Chapter 10

10

Will used the camera on his phone to document the placement and style of the backpack. It looked functional and expensive, like the type of equipment a real hiker would carry. There were three zippers, all closed: one for the main compartment, one for a smaller section in the front, and another for a pocket at the bottom. The material looked stretched to the limit. He could see two sharp corners pressing against the nylon that indicated a box or a heavy book was inside. The rain had stripped away some of the black soot from the fire. The nylon was lavender in color, almost identical to the shade of Mercy's Nikes.

Delilah came closer. "I saw that same bag in the house earlier."

Will asked, "Where was it?"

"Upstairs," she said. "Mercy's bedroom door was open. I saw it leaned against her dresser drawers. It didn't look that full, though. All of the zippers were open."

Will looked at Sara. They knew what should be done. The backpack was a valuable piece of evidence, but it was sitting among other valuable evidence. The arson investigator would want to take photos, comb through the debris, collect samples, run tests, search for accelerant, because something had clearly been used to make sure the cottage burned. Will had been inside while it was blazing. Fire didn't spread like that on its own.

Nadine offered her flashlight to Will, asking, "Can you hold on to this for me?"

He pointed the light downward while Nadine opened the heavy-looking toolbox she'd carried to the scene. She retrieved a pair of gloves. Then she reached into the back pocket of her coveralls for a pair of needle-nose pliers.

He trailed her with the beam of the flashlight. Thankfully, she didn't trample through the smoldering remnants of the fire. She walked around to the back. She reached over toward the lavender backpack. With a delicate precision, she grasped the metal pull tag of the zipper between the pliers and gently tugged. The bag opened up around two inches before the teeth caught.

Will angled up the light so she could have a better look inside.

Nadine said, "Looks like there's a notebook, some clothes, women's toiletries. She was going somewhere."

Sara asked, "What kind of notebook?"

"Composition type that kids take to school." She turned her head to get a different angle. "The cover looks like it's plastic. Melted from the heat. The bottom is full of water. Rain must've found its way in through the zipper. Pages are soaked together like glue."

Will asked, "Can you read anything?"

"Nope," she said. "And I'm not gonna try. We need somebody a lot smarter than me to handle that thing without destroying the pages."

Will had dealt with this kind of evidence before. The lab would need days to process the notebook. To make matters worse, the flashlight had picked out a burned plastic and metal carcass beside the backpack.

Nadine saw it, too. "Looks like an older-model iPhone. That thing is toast. Shine the light under there."

Will followed the spot she pointed to. He saw the remnants of a charred metal gas can. Dave had probably used it to fill the generator, then he'd used it to burn away the crime scene after murdering his wife.

Sara asked Delilah, "Do you know if Mercy said anything about leaving?"

"Bitty gave her until Sunday to get off the mountain. I don't know where she would go, especially in the middle of the night. Mercy's an experienced hiker. This time of year, we've got young male black bears looking to establish territory. You don't want to accidentally cross one."

Nadine said, "No offense, Dee, but Mercy wasn't known for her logic. Half the time she landed herself in hot water, it was because she flew off the handle and did something stupid."

Sara weighed in. "Mercy wasn't angry after the fight with Jon. She was worried. According to Paul, she made the ten o'clock rounds and picked up Monica's request from her front porch around ten-thirty. He didn't mention that she was acting strange. Even without that, I don't believe Mercy would head off in the night and leave Jon with things unsaid."

"No," Delilah said. "I don't believe she would, either. But why come here? There's no plumbing or electricity. She might as well stay at the house. God knows those people know how to glare at each other in angry silence."

They all looked at the backpack as if it could offer up an explanation.

Nadine said the obvious. "This is a hotel, people. If Mercy was sick of her family, she'd stay in one of the guest cottages."

Will offered, "Some of the beds were unmade when I searched the empty cottages. I figured they hadn't been cleaned from the previous guests."

"Penny's the cleaner. She's also the bartender. Might be worth asking her the question." Nadine looked up at Will. "You were searching the cottages for Dave?"

"I could've told you that was a waste of time," Delilah said. "Dave would be too afraid to stay in a cottage. My brother would tar his ass."

Will didn't point out that her brother couldn't leave his own house without assistance. "If Dave wanted to get out of here fast without being seen, he wouldn't go back to the main compound. He could follow the creek and eventually hit the McAlpine Trail, right?"

"Theoretically," Delilah said. "Lost Widow Creek is too deep to cross at the lake. You have to get past the big waterfall, and then it's still rough going. Might as well go another two hundred yards and cross on the stone footbridge at the mini waterfall. It's more like a white water section than Niagara Falls. From there, you can make a straight line down through the woods and pick up the McAlpine Trail. You'd be down the mountain in three or four hours. Unless a bear stopped you first."

"I dunno," Nadine said. "I don't see Dave going for a hike when the family truck's right by the house. He's been known to jack a vehicle or two when it suits him."

Will had been so sure of who Dave was as a kid that he hadn't thought to ask about his criminal record as an adult. "Has he ever been inside?"

"Early and often," Nadine said. "Dave's been in and out of county lock-up for DUIs, thieving, that kind of thing, but he's never landed himself in Big Boy prison, as far as I know."

Will could guess why Dave had never been sentenced to a state facility, but he tried to be careful. "The McAlpines are close to the sheriff's family."

"Bingo," Nadine said. "If you wanna know what to worry about, Dave's specialty is bar fights. He gets wasted, then he starts needling at people, only when they snap, he's ready with a switchblade."

"A switchblade?" Sara's voice went up in alarm. "Has he stabbed someone before?"

"Stabbed a leg once, slashed a couple of arms. Opened up one guy's chest to the bone," Nadine said. "People round here don't blink much over a bar fight. Dave took his licks. He gave some out. Nobody died. None of 'em pressed charges. That's a Saturday night."

Delilah said, "I thought Dave only picked on women."

"You're still seeing him as that stray pup looking for a home," Nadine said. "Dave's grown into his badness. All those demons he carried up from Atlanta have gotten older and meaner. Not sure how he's gonna wriggle out of this one, if that's any consolation. Murder is murder. That's a life sentence. Should be the death penalty, but he plays the poor battered orphan card better than most."

"I'll believe it when he's behind bars," Delilah said. "He's always been slippery as a snake. Ever since he slithered up the mountain. Cecil should've left him at that old campsite to rot."

Will knew that everything they were saying about Dave was true, but he couldn't help but feel defensive hearing them talk about abandoning a thirteen-year-old kid. He tried to catch Sara's eye, but she was studying the backpack.

"My God, that's where he's hiding!" Delilah exclaimed. "Camp Awinita. Dave used to sleep there when things got bad at the house. I'm sure he's there now."

Will felt like an idiot for not thinking of the campsite sooner. "How long will it take to get there?"

"You look like a sturdy man. It'll take you fifty minutes, maybe an hour. Go past the Shallows, then loop around to the back section of the middle part of the lake. The camp is a forty-five-degree angle from the diving platform, give or take."

"We were in that area before dinner," Will said. "We found a circle of rocks, like an old campfire."

