Devil's Oven (29 page)

One of the social workers who had shown up at the trailer door twice a year until Ivy turned eighteen asked her once if Thora acted more like a parent or a sister to her. Ivy’s sincere response was that she owed Thora her life. When she looked back, she knew she had probably sounded melodramatic, the way young girls do. But it was the truth. The love part wasn’t important.

Ivy lay on the guest bed, Anthony’s bed, in the dark. She was finally accustomed to the rancid smell lingering over everything he touched.

At the foot of the bed, in a soiled pile, lay the contents of the hope chest that Ivy’s mother had started for Thora: a pair of linen pillow cases, handkerchiefs with Thora’s initials, a thick wedding-ring quilt that Ivy vaguely remembered her mother working on at night, candles, a glass pitcher, a delicate linen nightgown, and a Bible. Anthony had finally broken the chest open. Had she really thought he wouldn’t bother it? Thora had come to see the thing as a joke, but she had never taken it out of the house or even suggested getting rid of it. Now everything was ruined—the pages ripped from the Bible, the nightgown ripped at the throat and shoulder seams as though Anthony had tried to put it on his own body.

This
was what she had brought on them.

Lila had run away. Ivy had seen her run onto the highway, then veer back onto the shoulder, weaving like a drunk. Maybe she’d been hit by a car. That would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? Then no one would know where she had been.

What kind of person have I become that I’m hoping a woman I’ve known all my life is dead?

Without Thora, Anthony was all she had left. Now she was afraid of the one person she had left in the world.

She closed her eyes. She would eventually have to go up to the trailer. He was up there. Alone. He might be hurt. Or suffering.

She was in a twilight sleep when she heard the gravel crunching out in the drive. Jumping from the bed, she put her face close to the cold glass of the window. Whoever it was had already reached the trailer, and was turning the vehicle around so that the headlights swept the thinning dark. The car looked small. Not a police car or any kind of ambulance or truck. Maybe the driver was lost. She thought of the girl, the pregnant one who was expected the next afternoon to pick up her dress. Whoever it was shut off the car, then the lights.

The motion detector light at the corner of the trailer came on, illuminating a man—large, and moving quickly toward the trailer’s back entrance—and a small woman with dark hair. Or was it a girl? She couldn’t see well, but they seemed to be wearing matching coats, a fact that was odd and not at all reassuring.

•  •  •

Ivy opened the trailer’s back door and leveled the shotgun at the girl standing in the middle of the living room.

“Ivy,” the girl said, reaching out her hand to her. She didn’t look at all afraid of the gun. She was the same girl Thora had wanted to rent the trailer to. What was her name? The same glow surrounded her, so Ivy couldn’t get a good look at her face. Despite the obscurity of her features, Ivy wasn’t afraid.

Behind the girl, Bud Tucker came out of the master bedroom, stepping over what was left of the door. His forehead was creased with worry, his eyes intent on the shotgun. Ivy had always liked Bud. Lila was lucky to have him. She had never heard a mean or unpleasant word said about him, not even from Lila, who had something critical to say about everyone. It had never been Ivy’s desire to cause people like Lila and Bud pain. She knew that about herself, didn’t she? Still, she kept the shotgun where it was. She didn’t know what else to do. Lila was obviously gone, but so was Anthony.

“I’ll let you leave if you go now,” she said. “The front door is down that hallway.” Her voice shook, but she couldn’t do anything about it.

“You’re not even going to ask why we’re here?” Bud said. “What did we ever do to you? What do you have to do with all this?” He stepped to stand directly behind the girl.

Ivy looked at her. Why had she said her name like that? Ivy. Like she knew her. Like she was her friend. Something about the sound of the girl’s voice calmed her, made her feel less like the world was collapsing. She felt stronger.

“There’s no one for you to see here,” she said. “Just get out and I won’t call the police.”

“
You
won’t call the police?” Bud said. He lunged toward her and the girl put her arm out to stop him. Ivy backed up a step, aiming the shotgun directly at his chest.

