The Bird Eater Page 17

  Pulling into the gas station, she saw her Thunderbird parked along the side of the convenience store where she had left it, waiting to take her back to a life she never truly felt was hers. Aaron pulled the e-brake and stared down at his hands. They both sat silently in their seats, Cheri waiting for him to say something, to explain what had happened back at the lake. She had seen it in his eyes—dread, as though somewhere inside his mind the sun had been blotted out by darkness. She watched him wring his hands in his lap, never once turning to face her. He may as well have been wringing her heart, twisting it like wet cloth, wrenching girlish hopes from their long-lived home.

  “Aaron.” She winced at the sound of her own voice. She had spoken softly, but anything above a whisper was too loud. “I’m worried about you.” She looked down to her hands, her wedding band still circling her left-hand ring finger. Pulling in a steadying breath, she exhaled her next few words.

  “I’m not angry,” she said, though she wondered if she should have been. The way he had jumped back from her, the way he had run from the shore; she’d been terrified that he’d leave her out in the middle of nowhere—it had been a bit much. She swallowed against a lump of emotion.

  “Do you regret it?” she asked. “Today, what we did?” It was the only question she needed answered. If it was a yes, she would step aside; let him hope and wait and dream about his wife finding the strength to forgive him for…what? An accident he couldn’t have prevented? A death he couldn’t have stopped?

  “No,” he said. That single syllable was hoarse, dry, rimmed with its own brand of masculine determination.

  Aaron’s reply gave her a little more strength. She squared her shoulders, caught both of his hands in hers, and gave them a squeeze. “I refuse to lose you again, do you understand?”

  He nodded faintly, a defeated acceptance.

  “I’m just tired,” he whispered.

  She supposed it could have been at least halfway true. He’d been slaving away on that house without proper food or a decent night’s rest, but it still didn’t explain the terror that had flashed across his face or the way he had stumbled backward and abandoned her on the sand, but she told herself that understanding everything all at once was impossible. Aaron Holbrook had over two decades of secrets; it would take time to excavate them all.

  “I know,” she said, deciding to let the strangeness of the past hour go—at least for now. Her fingers drifted in reverse, settling at the back of his neck. Pulling him toward her until they sat forehead to forehead, she closed her eyes as she listened to him breathe. And then she kissed the corner of his mouth and spoke against his skin.

  “We’ll make it okay. Just don’t push me away.”

  She had no idea what she was up against—depression, no doubt, but there was more. As soon as they leaned away from each other she wanted to touch him again, to keep touching him until he smiled and told her

  I’m okay now, Cheri, you fixed me, you did

  but she resisted the temptation.

  She wanted to tell him she loved him for a second time, but she kept that to herself too.

  Gathering herself up, she pulled her purse to her knees and rifled through her bag for her keys. She’d pay a visit to the house later to make sure he was okay, but she had to deal with Miles first. Despite the fact that it made her feel dirty and resentful, she still had to cover her tracks.

  “Call me if you need me,” she said softly. “I don’t turn off my phone.”

  She waited a beat, hoped for at least a good-bye, but she didn’t get one.

  As she walked across the parking lot to her awaiting T-bird, she found herself grateful that he hadn’t replied. A good-bye from Aaron was something she had never gotten, and it was something she never wanted to receive.

  Miles had watched Cheri leave. On the phone at the front counter, he had caught her sitting at her desk through the crack in her office door. Her phone had blipped—the familiar sound of a text message, probably from her mother; but rather than rolling her eyes at her phone like she usually did, she smiled instead, swiveled in her seat, and glanced out the window. A moment later he heard the soft tick-tick-tick of her typing on her touch screen. There was a jingle of car keys, the sound of the filing cabinet beside her desk opening and closing as she fished out her purse. Miles purposely turned his back to her as she stepped out of her office and across the lobby, pretending to be consumed by his phone call. A second later she was through the front door. Miles watched her climb into her car.

  “Can you hold on a minute?” he asked the guy on the other end of the line. He put the receiver down before he heard the customer’s reply.

  Cutting across the lobby, he stepped into Cheri’s office. It smelled of her perfume, light and airy like citrus fruit. But there was an overlay of something sweet and red—lip gloss. Miles paused at the window, squinted past the blinds, and watched a Toyota Tercel with Oregon plates pull out of Mr. Ice Cream’s parking lot and tail his wife. Miles calmly walked into the garage and shoved a toolbox full of wrenches off a worktable onto the floor. The guys in the garage stopped what they were doing, looked up at their boss, and ducked beneath car hoods and undercarriages a moment later. Miles’s temper was par for the course, and Miles didn’t give a shit if they saw him upset or not.

  It was a slow workday—nobody waiting in the lobby for immediate fixes—so he sent the guys home early and took up residence behind Cheri’s desk.

  He texted her just to see if she’d reply: Where RU?

  She didn’t.

  It took her over four hours to return. When she pushed open the office door, she gave a little yelp, startled to see him sitting there. Her hand flew out against her chest and she breathed a little laugh, then gave him a comical scowl.