"That's the bead circle for the Camp Fire Girls. It's roughly four hundred yards from the campgrounds, give or take. Too many Boy Scouts were sneaking over in the middle of the night, so they pushed it farther out. What you need to do is stay on the forty-five-degree angle from the diving platform. You'll find some bunkhouses that have been standing since the 1920s. I'm sure they're still there. Dave's bound to be in one of them." Delilah's hands were on her hips. "If you give me a moment to change, I'll take you right to it."

Will said, "That's not happening."

"I agree," Nadine chimed in. "We've already got one woman stabbed to death."

"Actually," Delilah said. "Now that I'm thinking about it, a canoe would be quicker."

Will liked the idea of sneaking up on Dave from the water. "There's a trail to the equipment shed, right?"

"Take Old Bachelor, just past the sawhorses. Go left on the Loop Trail, then back down at the fork toward the lake. The shed's tucked behind some pines."

"I'll go with you," Sara volunteered.

Will was about to shut her down, but then he remembered he only had one good hand. He told Sara, "You have to stay in the boat."

"Understood."

They started to leave, but Nadine was suddenly blocking his way.

"Hold up there, big guy. I've been happy letting you two kids tag along up till now, but Biscuits made it real clear he's not turning over the investigating. You can have the body, but the GBI doesn't have any authorization to be hunting down a murder suspect in Dillon County."

"You're right," Will said. "Tell the sheriff my wife and I are prepared to make our statements when he finds the time. For now, we're heading back to our cottage."

Nadine knew he was full of shit, but she had the sense to stop blocking his way. She stepped aside with a heavy sigh.

Delilah said, "Good luck."

Will followed Sara. She used the flashlight to supplement the changeable moonlight. Instead of following Delilah's directions toward the trail, she kept to the lake shore, probably because the route was more of a direct path to the shed. Will tried to plot out how they would handle the canoe. He could probably use the heel of his injured hand as a fulcrum, then pull back with his good hand, which meant the bulk of the work would need to come from his biceps and shoulders. He tested his bandaged hand. The fingers could move if he ignored the searing pain.

"Do you want my opinion?" Sara asked.

Will hadn't thought that her opinion was any different from his. "What's wrong?"

"There's nothing wrong," she said, sounding like a lot was wrong. "My opinion, if you're interested, is that you should wait for Faith."

Will had waited around long enough. "I told you she hit a traffic jam. If Dave's at the campsite—"

"You're unarmed. You're injured. You're soaking wet from the rain. Your bandage is filthy. You're probably setting up an infection. You're clearly in tremendous pain. You don't have authorization, and you have never paddled a canoe in your life."

Will chose the easiest point to knock down. "I can figure out how to paddle a canoe."

Sara used the light to find a way past the rocky shore. He caught the set look to her face. She was angrier than he'd thought.

"Sara, what do you want me to do?"

Her head started shaking as she splashed through the shallow water. "Nothing."

Will didn't have an argument for nothing. What he knew was that Sara was incredibly, consistently logical. She didn't get upset without reason. He silently scrolled back through the conversation at the crime scene. Sara had gone quiet when Nadine had told them that Dave carried a switchblade. And that he had used it on other men.

He studied her stiff back as she picked her way across a rocky incline. Her movements were jerky, like the anxiety was trying to punch its way out of her body.

He said, "Sara."

"You need both hands to perform a forward stroke in a canoe," she lectured. "Your dominant hand is the control hand. It goes on the top of the paddle at the palm grip. Your stroke hand goes on the shaft. You have to be able to stroke the paddle through the water while you push down and twist the control if you want to keep the canoe straight. Can you twist and stroke with both of your hands?"

"I like it better when you do it."

Sara swung around on him. "I do, too, babe. Let's go back to the cottage and bang one out."

He grinned. "Is this a trick?"

She whispered a filthy curse, then continued her forward momentum.

Will wasn't one to break a long silence. He also wasn't going to argue with her. He kept his mouth closed as they slogged through a dense patch of brush. Sara's sudden burst of anger wasn't the only thing making the hike uncomfortable. He was sweating. The blister on his foot was rearing its ugly head. His hand was still throbbing with every heartbeat. He tried to tighten the bandage. Water dripped from the gauze.

Sara said, "You need to listen to me."

"I'm listening, but I don't know what you're trying to say."

"I'm saying that I'm going to have to paddle the boat by myself to the other side of the lake so we don't go around in circles for the rest of our natural lives."

"At least we'll be together."

She stopped again, turning to face him. There was not even a hint of a smile on her lips. "He carries a switchblade. He cut a man's chest to the bone. Do I have to tell you what organs are in your chest?"

He knew better than to joke this time. "No."

"What you're thinking now—that Dave is pathetic, that he's a loser. All of that's probably true. But he's also a violent criminal. He's not going to want to go back to jail. According to you and everybody else up here, he's already got one murder on his conscience. Adding another isn't going to faze him."

Will could hear the naked fear in her voice. Now he got it. Her first husband had been a cop. The man had underestimated a suspect and ended up dead because of it. There was no good way for Will to tell her that same fate wasn't going to fall on him. He was built differently. He had spent the first eighteen years of his life expecting people to do brutal and violent things, then the subsequent years doing everything he could to stop them.

She reached for his good hand, holding so tightly that he could feel the bones shift.

"My love," she said. "I know what your job is, that you make these life and death choices almost every day, but you need to understand that it's not just your life anymore, and it's not just your death. It's my life. It's my death."

Will traced his thumb along her wedding band. There had to be a way for them to both get what they wanted. "Sara—"

"I'm not trying to change you. I'm just telling you I'm scared."

Will tried to split it down the middle. "How about this: once I have Dave in custody, I'll go to the hospital with you. A place up here, not down in Atlanta. And you can take care of my hand and Faith can get a confession out of Dave and that will be the end of it."

"How about we do all of that, then you help me look for Jon?"

"That sounds reasonable." Will readily accepted the bargain. He had not forgotten the promise he'd made to Mercy. There were things that Jon needed to hear. "What now?"

Sara looked out over the water. Will followed her gaze. They were close to the equipment shed. Moonlight bathed the diving board on the floating dock.

She said, "I'm not sure how long it will take me to get us across. Twenty minutes? Thirty? I haven't paddled a canoe since Girl Scouts."

Will guessed back then she hadn't been dragging the dead weight of a grown man who couldn't hold a paddle. On the return trip, there would hopefully be two grown men. Which brought its own problems. Will's water attack fantasy hadn't gone past taking Dave down. He would have to hike the murderer out of the campsite rather than bring him back across the water. There was no way he was going to have Sara in a boat with Dave.

He said, "I want to check the shed to see if there's any rope."

Sara didn't ask him what the rope was for. She retreated into silence as they resumed the hike, which was somehow worse than when she was yelling at him. He tried to think of something to say that would make her less worried, but Will had learned the hard way that telling a woman not to feel something was not the best way to stop her from feeling that thing. In fact, it tended to make her furious on top of feeling that thing.

Fortunately, the journey didn't take that much longer. Sara's flashlight caught the canoes first, all stored upside-down on a rack. The equipment shed was roughly the size of a two-car garage. The double doors had a serious latch considering the place was so isolated. The spring-loaded chain-grip slide bolt had a foot-long metal bar that had to be flipped over to release the latch. A spring safety latch looped through the end of the bar, pinning it to a hasp lock on the door.

