10. What They Say, What I Know
WHAT THEY SAY, WHAT I KNOW
CAIN
I have another shit night. Like I’ve had since that beautiful one with Faith turned ugly.
I’m having nightmares. Loud ones.
It starts in silence—but it’s the wrong kind, the one where a storm’s sucked the air from the world.
I stand in a hallway that smells like bleach and iron.
Jail. I knew it before I saw the bars. Before I hear her voice.
“Cain, baby?”
It’s a whisper. Fragile. Uncertain.
I follow the sound, boots heavy on tile. The corridor is endless, stretching like some hell-loop, doors on either side, like mouths sealed shut. But I know which one is hers.
When I reach it, she’s sitting on the floor in the corner of the cell, arms wrapped around her knees, hair hanging in damp strands over her face. The jumpsuit they’ve put her in is too big. Her wrists are bruised where the cuffs must’ve bit down.
She looks up.
Her eyes find mine. But there’s nothing there but grief. Immeasurable. Immense. Unending.
“I didn’t do it,” she says, voice cracking. “Please, baby. You know me. You said you knew me.”
I press my hands to the bars.
I try to say her name, to tell her I’m sorry, that I was wrong, that I never stopped believing her—except I did, didn’t I?
I let doubt crawl in through the cracks and take root.
I looked her in the eyes and still chose everyone else.
“You stole,” I whisper to protect myself. She did.
But I remember even in the dream what Lo said, “No evidence.”
Faith reaches for me, fingers trembling through the gap in the bars.
“Help me,” she whispers. “Please, Cain. Help me.”
I try to move. Try to reach her. But I can’t. I’m stuck. Paralyzed.
I scream, but no sound comes out. My feet won’t budge. I’m cemented to the floor of a cage I made for her— and myself.
Then she starts to cry.
Not just tears. But sobs that shake her whole body.
She breaks right in front of me. Her shoulders hunch, her breath comes in stuttering gasps, and she folds in on herself like she’s trying to disappear into the concrete.
“Faith!” I shout. Now my voice is back, and I can move. But it’s too late.
She collapses. Crumples like paper, her body limp and pale. Her head hits the floor with a sickening crack.
“FAITH!”
I slam into the bars, trying to break through them. She lies still. Her skin is gray. Her eyes closed.
Lo is there. She tells me that Faith is dead. “You killed her.”
“No. No.”
I reach through the bars again, and this time, I can touch her fingers—cold, unresponsive.
“Don’t do this. Come back. Please, come back. I love you. I didn’t know until it was too late, but I love you, God, I love you.”
And then ? —
I wake. My chest heaving, heart hammering like it’s trying to punch its way out. I’m soaked in sweat.
I’m in my bed. Alone. Sheets tangled, breath sharp in my throat.
The same bed where we made love. Where we spent the night. Where we woke up.
The nightmare still has its grip on me.
You have to drop the charges.
I run a hand through my hair. No, I don’t. She’s not there anymore. They let her go. They said there was no proof she did it.
You killed her.
The edges of the dream still have their hold on me. The pain is raw. It clings, raw and real and pulsing.
Faith’s not dead, Cain. She’s alive.
What if she didn’t do it? What then?
Then I let the best thing that ever happened to me slip through my fingers.
I press my palms to my face, trying to steady my breath. But the image of her on that cold jail floor doesn’t fade.
The next day, the rumors start afresh. Silverton is a small town, and the gossipmongers are having a field day.
Georgia is colder than usual with me.
“What?”
She looks like hell, like she hasn’t slept. But then so do I.
“Nothing.” She turns her back on me.
The first piece of news comes from Alison Stryker. Nice Church-going lady. Married to Lou Stryker, who runs Pine Mutual Bank. “She’s living in Ricky’s by-the-hour motel.”
“Goes from thief to whore,” Geena Stinson says. Her husband owns the auto parts store.
“Maybe she always was one.” Alison titters.
Georgia slams their check in front of them. “Whenever you’re ready.” She says it polite-like, but I know her, and she’s furious.
The words only get louder with every passing day: She’s a thief. A liar. A whore.
Silverton’s small. Cruel in that small-town way. Once people decide what you are, they don’t let you change your mind.
I try not to listen. But I do. Every single word.
“You believe any of this?” Georgia demands as we prepare to close for the day.
“About what?” I ask, feigning ignorance.
“About Faith.”
I shrug. “None of my business, Georgia.”
“She’s not hooking or stripping,” Georgia hisses. “She’s cleaning.”
“Whatever.”
She shakes her head. “It’s easier, isn’t it, to hate her than to admit you might’ve ruined someone who was already clinging to the edge.”
“Georgia,” I snap, “If you don’t want to work for me, say the word. I’m not going to have you keep on it about Faith. She’s dead to me, gone.”
“You’re the most beautiful woman, inside and out, that I’ve ever been with, Faith.”
“Really?” The vulnerability in her voice, the hope in her eyes, undoes me.
“Your skin is like silk, Faith.”
“Hardly.”
I don’t want to think about Faith or listen to others talk about her.
Paula and Melody are all over it with vicious glee. I hate it, hate them, hate myself. I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore, and I don’t know what to believe.
“Is there any progress on the investigation?” I ask Kyle when he joins them one night, nearly two weeks since they let Faith go.
“What investigation?” Kyle looks confused.
“The theft,” I bellow.
People look at us, and both Paula and Melody look chagrined.
“Ah….” Kyle looks at my sister and then at me helplessly. “I…don’t know, Cain. Sheriff Z took the investigation over. I’m out of it.”
“What do you mean by that?” Melody screeches.
He lifts his shoulders in a helpless gesture. “I’m…I don’t know what’s going on with the Faith thing.”
“But Faith is still a suspect, isn’t she?” Melody asks in a way that makes my skin crawl.
Why do these two hate her so much? She’s never done anything to them.
Is all this anger on behalf of her stealing from me?
“I guess.” Kyle looks like he’d rather be getting a root canal right now than be talking about Faith. “She was told not to leave town.”
Paula and Melody look relieved.
I want to stop thinking about Faith, but I can’t let it go. Doubt keeps scratching at the walls of my certainty.
“You sure you both saw her that night?” I ask carefully.
“Of course, honey.” Melody snuggles up to me, her tits brush against my arm. I pull away.
Since Faith, she’s been dropping big fat hints that she wants us back together.
I’d rather sleep alone for the rest of my life than get back with her, so I keep my distance from her, obviously, clearly, unambiguously, but now it looks like I might need to talk to her, tell her we’re never fucking happening, even if we were the last two people on the planet.
I drive to Nectar two nights later and wait in my truck.
I see her walk out at four in the morning when the place closes. There’s a hunched quality to her. She looks like she’s holding herself as she walks. The usual grace, the alacrity in her step, isn’t there.
If I didn’t see her face in the light of the back door when she stepped out, I wouldn’t know it was Faith.
This woman is not the one I remember, the one who was spry, cheerful, lively.
She’s not the one who sat across from me on a bench outside at Ripley’s on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, reading a book she borrowed from the library during her break.
“What’s the new book?”
“Cicero.”
Will this girl ever cease to surprise me? “The Roman orator?”
She grins. “This is the last book in the trilogy by Robert Harris. He’s the same guy who wrote the book the movie Conclave is based on.”
“Three books? That’s a commitment.”
“I’ve read them twice. Have you? You should. The library has the books.”
Does she still read, I wonder? And if she does, what is she reading now?
Crime And Punishment by Dostoevsky?