Chapter 11 #2
Val does not know how much she knows. She has the plate and the scent and she has whatever else she has. She does not have Evangeline's name. She does not have the cabin's address. She does not have a photograph. She does not have an admission.
She has one lie from me.
One lie about Rachel Doyle.
I have spent fourteen years buying a kind of standing with Val that she does not extend to any other body in this house, and I have just spent it.
I have spent it on a woman I have known for five days.
I have spent it on a woman who is asleep in my bed in a flannel shirt of mine right now, who has no wallet and no passport, whose face is on a seven a.m. newsfeed in every kitchen in the city. Evangeline Clark is a missing person.
I have spent my standing with Val on the sound Evangeline made when she came into my mouth.
I have spent it and I will spend it again.
That is the sentence. It came up in me plain in the chair while Val was watching me lie, and it has not moved. I will spend it again. I will lie to her again. I will lie to her every morning this week if I have to. I will lie to her every morning this year.
I turn the key. The engine catches. The heater comes on.
I pull out of the yard.
I drive the four blocks to the diner across the river. I do not eat. I sit in the booth with a cup of coffee I do not drink, and I take out my phone, and I stare at the screen. I do not call her. I do not have a phone for her yet. I cannot call her.
I write her a message I cannot send because she has no phone.
I told Val you are a woman named Rachel Doyle. If anyone asks, Rachel Doyle flew into Boise Saturday. Don't come to the door. I will be home by eight.
I do not send it. I can’t even if I want to. I delete it. I delete it because the message is evidence. I have started writing the wrong kinds of messages on my phone. I have started thinking of my phone as a thing that could betray me. I put the phone screen-down on the table.
I sit in the booth.
I look out the window at the river.
The river is gray and cold and moving. It is not yet full light. A man in a reflective vest is walking a dog along the bank. A bus goes past. The waitress tops up my coffee.
I think about Evangeline.
I think about her on purpose. I think about her to have something in the booth with me that is not Val's voice.
And because I am obsessed with her. I think about her asleep on her side this morning in my bed.
I think about the curve of her shoulder.
I think about her bandaged hand on my stomach.
I think about the small laugh out of her when I said stop thanking me and she said no.
I think about the way she put my wrist in her hand and turned the scar up and ran her lips over it.
Val gave it to me, in a way. Val wrote it into my file.
Val never put her hand on it. And certainly not her mouth.
Evangeline Clark put her fingers and mouth on it like it was the most precious thing in the world.
I am in love with a woman I have known five days.
I say the sentence in my head.
I say it again.
I do not flinch from it. I have never said it about anyone.
I have not said it about women who were kind to me and I have not said it about women who I slept with for six months at a time in the years I still did that, and I have not said it about Val, who I love in a different way and who is not a word I would put the word love on.
I say it about Evangeline Clark in the booth of a diner two miles from the station where I just lied to the woman who pulled me out of a class of thirty nineteen years ago, and the sentence does not move when I set it down.
I run the cover in my head.
Rachel Doyle. Academy, 2007. Oregon since 2011.
Dark hair, my height, the kind of laugh that carried across a bay.
I last had coffee with her at a conference in Spokane in 2017.
She married a carpenter. She has two kids.
She would pick up if I called her at five in the morning.
I think about what I would have to tell her and I think about what I would not have to tell her, and I decide that if Val pushes I will drive up into the hills and make the call from a gas station off the interstate and not from my phone.
I will give Rachel a version of the story that does not involve a missing woman in my bed or a fire I set.
I will tell her I have a sister in trouble.
Rachel had a sister in trouble in 2005 and she took her in for a year.
She will understand the verb in trouble.
I lay the cover down like a turnout coat, in order. I pat the pockets.
I put my hand flat on the table.
I pick up the phone. I slide it into my pocket.
I pay for the coffee.
I walk out to the truck.
I drive back to Station 9.
I have a shift to run. I have a crew to push. I have a probie to ride. I have three more conversations with Val today and a meeting at two with the arson board to prep.
I have a missing woman in my bed forty miles northwest.
I have both. I am going to have both. I do not yet know how.
I pull into the yard. I park. I take my keys out of the ignition. I sit with them in my hand a count.
The scar on my forearm hums.
I get out and I go in.