Chapter 21
MAX
Isign the last page at eleven-fifty-eight.
I put the cap on the pen. I square the stack. I get up. I take the stack down the hall to her office. The door is open. The lamp on her desk is on. The chief is at the desk in the same shirt with the same coffee cup at the same angle she had at six and she does not look up when I come in.
"Chief."
"Put it on the corner."
I put it on the corner.
She does not look up.
"Go home, Hale."
"Chief."
"Go."
I stand at the door. She does not look up.
I go.
The drive out is forty-two minutes. I do not put the radio on.
The road past the on-ramp is empty at midnight.
The moon is a thin slice over the foothills.
I count the mile markers between the highway and the cabin road and I do not count anything else, and I pull into the drive at twelve-forty-one with the headlights on the porch.
The lamp in the kitchen window is on at low.
I sit in the truck for a count of four with my hands on the wheel.
The lamp is on.
She left the lamp on for me.
I get out.
I take the steps two at a time the way I take them every time.
The porch boards are cold under my boots.
The screen door has been latched. I open the screen.
I open the inside door. The cabin is warm at the edge of the door and it smells of rosemary and butter and bread, and the front room is dim and the fire is out, and there is a quilt on the corner of the sofa with a book face-down on it.
"Evangeline."
I do not call her loud.
I call her once.
The cabin does not answer.
I stand in the front room with the door open behind me and the cold coming in around my boots, and I look at the quilt on the corner of the sofa, and I look at the book face-down on the cushion, and I look at the wine glass on the side table half-full, and I look at the fire in the front room that is out, and I look at the lamp in the kitchen window, and the lamp in the kitchen window is on at low.
"Evangeline."
I close the door behind me.
"Evangeline."
I cross the front room into the kitchen.
The chicken is on the counter beside the bread. The chicken is cold. The skin is set. There is a knife on the cutting board beside the bread that has not been used. The note I wrote to her at five in the morning is on the table by the window, folded twice, the way I left it.
She has not opened it.
She has not opened the note.
For a beat I do not understand.
Then I do.
She did not need to open the note to know I was coming home tonight.
She knew I was coming home tonight.
She is not here because she chose not to be here.
I stand at the counter with my hand on the edge of it and I look at the chicken and the meal is cold.
I put my hand flat on the counter beside the bread.
I count to four.
The bedroom door is open. The bedside lamp is on at low. The bed is made. The quilt is folded at the foot the way she folds it. The pillow on her side has the dent of her head in it from this morning. The closet door is open.
I walk to the dresser.
The brass dish is on the dresser the way I left it Tuesday morning when I cleared the dish for her ring.
The chain is gone. The chain is gone and the ring is in the dish, and the ring is in the dish without the chain, and the ring is sitting at the bottom of the brass dish on its side at the edge of the rim with the small diamond up and the band down, and the diamond is cold in the lamplight, and there is a piece of paper folded in half under the dish.
I move the dish.
I unfold the paper.
It is one line.
I know what you did.
The pen is the pen from the side table. The paper is from the small notebook by the bed.
I know what you did.
I sit down on the edge of the bed.
I sit down on the edge of the bed with the paper in my hand and the brass dish at my elbow and the ring in the dish on its side, and I do not move for a count of four, and I do not move for another count of four after that.
She knows.
She knows.
And surely only one person could have told her.
Val.
Val came here.
Val came to my cabin and stood in my front room and told the woman I love that I killed her husband.
Val gave me ten hours of paperwork so that she could come out here alone.
The paperwork was not the punishment.
The paperwork was the alibi.
I make a sound in my chest I have not made before.
I make it once. I do not let it have a second one.
I stand up.
I walk out of the bedroom and down the stairs. The front room: quilt, book face-down, half-glass of wine. The kitchen: cold chicken, bread on the board, brass key, the note I wrote her, the lamp on at low in the window.
I turn the lamp off.
The kitchen goes dark.
I turn the lamp back on.
I want to scream. Where is she? Where is Evangeline?
I can’t live without Evangeline.
I put my coat on.
I open the door, and I go out.
---
I run.
I run off the porch and across the gravel and onto the trail at the side of the cabin that goes up into the pines. The trail is dark. There is no moon under the trees. I have run this trail five hundred times. I have run it in the dark. I have run it in snow. I have run it in rain.
I run it now.
I am crying without making the sound of crying because I do not know how to make the sound of crying and I have not made it since I was eight years old in a kitchen on Wells Avenue when my mother told me my father was not coming back.
I run.
The trail forks at the half-mile. I take the left fork up the ridge. The trail gets steeper. The trees thin. There is a clearing at the top of the ridge with a flat rock the size of a kitchen table and a view of the valley that on a clear afternoon you can see Boise in.
I run past the clearing.
I do not stop at the rock.
I keep running.
I run past the clearing. I run up the back of the ridge.
I run along the spine of the ridge to the place where the trail ends at the down-fall pine across the path where I have not cleared the trunk yet, and the trunk is at my hip, and I go to put a hand on it to vault it, and my left palm hits the bark.
I scream.
I scream once into the trees.
I do not scream her name. I do not scream Val's name. I do not scream a word. I scream like an animal in a snare and I scream until there is no air in me and then I bend over the trunk with my forehead on the bark and I breathe.
I breathe.
I breathe in fours.
The pine smells of sap. The bark is cold. The wind in the top of the pines is a small thing.
She made a chicken.
She made a chicken in my kitchen, and she made bread on my board, and she put the wine on the side table and the book on the cushion and the lamp on in the window, and she waited for me, and a woman I have loved for fourteen years drove out from the city and told her what I did, and she walked out of the cabin and now she is gone.
I know what you did.
I lift my head off the bark.
I push off the trunk.
I sit down on the ground with my back against the trunk and my legs out in front of me on the trail, and I put my face in my hands, and I cry the way I have not cried since the day on Wells Avenue.
I cry with my elbows on my knees and my hands over my face, I cry until my breath is even, and then I cry a little more.
I am in love with her.
I have been in love with her since the first day. And she loves me too.
I am going to get her back. I have to.
I do not know how.
But I am going to get her back.
I sit on the ground until the cold has gone through the jeans into the back of my legs and I am shaking. I pull myself up on the trunk. I turn around. I start back down the trail.
I run down.
I run down past the clearing on the ridge. I run down the spine of the ridge. I run out of the pines and across the gravel of the drive and up the porch steps and into the cabin, and I shut the door behind me, and I put my back against the door, and I slide down the door to the floor.
I feel my tears coming back and I can suddenly barely breathe.
I can’t breathe without you Evangeline.