By way of explanation, Sara said, "Bears can open doors, too."

Will let her twist open the hasp, then he took over pushing the metal bar. The mechanism was tight. He had to put his shoulder into it, but finally, the doors swung open. Will caught a weird mixture of wood smoke and fish.

Sara coughed at the smell, waving her hand in front of her face as she walked into the shed. She found the light switch on the wall. The fluorescent bulbs revealed a neatly ordered workshop. Tools were outlined with blue tape on a pegboard. Fishing poles were on hooks. Nets and baskets lined an entire wall. There was a stone countertop with a sink and well-used cutting board. Two sets of scissors and four knives of varying lengths were hanging from a magnetic strip. All but one of the blades was slim and non-serrated.

Will was a gun guy, not a knife guy. He asked Sara, "Is anything missing?"

"Not that I can tell. It's a standard set for cleaning fish." Sara pointed them out from first to last. "Bait knife. Boning knife. Fillet knife. Chunk knife. Dressing scissors. Line snip."

Will didn't see any rope. He started opening drawers. Everything was arranged in sections. Nothing was loose. He recognized some of the fasteners from his own garage, but assumed they weren't used on cars. He found what he needed in the last drawer. Whoever was in charge of the shed was too thorough not to have the basics: a roll of duct tape and heavy-duty zip ties.

The ties were neatly bound together with a bungee strap. Will couldn't bind them back with one hand. He felt guilty leaving the ties loose in the drawer, but there were more important things to worry about. Six of the larger ties went into his back pocket. He shoved the roll of tape into a deeper pocket in the leg of his cargo pants.

He was shutting the drawer when he thought about the knives on the wall. Will took the smallest one, the bait knife, and tucked it down the side of his boot. He didn't know how sharp the blade was, but anything could puncture a lung if you rammed it hard enough into a man's chest.

"What's this?" Sara asked. She had cupped her hands around her eyes as she tried to see through the slats in the back wall. "Looks mechanical. Maybe a generator?"

"We'll check with the family." Will found a padlock underneath some hanging metal baskets. He pulled at the hasp, but it was firmly in place. "Bears?"

"Guests, probably. There's no internet or TV. I imagine a lot of late-night drinking goes on. Help me with this." Sara had located the paddles. They were high up to the ceiling, hanging like shotguns on a rack. "The blue one looks like the right size."

Will was surprised by the light weight when he lifted the paddle off the hook.

She said, "Bring two in case one gets lost in the water. I'll get the life jackets."

Will didn't think it was a good idea to wear bright orange as they approached the campsite, but he wasn't going to fight that battle.

Outside the shed, he followed Sara's lead flipping one of the canoes off the rack. There was nothing for Will to do but stand by as she maneuvered the paddles into the hull and tossed in the life jackets. She pointed out the carrying handles around the gunwale, told him where to stand, how to lift. She went silent again as they carried the canoe to the lake. Will tried not to pick up on her anxiety. He had to focus his mind on one singular purpose: bringing Dave to justice.

Sara kept the splashing to a minimum as she walked into the shallow water. Will lowered the boat when she told him to. She lined up the back end so that it was anchored in the mud. He was about to get in when Sara stopped him.

"Hold still." She helped him into one of the life jackets, then made sure the clips were secure. Then she leaned down and held the boat steady so that he could get in.

Will felt needlessly fussed over, but climbing in with one hand was harder than he'd anticipated. He sat on the bench at the rear of the boat. His weight lifted up the bow. Sara's weight only brought it down slightly when she climbed in. She didn't sit on the other bench. She got on her knees and used the paddle to push them out onto the water. She started off using shallow strokes until they'd put some distance between themselves and the shore.

By the time they reached open water, Sara had established a steady rhythm. When it came time to leave the Shallows and navigate into the larger part of the lake, she shifted from one side of the canoe to the other to make the turn. Will tried to keep an idea of where the diving platform was as the boat glided across the expanse. The equipment shed disappeared from sight. Then the shoreline. Soon, all he could see was darkness and all he could hear was the paddle working and the sound of Sara's breathing.

The moon peered around the clouds as they reached the middle of the lake. Will took the opportunity to check the bandage around his hand. Sara was right that the gauze was dirty, and probably also right about the infection. If someone had told Will there was a chunk of white-hot coal inside the web between his finger and thumb, he would've believed them. The burning slightly lessened when he lifted his hand to chest level, resting it on the edge of the life vest.

He reached down to his boot, checking on the bait knife. The handle was thick enough to keep the blade from sliding down to his ankle. He pulled out the knife, testing the motion. He hoped like hell Dave wasn't tracking their progress across the water. Will wanted the knife to be a surprise if things went sideways. The neon orange vests felt like they were glowing. He scanned the horizon, searching for the shore. It came into view slowly. First some lighter patches among the blackness, then he could make out rocks, then eventually what looked like a sandy beach.

Sara glanced back at him. She didn't have to say it. A sandy beach meant they had found the campgrounds. It was in bad shape. Will saw the remnants of a rotted-out dock, a partially submerged boat launch. A rope dangled from a towering oak tree, but the wooden seat that had turned it into a swing had dropped into the water long ago. There was something haunting about the place. Will wasn't one to believe in ghosts, but he had always trusted his gut, and his gut was telling him that bad things had happened here.

The canoe started to slow. Sara reversed the strokes as they approached the beach. Up close, he could see weeds growing through the sand. Broken bottles. Cigarette butts. The edge of the boat made a grinding sound as it banked onto the shore. Will unclipped his life vest and let it drop. Again, he thought about the bait knife in his boot, but this time it was in relation to leaving Sara unprotected. The best thing to do was send her back to the shed. He could hike to the lodge with or without Dave.

"No." She had a bad habit of reading his mind. "I'll wait for you ten yards out."

Will got out of the boat before she told him she was going to supervise the search. Nobody would've called his dismount graceful. He tried to keep the splashing to a minimum as he righted himself onto solid ground. Then he used the steel toe of his boot to give Sara a firm push back onto the water.

He waited until she started working the paddle before he scanned the forest. First light had yet to break, but the terrain was more visible than it had been when they'd left the equipment shed. He turned to find Sara again. She was paddling backward, keeping her eyes trained on Will. He thought about watching her swim toward the floating dock in the Shallows only a few hours ago. She was doing the backstroke, inviting him to join her. Will had felt such elation that his heart had turned into a butterfly.

And across the water, Dave was raping and stabbing the mother of his child.

Will turned away from the canoe and walked into the woods. He tried to get his bearings. Nothing looked familiar from their earlier search for the campsite. It wasn't just the lack of light. Before, they had approached from the back end of the Shallows. They'd stopped when they'd reached the circle of rocks. Will slipped his phone out of his pocket and tapped open the compass app as he headed in what he hoped was the right direction.

The forest was dense and overgrown, more so than the uncleared areas around the lodge. Using his flashlight app would be tantamount to lighting a beacon. He turned down the brightness on his screen as he followed the compass. After a while, Will realized that he didn't need it. There was the musty scent of smoke in the air. Fresh, like a campfire burning, but with a revolting undertone of cigarettes.

Dave.

