Trespass (15 page)

Russ stared at her for a minute. “Isn’t that self-defense, though? Maybe?”

“My friend told me she was going to call the police on me,” Sarah said. “She told me I murdered him and she started screaming about the death penalty or something crazy, and I bolted, afraid the neighbors were already dialing 9-1-1.”

“And you just ran?”

“I had about five hundred dollars in my checking account, and I hit a few ATMs, withdrew the limit until I drained it. I rode around on the city buses with no plan, no clue what to do, ended up crashing at an ex’s place for the night. And the next day I found a bus line that didn’t ask for ID and I just…left. I went to Des Moines, then Denver, then I ran low on cash so I started hitching in Wyoming.”

“You can’t go back and tell the police what happened?”

“She won’t corroborate my story, and the bruise she had, it must be gone by now, so I can’t prove he hurt her. Plus I don’t have a real stellar record. Shoplifting and some fights when I was younger. My legal karma’s pretty bleak. And I mean, I ran. That can’t look good.”

“And you won’t face the time you might be due?”

She took a deep breath, staring down at her hands on the front of the saddle. “I know, it sounds so cowardly. But it could be a
lot
of time. And this is probably going to sound
really
ridiculous…I’m claustrophobic. I can’t tell you how much of a non-option prison is to me. I’d seriously rather be on the run. I’d rather live in fear than in a cage.”

“I can’t fault anyone for trying to preserve their freedom.” Russ stared up into the trees to their right, as if he was thinking exactly what she was, how heavenly all this space was—how necessary.

“But what about your family?” he asked, meeting her eyes. “Aren’t there people back there missing you? Worried about you?”

“No, not really. I don’t have any family. A few friends, but no one so close to me that I’d risk trying to reach them, you know?”

“I don’t, but I’m trying to understand… Can I ask where your parents are?”

“My mom died two years ago. And I never knew my dad.”

“No siblings?”

“None I know about.”

“Oh.”

He sounded sad, so sad she wanted to reach across and hug him, remind him she didn’t deserve his sympathy, as comforting as it felt.

“What did you do for work, before you took off?” he asked.

“Tended bar. I never went to college…though I sort of still wanted to, up until last month. But I was always lousy at school. I’m dyslexic and I was way behind everybody by the time anybody figured it out. By then I hated everything about school. Everything but art classes and track.” She finger-combed her loose hair, twisting it into a knot and snapping an elastic around it. “God, you must think I’m such a loser, telling you all this. That I’m twenty-eight next month, and I’ve got no career and a criminal record and probably a murder warrant—”

“I don’t think that.”

“No?”

“No.” He gazed out across the grass in the waning afternoon sun, hat casting a shadow over half his face. “Trust me, I’ve got no clue who you are yet, but I don’t think you’re a loser. Outlaw, maybe.” He straightened up, smiling at her. “Very exciting.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Most exciting thing that’s happened around here in ages.”

“Do you believe me, about how things happened?”

Russ didn’t reply right away and she couldn’t blame him. “I honestly don’t know. But I figure I have two choices. I choose to believe you, then I’m either a nice, forgiving person or a sucker twice-over. If I choose to assume you’re lying, then I’m either smart or an asshole. Think I’d probably rather be a sucker than an asshole, so I guess I’m choosing to believe you.”

It didn’t feel like a victory, Russ’s limp offer of trust. It smacked of pity and duress. Sarah sighed to herself as she stared down at Lizzie’s steady, lumpy shoulder muscles working. “This isn’t how I imagined my life would end up. For all the shit I’ve gotten myself into, I never thought I’d find myself doing this. Running.”

“I’m sure nobody ever does.”

She took a deep breath. “You know what happened between us…”

“Yeah?”

“Physically, I mean. I just want to say again, that wasn’t anything aside from what it seemed like. I wasn’t trying to get into your good graces or anything. That was all real for me. It actually…” She laughed. “It actually sucked, hearing you call me Nicole. You don’t know how bad I wanted to set you straight about my name.”

Russ licked his lips, shy or nervous.

“But for all the other ways I’ve lied and screwed you over, that wasn’t one of them. Not to me, anyhow.”

“Thanks… I have to wonder, why did you run?” he asked. “From me, I mean. Why was that an option, when telling me the truth, asking to stay for a while, wasn’t?”

