“I was thinking of something cleaner.”
“Cleaner costs more.”
“I have savings.”
“You’re going to let a man like that eat your savings?”
“Yeah, on second thought…”
“Well then.”He picks up his keys from the counter.Turns them over in his hand.“Let me know if you need help digging.”
From the basement, just below this conversation, silence.
I pick up the prayer beads from the floor.Set them on the counter.
“See you Tuesday,” Luke says.
“Tuesday.”
He walks out.Boots on the porch.Truck starts.Gravel crunches.
The basement door is still open.Six inches.
I close it.
53
Luke
The call comes at 1:47 a.m.
I’m not asleep.I don’t sleep much anymore.I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of bourbon I haven’t touched.
My phone lights up.Marin.
“He’s gone,” she says.
I wait for more.There isn’t more.
“Gone how?”
“Gone as in not in the basement.Gone as in the column didn’t hold.Gone as in I went downstairs to check on him and there’s an empty pair of cuffs hanging off an iron post and no Charles.”
She doesn’t sound scared.She sounds like a woman who just found out the dog got through the fence again.
“How long?”
“I don’t know.An hour maybe.I fell asleep.”
I’m already pulling my boots on.Phone between my shoulder and my ear.Keys off the counter.
“He’s on foot,” I say.“Weak.Hasn’t walked more than four feet in weeks.He’s not getting far.”
“He doesn’t need to get far, Luke.He needs to get to a phone.Or a road.Or Mrs.Mather’s front door.”
“I’m on my way.”
I’m in the truck in forty seconds.The county road is empty and dark and I drive it the way I drive everything lately—fast, quiet, thinking three steps ahead of a problem I didn’t cause but somehow own.