  “You scared me,” she complained. “What are you doing, looking for something?”

  It was the only reason Miles went into her office, to look for things: invoices and receipts and lunch and an occasional cigarette. She dropped her purse onto an old office chair beside the door and raised an eyebrow, waiting for a reply.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You.”

  It was a cinematic thing to say, and it gave him a little thrill to see Cheri’s expression waver. She was trying to keep her expression Zen calm, but he could see the alarm register in her eyes. He had mastered reading the tiny shifts in her face; the way her eyes crinkled at the corners ever so slightly, the way her mouth twitched before blooming into a fake, easy smile.

  Cheri smiled and shrugged her shoulders and walked around the desk to the filing cabinet in the corner as though she’d been gone four minutes instead of half a day, and then she glanced over her shoulder, almost sultry, and said, “Well, I’m here now.”

  He suddenly wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shove her face-first into that painted cinder block wall.

  “Where were you?”

  “Get your feet off my desk.”

  She slapped his dirty boots with the corner of a manila folder.

  “Where were you?” he asked again, affirming that he wasn’t going to let it drop, not the way he let most everything else go—like the way she peered at him when she thought he wasn’t looking, her mouth screwing up as though she’d just eaten something sour; the way she walked out of rooms when he entered them, as though they couldn’t possibly occupy the same space; the way she bitched about his endless hours at the shop, but when he took the time to be at home she simply ignored him, aggravated by everything he said or did.

  “I went to Banner’s,” she said. “For cigarettes.”

  “I texted you,” he told her.

  She blinked at him as if mystified, and he could tell that she was genuinely surprised. What her reaction also meant was that she had been too preoccupied to glance at her phone—Cheri, the woman whose mother teased that she should have her phone surgically attached to the side of her face, ha
dn’t even noticed she had missed a text.

  “That’s weird,” she said. “Nothing came through.”

  Except he knew if he checked her phone his text would be there, waiting to be read.

  “You know how long you were gone?” he asked.

  She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, checking for moths in the light fixtures.

  “Four hours,” he told her.

  “What’s the big deal?” She frowned at him. “I ran into a friend.”

  A friend.

  Miles gritted his teeth. Was that what Aaron was, a friend? Because it sure as hell didn’t look like Cheri had been standing around in the produce department for hours on end. Her hair was different, matted and stringy, like she’d been caught in the rain. There was a swatch of dirt on her pants, right below her ass cheek where she couldn’t see it, and Miles knew better than anyone that Cheri Miller Vaughn did not sit in the dirt.

  “Who?” His voice cracked, dry with tension.

  That momentary flash of anxiety returned to her face, just for a heartbeat, just long enough to defy her play at innocence.

  He pushed away from her desk, bolted up from the swivel chair, and before she could take more than two steps he had her against the wall, her hands pawing at his wrists as he held her by the shoulders. It took every ounce of willpower to not shift them to her neck.

  “I want to hear you say it,” he told her, mere inches from her face. “Say his name, Cher.”

  “You’re hurting me,” she whispered, her words strained beneath the quick onset of tears.

  “But you aren’t hurting me?” He gave her a shove before letting her go. “Say his fucking name!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she screamed back, crying now.

  “Really?” He expelled a humorless laugh. “Jesus, really? I saw you.”

  Cheri shook her head, still denying the whole thing.

  “How many people in Ironwood have Oregon plates, Cher?”

  She blanched.

  He turned away from her and shoved the corner of the desk with his hip. Lingering in the doorway, he considered walking away.

  “I work sixty-five hours a week,” he said, surprised by the subtle tremble that accompanied his words. “Sixty-five hours a week so you can fuck another guy behind my back.”

  Cheri opened her mouth to protest, but she snapped it shut when he shot her a glare.

  Don’t you dare deny it. Don’t you dare tell me I’m dreaming, you stupid cheating bitch.

  He stared out the window, feeling like she’d doused him in gasoline and set him ablaze. The momentary silence gave him an iota of pacification, calm slowly creeping into his veins, quelling the indignation that was poisoning him, that had been poisoning him for months.

  But then she spoke: “You’re wrong.”

  She couldn’t confess.

  “And if you think you can tell me who I can and can’t be friends with…”

  Cheri cried out when he grabbed her.

  She screamed when the back of her head thudded against the wall; screamed again when he reeled back with his fist and punched the bricks just shy of her face, the bones in his hands folding in on themselves before snapping back into place.

  “You’re fucking crazy!” she howled, ducking beneath his arm, clamoring for her purse. “Don’t ever touch me again!”

  He could have reached out and grabbed her by the hair, could have pulled her back and slammed her on the ground before pounding her face in, screaming

  How could you betray me, how could you defy my fucking love?!

  But he let her go.

  Sucking in a wheezing breath through his snarl, he let her go.

  Because he did love her.

  He loved her and she knew it, and maybe this was what they needed—to come back together, this rift needed to tear them apart.

  He’d give her a chance to fix it. But if he caught her with Aaron again, the break would never heal.

  And to make it even, he’d break Aaron’s fucking neck.