Will didn't immediately move toward the target. He stood absolutely still, focusing on regulating his breathing and quieting his mind. Any worries about Sara, the pain in his hand, even Dave, were pushed to the side. The only thing he thought about was the person who truly mattered.

Mercy McAlpine.

Only a few hours ago, Will had found the woman clinging to the last few moments of her life. She had known it was the end. Refused to let Will go for help. He was on his knees in the water, begging Mercy to tell him who was responsible for the attack, but she had shaken her head like none of it mattered. And she was right. In those final moments, none of it really did matter. The only person she cared about was the person she had brought into the world.

Will silently repeated the message he would relay to Jon—

Your mother wants you to get away from here. She said you can't stay. She wanted you to know it's okay. That she loves you so much. That she forgives you for the argument. I promise you that you're going to be okay.

Will continued forward at a deliberate pace, careful not to step on any fallen branches or piles of leaves that might alert Dave to his presence. As he got closer, the silence of the forest was broken by the soft beat of "1979" by the Smashing Pumpkins. The music was turned down low, but it offered enough cover for Will to move more freely toward the source.

He altered his trajectory, approaching Dave from the side. He saw the outline of a few bunkhouses. All one story, rough-hewn, raised two feet in the air on what looked like telephone poles. There were four houses clustered together in a half circle. Will peered into the windows, scanning the interiors to make sure Dave was alone. In the last bunkhouse, he saw a sleeping bag, some boxes of cereal, cartons of cigarettes and cases of beer. Dave had planned on being here for a while. Will wondered if that would help him build a case for premeditation. There was a difference between a spur of the moment murder and one where you carefully planned your escape ahead of time.

Will kept himself low as he carefully approached his target. The fire Dave had built wasn't blazing, but it was generous enough to illuminate his immediate surroundings. He'd also done Will the courtesy of bringing a Coleman lantern that was giving off upwards to eight hundred lumens, the rough equivalent of a sixty-watt light bulb.

Dave had always been afraid of the dark.

The large, circular clearing wasn't as overgrown as the rest of the grounds. Boulders cropped up around a fire pit. Stumps of trees had been placed for seating. There was a grilling rack that swung out over the pit. Will knew there were more clusters of bunkhouses, more fire pits, scattered around the campsite. Back at the children's home, he had heard stories about nightly marshmallow roasts and impromptu singalongs and scary stories. Those days were long gone. There was an eerie feeling about the circle, more like a place of sacrifice than a place of joy.

Will found a spot behind a large water oak to crouch down. Dave was leaning against a felled log that was about four feet long and maybe eighteen inches in diameter. Will debated strategies. Surprise Dave from the rear? Jump him before he could think to act? Will needed more information.

He carefully moved forward, knees bent, muscles tensed in case Dave turned around. The smell of smoke thickened. The recent rain had made the wood smolder. As Will got closer, he caught a familiar metallic clicking sound. A thumb quickly rotating a friction wheel, the wheel meant to create a spark that ignites the gas from butane, the gas meant to feed a flame that lit the end of a cigarette.

He heard the metallic click again, then again, then again.

It was just like Dave to keep trying a lighter that was clearly empty. He kept flicking the wheel, hoping to pry out one more spark.

Finally, Dave gave up, mumbling, "Fuck, man."

The fact that he had a fire source two feet in front of him didn't give Dave any ideas. Even after he tossed the plastic lighter into the fire. The ensuing spit of flames made Dave throw up his hands to protect his face. Will took the distraction as his chance to close the distance between them. Dave slapped the melted plastic off his forearms. The pain didn't seem to register. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out why.

Crushed beer cans littered the ground. Will stopped counting after ten. He didn't bother cataloguing the spent joints and cigarette butts, which were all smoked down to the filters. A fishing pole was leaning against an overturned log. The grill had been swiveled out. Stray bits of charred meat were glued to the grate. Dave had used the surface of a tree stump to prepare the fish. Decapitated heads, tails and bones rotted in a pool of dark blood. A long, slender boning knife rested beside a six-pack of beer.

Will calculated that the curved seven-inch blade was easily within Dave's reach. If the man heard a twig snap or the rustling of leaves or even got a bad feeling that someone was coming up behind him, all he had to do was reach out to the tree stump and he was armed with a lethal weapon.

The question was, did Will meet him with his own knife? Will had the element of surprise. He wasn't drunk or stoned. Normally, Will could confidently predict that he could have Dave pinned to the ground before the man knew what hit him.

Normally, Will had two working hands.

"1979" faded into the blasting guitar of "Tales of a Scorched Earth". Will took the opportunity to reposition himself again. He wasn't going to sneak up on Dave. He was going to approach from the front like he'd followed the trail around the Shallows and ended up here. Hopefully, Dave was too wasted to realize that the meeting wasn't a coincidence.

The time for being stealthy had passed. Will spotted a downed branch on the forest floor. He lifted his foot and stepped on it. The steel-toe boot sounded like an aluminum bat cracking open a gourd. For good measure, Will let out a loud curse. Then he tapped his phone to turn on the flashlight.

By the time Will looked back up, Dave already had the boning knife in his hand. He tapped his phone to pause the song. He stood slowly, scanning the forest with beady eyes.

Will took a few more noisy steps, waving around his phone like he was a caveman who didn't understand how light worked.

"Who's there?" Dave brandished the knife. He'd changed clothes since Will had seen him on the Loop Trail. His jeans were bleach-stained and torn. A bloody hand had swiped across his yellow T-shirt. He slashed the sharp blade through the air, demanding, "Show yourself."

"Shit." Will filled his tone with disgust. "What the fuck are you doing out here, Dave?"

Dave smirked, but he kept the knife raised. "What're you doing here, Trashcan?"

"Looking for the campsite. Not that it's your fucking business."

Dave huffed a laugh. He finally lowered the knife. "You're fucking pathetic, man."

Will stepped into the clearing so that Dave could see him. "Just tell me how to get out of here and I'll leave."

"Go back the way you came, dumbass."

"You think I didn't try that already?" Will kept walking toward him. "I've been out in these goddam woods for over an hour."

"You wouldn't see me leaving that sexy little redhead alone." Dave's wet lips twisted into a smirk. "What was her name again?"

"If I ever hear you say it, I'll punch it out of your mouth through the back of your skull."

"Shit," he said, but he backed down easily enough. "Just go left up to the rock circle, then hook a right around the lake, then left back up to the Loop Trail."

Will was a second too late figuring out Dave hadn't backed down at all. Telling a dyslexic to go left then right was the equivalent of telling him to go fuck himself.

Dave started chuckling as he took his place back in front of the fire. He leaned against the felled log, returned the boning knife to its place on the tree stump. Will could tell he expected that to be the end of it. Dave had spent a lifetime getting things wrong. The only question was, at what point did Will tell the man that he was a special agent with the GBI? Technically, nothing that Dave said before that moment, even if he outright confessed to killing Mercy, could be used against him in court. If Will was going to do this right, he had to establish a rapport, then slowly lead Dave into the truth.

He asked, "You got any beer left?"

Dave raised an eyebrow in surprise. The Will he knew from his childhood wasn't a drinker. "When'd you get hair on your balls?"

