PART SIX THE WOMAN
The boutique was called Little Bird. It sold clothes for babies and small children. Maren Delgado worked the register on Fridays.
Caleb walked in on a Friday afternoon. He had a photo of her on his phone, the one with the fall leaves. He found her behind the counter. She looked exactly like the photo. She was twenty-four. She was wearing a name tag that said Maren.
He walked up to the counter. He said: Maren.
She smiled the way retail workers smile. She said: hi, can I help you?
Caleb said: it’s me. Caleb. We’ve been talking for four months. You stood me up on Valentine’s Day. You told me you were in a wreck. I drove eight hours. I’ve been losing my mind.
Maren’s smile faded. She looked at him as you look at a stranger saying your name wrong. She said: I don’t know you. I’ve never spoken to you. I don’t use dating apps. I’ve never used dating apps. I’m married. I have two children. I think you have me confused with someone.
Caleb said: you’re Maren Delgado.
She said: yes.
He said: the photos. The ones you sent me. The porch. The coffee. The fall leaves.
Maren went cold. She recognized her own photos in his description. She understood, in a fast horrible second, that someone had taken her pictures. She said: those are my photos. From my Facebook. Someone took them. It wasn’t me. I’m so sorry, but it wasn’t me.
Caleb did not hear it. He heard: I am lying to you. He heard: I used you and I am standing here pretending I don’t know you. He heard what his rage needed him to hear.
He called her a liar. He said it loud. A mother near the strollers turned to look. Maren stepped back from the counter. Caleb’s hands were shaking. He wanted to grab her. He wanted to make her say his name the way she had said it on the phone, soft and low, like he mattered.
He turned. He walked out. He left the door swinging to slam behind him.
He sat in the rental car across the parking lot.
He looked at the front of the store until the lights went down at nine.
He watched her come out with a coworker.
He watched her get into a minivan and drive to a house twelve minutes away.
He followed behind inconspicuously. He watched parallel park on the street, get out of the vehicle, slowly gather a bag from the backseat, and turn to walk up a long path towards the front door of a suburban middle-class home.
With his car’s headlights off, he pulled over a few parking spot behind her. He eased out of the car, slow and quiet, gently cracking the car door. Not closing it completely.
He snuck up behind her in the dark. She did not hear him until he was too close, and then as she started to turn…
he shot her twice. One bullet grazed her left hip, and another bullet went clean through her lower ribcage.
The sounds were enormous, cracking the peace of the silent neighborhood into sudden shock.
She went down to her knees and fell forward onto her face.
The diaper bag she carried hit the concrete and fell open.
Before the baby toys and empty bottles rolled out to the nearby grass-line, Caleb was already back in the car, engine started, pulled away so fast tires screeched and burned marks into the road.
He did not look at her again. He drove east out of the city, toward the highway, toward Texas, toward Denton, the only city he knew besides home, the city where the man lived who had sent him here.