“Shhhhh,” the girl said. “You can put the gun down, Ivy. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Nobody’s going to bring the police. You don’t have to be afraid.”

Why was the girl talking to her like she was a child?

“There’s blood and dirt all over the bathroom,” Bud said. “Still wet.”

“My bathroom isn’t any of your business,” she said. But she knew it was lost.

“Her hair,” Bud said. He could barely get the words out. “It’s all over the place.”

Ivy lowered the barrel of the gun.

They stood, silent, as if Lila’s body had suddenly appeared in the midst of them.

The girl walked over to Ivy, holding her hands out in front of her. As she got closer, Ivy could see how young she was.
So pure
. And all was ugliness around them. Ivy felt corroded in comparison. Vile to her core. She had touched evil, felt possessive of it like it was some treasured charm. She almost cried out when the girl rested her fingers on her cheek.

“You don’t know where they are,” the girl said. “Do you?”

Ivy could see the girl’s eyes now. Kind. Comforting in their familiarity. She shook her head.

Bud picked up a piece of splintered wood from the floor. “If he took her, she didn’t go without a fight.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

When they reached the road leading to the state forest, Tripp almost didn’t take the turn. The clear part of his head, the part that had slipped further and further away as the day progressed, was telling him to just take Lila and run without stopping. Run to the nearest airport, or drive as fast as he dared to the interstate exchange fifteen miles away. They could drive south to his folks’ place. His dad wasn’t the kind of man to ask a lot of questions, and they could rest there for a day or two before leaving the country. Money might get to be an issue, but if he dealt with it right away, he might be able to get his money out before anyone realized he was leaving town.

But he couldn’t make himself drive away.
Here
was the only place he truly felt safe, the only place he really knew. There were things they needed, whether they ended up on one of the mountains an hour or two north, stayed on Devil’s Oven, or managed to get out of the area completely. Money, supplies, and a little time for Lila to get rested up and with the program. She wasn’t in the best shape for travel.

Tripp figured they would have an hour at most. The guy he had cold-cocked wouldn’t be out long, but it would take some time for them to figure out that Tripp hadn’t taken her to the hospital or even to the troopers’ station. The rank-and-file troopers like his friend, Keith, knew him as a good guy, with a string of drug, bootlegging, and arson arrests to his credit. He felt a little bad that he was putting Keith on the spot. Keith really was a good guy.

•  •  •

Tripp stood in front of the bedroom closet, a duffel bag sitting open on the bed behind him. Lila didn’t have much at the cabin: a pair of jeans, a couple of sweaters, the bra she had left hanging in his living room. It pleased him that when they were together, she liked to roam the house naked, maybe putting on the robe she had bought him or tossing a throw around her shoulders when she got cold. She looked so vulnerable when she was naked. Soft.

A sound from the living room made him jump and he reached for his sidearm, but remembered he had laid it on the front table out of habit. He told himself there couldn’t be anything to be worried about yet.

“Lila?” he said, coming slowly out of the bedroom.

The single desk lamp he had turned on didn’t quite chase the shadows from Lila’s tired face. She stood near the door, the grubby blanket still wrapped around her. How strange for her—a woman who was so beautiful, so careful about her appearance, so attached to jewelry and other precious things—to be dragged down into filth and violence. It was more than her injuries, her sleep-teased hair, or the fact that the blanket looked like it had been driven over a hundred times. She looked broken to him.

“Baby, I thought you were still asleep,” he said. “Let’s get you warm and out of those clothes.” He turned aside to adjust the thermostat beside the bedroom door.

She was so quiet that it made him worry she couldn’t speak. But she
had
spoken down at the convenience store. She had asked for his help.

“You’ve got some clothes in the bedroom,” he said. “Want a quick shower?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to kick himself for pressuring her. She had been through—he didn’t know exactly what, but he had seen what the creature did to Claude Dixon and Danelle Pettit. Lila had been left alive. He’d seen enough victims of violence to know that whatever had been done to her had affected her in ways he could never completely understand.

When she spoke, her voice was subdued. Rocky.

“Take me home.”