Will knew how to play this game. "After your mom sucked them dry."

Dave laughed, reaching back to twist a beer off the six-pack. "Pull up a chair."

Will wanted to keep some distance between them. Rather than sitting in front of the fire alongside Dave, he leaned his back against a boulder. He rested his phone beside his bad hand. He bent his knee to keep the bait knife in his boot close to his good hand. He had to be prepared if Dave decided to put up a fight.

Dave didn't seem like he was thinking about fighting. He was too busy looking for ways to be an asshole. He could've tossed the can of beer to Will, but he spiraled it like a football.

Will caught it in one hand. He opened it one-handed, too, making sure the spray hit the fire.

Dave nodded, clearly impressed. "What happened to your hand? You get a little too rough with your lady? She looks like a biter."

Will held back the response that wanted to come. He had to put it all aside—the sense of betrayal and fury that still festered from their childhoods. The disgust over what kind of man Dave had turned out to be. The brutal way he had murdered his wife. The fact that he had abandoned his son to pick up the pieces.

Instead, Will held up his bandaged hand, saying, "Cut it on a piece of broken glass at dinner."

"Who patched you up? Was it Papa?" Dave clearly enjoyed the cruelty of the joke. He stared into the fire with a smug grin on his face. His hand went under his shirt as he scratched his belly. Will could see deep gouges where someone had scratched him. There was another scratch on the side of his neck. By all evidence, he had recently been in a violent altercation.

Will placed the can of beer on the ground beside his boot. He rested his hand beside it, making sure the bait knife was in reach. The best-case scenario would leave it tucked inside his sock. A lot of cops thought the way you met violence was with violence. Will wasn't one of those cops. He wasn't here to punish Dave. He was going to do far worse than that. He wanted to arrest him. To put him in jail. To make him suffer through the stress and helplessness of being a defendant in a criminal trial. To let him have that boundless sense of hope that he might possibly get away with it. To see the crushing look on his face when he realized that he hadn't. To know that he would have to scramble and claw every day for the rest of his life because inside the prison walls, men like Dave were always at the bottom of the pyramid.

And none of that took into account the death penalty.

Dave let out a pained sigh to fill the silence. He picked up a stick. Stoked the fire. He kept glancing over at Will, waiting for him to say something.

Will wasn't going to say something.

Dave waited less than a minute before he let out another pained sigh. "You keep up with anybody from back then?"

Will shook his head, though he knew a lot of their former housemates had ended up in prison or in the ground.

"What happened to Angie?"

"I don't know." Will felt his hands wanting to clench into fists, but he kept both of them resting on the ground. "We were married a few years. Didn't work out."

"She fuck around on you?"

Will knew Dave already had the answer. "What about you and Mercy?"

"Shit." Dave poked at the fire until it sparked. "She never ran around on me. Had it too good at home."

Will forced out a laugh. "Sure."

"Believe whatever you want, Trashcan. I'm the one what left her. Got tired of her bullshit. All she ever does is complain about this place, then she gets a chance to leave, and …"

Will waited for him to say more, but Dave dropped the stick and grabbed a fresh beer. He didn't speak again until the can was drained and laying crushed on the ground.

"They had to close this place down. Too many counselors diddling the kiddies."

Will shouldn't have been surprised. This wasn't the first time the idyllic setting he'd imagined as a child had been spoiled by a predator.

Dave asked, "Why'd you come up here, Trashcan? You never wanted to see the camp when we was kids. You were better at memorizing them Bible verses than I ever was."

Will shrugged. He wasn't going to tell Dave the truth, but he needed to come up with a believable story. He remembered what Delilah had said about the circle of rocks. "My wife used to come here when she was in the Camp Fire Girls. She wanted to see it again."

"You married a Camp Fire Girl? Does she still got the uniform?" He snorted a laugh. "Jesus Christ, how is it fucking Trashcan's living in a porn movie while I'm lucky if I find poon that ain't stretched out like a gummy bear?"

Will steered the conversation back to Mercy. "Your ex gave you a son. That's something."

Dave opened another beer.

Will said, "Jon seems like a nice kid. Mercy did a good job with him."

"Wasn't all her doing." Dave slurped foam off the top of the can. He hadn't downed it like the previous one. He was pacing himself now. "Jon always knows where to find me. He's gonna make a fine man one day. Good lookin' too. Probably catching OPP like his daddy at that age."

Will ignored the dig, which was clearly meant to invoke Angie. "You ever think you'd end up married?"

"Shit no." Dave's laugh was filled with a tinge of bitterness. "Being honest, I thought I'd be dead by now. It's dumb luck I made it up here from Atlanta without some pervert picking me up on the side of the road and trafficking me to Florida."

Will knew he was trying to brag about running away. "You hitched?"

"Sure did."

"It's not a bad place to hide out." Will made a show of looking around the campsite. "When you disappeared, I told them this was where you'd go."

"Yeah, well." Dave cocked back his elbow on the log.

Will tried not to react. Dave had managed to position his hand closer to the knife. Whether this was intentional or not remained to be seen.

Dave said, "I knew who I was the first time I came up here on that church bus, you know? Like, I could fish and hunt and feed myself. Didn't need nobody looking after me. I wasn't built for living in a city. I was a rat down there. I'm a mountain lion up here. Do what I want. Say what I want. Smoke what I want. Drink what I want. Nobody can fuck with me."

It sounded great until you understood his freedom came at a price that Mercy had paid. "You were lucky the McAlpines took you in."

"There were good days and bad days," Dave said, always teasing out a bad story. "Bitty, she's an angel. But Papa? Shit, he's a mean motherfucker. Used to beat the hell outta me with his leather belt."

Will was not surprised to hear that Cecil McAlpine had been physically abusive.

"He didn't care if the belt slipped and I got whacked with the buckle. I used to get these big welts all over my ass and down my legs. Couldn't wear shorts cause I didn't want the teachers to see. All I needed was them dragging me back to Atlanta."

"They could've placed you up here."

"Didn't want it," he said. "Bitty needed the money from the state just to put food on the table. I couldn't abandon her, especially to him."

Will was familiar with an abused child's need to help everyone but themselves.

"Anyways." Dave gave a practiced shrug. "What about you, Trash? What happened when I left your pathetic ass?"

"I aged out of the system. Turned eighteen, got a hundred dollars and a bus ticket. Ended up at the Salvation Army."

Dave hissed air between his teeth. He probably thought he knew how bad things could get for an unaccompanied teenager sleeping in a homeless shelter.

He did not know.

Dave asked, "Then what?"

Will skirted the truth, which was that he'd ended up sleeping on the street, then sleeping in a jail cell. "I managed to figure it out. Put myself through college. Got a job."

"College?" He huffed a laugh. "How'd you manage that with barely being able to read?"

"Hard work," Will said. "Sink or swim, right?"

"You're damn right about that. All that bad shit we went through when we was little, it made us survivors."

Will didn't like his tone of shared camaraderie, but Dave was a murder suspect. He could use whatever tone he wanted so long as he ended up confessing. Will asked, "The McAlpines didn't have a problem with you hooking up with Mercy?"