She frowned, sad about her answer. “I didn’t know what you’d say or do. I didn’t know how angry you’d be about me turning up here as like, a fugitive, making you an accessory, maybe. However that works. Or how you’d feel when you realized I’d lied to you. You seem like a real good guy, Russ—like the kind of good they don’t make on the east side of Buffalo. Real straight-and-narrow, guns and justice. I thought there was a decent chance you’d turn me in. And I didn’t want you to know what a lousy person I am, frankly. Or at least I didn’t want to have to see your face when you found out. Ideally I just wanted to disappear, leave you thinking I was better than I really am, maybe even missing me. But right now I have to put money and survival above saving face.”

Russ nodded and gave Mitch a few pats on the neck. “That’s real sad.”

“Sad like, pathetic, or sad like…”

“Like I feel sad for you. No pity, no judging. It’s just real sad. Sad like when a friend loses a parent or a child. Sad like your life’s changed and nobody can change it back. Like grief.”

Something about that word was too much. Sarah prayed Russ would keep his eyes on the path when the tears started, and she kept her own eyes on Lizzie’s mane so she wouldn’t have to know if her crying had a witness. Grief was exactly it. Her old life was dead, and she’d woken up here, in a beautiful place she envied but didn’t belong in, nothing familiar to be found in all these acres of somebody else’s freedom.

They rode in silence for a long time, Russ leading them single file through a path in the woods. The tears cleaned Sarah out and left her calmer. She watched her host’s back, feeling comfortable for once, tucked safely behind him, relegated to Lizzie’s burden, allowed to follow and ride, to turn off her own momentum and simply be carried.

“Russ?”

“Yeah.”

“You know that room past your bedroom?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Uh-huh.”

“What’s in there? Is it another bedroom?”

“Supposed to be. You think I’d stick you on the couch if it was habitable?” He smiled, something not quite comfortable about the gesture, then faced forward.

“Can I ask what’s in there? Is it your wife’s things or…?”

“Oh, I see what you’re getting at. And yes. And no. Not the way you mean.”

“You don’t have any pictures of her out or anything.”

He slowed Mitch and let Lizzie catch up so he and Sarah were side by side again. “No, I don’t, you’re right. They’re in albums. Those memories are complicated… I like to think about that stuff on purpose, I guess. Sit down and do it properly, not glance at a frame and suddenly get all thrown into it.”

“You’ve got plenty of pictures up of your great-grandfather.”

“Yeah, but that’s different. He died when he was a hundred and three. That’s fair. What happened to my wife was unfair, and thinking about it makes me real angry sometimes.”

“Oh.”

“And that room’s full of all kinds of stuff. Books and projects I’ve half-finished, boring things. And some other things, the type of things you’re thinking about. Her wedding dress is in there. And, um, some baby furniture.” He met her eyes and smiled tightly.

Sarah went numb. “Oh. Was she…?”

“No, she wasn’t, but we were headed in that direction. Getting excited about it, starting to turn that room into a nursery and all that. I’m a practical man, but I haven’t quite had it in me to disassemble the crib and haul it into town to the thrift shop. At first you know, it was too hard. Now it’s just that I’ve gotten used to that room being a mess.”

“Understandable.”

“And part of it’s because I
am
practical. I’d like a family someday, and I thought hell, I might need a crib again, who knows? Not that things are looking too likely seven years on. Lately I’ve been thinking I need to clear that room out…it’s the place where projects go to die. Some black hole for good intentions.”

“Maybe my old life is buried in there someplace.”

Russ laughed, out of politeness she guessed.

“If you want, I’ll clean it out for you,” Sarah said. “As one of my chores.”

Russ nodded in time with Mitch’s steps, looking thoughtful. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“What would you do if you did have a free room?”

“Well it used to be the guest room, where our parents or my sisters would sleep when they came to visit. But I kind of stopped volunteering to host family holidays after my wife died. Like the venue was too depressing and might bring everybody down.”

“I used to host this thing I called Homeless Thanksgiving,” Sarah offered. “I’d invite all my friends who were like me, not close with their families, and the ones who couldn’t travel home for whatever reason. I’d cram twenty people into my one-bedroom apartment, and we’d eat supermarket rotisserie chicken and macaroni and cheese and drink wine and play board games.”

