He Started It

The sun begins to appear, a brilliant orange dot on the water, and we sit and watch the final moments of its rise.

‘They really believed we were fighting yesterday,’ I say.

He glances over at me. ‘Well, we kinda were.’

‘Why were you so mad?’

He shrugs. ‘I just can’t believe you never told me about the camping. That’s just so … wrong.’

The anger appears again. It’s so easy to see now. I had been thinking this might be a good time to bring up his smoking, to tell him that I knew, but now I won’t. Not while he’s angry.

I slip my free hand into his. ‘I was wrong. I’m sorry.’

He leans over and kisses me. A dry, chaste kiss because we haven’t brushed our teeth and we smell like instant coffee. It could have been a brother-sister kiss.

We haven’t had sex on this trip. Not once. Maybe because Portia was in our room half the time, or maybe because the motels were so bad. Or it could be that transporting Grandpa’s ashes across the country is the least sexy thing ever.

More likely, it’s because we haven’t had sex in months – three months and nineteen days, to be exact.

Oh well.

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s take a swim.’

We strip down and get in the water and it’s still not sexy. It’s cold at first, then pleasant. If I had to describe my marriage, that’s the word I would use. Pleasant. Mostly.

The water is smooth and clear, not a ripple as far as I can see. Felix follows me out beyond the shallow water, and I challenge him to a treading contest. He splashes at me. ‘No way.’

‘You think you can beat me?’

He does. Felix can be so traditionally male that way. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

I start to tread, he does the same.

My eyes stay on his, watching. Waiting. Not for anger. This time, I see the moment the sleeping pills take effect.

He doesn’t feel it for another thirty seconds or so. ‘Wait,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘I’m just …’

‘Just what?’

He shakes his head, turns toward the shore. Felix starts to move toward it until I grab his arm. ‘Are you okay?’ I say.

‘I can’t keep –’

‘Sure you can.’

He shakes his head, his eyes already drowsy. That’s a hell of a sleeping pill. No wonder people get addicted to those things. So easy to get, too.

It’s nothing at all for me to reach up and push his head underwater. He struggles, though. Even pops up for one more breath. Felix grasps at me, the horror in his eyes. The betrayal.

He knows.

I push his head under for good. He doesn’t struggle for long.

Felix. Poor, sad, finicky Felix. Did I know from the beginning I would do this?

No. But I brought the sleeping pills, so I always knew that I could. If it came to that, which it did. Now I have to make sure he stays under the water.

If I weight him down, it will be obvious he was murdered. For this to be considered an accident, I have to get more creative. Luckily, the rocks along the side of the shore are helpful. Also, luckily, bodies are easy to move in the water. It’s a fairly simple thing to lodge his body halfway behind the rocks. He stays under that way, like he got stuck and ended up drowning.

I take one last look before walking away.

Our marriage was never going to work.

When I met Felix, I had no one. My father was dead, my mother in prison, Nikki had been gone for years, and I certainly wasn’t close to Eddie or Portia. If I’m being perfectly, totally, 100 percent honest, I was so lonely, anyone I met could’ve become my husband. It just happened to be Felix. He was the one I latched onto, clung to, stayed with, and married. And for the most part, he’s been a wonderful husband – at least right up until he slammed his fist on the dashboard, reminding me that even the kind, easygoing men are capable of violence. I’m not waiting around to see if that fist hits me.

No, I don’t need Felix anymore, not the way I used to. Don’t even want him, because I’m going to find Nikki.

My mother would understand, because she realized the same thing about Dad. She just didn’t need him anymore. Not if he was going to insist Nikki was dead.

Remember, a cheating wife is just one deal breaker. Murder is the other, which means neither my mother nor I can be the heroine of this story.

‘We have to call the police.’

When Nikki disappeared, that’s what I said. We have to call the police.

Grandpa looked at me like I was the crazy one.

I turned to Eddie, who couldn’t hate our sister that much. ‘We can’t just leave her out here,’ I said.

‘You know what the police said when she ran away,’ Eddie said.

Which time? There had been quite a few. The first was years earlier, and the police were pretty serious about looking for her, given that she had been fourteen, and young girls who disappeared were all over the cable news back then.

They found Nikki in less than a day. She was hiding at a friend’s house.

The second time she ran away, they didn’t take it as seriously. They said, ‘She’ll be back in a few days.’

The third time, they barely wrote a report. Nikki always came back whenever she stopped having fun or ran out of money. They usually happened at the same time.

‘She’ll call Mom and Dad when she’s ready,’ Eddie said.

‘No,’ I said. This wasn’t like when Nikki ran away at home, where she had friends and family and a town she was familiar with. This was the wilderness.

And she was pregnant.

‘We have to find her,’ I said.

‘Where? How?’ Eddie said. He was throwing his stuff in his bag, no longer looking for Nikki. ‘Just let her go. She knows how to use a phone.’

I went to Grandpa, who was cleaning up our cooking stuff. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I bet we can find her.’

He looked at me, his eyes hard. ‘Did you help her?’

‘Of course I didn’t help her! No!’

Grandpa just stared at me.

‘Do you really want to go back home without Nikki?’ A threat, yes. I’m not even sure I knew I was making it. The question just seemed obvious. ‘Do you want to explain this to Mom?’

‘Nikki!’ Portia yelled. She may have been tricked by Nikki, but Portia still wanted to find her. ‘Nikki!’

She just kept yelling. No one answered.

Grandpa sighed. He looked off into the woods, maybe thinking about what to do next.

‘We really should call the police,’ I said.

He sighed. ‘Before we do that, let’s try to find her first. You know she runs away a lot.’

I had to agree with that.

‘Do you have any idea where she would go?’ Grandpa asked.

I smiled. Yes, I did know. ‘Ever seen Thelma & Louise?’ I said.

‘Your grandmother loved that movie,’ he said. ‘I never understood it.’

‘Nikki loves it, too. And there’s a desert in it. She always talks about seeing that desert.’

‘Then let’s go see the desert.’

It was impossible for me to know, to visualize, just how big the desert was, or that there were so many of them. At least we were looking for her, though. That was the important thing.