The End of the World (30 page)

Come to think of it, maybe I should become a drug addict.

I should definitely become a drug addict. Like, right now. Then, at least, I could send my mind somewhere else and temporarily numb this pain.
My Pete is dead—murdered, and I can’t stop panicking.

These are the kinds of thoughts rolling through my mind as I yank sweater number four over my head and step into dress number two. All my discarded outfits lay in a heap on the floor, where they will likely stay for the rest of the day. I’m too nervous to bother with something as trivial as hanging them up. Not now. Maybe not ever.

I turn toward the mirror again and sigh.

I look awful. Worse than awful.

I feel terrible. Worse than terrible.

I’m nervous. Worse than nervous.

I’m also late.

Late to be interviewed. Late to be questioned. Late to be interrogated.

Late to defend Pete.

I grab my keys and head for the door. It doesn’t matter what kind of awfulness happens today. I have a responsibility to Pete, to tell his truth—to see Carl and Tami pay for what they’ve done.

And that, more than sadness or nerves or outfit choices, is the reason I woke up this morning.

And as I let myself out the front door and walk to my car, hands shaking so badly I can barely fit the key into the ignition…

It’s also the reason I start crying all over again.

Cameron

“H
e’s claiming self-defense.
Mrs. Bowden is on the record saying she knew nothing about it.”

“They’re both lying.” I release a burst of air. “Self-defense for what?”

“He says Pete came after him with a knife. That Pete tried to stab him with it, and that in a rush of fear he hit the boy with the closest thing lying around.”

“Which was?”

The detective shifts in his seat. “A frying pan. One strike was all it took.”

This is the first time I’m hearing all the details, and I feel sick. Sicker than sick. Pete lived there another six years without me. Six years without anyone to protect him, not even the system. I want to punch something. Why is it that violence is always the first reaction toward solving problems?

“I’m going to be sick.”

“Do you need something?” The detective looks around, spots a garbage can in the corner and begins to stand. I stop him.

“I’ll be alright.” I take a deep breath, will myself to calm down.

“You okay to keep going?” the detective asks.

At my nod, he picks up his pen again.

“So you never witnessed any violence firsthand?”

I pause, unsure of what to say. The answer to the question is yes. Of course, it’s yes. I witnessed all kinds of violence in the four years I lived with the Bowden’s. Violence against me. Violence against Shaye. But never against Pete.

“Not against him.”

The officer stares me down. “So I’m safe to assume you witnessed it against others?”

I say nothing for a long moment. I may be a twenty-four-year-old man now, but I know in my gut that he’s looking at a boy, a scared and lonely and abandoned boy with nowhere to go but the pit he’s been dumped in, neglected by the system with a shoulder shrug and hands held open in the air because he’s fourteen and too old to bother with anyway. Way past the age of adoption, grown up enough to take care of himself.

And the officer knows. I can tell by the look in his eyes—the sympathetic gaze and the downward pull at the corners and the clouded haze that instantly envelops his pupils. He knows everything. Every tug and rip and claw and scrape that happened that night.

And every secret afterward.

I take a deep breath. There’s no use in even entertaining a lie.

“I saw plenty of violence, but none that had to do with Pete. Or maybe it all had to do with everyone. I don’t know…” I feel so stupid. So utterly naïve and immature and…stupid. I shake my head. “Why didn’t I do more?”

My cuticles have been torn to the point that they hurt. I tear off one jagged corner and fist my hands on the table in front of me, squeezing one knuckle and then another and then another. This room is small. No bigger than ten by ten. Maybe smaller than that. I wish I had a tape measure so I could know for sure.

“Because you were a scared kid. You would be surprised by how many kids don’t speak up. But you’re grown now, so…care to elaborate?”

I meet his gaze. “Do I have a choice?”

He sighs. He’s not the only one wishing he could say yes. “No. Unfortunately not.”

So I tell him about me. About the sink full of warm water and the threats and the black eye and all the other nights I lay in bed, scared he would come for me. Scared he would make me move out. Scared I would have to stay. It’s clear by his non-reaction that nothing I say is a surprise. Other than pushing play on his smartphone, he takes no notes. Doesn’t even glance at the papers in front of him. Just listens, nods once or twice, clenches and unclenches his jaw, and breathes slowly through his nose when I finally lose my composure. I’m a frightened kid once again, crying now about the things he refused to let himself cry about back then. When I’m finished, he sniffs.

“And the other children? Did you see anything unsafe happen to them?”

I swipe at my eyes with two knuckles. More than Pete or the Bowdens or anything else that happened during the time I spent at the house, I don’t want to talk about Shaye. In fact, I’ve changed my mind; after this, I no longer want to see her. Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe it’s that everything that happened to her—everything she shared and suffered and cried through—stopped with me. I’ve never told a single soul, and now I’m resurrecting every confidence she unloaded on me each night by a quiet lake that absorbed our secrets and settled them along its murky bottom, burying them forever.

It’s definitely guilt.

“Only one other.”

On this, he picks up his pen. I shift in my seat. “The oldest girl?”

Slowly, I nod. “Shaye. Her name is Shaye.” My heart churns with an old, familiar ache at the sound of her name.

“That’s what I have written here. Shaye McCormick is what my paper says. Thirteen when she arrived at the house, currently lives in Tulsa with—”

“Tulsa?” Shaye lives in Oklahoma City. Doesn’t she?

