Chapter 4
The pungent smell of vinegar barbecue hits the patio of Lindsey’s Smokehouse, one of the only restaurants on Lincoln’s square.
James sifts through his pulled pork and tries to listen to his cousin Jessie talk about living in New York, the paid sponsorship she just got, the collectors buying her paintings, how glad she is that her sucky roommate’s moving out next week, the friend she met who is unnaturally hot and smart and could possibly, fingers crossed, turn into more.
“Half the week I go to a little studio in Brooklyn to paint,” Jessie says.
“I swear it’s like a scam. I get to do what I love, and these suckers are buying it.
” Her hair is frizzy from the heat and tied back in a ponytail.
She wipes a smudge of hot sauce off her cheek.
Two years ago, Jessie’s artwork blew up on social media.
Since then she has had an influx of commissions and people with too much money and empty walls scrabbling to clean out her shows, and brands constantly paying her to come to their events, to use their paint, to post a picture with their energy drink.
“Every now and then, though, I pick up a shift at the place I worked in college. This tiny little bookshop, Shack O’ Books. You’d love it.”
Jessie continues. “I also have my internship, which isn’t great because it’s unpaid labor, but I’m making unbelievable connections.
Not just Lena, though she’s definitely a perk of the job.
She’s really studious, which isn’t normally my type, you know.
But she just got a job working at some corporate law firm, so she’ll probably leave the program soon, and when she’s out, I’m out.
I’m only doing it as an excuse to spend time with her. ”
“Mm-hmm.” James tries to remember what she said, but her words are mush in his brain. He shoots in the dark with, “Then what?”
A crumpled straw wrapper bounces off his forehead.
“Ouch.”
“Come back to earth please,” Jessie says. “If you need to talk, talk. But don’t leave me rambling. You know I’ll go on forever.”
“It’s nothing,” he says.
“My flight back is in eight hours, so you have about six left to receive my wise counsel.”
He sets his fork down. “I met someone.”
Jessie swirls her straw. “Intrigued.”
“She was here on the Fourth of July, and on Monday I stopped by her house—”
“Where does she live?”
“Blackwood Road.”
“Name?”
“Nelle. Nelle Quill, I guess.”
Jessie purses her lips. “She lives here? I’ve never heard of her.”
“Me, neither,” James says. “She didn’t give me a phone number, just her address.
So I go see her, and Wallace Quill opens the door.
He says she’s his daughter, that she has to finish her homework, but I never heard about him having another kid after the accident with his family.
And when I come in, he has this aura about him.
Like he wants to pick apart my ribs and use each one as a bow for his violin. ”
“Gruesome, but okay. Don’t most dads have that ‘Oh, this is my daughter and you’re not allowed to even think about her’ look?”
“This was different,” James shakes his head.
“Nelle was in the kitchen. I could see her. But . . . she wouldn’t move.
She was trembling . . . and the way he talked about her .
. .” Even in the ninety-degree heat, chills break out across James’s arms. “I can’t describe it, but I think something bad is happening in that house. ”
“Do you want my advice?”
He sighs. “Yes.”
“Stay out of it,” Jessie says. “If something weird is going on, trust me, you don’t want to get involved. Call the police, and they’ll take care of it.”
“No.” His heart hammers at the thought of abandoning Nelle in unknown peril.
“James.” Jessie snaps her fingers. “Don’t get hurt over someone you’ve only known for three days. If her dad is like you say he is, he might be dangerous, and you don’t know what he’s capable of—”
Straw to her lip, Jessie freezes, looking over James’s shoulder. “Holy shit, he’s here. He’s watching you.”
James whirls, knocking the table with his leg. Soda sloshes, pools around the base of the glass.
A 2004 Jeep zooms off the square, tires screeching as it pulls down the street.
The evening is mellow, warm, sticky. Cicadas scream in the trees in front of James’s house.
He smacks a mosquito on his arm, leaving behind a trail of blood, and waves goodbye to Jessie as she backs out of his driveway in her rental sedan, off to the airport.
It stings every time she leaves. He doesn’t know when he will see her again, and he is jealous of the life she is flying away to.
He sighs. Is he stupid for thinking he, too, will one day get to live in New York?
Being an author feels like a pipe dream, especially when his mom and dad slip med-school brochures under his bedroom door and shake their heads with disapproval every time he breathes Jessie’s name.
