“Hm.”
They rode in silence—not total silence, as the creaking of the saddles made for a strangely pleasing backdrop of sound, as did the clop of hooves over various ground coverings and the occasional snorts from the horses—for a while longer before he tried again.
“I sense that comes from experience.”
She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Yeah, okay.” She girded her mental loins. “When I was thirteen, my dad was gunned down on the street outside a gas station convenience store. To this day, they don’t know who did it. Never caught the guy. I just… I feel like I could have done something if….”
“Ah.” His gloved hand lightly touched her arm, then returned to his thigh. “I’m sorry you went through that.”
“Thanks,” she said, feeling awkward now and falling silent.
The horses snorted. The saddles creaked. The hooves clopped on asphalt, the current ground cover. Otherwise, they were surrounded by an eternal hush. No birds. No chirring of bugs. No traffic noise.
“That could’ve been your villain origin story,” Jerome said mildly. “Like in the movies.”
She shot him a look, but since it was impossible to judge his expression, she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“I guess I decided to make it my hero origin story instead.”
“Good choice,” Chad said.
It sounded as if he were grinning. It was a good sound, but it did make her wonder how words without mouths to shape them could sound as if they came from smiles.
“No hate,” Jerome said agreeably, putting up a hand. “I wanted to be a lawyer for similar reasons. My aunt and uncle were run down in the street by a couple of kids drag racing. They were just dumb kids, caught because their cars were totaled in the wreck. The dumb kids were lucky to get out alive themselves, but it didn’t feel like they got enough punishment. Vehicular manslaughter when they were doing seventy-eight in a forty-five?” He made a “pssh” sound that, again, made her wonder about the shaping of lipless sounds. “So I get it. Sometimes, you just want to do some good in the world. Right some wrongs.”
She eyed him for a moment as if looking for sarcasm, but again, none of the usual visual cues were available. After a while, she again decided to take him on faith and nodded, albeit slowly.
“What about you, Chad?” she asked, turning slightly to look back over her shoulder, then realizing the futility and facing forward again. “What’s your hero origin story? What did you want to do with your history major?”
“You remember that?” Again, he sounded amused.
“It’s amazing how much sheer terror pulverizes details into your brain,” she said, deadpan.
He snorted. “I wanted to work in historical preservation. There’s a lot of history back home just going to rot because it’s not Confederate history. I wanted to highlight some of the brighter, more enlightened side of Missouri’s past, hard though it can be to find.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Wow. That’s really cool, actually. And then you wanted to be a writer. I can imagine that being really rewarding.”
He cleared his throat. Both interesting and distressing, and she was glad she couldn’t see it from this angle. “Well. I thought it might be. Anyway.”
His discomfort was clear enough in his voice that she didn’t need to see his nonexistent face, so she turned her attention to the quieter of the three.
“What about you, Aaron? What did you want to do with your MBA?”
He sighed. “I don’t have a hero origin story, Esmie. Sorry to say, but I just wanted to make a lot of money.”
“Hey, now,” Jerome said, surprising her. “To be fair, he came from a really poor background, so I don’t blame him one bit. And he always said the first thing he’d do with all that money was buy his mama a big, brick house in the richest neighborhood in town.”
“Aw.” She smiled at Aaron, abruptly aware from the way her smile went crooked that her face had swelled from her faceplant into the gravel. She must look quite a sight. “That’s really sweet, Aaron. And there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to be poor anymore. I’m on three different scholarships at MSU and a T.A. for the stipend. And I have a non-school job on top of that.”
Jerome grunted. “So how did you have time to be out walkin’ after midnight in a cemetery?” he half-asked, half-sang. “Andwhy,for god’s sake? A pretty girl like you all by yourself?”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, you’re definitely from the Eighties if you think ‘a pretty girl all by yourself’ is an okay thing to say to a woman.”
“Huh?”
“And second, I’m so not pretty right now with my face all swollen up like a pumpk—uh—” She cut herself off and coughed. “Anyway.” She cleared her throat, her bluster failing her. “Er… uh… Yeah. I was supposed to wait for my friend, Tavia. But I needed the research for a paper this week, and Tavia and Icouldn’t sync up our schedules until Monday, so… I came by myself.” She sighed, caught back up with her runaway mouth. “Not my best idea, I admit. But how could I have known?”
Chad patted her arm lightly, probably with sympathy. Jerome grunted again, but thankfully didn’t say anything. Aaron sighed. Jerome’s horse snorted loudly, jetting steam into the muted air, as if it agreed.