“My notes say Tulsa.” He looks at me quizzically, his pen poised over the paper. When I only stare at him, he continues. “After Mr. Bowden confessed to killing Pete, we subpoenaed the medical records of all the children in the house, even yours. Most were clean, but some troubling things turned up about Miss McCormick. It says here that she lived with the Bowdens for four years, that she was repeatedly suspended from school for behavior issues, that she was pregnant twice before age seventeen, both boyfriends wanting nothing to do with the pregnancies, each quietly taken care of before she permanently left the home…”

The room shrinks to the size of a prison cell. A closet. A box. A pair of handcuffs tightening around my neck.

I’m suffocating.

I can’t breathe.

It’s hot so hot so hot.

I can’t breathe.

It’s spinning it’s spinning it’s spinning.

I can’t breathe.

I’m choking I’m choking I’m choking.

Until everything stops.

And there’s nothing but silence.

Silence. And the sound of someone talking in a vacuum.

The vacuum is my head.

It’s hollow. It’s empty. It’s closing in with a forced stillness.

And suddenly it opens with a loud YELL.

“Did you hear me, Mr. Tate?”

I blink and look at him. “What did you say?”

“I asked you what you knew about her pregnancies. If you have any idea if Mr. Bowden was the father.”

Shaye never had boyfriends
, I want to say.

Of course Carl was the father
, I want to growl.

He abused her for years
, I want to scream.

He pulled her out of her sleep at least once a week for his own sick pleasure
, I want to cry.

But instead I swallow, force my anguish down, look him in the eye, and answer.

“I knew nothing about it.”
No wonder you left me, Shaye.
“Nothing at all.”

*

Shaye

My skin prickles
with heat so intense I’m silently begging to peel it off.

“That’s written in your notes? How did you find out?”

The detective clears his throat. “Mr. Bowden confessed to killing Pete in exchange for a plea deal.”

I don’t ask what kind of deal. Maybe later I’ll care; right now all I feel is a desire to disappear.

I swallow the cotton lodged in my throat, smooth out the crease in my skirt, and shift in my seat. My phone is warm in my hand from all the clenching and unclenching I’ve been doing to it the last half-hour, but there’s nothing else to hold onto. Except the seat of my chair. I’ve gripped it repeatedly too. And the pencil lying in front of me. It used to have an eraser, but now crumbled bits of it are scattered all over the top of the table. I don’t even remember ripping the eraser off—that’s how detached I feel. But that’s the strange thing about detachment; it comes with the weirdest sense of panic and intense connection, almost like in trying to distance yourself, you’re clinging to the subject at hand with every ounce of energy you possess.

Like now. All I can focus on are the four words the detective just spoke.

You were pregnant twice.

And now all I want to do is die. It’s a familiar feeling, wishing desperately for my own demise, though I haven’t felt this way in a while. Not once since Zachary was born. Not one single time.

Until now.

“How did you find out about me?” I hear the strain in my voice, the panic. It’s choking me, wrapping long sinister fingers around my throat and squeezing until my eyes bulge from the pressure. I close them for a brief second to calm myself down.

“Medical records. All of which are quite surprising.” The detective flips through the top two pages and looks up at me. “My notes say the first pregnancy occurred when you were almost sixteen, and then again just before your seventeenth birthday.” He stares at me, his nose peppered with freckles, his lower lip making a faint W shape as though he’d been cut with a knife or bitten by a dog in his younger years and the stitches hadn’t been sewn right. The flaws make him handsome, but it doesn’t ease my discomfort. I meet his gaze until he begins to speak again.

“That neither of your boyfriends wanted to be fathers. That both of your pregnancies were taken care of quietly.”

I feel the blood drain from my face.

Boyfriends.

Taken care of
.

As though the pregnancies were a disease. A summer cold. A knee scab crusted over after a particularly nasty bike wreck.

As though Carl would ever tell the truth.

“From the look on your face, am I correct to assume Carl Bowden lied? Was he the father of your babies, Ms. McCormick?”

I remember walking toward the clinic that second time. I’d been there before, but that didn’t help assuage my fear.

Abortion center protests were popular back then, and that day was no exception. Picketers hurled insults at me—
baby killer, slut, good for nothing, rot in hell
. I was so scared. They were so mean. Except for one middle-aged lady whose face I will never forget.
I’ve been in your shoes
, she said.
There’s another way
, she said.
Be honest with yourself
, she said. And for a moment I tried to be. I told myself to be strong. I told myself to walk into the clinic and tell the truth. I told myself to announce that there were no boyfriends…that Carl was a liar…that his show of fatherly support was nothing but a front.

Who would believe me anyway?

I drag myself away from the memories and study the detective, unsure how to answer.

Of course Carl was the father. Before him, I was a virgin. After him, I no longer cared who used me. Or how often. And I let Carl continue to destroy me, because that’s what a girl does when she’s numb and unfeeling and indifferent and desperately wishing to be the opposite. In the end, she found one good relationship. One man who loved her. And then she did the only thing she knew. She walked away from him.

It seems all I ever do is destroy myself, even now.

I barely manage a nod. “Yes, he was the father. But is there any way to keep this quiet?”

It’s a silly request, one I know he can’t possibly honor. But desperation rarely makes sense.

“I highly doubt we can keep it quiet, not if there’s any hope of locking the Bowden’s away forever. But as of now…” He flips through his notes while I frantically scan the single words I manage to make out:
Bowden. Interview. Statute of limitations. Tate
. “Only a few people know.”

But it’s too late; his words no longer matter. That last name sears the sockets behind my eyes with so much force that both sides leak two simultaneous tears.

Anyone but Cameron. Anyone but Cameron.

Getting pregnant by Carl is the one thing I never told him.

And not telling him was the one thing he would never forgive me for.

“Carl Bowden’s confession is dated yesterday morning, so I doubt the media would have gotten hold of the story yet.”