"Hell yeah they did. Papa used a fucking chain on me when she wound up pregnant. Kicked me off the mountain. Her, too." Dave's raspy chuckle turned into a cough. "I took care of Mercy, though. Made sure she was clean when Jon was born. Helped Delilah get him settled in. Gave her whatever money I could spare to help."

Will knew for a fact that he was lying. "You didn't want to raise him yourself?"

"Shit. What do I know about taking care of no baby?"

Will figured if you were man enough to make a baby, you should be man enough to figure out how to take care of one.

Dave asked, "You got kids?"

"No." Sara wasn't capable, and Will knew too many terrible things that could happen to a child. "Seems like there's still a lot of bad blood between Mercy and her family."

"You think?" Dave knocked back the rest of his beer. He crushed the can, then dropped it with the others. "It's hard this far up the mountain. You're isolated. Not much to do. You got rich, stuck-up bitches expecting you to wipe their skinny, tight asses. Papa pushing you around. Taking you to the barn to beat the fire outta your ass cause you didn't put the towels in the right place."

Will knew Dave wasn't just venting. He was looking for a gold medal in the Abused Kids Olympics. "Sounds pretty bad."

"It sure as hell was," Dave said. "You and me learned the hard way you just gotta count the minutes until it's over, right? They'll get tired eventually."

Will looked into the fire. He was cutting a little too close.

"This is why we lie," Dave said. "You tell this shit to a normal person, they can't take it."

Will kept his eyes on the flames. He couldn't find the words to change the subject.

"You tell your wife all that shit you been through?"

Will shook his head, but that wasn't completely true. He had told Sara some things, but he would never tell her all the things.

"What's it like?" Dave waited for Will to look up. "Your wife, she's normal, right? What's that like?"

Will could not bring Sara into this moment.

"Don't think I could be with a normal woman," Dave admitted. "Mercy, she came to me damaged. I knew what to do with that. But fuck, a Camp Fire Girl? And a schoolteacher? How the hell do you even make that work?"

Will shook his head again, but in truth, things had been hard with Sara at first. He'd kept waiting for the games, the emotional manipulation. He couldn't accept that she would listen to him and try to understand instead of collecting his secrets like razor blades she could use to slice him open later on.

"She's smokin' hot. I'll give you that. But hell, I couldn't be with somebody that perfect. Does she even fart?"

Will couldn't stop himself from laughing, but he didn't answer.

"Gotta be a gentleman, huh?" Dave reached for his pack of cigarettes. "That's the other part I couldn't swing. I need a gal knows how to scream when I grab her by the hair."

Will pretended to drink from his can of beer. His words had put Will back at the lake shore by the bachelor cottages. The way Mercy's hair had spread out in the water. Blood had swirled around her body like dye. She had clutched Will's shirt collar, keeping him beside her instead of letting him find help.

Jon.

Will put both his hands back on the ground, anchoring himself. "Why'd you come find me on the trail yesterday?"

Dave shrugged as he dug around for another lighter in his pocket. "I don't know, man. I do shit and I look back at it and I can't tell you why."

"You asked me if I was still carrying around a grudge against you."

"And?"

"I honestly never thought about you after you ran away."

"That's good, Trash, cause I never thought about you, neither."

"To be honest, I would've totally forgotten about you again." Will tested the waters. "Except for what you did to Mercy."

Dave didn't react at first. He shook the lighter. The flame caught. He touched it to the tip of the cigarette. He blew a jet of smoke in Will's direction.

He asked, "Did you follow me?"

Will had only seen Dave once before Mercy's death. He was waiting for Will on the Loop Trail. Will had given him to the count of ten to leave. "You mean, did I follow you after you ran off with your tail between your legs?"

"I didn't run off, dumbfuck. I chose to walk away."

Will said nothing, but it made sense that Dave would slink away from Will, then find Mercy to take out his anger on.

"Shit, I know you followed me, you pathetic asshole," Dave said. "I sure as hell know Mercy didn't tell nobody. She's a lot of things, but she ain't no snitch."

Will noticed he was still talking about Mercy in the present tense. "You sure about that?"

"Hell yeah I'm sure." Dave smoked. He was nervous. "What do you think you saw?"

Will assumed he was worried about the strangulation. "I saw you choke her."

"She didn't pass out," he said, as if that was a defense. "She fell against the tree, then her ass hit the ground. I had nothing to do with that. Her legs give out. That's all."

Will stared his credulity into him.

"Look, dude, whatever you think you saw, that's between me and her." Dave threw his hand in the air, then rested it in his lap. He flicked the cigarette end, knocking off the ash. "Why are you even asking? You sound like a fucking cop."

Will guessed now was as good a time as any to give him the news. "I am, actually."

"You am what?"

"I'm a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation."

Smoke puffed out of his mouth as he laughed. Then he stopped laughing. "For real?"

"Yep," Will said. "That's what got me through college. I wanted to help people. Kids like us. Women like Mercy."

"That's bullshit, man." Dave pointed at him with his cigarette. "Ain't no cop ever helped kids like us. Look at what you're doing here now, asking me about some private shit that happened a couple'a three hours ago. Ain't no way Mercy filed a report. You're just all up in my business cause that's what you fuckers do."

Will slowly moved his injured hand across the ground until he felt the edge of his phone. "You're right. Mercy didn't file a report. I can't arrest you for strangling her."

"Damn right you can't."

"But if you wanted to admit to abusing your wife, I'd be happy to take your confession."

Dave laughed again. "Sure, man, give it your best shot."

Will forced his thumb to double click the button on the side of his phone, turning on the recording app. "Dave McAlpine, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law."

Dave laughed again. "Yeah, I'm gonna be silent."

"You have the right to an attorney."

"Cain't afford no attorney."

"If you can't afford an attorney, one will be provided for you by the courts."

"Or the courts can suck my fat dick."

"With these rights in mind, are you willing to talk to me?"

"Sure, dude, let's talk about the weather. Rain passed real quick, but we're gonna get more. Let's talk about the good ol' days at the children's home. Let's talk about that tight little snatch you got up at your cottage. Why you down here dickin' around with ol' Dave when you could be pounding it into that throat goat?"

"I know you strangled Mercy on the trail this afternoon."

"So what? Mercy likes being roughed up every now and then. And there ain't no way in hell she's gonna turn me in for it." Dave sounded smugly confident. "Stay the fuck out of my business or you're gonna figure out real soon what kind of man I grew up to be."

Will wasn't satisfied with getting Dave admitting to domestic violence. He wanted more. "Tell me what happened tonight."

"What about tonight?"

"Where were you?"

Dave smoked his cigarette, but something had changed. He had talked to enough cops to know when one was asking him for an alibi.

Will said, "Where were you, Dave?"

"Why? What happened tonight?"

"You tell me."

"Shit." He sucked on the cigarette. "Something bad went down, didn't it? You weren't just wandering around out here like a dumbass. What are we talking about? State crime, right? Drug deal go bad? You on to some traffickers?"

Will said nothing.

"That's why it's you and not fucking Biscuits." Dave sucked down to the filter. "Fucking bullshit, man."

Will still said nothing.

"What now?" Dave said. "You think you're gonna take me in, motherfucker? With your one hand and your bullshit story about seeing me strangle my wife?"

"Mercy isn't your wife anymore."

