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“Are you kidding me? You can’t say no when someone asks you that. I’ll give you another chance. Do you want to see pictures of my kids?”
“Sure.”
Meggie spun her fanny pack around, unzipped it, and took out a camouflage men’s wallet. She unsnapped the wallet and opened it to a booklet of plastic sleeves. “This is an old one,” she said, showing Abby a photo of herself and three little kids. “Nammie was four in this picture but she’s going on nine now. Josiah was three, he’s going on eight. This little one, Tommy, was five months but he’s passed now. Rake and I have two of our own. Rake Junior and Luke. They’re eighteen months and seven months. They’re staying with my mom for a while. All of them are. The state decided to give them to my mom when my sister got involved and stuck her big nose where it don’t belong. I don’t have any pictures of me and Rake’s little ones with me on account of their pictures are all just on Facebook. They look exactly like their daddy. Real handsome. I had a good phone but I broke it so now it’s back to a flip phone for now, and anyway, Rake’s holding it for me. Otherwise I’d show you, if I had that good phone still. Do you have any kids?”
“No.”
“You don’t like kids, or you never found the right guy, or what?”
“What made you guys come out here today?” Abby asked.
“I don’t know. Rake and Charlie got something planned, I guess. As usual. I came along ‘cause Rake told me to.”
“Rake and Charlie had something planned?”
“Yeah. I don’t know what. Rake just told me to get in the truck.”
“What kind of a name is Rake?”
“It’s a good name. Like Jake.”
“Do you know if there are alligators in that pond?”
“The biggest you’ve ever seen. Rake told me when they were kids they shot one from that exact pond and it was twelve feet long. He’s showed me old pictures of them all standing with it after they shot it. They used to have it hanging on their wall in the living room. From its nose to its tail, it went from one whole end of the room to the other end. I’ve seen pictures of that too, with it all mounted up on the wall like that, and with Rake and his brothers sitting lined up underneath it on the couch, holding their Christmas stockings. But when the house burned down they lost everything, even that great big gator skin. Ask him about it when he comes back.”
“No, that’s okay.”
“Yeah, now that you mention it, we probably shouldn’t even be standing down here unless we have some big sticks with us or a gun. I’m not too afraid of gators, though. They’re more scared of you than you are of them.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Hey, you’re the girl who needed the birth control pills, aren’t you?”
“What are you talking about?” Abby wondered if Meggie had x-ray glasses on or something. Along with her iPod and the cash, the only thing she’d brought was a container of lip balm that was nearly empty. Into the vacant space of it she had dumped seven days’ worth of birth control pills. All the rest and their packaging had been disposed of a few days ago in one of the trashcans at the mall.
“I had to go to the free clinic and go on the pill for some girl Chuckles was screwing. Excuse me, making love with. That was you, right?”
Abby was too humiliated to answer.
“If it wasn’t you, I really put my foot in it. Holy shit. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Relax. It was me.”
“Whew! That’s a relief. For a second I thought, uh oh, it was some other girl. I told you, he’s a heartbreaker.”
Abby started walking back toward the shed, away from the pond, away from the record setting predators. Meggie fell into step beside her. “And that’s your cabin too, right? You’re the rich girl with the cabin?”
“How do you know about the cabin?” Abby asked.
“I just heard about it. That’s all.”
“Were you at my cabin?”
“Uhh... I don’t remember. How come you can afford a nice cabin but not birth control pills? Don’t you have any health insurance?”
“I’m sorry you had to get birth control pills for me. That’s super weird. We don’t have to talk about this anymore.”
“It was no big deal. There’s the free clinic if you can’t go to the regular doctor’s office. You could go there. That’s where I go.”
