Chapter Thirty-Three
On foot, dressed in a heavy parka and boots on a hot summer day, he lugs a heavy suitcase through crowded streets, trying to find the airport in some foreign city.
He tries to flag a taxi, but they all drive on past, and he tries to ask for directions, but no one speaks English. There’s nothing to do but keep walking.
Every part of him aches with the effort, and the more he walks, the more lost he is. Day turns to night; the pavement and streetlights and traffic disappear, and somehow he’s in rugged, forested terrain. He’s dogged by panic, certain he’s going to miss his flight, and he has to get away because—
A harsh bleating wrenches him from the nightmare.
It’s the alarm.
He isn’t in the woods or in some foreign city. He’s in bed in the room he rented at the Super 8. The ache is real. So is the heat. He isn’t wearing winter clothes, but he is fully dressed, shoes and all, beneath the thin bedspread. He’d been utterly exhausted when he got back here last night.
No, this morning. Just as the sun was coming up.
He had lived through a nightmare—the steep mountain road, searching, finding the spot at last, getting down to work with the shovel.
Digging was much easier back in April, when the air was cool and the soil was soft and spongy after weeks of spring rains.
Now the air felt warm and sticky even at that altitude, and the ground was dry and hard, strewn with rocks .
. . He doesn’t remember so many rocks the last time.
He couldn’t dig nearly as deep a grave as he had for Junia Stanton.
In the end, he dragged the tarped corpse into the hole, along with the cell phone, and covered it with a few inches of dirt and stones, telling himself that it would be fine. It’s not as if someone is going to come along and notice that something is amiss.
Now, though, he suspects he was too careless.
He sits up and throws off the covers. The white sheet’s underside is streaked with dirt and a bit of blood.
Hers, somehow?
No, it’s his own. His palms are raw and blistered from gripping the shovel. His pants are torn and his shoes caked in crumbly soil. He can smell the earth, mingling with his own sweat and putrid breath and the stale hotel room.
He gets up and finds his phone on the table beside the door. He hadn’t bothered to turn it on when he got back. Now he does.
There are a number of missed calls. Text messages too.
Yesterday, he answered her Hey, babe, how’s the trip going? with a quick Fine, working, will call you later.
He never had. Before he left home, he’d warned her that cell service might be sketchy where he was going.
She’d texted several more times.
Miss you! Still working?
Everything okay?
Getting worried!
Hey, where are you?
Going to bed, just let me know you’re alive!
That was the last one.
He responds now with a thumbs-up emoji and a cheery Good Morning! Sorry, late night.
He hits send.
His phone rings almost immediately.
He sighs and answers it. “Hi, sweetie.”