Aunt Patricia, in that classic mom way, calls her twice a week to guilt her into coming back to Lincoln.
The first firefly of the night blinks past. Pam, the town’s mail carrier, pulls onto Anderson Street, bobbing her head behind her windshield.
Her musical taste is vast and consistent: explicit rap Thursday through Saturday, worship songs Monday through Wednesday.
When she pulls up to the house and waves at James, out spills a soulful lyric about sinking into the waves of God.
Wednesday. July 7.
Three days since he met Nelle.
Two since he went to her house and saw her sitting almost lifeless at that table.
James braces himself on the porch railing, his phone like a rock in his pocket. Just three numbers. He could dial three numbers, tell them he is concerned for Nelle, and be done with it. That is all he has to do. Anxiety eats at his stomach like a monster, stilling him.
Going back to 23 Blackwood Road terrifies him.
But Nelle might be in danger.
Shit.
He pulls out his phone, nauseous and trembling, and dials 911.
It rings for half a terrifying second before a woman answers.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“I, um . . .” James sucks in the warm air.
“I went to a friend’s house two days ago.
Nelle Quill. She lives at 23 Blackwood Road.
I met her father for the first time, or at least I think it was her father.
But he seemed really strange. Scary. I saw him again today in town.
I think he was following me. I’m just worried about her safety, so if there’s anything you could do to check in on her .
. . I know you probably need a search warrant for that, but—”
On the other end, a woman exhales strongly enough to cut him off. A pen scratches. “What’s your name?”
“James. James Finch.”
“Thank you for calling us about this, James. Where are you now?”
“Home.”
“Stay there for now, ’kay, hon?”
“I can do that.” Suddenly James’s porch feels like a prison cell. All he wants is to break out and haul ass to Blackwood Road. Is sending the police a grave mistake? He leans against the chipped railing. “How soon do you think you’ll send someone?”
“We can have an officer out there tonight.”
James exhales and fishes his memory for Jessie’s advice. Stay out of it.
“’Kay. Thank you for calling, James.”
“Thanks,” he says absently.
A frightened animal coils inside him, telling him to stop talking to Nelle, to disassociate himself, to resume life like normal and never think about her again. Go back to school, graduate, get a job, stay in Georgia.
But Quill is in that house with Nelle, and has been for God knows how long. James swallows.
Stay there for now, ’kay, hon?
He storms up to his Smith Corona and lets his fingers fly. Metal hammers clank down on paper. Fifteen minutes later he crumples a half-filled page and tosses it over his shoulder. It bounces off the trash can rim.
He rolls in another sheet.
Dear Nelle, I—
Should he ask if she’s okay, if she needs help? If Quill is hurting her?
He feels like he’s overstepping his boundaries as a stranger, but a bigger part of him can’t ignore the uneasiness in his gut. The feeling of slime coating his skin that three showers haven’t scrubbed away. Whatever is happening in that cabin at 23 Blackwood Road isn’t good, that’s all he knows.
And he needs to make sure Nelle’s okay.
Something she said to him on the Fourth keeps coming back, echoing in his mind.
I get to be happy right now. Did her happiness end when she returned home? Chills spread like ivy up the back of James’s neck. He slides his typewriter into position, ready to start yet another first line.
Dear Nelle . . .
An out-of-breath panther paces Nelle’s room, muttering to the floor, strands of black hair falling over his forehead. Her thin white rug slides crooked under his shoes, but he doesn’t straighten it.
“I ask you to follow simple rules, and still you disappoint me.”
Nelle checks the clock on the wall, a gift for her eighth birthday. Before, she used the stars to track time in this cage of a room. Since she got the clock, she has been tallying off the days on the baseboard under her bed using a hairpin. Almost five thousand little white marks now.
Father pokes her chest, hard, and she flinches, the quilt curling under her fingers.
“I’m the reason you have a beating heart under there, and breathing lungs, that you fucking exist. I created you.
” His words slice at her until she can feel the tendons of her love for him snapping.
Only took twenty-one years, one too many tastes of freedom, and James Finch to get her to this point.
Up close, the liquor on his hot breath twists her stomach.
He growls and resumes his pacing. “All that work. Every day I slave over your life, writing for you. Don’t you know what would happen if it weren’t for me, Nellie? Don’t you know?”
Nelle says, “I would be stuck here. I wouldn’t be able to move. Or go anywhere. Or eat. I would be immobile.” The words are a lifeless recitation.