Russ stared at her face for a few beats. “You sound like you miss that.”

She smiled down at her hands. “I will, I bet. When November rolls around. But people are adaptable. Who knows where I’ll be this year. Maybe Mexico, so there won’t even be a Thanksgiving to worry about.”

Russ studied her for a moment.

“What?”

He looked ahead again as Mitch brought them back out into the fields. “If you don’t screw me over before you leave…if you ever find yourself back around here at Christmastime or whenever, you feel free come by. I’ll drive you to Idaho and my mother will stuff you silly.”

She chewed her lip to stifle a grin.

“Actually,” Russ went on, “I could pay you to pretend to be my girlfriend so she’ll stop asking about my love life and the dwindling male branches of the Gray family tree.”

“Right, that’d go well. ‘Hi, Mom, this is Sarah. What does she do? Oh, you know, she’s a fugitive. Murdered this guy in Buffalo with a blender? Yeah, long story. So when’s dinner?’”

They sank into silence, comfortable again by some miracle of the awkward conversational topic. The horses aimed them home as the sun sank low. Russ hopped off to open the gate, and Lizzie and Mitch headed into the pen. He offered a hand, and Sarah managed to dismount with a modicum of dignity.

She helped him feed the horses and watched him putter in the lengthening shadows. It hurt. He was the kindest, best-looking man she’d ever had a chance with, just another good thing she’d lost now.

He finished his nightly checks and met her by the back door to ditch their boots. “How’re your legs?”

She shifted from one foot to the other. “Hips are a bit sore, but it feels good. Like I accomplished something.”

He nodded.

“Thank you, for taking me out. You’re being really nice, and I’m the last person who deserves it.”

Russ shrugged. “Won’t make me feel any better to be a jerk to you.” He held the door open.

“Thanks… Do you hate me?”

Russ’s answer came quick and without bitterness. “I hate what you did to me. But I like
you
. I like the woman I’m choosing to believe you are.” He shut the door behind them.

“The one who killed someone?”

He shoved his hands in his front pockets and met her eyes. “I don’t even know how to begin to think about that yet. But I like certain things about you. I think you talk a lot of sense, even if half the time I don’t understand or agree with you.” He pinched two fingers together, nearly touching. “I’m actually about this close to thinking I sort of admire you for having the balls to drug my dogs and rob me in the dead of night. I want to wring your neck, but I also think you might be sort of special.”

She made a skeptical face.

“Anyway…” Russ trailed off, scanning the room. “Why don’t you take it easy until dinner? I have to return a couple phone calls and do some more paperwork. I’ll make something in a bit.”

Her heart sank. “You sure there’s nothing else I can do to help?”

“Not really.”

She sighed, took a chance and made a joke. “You have a harmonica I could play? Maybe a tin can to rattle against the bars when I get hungry?”

Russ’s face flipped through a range of emotions before settling on a sad smile. “I really don’t have any easy chores to give you, but if you’re bored, how about a puzzle or something?”

She laughed. “Yeah, sure.”

Russ headed to the door past his bedroom, the so-called black hole for good intentions. Sarah followed as he went inside, scouting around for tragic souvenirs but not finding any obvious ones. Aside from the crib. That was sitting by the far wall under a curtained window, cardboard boxes stacked neatly inside it.

Russ walked to a bookshelf and waved his hand at a selection of board games and jigsaw puzzles. “Have at it.” Seeming cagey about being in the room, he left her alone.

Sarah slid out a thousand-piece puzzle of what she thought was a Montana landscape, only to discover it was Idaho when she looked at the lid. “Close enough.”

She tucked it under her arm, the rattle of the pieces and the promise of this activity comforting. She bet she hadn’t done a puzzle in fifteen years, but she anticipated the smell of musty cardboard already, the perfect fragrance to complement Russ’s dated interior decorating.

Closing the door softly behind her, Sarah crossed the den and eyed the coffee table, hoping it was big enough. She opened the box and propped the lid against the arm of the couch beside her for reference. Whoever had done this puzzle last had been lazy, and she set to work breaking up the chunks of linked pieces, wanting to do it properly. She gave a small jump as Russ clunked an open beer bottle before her on the table.