  Fifteen

  The sheets pooled beneath Cheri’s shoulders as she dragged her fingernails down Aaron’s back. Her hair was a tangle of crimson upon his pillow, and the tip of her tongue left a slick of saliva along the curve of her bottom lip as a purr resonated from the hollow of her throat. She caught his wrists and shifted her weight, rolled on top of him and arched her back, her neck craning like an exotic bird. Aaron’s fingers bit into the curve of her thighs, and when her head lolled forward, the cascade of deep red was replaced by iridescent black that shifted in the light—hints of metallic blues and greens playing within that slick Cimmerian hue.

  He blinked up at her, a noxious swirl of confusion coiling inside his chest. Cheri exhaled a moan as her nails dug into his shoulders. Aaron shut his eyes, blotting out her sudden change in appearance, his hands slithering up her bare sides as he moved with her. But the air caught in his throat when her fingers stabbed into his skin, jabbing down so hard they buried themselves up to the first knuckle in his flesh. His eyes grew wide when he saw her hands—no longer hands but scaly four-pronged feet.

  Aaron tried to scramble out from under her, the bedsheets suddenly gritty with damp lake sand, but she held him down, her moans replaced by belabored cries of agony as something rippled just beneath her skin. Her flesh raised up in grotesquely pronounced goose bumps. For the briefest of moments the girl above him looked like a reptile, thrashing as if trying to get away, cemented in place by the claws she’d sunk into his shoulders. Her screams reached a fevered pitch as the bumps of her skin sprouted hard, flesh-covered points that laid flat against her flesh. Black, feathery tufts poked out from beyond the hard cuticle that held the pins in place. Her spine elongated, the needle-like probes growing impossibly long along the undersides of her arms.

  Aaron thrashed beneath her as her face shifted shape, her nose and mouth fusing together, protruding outward into a beak; a terrifying mask, like the bird doctor of the plagues. She exhaled an ear-piercing squawk, reeling back as if to peck him straight through, but he coiled his legs against his chest and shoved her away with his feet. Her talons ripped from his skin, blood surging from his shoulders. Frantically feeling the shore around him, Aaron’s fingers caught the edge of a large rock. The bird screeched as he brought his arm around in an arch, roundhousing the monstrosity against the side of the head, stone in hand.

  The thing fell back, and Aaron threw himself at it, pinning it down. It tried to flap its wings, its beak open wide as it snapped at his face. Aaron reeled back and screamed, smashing the rock against the bird’s massive skull. He pulled back again, and again, and again until he was bludgeoning nothing but pulp and fragments of bone.

  When the bird was dead, Aaron slowly looked up at his surroundings. The shore was the dusty floor of his living room. The monstrous bird before him was nothing but an ordinary raven.

  Moving away from the carnage, he stared down at his bloodied, feather-covered hands. They were small, a boy’s hands, hands that twitched as he

  bolted upright, his book sliding off his chest and tumbling to the bedroom floor. His uncle Fletcher’s voice reverberated against the inside of his skull.

  We should cut the damn trees down.

  Despite the darkness, the birds still tittered outside his window. There were hundreds of them now, dozens per tree. It was as though the things didn’t sleep, like there were too many of them—feathers tangled together, beaks biting and snapping, feet clawing, wings beating in the breeze.

  Aaron pressed his hands over his face, forcing the vision of that massive bird from his mind. He was getting used to the dreams, learning how to ignore them rather than letting them seize up his heart. The visions were decidedly better than the nightmares he’d suffered in Portland—the same dream playing over and over again on a loop: the crush of metal, the splintering of
glass. He’d take giant birds over car accidents any night of the week, because giant birds and insane boys and children being pushed out of windows didn’t make sense. As long as it wasn’t Ryder, he could push it to the back of his mind.

  Rubbing his eyes, he twisted upon the mattress and let his feet hit the ground. The coolness of the floorboards felt good on his feet: soothing, grounding, reminding him that despite the nightmares in his head, despite the nightmare that had become his life, he was still alive.

  Somehow he was still okay.

  I’ve always loved you…

  That whisper made his heart ache. He only wished the voice had been Evangeline’s, but perhaps it was a sign.

  Time to move on, he told himself. Time to let go.

  It had been too long; it had hurt too much. He wanted to feel better, and because Cheri wanted the same thing for him, somehow that made things feel all right.

  Pushing his fingers through his hair, he exhaled a breath and looked across the darkness of the room to his door. But rather than sliding off the bed and heading to the bathroom for a quick gulp of water, he stared at the space beneath the door as his heart sputtered to a stop.

  The moonlight shifted across the hardwood in a pale blue glow, darkness cutting through it in two distinct spots—spots where someone’s feet blocked the light.

  The surge of adrenaline made him nauseous.

  He was sure he was going to vomit as he slid to the ground, his knees whispering against the floorboards, his right arm jabbing into the shadows beneath the bed. His hand grazed the hard plastic of the gun case, pulling the box into view, but the gun wasn’t there. Sudden realization hit him hard: he’d left it downstairs, he’d left the fucking thing on the coffee table for any trespasser to use against him.