“It’s all over, and you’re safe now,” he said. “You need to get as much rest as you can. We’re going to get you somewhere you can recover.”

“I didn’t get it before,” she said. “What you were doing.”

“I have a clean blanket here, too,” he said. “You know how you were bugging me to get the wool one dry-cleaned? I meant to tell you I bought a new one.”

“You’re not…” Her voice faltered. “Something’s happened to you.”

He laughed. “Do you know how beautiful you are? Even now?”

“Not since that night,” she said. “Maybe before. I can’t remember.”

“You can’t remember because that sonofabitch almost killed you.”

She was more damaged than he had thought. Delusional. Once he took her in his arms, once he held her, she would relax. She was so different from that bitch, Jolene. He couldn’t tell Lila the truth about Jolene, that he had gone and had sex with her, just like she had suspected him of doing. What they had was too fragile right now, but he wouldn’t tell her even if she were stronger. She could never know how close Jolene had come to driving him out of his mind.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “You’re not going to touch me again.”

“Baby, I know,” he said. “I know when you’ve been traumatized like this, you might not want anyone, you know, you might not want a man to touch you. We’ll handle it. Together. And I won’t touch you if you don’t want. Not until you say it’s time.”

“I want the keys to one of your trucks,” she said.

“Honey, we’re out of here, don’t worry. I’ve got our stuff in a bag. I packed up a cooler, too.”

She let the blanket fall to the floor. Her hand was unsteady, but she was aiming the .44 at him. It was his service piece, the same gun he’d had her shooting in the backyard the past summer. She had joked about it, but he had seen how natural she was with it. She’d said that Bud had taken her shooting once or twice. Tripp suspected it had been more than twice. Right now, though, she wasn’t in any kind of shape to be handling a gun.

“You don’t need that,” he said. “They aren’t coming for us. Not yet. We’ll be out of here before they think of it.” Holding his hands out in front of him to show he wasn’t going to hurt her, he took a step forward.

“Stop!” she said. “Just stop!”

He knew she wouldn’t shoot him. If only she would let him hold her.

“That’s not the kind of person you are,” he said. He kept his voice low. Calm. “If you want me to die, I’ll kill myself for you, baby. Is that what you want? I’ll give you my life if it’s what you want. You know I will.”

Her eyes welled up. She would be crying in a minute. It was all too much for her. She needed to be held. Protected from herself.

He was close now.

It was only dumb luck and his own clumsiness that saved him from the burst from the gun. Lunging for her, he tripped over the footstool Jolene had been sitting on hours earlier
.
He fell just a foot or so from Lila, surprising them both. But he was the first to recover and, still on the floor, he wrapped an arm around her legs.

How can she try to kill me, the man who completes her?
He needed to keep her near him, even if it killed them both.

Tripp jerked her off her feet—one foot in a filthy gray sock, the other bare, red and swollen. Falling, she dropped the gun and tried to catch herself. Her cry broke his heart. Even worse was the muted
thud
of her head hitting the table beside the door.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

“I can’t stay here,” Bud said.

Every nerve in his body told him to head up into the woods to look for Lila. The bastard had her somewhere out there, if he hadn’t already killed her. As nightmarish as that thought was, there was another one that ran a close second. The image of Lila with Tripp Morgan sat in the back of his head like an unwanted photograph, or a piece of porn like what he’d found on the office computer of the guy Claude had replaced: pictures of women having sex with animals; louche, grandfatherly men committing unspeakable acts with prepubescent girls. Morgan had to have done something to Lila, blackmailed or tricked her in some way into being with him. Because to think of it any other way made Bud feel sucker punched.

“You won’t find anything,” Jolene said. “Not when it’s still dark. If you go, you should wait.”

She was looking better than she had when they first got to the trailer. She was calm, as always, but there was something else. She seemed to know her way around. It was almost as though she belonged there.

Ivy was the one they should be worried about. If Jolene hadn’t been there when Ivy showed up with the shotgun, he would’ve taken the thing from her and, God help them both, probably beaten her with it. His frustration, his hatred for what she had allowed to happen to Lila, was that great.