"She's mine, you fucking piece of shit. Mercy belongs to me. I can do whatever the fuck I want to her."

"What'd you do to her, Dave?"

"None of your goddam business. This is some bullshit." He flicked his cigarette into the fire. He didn't yank another beer off the pack. He didn't rest his hand in his lap. He leaned back again, resting his elbow on the log, putting the boning knife within easy reach.

This time, the movement was clearly deliberate.

Dave tried to pretend that it wasn't. "Get outta here with your bullshit."

"Why don't you get out of here with me?"

Dave snorted again. He wiped his nose with his arm, but it was only an excuse to put himself closer to the boning knife.

Will ignored the searing pain in his injured hand as he gripped it into a fist. He used his good hand to push up the leg of his pants so the handle of the bait knife was out in the open.

Dave said nothing. He just licked his lips, eager to get things started. This was what he'd been wanting from the second he'd spotted Will on the Loop Trail. In truth, maybe Will had wanted it, too.

They both stood up at the same time.

The first mistake people made in a knife fight was that they worried too much about the knife. Which was fair. Being stabbed hurt like hell. Belly wounds could put a clock over your grave. A straight shot to the heart could send you there quicker.

The second mistake people made in a knife fight was the same mistake most people made in any type of fight. They assumed it would be fair. Or at least that the other person would play fair.

Dave had been in his share of knife fights. He clearly knew the two mistakes. He kept the boning knife straight out in front of him while he reached for the switchblade in his back pocket. His plan was clever enough. Distract Will with one knife while he plunged in the other.

Fortunately, Will had his own clever plan. He knew that Dave's primary concern was the bait knife. He wasn't thinking about Will's injured hand. He hadn't noticed that Will had grabbed a handful of dirt. Which was why he was so surprised when Will slashed it into his face.

"Fuck!" Dave staggered back. He dropped the boning knife, but muscle memory kept his dominant hand in play.

Nadine had been wrong about the switchblade, which only required the push of a button to release the blade. Dave carried a butterfly knife. It served as both a lethal weapon and a distraction. Two metal handles folded like a clamshell around the sharp, narrow blade. Opening it with one hand required a quick figure-eight movement of the wrist. You pinched the safe handle with your thumb and fingers while you flipped the latched handle over your knuckles. Then you rotated the safe handle, swung the latch handle over your knuckles again, flipped it back home, and you ended up wielding a ten-inch-long knife.

Will didn't give a shit about the knife.

He swung back his leg and drove his steel-toe boot straight up into Dave's groin.

January 16, 2014

Dear Jon—

I've had you back with me for three years now, which means there are gonna be more years of us being together than years that we were apart. I know it's been a long time since I wrote you a letter, but maybe it'll be easier if I tell myself it's only going to be once a year, especially since it seems like January is the month my life always gets turned upside-down. I'm choosing January sixteenth because that's what I think of as your gotcha day. I'm gonna be honest and tell you I got that phrase from Aunt Delilah. She's got a ton of dogs and who knows when their actual birthdays are, but she calls the day they came to live with her their gotcha day. So three years ago is your gotcha day, the day I brought you back to the mountaintop to live with me so I could be your full-time mother.

Not that you're a stray dog, but I was just thinking about it because this morning I was missing her. I know that's stupid to say since Delilah's the one that took you from me to begin with, and I had to fight something fierce to get you back, but Delilah was always the one I ran to when things got bad. And things are really bad now.

The truth is, not a day goes by that I don't think about drinking and drugging, but then I think about you and our lives together and I don't do it. The thing is, something bad happened with your daddy over the holidays and before I knew it, I was at the liquor store buying a bottle of Jack. Couldn't even wait to get home. I just popped the top in the parking lot and nearly downed the whole thing in a couple of gulps. It's funny how you don't even taste it after a while. You just feel the burn and then your head swims and I'm not ashamed to say it's been so long since I got my drink on that I threw it right back up.

There was a time maybe when things were bad enough that I'd get that alcohol back in me one way or another, but that wasn't this time. I threw the bottle in the trash. Then I sat in the car a long while and thought about what brought me there.

Your daddy almost killed me is the plain way of saying it. It was New Year's Eve and he threw himself a big party and smoked a lot of meth, which he's done before but this musta been a bad batch. He was like a possessed devil and it scared the shit out of me. He was tearing around trashing the trailer and I was yelling back at him, which I probably shouldn't of done, but baby I'm so damn tired.

Your daddy isn't a bad man, but he can do some bad things. He'll get a little money in his pocket and bet it on a hail Mary or party all week and then it's gone. Then he'll blame me for not stopping him from blowing through all his money. Then he'll bug me until I give up whatever cash I got stashed away, even if it means we can't buy groceries or keep the power turned on, and none of this is the worst of it, cause on top of it all he's been cheating on me.

I mean he's cheated on me before, but this time he chose a girl I work with. Who I thought was my friend. Not a friend like Gabbie, but a friend anyway that I could talk to and pass the time with. The both of them thought they were so damn clever sneaking around right under my nose, but I could tell something was going on. I just held my tongue because your daddy was only doing it to hurt me, and God knows we've been here before, but I wasn't up for going through the same thing again where he cheats on me then begs me to come back and then once I'm back he cheats again.

What he did this time was, he made sure he was fucking her in one of the motel rooms I was assigned to clean. The schedule is on our fridge he sees every time he gets himself a beer, is how I know he knew. She knew, too, because her name is on the damn schedule. And there they both were fucking up a storm in that very room when I walked in with a bunch of towels and sheets in my hands. I know your daddy was expecting me to blow my top, but I didn't. I just didn't have it in me to say anything. I ain't never seen him so shocked as when I just backed out of that room and shut the door like it didn't matter.

And being honest, it didn't.

I told you this has happened before with the cheating, but it was only this time that I could see things had changed. And when I say changed, I mean inside me. You'll see that as you get older sometimes you can look back and see a pattern. The pattern with your daddy was, he cheats, I find out, there's a blow-up and a beat down and then he turns sweet in case I get any ideas about leaving. This time, we skipped the blow-up and the beating and went straight to your daddy being sweet. Taking out the trash, picking his clothes up off the floor, even cranking my car in the morning so it'd be warmed up for me. One day I caught him singing to you and it was real pretty but it stopped as soon as I left the room.

See, I didn't give him the reaction he wanted, which was to throw myself at his feet and beg him to stay. I don't know what it is about your daddy that's so broken inside, and it's hard to explain, but what he wants most in the world is for people to get desperate enough that all they got left is to cling to him.

And then when they're clinging, he hates them for it.

What kept me going this time was I promised myself that you and me would be out of that godforsaken trailer by the end of January. But I wasn't gonna be a sneak about it. Sneaking is your daddy's territory. I thought about this a lot, and I had it set in my mind that the right thing to do was to tell him we were leaving instead of packing up all our shit and moving out while he was gone. Anyway, it wasn't like I could really get away from him since we live in the same damn town. Also, there's you. I can't stand being around him anymore, but Dave is still your daddy, and I'm not gonna take you away from him no matter what terrible things he does to me.

Anyway, he'll tell you I was a bitch for leaving him, but I want you to know I didn't plan on being a bitch. I wanted to keep it civil. So I brought him a beer and sat him down on the couch and said that he needed to listen to me cause I had something important to say.

