner?”
Sarah pushes the coat off and he helps her up. She follows him into the kitchen, her hand swallowed in his. There’s a slight tug in his grip, a sense of urgency she doesn’t quite understand, but she’s touched he wants to get her alone after a hard day.
Caleb browns the ground beef, and she puts a pot of water on the stovetop to boil for pasta. Like the morning, it’s all very comfortable, like they’ve been cooking together for years. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes, though, and there’s a tension in his shoulders that wasn’t there earlier. She wonders if Isaac said something to remind him she’s supposed to be in quarantine, not laughing with him in the kitchen, playfully flinging strands of cooked spaghetti at each other.
“Is anything wrong?” she finally asks.
Caleb stops stirring the sauce and slumps against the counter. “This morning when I left, there were a couple of broken beer bottles on the porch.”
Sarah remembers the car engine she thought she’d heard last night, the clink of glass. A chill creeps across her skin, and she wishes she was wearing the shearling coat again.
“Then I went to Murry’s Hardware, and they wouldn’t talk to me. I mean, I get side-eye at the best of times, but they refused to serve me. I had to call Uncle Isaac to come and persuade them.”
“But why?” Sarah asks, although she knows.
“They know you’re staying here. They think I might have the virus, too.”
Sarah’s blood runs to ice water. “Oh God. I’m sorry.” It’s her fault, it’s always her fault. She’s brought this on their house. Opened a door and let all the hatred in. She doesn’t belong, as much as she fooled herself into thinking she did.
He shakes his head. “Nothing for you to be sorry about.”
Sarah sets out the plates, her mind and stomach roiling. Time is ticking by. How many days has she been here? Too many.
She could stay here, she knows. Tangled up with Caleb at night, playing house with Elijah during the day. While the wolves outside howl for her blood and the virus closes in. But it’s another prison, like the one she’d inhabited with Ben. He whispers in her ear now, with the wind.What did I do to deserve this?
He’s never far from her thoughts. Literally. The knowledge that his body is just in the garage haunts her. She can’t pass the parlor without replaying how he’d sprayed blood in her mouth, which seems more intimate and violating than any sexual relations they’d had together. He’s tainted Sweetside Manor with his memory. She might as well still be trapped with him.
He wins.
She has to leave before she runs out of choices. If she stays here, she’ll never know who she is without Ben.
You already know who you are, Ben whispers in her head.
Caleb’s truck is the only way out. Sarah ambles to a drawer and pulls out three forks and spoons, all of which are tarnished. Everything in this cursed house is old or dead.
“Come away with me,” she says, turning to Caleb.
“What?”
“Come away with me. The motel’s closed, there’s nothing for you here. We could pack our stuff tonight and get in your truck and go.”
He laughs. “Go where?”
“Anywhere. I’ve got my laptop, I have a roster of clients. All I need is wifi. I can work anywhere. Even in a parking lot outside a coffee shop if I have to. We could get on the Trans-Canada Highway and find someplace new to put down roots.”
He shakes his head. “It’s a nice dream, but I don’t think so. What am I going to do for work? And during a pandemic?”
“You said you don’t really need to work.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to. A man likes to be useful.”
She pictures him hammering boards over a window, the inhabitants inside spitting or swearing or begging for mercy. She swallows. “You managed a motel for most of your adult life. That’s good for something. You’re smart, Caleb. You’ll figure out how to survive outside Sweetside.”
“What about Elijah?”
The more she thinks about it, the more excited she gets. There’s no reason to stay in this tiny, insular town where they’re all outcasts. “He’ll come with us. We could go somewhere and start fresh, where no one knows us. Where no one cares what I look like. Board up the house, or sell it, or give the keys to your uncle, whatever. We could disappear and leave this all behind.”
