Sandra swore again, more loudly than before, and Norm’s eyes narrowed with shocked surprise. He stared at me as if I must be a robot operated by remote control, with Ricky pushing the buttons and telling me what to say.
“Rebecca, did Ricky threaten you in any way? Or did he threaten Shelby?”
“No.”
His face darkened with a new thought. “Where is Shelby?”
“Safe,” I said.
“Safe where?”
“She’s safe,” I repeated.
Sandra looked ready to spit. “That’s it. I’m calling Darrell.”
“No.” I grabbed hold of her wrist. “No, don’t do that. It’s fine. Really.”
“It’s not fine. You’re not fine.”
“This is my choice.”
“She just told you she’s fine, Sandra,” Ricky interjected. “It’s time for you to mind your own business for once in your life and leave my wife alone.”
“Rebecca is not your wife anymore,” Norm pointed out.
“That’s up to her, not some piece-of-shit lawyer like you.”
Norm shook his head. His eyes pleaded with me to take a different road. “Rebecca, this man has no control over you. You owe him nothing. He’s not your husband. All you have to do is say the word, and Darrell will take him to jail.”
“That’s not what I want.”
“Rebecca!” Norm went on, his frustration boiling over. I hadn’t seen him lose control like that very often. “Have you forgotten what this man did to you?”
Just for an instant, my eyes smoldered. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
I wanted to say: For Shelby. That was the reason. That was the one and only reason. Everything in my whole life was about you. But there was no way for me to explain.
Instead, I looked at Ricky and said, “Let’s get out of here. I don’t care about the show. Take me away from here.”
“You heard her,” Ricky announced to the crowd. “My wife says we’re leaving.”
He took my hand in a tight grip. As we headed for the door of the 126, a path parted slowly, just wide enough for the two of us to get through. Sandra, Norm, and others followed right behind. When we reached the door and Ricky opened it, Sandra called after me.
“Rebecca, do not leave with him. Honey, please. Stay here.”
I froze in the doorway and looked over my shoulder at her. My face was stricken. A part of me wanted to stay, but it was too late for that. A part of me wanted to explain, but I couldn’t do that, either. I opened my mouth to say goodbye, but I didn’t have a chance to say anything at all.
Someone screamed. Not in the bar. On the television. The introduction to Ben’s new documentary began with the sound of a woman screaming, making my flesh ripple. Then we heard Ben’s dramatic voice filling the silence of the room.
“I’m Ben Malloy. Seven years ago, I brought you to a remote place called Black Wolf County, where a murderous beast known as the Ursulina had ripped apart the flesh of two men in a savage attack. Ever since that awful day, the people in this area have lived their lives in terror, wondering when the monster would return. Well, last December, they got their answer. The Ursulina came back... to kill again.”
I didn’t need to hear any more.
Ricky and I left the bar together.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Where are we going?” I asked Ricky as we drove.
He stayed on the arrow-straight highway, leaving Random far behind us. We continued under the moon’s glow, and snow flurries fell from the cold night sky. After a while, I guessed what our destination was, and I said nothing more. Honestly, it felt right to go there, like the end and the beginning of my story coming together in the same place.
It took us an hour to reach Norm’s trailer. I could sense my stress rising as we got closer. My heart always felt it, like a shadow coming over my soul. We traveled first on the highway, then on the rutted dirt road through the national forest. Eventually, I saw the familiar glint of the silver frame through the headlights. Ricky pulled off the road onto a bed of fallen leaves and stopped. I could see in the tire tracks that he’d been coming and going for several weeks.
“You’ve been staying here?” I asked.
“Yeah. Ironic, huh?”
“Weren’t you afraid Norm would find out?”
“A buddy of mine rented it from Norm for a couple of months. Told him he was having trouble with the wife, and they needed time apart. So we have our privacy here, don’t worry. It’s just you and me.”
I got out of the car. Ricky headed straight for the trailer, but I lingered by the woods. Somewhere nearby, I heard the hoot of an owl, like a sign, like a warning. When I’d been ten years old, an owl had tried to alert me that the Ursulina was close by. That I was in danger. I inhaled, to see if I could smell the beast. I listened for the hufffffff. There was nothing. But I could feel its presence looming over me, the way I had that night near Sunflower Lake. If I plunged into the darkness, I was sure I would find it, or it would find me. We would be reunited, the monster and the girl. In my heart, we’d been inseparable ever since that moment. The two of us joined together by blood.
I followed Ricky inside the trailer. My chest convulsed with terror when I closed the trailer door, as if no time had passed. It was seven years ago again. I was right back where everything had started.
Ricky sat on the bed. He didn’t turn on the lights, so he was nothing but a dim shadow. He still wore the fur coat, the fur pants; he still looked like the beast, waiting for me. The trailer floor creaked under my feet as I walked toward him. He patted the bed, which was unmade, and I sat down beside him.
This was my moment of truth.
I’m sorry, Shelby. I wish I could keep this from you forever. I’ve held back my secret from you, and maybe that was wrong of me. Maybe I should have told you at the beginning — told you who I am and what I did — but then what? I couldn’t expect you to understand it until you knew me. Until you knew my whole story.
But now?
Now I have to tell you who your mother really is. You can decide for yourself if there is any salvation possible for someone like me.
I stared at Ricky. It was obvious what he wanted to hear, and there was no point in holding it back anymore. It was time to say out loud what we’d both known and both kept from each other.
“So you knew all along that I killed them,” I said. “You knew when you met me that I was the one who murdered Kip and Racer.”
There was enough moonlight through the window for me to see his white teeth.
“Yeah. That was part of the thrill.”
I stood up from the bed. I had to swallow down the urge to vomit, hearing my own confession. For seven years, I’d hidden my sins from the world. I’d lied to Darrell. I’d lied to everyone. I’d lived in terror of being discovered. And all along, the whole time, Ricky knew.
He’d found my camera.
“Where are the rest of the photographs?” I asked, with a kind of clinical curiosity. “I want to see them.”
“They’re in the cabinet over the sink.”
I went and turned on the small light there, and then I opened the cabinet door. There was a small envelope of pictures on the lowest shelf, next to a dated thirty-five-millimeter camera. I grazed my fingers across its familiar frame.
It was the camera that I’d seen in Ricky’s hand in the film I’d watched at Ben Malloy’s house.
The same camera I’d used to take the photograph of Gordon Brink, Kip Wells, and Racer Moritz seven years earlier.