Blood on My Hands

to wear an ankle monitor. So they know where you are in case they want to talk to you again.”
    “Or arrest me?”
    “I suppose it can’t be ruled out.”
    “What’s the other promise?”
    “Under no circumstances are you to leave the county.”
    “What difference does it make if I’m wearing an ankle monitor? Won’t they know where I am anyway?”
    Gail bugs her eyes at me. “Why are you giving me grief? You’re out, okay? Free! All you have to do is wear the stupid thing and not leave the county. When’s the last time you left the county, anyway?”
    She’s right. For the first time in what feels like forever, I have a smile on my face.
    We stop at the police station and they place the monitor just above my right ankle. It’s a black box, slightly smaller than a pack of cigarettes, on a black strap. The officer who puts it on warns me that even though I could cut it off with scissors, as soon as I did, I’d break the circuit and send an alarm to the tracking unit.
    Then Gail drops me off at my house. Stepping through the front door feels strange, as if I’ve been gone for months, not days. It’s dim and cool inside. Mom’s become fanatical about keeping the lights off and the heat down while she tries to get by on Dad’s disability payments.
    “Mom?” I call from the front hall.
    “Callie?” Coming from the kitchen, her voice is filled with surprise. A moment later she appears in the hallway in her old red plaid robe and envelops me in her arms. “Thank God!”
    She’s so happy that I’m home that she hardly seems to hear when I explain what’s happened and why they let me go. All she cares about is that I’m free. As soon as I can get away from her, I go to a phone and call Slade, but I get his voice mail. He’s probably at the town center, finishing the job. I’d text him from Mom’s phone, but she doesn’t have texting set up. I could wait for him to call me back, but I’m too excited, too brimming with yearning to see him. I beg Mom to let me borrow the car. Just to go into town. Please? She finally says yes and I drive to the town center.
    Slade’s pickup isn’t in the parking lot, but maybe he parked somewhere else or rode with his dad that morning. I go through the back door of the center and follow the sounds of hammers and saws up to the second floor. In the hallway a painter lugging a large white bucket stops and stares at me like he’s seeing a ghost.
    “Do you know where the Lamonts are?” I ask.
    He points down the hall and I go in that direction, looking through doorways into empty rooms until I come to one and see Mr. Lamont’s back. With quick, deft movements, he’s using a trowel of mud to fill the seams and screw holes along a new wall. I watch for a moment, then say, “Hi.”
    Mr. Lamont stops and turns. A day or two’s worth of gray stubble coats his jaw, and his broad stomach hangs over his belt. This is a man who always has a smile on his face for me. But there’s no smile today. “Hello, Callie.”
    “Is Slade here?”
    He doesn’t answer. His eyes slide away and his face grows sadder. Something’s wrong and I feel myself fill with dread even before he answers: “He’s gone.”
    “Gone?” I repeat. I can tell by the way he says it that he doesn’t mean gone to the store. He means gone. My mind screens the possibilities. “Not deployed? He said he’d been—”
    Mr. Lamont shakes his head. “Just gone. Cleaned out his bank account and left a note saying good-bye and not to bother looking for him.”
    This makes no sense. Where would he go? I feel my heart begin to disintegrate. “That’s all it said?” I ask, thinking, Nothing about me?
    “It said to tell you he was sorry.”
    “About what?”
    “I don’t know, Callie. I wish I did, but I don’t.”
    I’m back in the car and driving down the thruway. Mom’s going to have a fit when I don’t bring the car back. The police are going to go ballistic when they figure out I’ve left the county, but I don’t care. I have to find him.

Chapter 45
    Saturday 8:37 P.M.
    IT’S DARK AND the rain is coming down hard. My hair is soaked. As I walk across a parking lot, water drips down my neck and sends chills as it runs down my back. My feet are soaked and cold from stepping into puddles. The smell of fish and ocean is in my nose as I pull open a door. This is the twelfth bar I’ve gone into. The odor of stale beer is in the air. Yellowish light inside illuminates half a dozen grizzled