Page 30 of The Wrong Track

“Raw meat? You grill things all the time.”

He did, outside in the snow and wearing boots. He insisted that it was good for the grill to use it year-round.

“That doesn’t mean I like to touch it,” he answered. “I meant you, though. What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing.” We kept walking.

“I’m asking about the nightmares,” he told me. “That was a rough one last night.”

He’d come into my room again and turned on the light for me, and he’d watched as I’d taken a puff from the new inhaler. I’d told him he didn’t need to check on me and I’d stuffed towels under my door in case I made noise to wake him, but he still came. “Don’t you have bad dreams?” I asked.

“You’re really good at doing that,” he told me. “You never give out too much information. Are you dreaming about Kilian and what he did to you?”

“Did you look me up or something?”

“No, I never have. I’m not trying to invade your privacy. But I was there in the hospital when they interviewed you. You had bruises and scars all over your body and you told them how he’d abused you.”

“He’s dead.” I stopped, struck with horror. I’d worked myself into trusting that information, because it had been a long time now and I hadn’t heard otherwise, but was it a lie? “He is dead, isn’t he? You showed me the picture. That was real, wasn’t it? Are they faking it?”

Tobin stopped, too. “‘They?’ No, no one’s faking anything. Kilian Rovina is dead and buried. So that is what you’re afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid of Kilian.” I walked again, but slowly because the sudden rush of doubt had made me feel dizzy and breathless.

“That mother fucker. I wish he were alive.”

“What?” I stared. “Why would you say that?”

“I was thinking that he didn’t suffer enough, not with how he mistreated you. He should have sat and rotted for a while.”

“He would have figured a way to get out,” I said. “Or a way to run things from the inside. He was smart like that. And he wasn’t all bad.”

There was no answer.

“He was nice to me, sometimes. A lot of the time,” I expanded. “He loved me.” I watched Tobin’s jaw tighten. “He did,” I said. “He cared about me. Why do you think I was in Michigan with him?”

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

“Because I think that things were getting, you know, a little hot for him in South Carolina so he had to leave, but he wanted me to come, too. There were…” I stopped. There had been other girls he could have taken, but he’d chosen me. “Yes, he didn’t treat me well. I know that. But he also cared. He wanted us to have a baby.”

“That’s how you ended up pregnant, because he wanted a baby? Is that why you’re keeping it, too? Because it’s what Kilian wanted?”

I tripped, my toe catching an uneven place on the sidewalk, and I stumbled. Before, I would have been agile and strong enough to right myself, but now—now I just kept going forward for a few steps, kind of a buckling run, until I ended up on my knees.

“Remy! Shit, Remy, are you all right?” Tobin had dropped his crutches and was trying to bend and help me and he was going to fall, too.

“Don’t! Don’t do that,” I gasped, and he took his hands away. “I just need to stay here for a minute.” I was still on my knees so I shifted to rest on my hip and I saw rips in the fabric of my sweatpants.

“I’m so sorry,” Tobin said, like it was his fault that I was an ungainly cow.

“Tobin? Tobin Whitaker?” A woman came out onto her front porch and pulled her sweater around herself. “What happened? Did she fall?”

“I’m ok,” I called hoarsely, but the woman was already getting her husband and they wanted to help me up, and cluck over me, and then she insisted on driving us home. Tobin had to ride in the front with his leg stretched out and I had to roll myself into the back seat. The woman talked to us the whole time about how she knew she should have salted better, and Tobin kept telling her that it was his fault, and I let them fight it out between themselves.

“Thank you, Mrs. Clark,” he said when we arrived at his driveway and I repeated it.

“I’m so glad you and the baby are all right,” she said to me. “Tobin, take good care of your family!”

There was just the tiniest of pauses before he answered, “I will.”