Page 50 of The Wrong Track

We had walked a little way before he brought it up. “Go ahead,” Tobin said. “Tell me about those dreams.”

I had prepared myself to talk to him as I’d brushed my teeth. There was a limited amount of information that I felt ok sharing. “They’re all about the same. No, they’re in different places, but the idea is the same. Something is coming to get me, sneaking up. It’s pretty blatant. I mean, I don’t think you have to be a dream reader or whatever to get it. I’m afraid.”

“Of what?” We walked a few steps as I didn’t answer. “He’s really dead, Remy. I promise.”

“But you may not know. If he got put in some kind of protection program—”

“No, he’s really dead. I’m absolutely sure.”

Maybe he was, but in spite of the slightly warmer temperature, I shivered.

“I called down to South Carolina again and they sent me a lot of materials about his case,” Tobin said. “It’s taking me a while to go through it all. The state had him for drug and firearms charges. Also prostitution of minors.” I felt his eyes on me but I didn’t return his gaze. “He was going to get hit with federal charges, too.”

I thought that I should have brought my inhaler with me. “I read that,” I said. They were going to try to put him away for a long time.

“Was that what happened to you?”

“Didn’t you look me up, too?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t,” he answered. “I told you that I wouldn’t.”

“You should,” I said. “I’m sure that your partner Bill did.” He knew because he watched me in the same way as Tobin’s mother, wary and distrustful. I was sure that she had also read my criminal history.

“It’s not my business.”

“It is because I live with you. As your roommate,” I clarified. “Your choice of a roommate reflects on you. And it’s all public record. That’s why I haven’t wanted to use my name here, because if you look up Remy Chastain, you can see that I have a sheet. And I’m living with you, which is awful. You’re a police officer.” I tried to take a deep breath and failed. “I’m sorry.”

“What were you charged with?”

“Possession. I got off with a fine.”

He seemed to relax. “That’s not great, but it’s not so terrible.” He stepped around a puddle and held out his hand to me so I could jump it. Then he kept holding my hand. “Were you using those drugs?”

“I used every day for four years,” I said. “Anything I could get, as much as I could get. I stopped when I might have been pregnant.”

“That was admirable.”

Not really. I didn’t explain why I’d gone cold turkey, that Kilian had cut me off when he’d decided that we would have a baby. Neither of those things had been my choice.

“Were you working for Kilian Rovina?” Tobin asked me.

I had to stop walking. “I was,” I said. “I stopped. I cleaned up and I stopped. I’m not doing anything now…” I thought of Kilian’s brown packages and pulled my hand away to ball it up inside the pocket of the plaid hunting coat.

“Ok.” His voice was very quiet. “Ok, let’s walk.” I did after a moment, my legs like lead beneath me.

“If Ella and I go, I could use a different name,” I said. “I could change her birth certificate, even, and get a driver’s license. It would be all new, in a new place where no one knows about anything.”

Now Tobin stopped. “Wait a minute. ‘Get a driver’s license?’ You don’t have one now?”

I shook my head. “Kilian took everything that said my name. My driver’s license, my library card, my school ID. He let me keep some money sometimes and I sent that home to my mom. He knew what I was doing and he thought it was funny because they didn’t know where that money came from, how I’d worked for it. He controlled everything else.” I looked around at the blue sky above us. “It’s so strange how I can choose,” I said. “I’m still not used to it. Right now, just this moment, I went for a walk. I can go home and take a shower. I can whenever I want.”

“He controlled when you showered?”

“He controlledeverything,” I said again. I didn’t know how else to explain it; even my thoughts, what the drugs and booze hadn’t suppressed, had belonged to Kilian because I’d been afraid to rebel inside my own mind. “When he was gone, I went to the grocery store for the first time by myself. I had to get food to eat but there was so much to choose from, I got overwhelmed. I went home with nothing and the next time, I made a list so I didn’t feel so scared. Now I can sleep when I want to, I can wear clothes that I pick for myself. I went to the botanical gardens and worked just like a normal person and I go to the library, too, and no one questions me at all.”

I kept talking, the words coming out even faster as I tried to show him how things had changed, to convince him that I had.

“Kilian didn’t like me to read very much and that was hard, because I missed books. I missed so much. It was hard not to know how my sister was doing and my mom, too. But I don’t know if I was even thinking, if my mind was even functioning. I was drinking and taking pills, snorting coke, doing anything I could because I just felt so…I didn’t want to feel. I didn’t want to be alive.”