He was dead quiet right up until I mentioned the apartment in town. I guess that's when it got real for him, and also looking back I think that's when he realized I hadn't told him about all the money. He asked me how much the deposit was, did it come furnished, where I'd park, did you have your own room, that kind of thing. Which I stupidly at the time took to mean he wanted to make sure it was safe for you and me. I made a point of promising him that he could come by and see you whenever he wanted. I said a couple or three times how important he is to you, that I always want you to have your daddy in your life. Which is true, because I'm saying the same thing to you in this letter.

What he wanted to know next was about child support and that kind of thing, which honest to God I hadn't even considered. Ain't no judge alive who can get money out of Dave's pocket. He'll either go to prison or his grave before he parts with a penny, even for somebody he loves. Even if that somebody is you. Anyway, he was real calm through all of it, smoking and nodding and drinking and not saying much more than those questions, then when I went quiet, he asked me if I was finished talking. I said yes. He put out his cigarette. And then he went fucking nuts.

I'm not gonna lie. I was expecting him to punish me, so I was prepared for the beat down that was coming. Your daddy ain't creative when it comes to hurting me, but there are a couple things he's never done before that he did that night. One was he pulled out his knife. The other was he choked me.

Now when I read back through that, it makes it sound like he was gonna use his knife on me. That ain't true. He was gonna use it on himself. And while I sure as hell don't want to be married to him anymore, I don't want your daddy to die, especially by his own hand. The Lord turned his back on me a long while ago, but I know for damn sure he doesn't forgive people who take their own lives and I would never wish eternal hell on your daddy.

That's why I nearly lost it when I saw that blade draw blood from his neck. I was on my knees on the floor begging him not to do it. He kept saying he loved me, that I was the only person on earth who made him feel like he belonged, and that he lost so much at the children's home and I was the only one who could make it up to him.

I don't know if any of this is true, but what I do know is we were both crying our eyes out by the time he finally put the knife down on the coffee table. All we could do was hold each other for a good long while. I would've said anything to stop him from killing himself. I kept telling him I loved him, that I would never leave him, that we would always be a family.

After that part was over, we both sat on the couch just staring at the wall, so exhausted from our own emotions, but then he says to me, "I'm glad you're not leaving", and that part I could not abide, because I was even more sure after that emotional display that I had to go. What I said was I would always be there for him. That I will always love him, and that I just wanted him to be happy.

Then I guess the mistake I made was I shoulda just left it at that, but I had to open my stupid mouth and tell him that I wanted to be happy, too, and there was no way either of us would ever be really happy while we were still together.

I have never seen your daddy move as fast as he did then. Both his hands went around my neck. The scary thing was, he wasn't even yelling. I've never heard him be so quiet. He was just watching me, his eyes all bugged out as he strangled me. I felt like he wanted to kill me. And maybe he thought he did kill me. I don't wanna be woo-woo about this, cause I'm not psychic or anything, but I would swear to you on a stack of Bibles that even after I passed out, I knew what was going on.

The closest I can come to describing it is, I was hovering up by the ceiling, and I looked down and saw myself lying there on that ugly green carpet that I could never get clean. I remember feeling embarrassed because my pants were wet like I'd pissed myself, which ain't happened in a good long while, not since I gave up the drink and drugs. Anyway, your daddy was still choking me out while I watched from the ceiling. Then he gave me one last shove and stood up. Instead of leaving out the door, he just stared down at me.

And stared. And stared.

It was the look on his face that struck me most, cause there was no expression. Just a few minutes before, he was sobbing and all emotional threatening to kill himself, and then he went to nothing. Absolutely nothing. And it come to me that this was maybe the first time I've really seen him for who he is. That the crying Dave or the laughing Dave or the high Dave or the angry Dave or even the Dave who pretends he loves me ain't the Dave that he is at all.

The real Dave is empty inside.

I don't know what all those foster parents took from him, or the PE teacher who abused him, but they dug down so deep into his soul that there was nothing else left. Sure as shit nothing was left for me. Being honest, I don't even know if he's got anything in there for you.

I'm gonna be real with you, it shook me seeing him like that. More so than losing my breath, which was something I've been terrified of since I was little. And that made me wonder what else Dave's been hiding.

God knows he loves your grandma Bitty something fierce, but did he ever really love me? Did he ever care? In his own way, he gave me time to figure it out. He's in jail now on account of getting into another bar fight after he finished with me. Which is what he deserves, but still I'm worried about him. Jail is a hard place for men like your daddy. He has a habit of pissing people off. And I'm really scared of him getting out if you want to know the whole truth. I'm scared of that empty man who was looking down at me like a fly he'd just pulled the wings off of.

And all that makes me worry about you, baby. You know there's nothing you could do that I wouldn't forgive, but your daddy ain't happy being the way he is. Nobody could be happy with that. He's so empty the only thing that fills him up is getting emotions off other people. Sometimes that's good when he's buying rounds and being the big man around town. Sometimes that's bad when he's smoking meth and tearing up his trailer. And sometimes it's really bad when he's choking me so hard that I'm thinking I'm gonna die. And then I'm looking at his face and what I'm seeing is that the only thing he has ever enjoyed in his life is shifting his misery onto other people.

Lord, this is a dark tale of a man. Maybe you will never see that side of him. I hope that you never do, because it's like staring into the mouth of hell. Your daddy can do whatever he wants to me, but he ain't never, ever, gonna raise a hand to you. But I'm not gonna be the kind of ex-wife who turns her child against his father, neither. If you end up thinking he's a bad man, it's gonna be because you saw it for yourself with your own two eyes.

So I'm gonna end this letter by telling you three good things about your daddy.

One is, I know this is gross and I've been saying from the beginning that it ain't true, but your daddy is family to me. He ain't like your uncle Fish in that he's like a brother, but he's close to that, and I'm not gonna deny it to you of all people.

Two is, he can still make me laugh. That might not sound like a lot, but I haven't had much joy in my life, which is why it's so hard for me to let him go. Me and Dave didn't start out like this. There was a time when your daddy was everything to me. It was him I ran to when Papa came after me. It was him I confided in. Him I wanted to please. He was so much older than me and had been through so much bad shit that I felt like he understood me. I never even really wanted him. I just wanted him to want me. But don't go feeling sorry for your daddy. He knew what was up and he was fine with it. Even happy with it. I hope you don't ever have to feel that for yourself, where you're in a situation where you'd rather be tolerated than loved.

Anyway, that's enough about that.

Three is, your daddy saved my life when I got into that car accident. I know that sounds dramatic, but he really did save me. Visited me in the hospital. Held my hand. Told me I was still pretty when we both knew that wasn't never gonna be the truth. Said it wasn't my fault when we both knew that wasn't true, either. I've only ever seen him treat one other person that gentle, and that's Bitty. Honestly, I think I've been chasing that version of Dave ever since. Anyway, I don't want to dig too far into that part in my misery, but let's just say your daddy stepped up.

So that's what I want you to know about him, especially that third thing. And that's probably why a part of me will always love him, even though I'm pretty sure that one day he's gonna kill me.

I love you forever,

Mama