AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For the next hour, they glided through the water, steering clear of the water hyacinths that choked the swampier areas. As they paddled from one hidden bayou to the next, through eerie cypress forests draped with Spanish moss, he barely spoke. She glanced back at him. The play of his muscles stretched his white T-shirt over his chest as he paddled, highlighting the message written in black letters. The shirt wasn’t one of his recent purchases but something that must have been stashed in the bike’s saddlebags when he’d left Wynette. If only it had stayed there. “Those awful bumper stickers are bad enough,” she said, “but at least a person has to be close to your bike to see them.”
He watched an alligator lolling in a patch of sunlight on the far bank. “I told you about the bumper stickers.”
She turned around in her seat, resting the paddle on her knees and letting him steer. “You said the bike’s previous owner put them on. So why didn’t you let me peel them off?”
He shifted his paddle to the other side. “Because I like them.”
She frowned at the message on his T-shirt: IT ONLY SEEMS KINKY THE FIRST TIME.
“It was a gift,” he said.
“From Satan?”
Something that looked almost like a smile flickered across his face and then disappeared. “You don’t like it, you know what you can do about it.” He cleared another snarl of water hyacinths.
“What if a child saw that shirt?”
“Seen any kids today?” He shifted his weight slightly on the seat. “You’re making me sorry I lost my favorite one.”
She turned back to the bow. “I don’t want to hear.”
“It says, ‘I’m all for gay marriage as long as both bitches are hot.’”
Her temper sparked, and the canoe wobbled as she twisted back around. “Political correctness is obviously a big joke to you, but it isn’t to me. Call me old-fashioned, but I think there’s value in honoring the dignity of everyone.”
He pulled his paddle out of the murky water. “Damn, I wish I’d brought the one I got a coupla weeks ago.”
“A terrible loss, I’m sure.”
“Want to know what it said?”
“No.”
“It said …”—he leaned toward her and spoke in a slow whisper that carried over the water—“‘If I’d shot you when I wanted to, I’d be out by now.’”
So much for conversation.
When they returned to the house, she made herself a sandwich from the groceries they’d picked up, claimed an old paperback someone had left behind, and closed herself in the bedroom. Loneliness wrapped around her like a too-heavy overcoat. Had Ted done anything to find her? Apparently not, considering that he hadn’t tried to stop her from leaving the church. And what about her parents? She’d called Meg twice from Panda’s phone, so it couldn’t be that hard for the Secret Service to locate her.
What if Mat and Nealy had written her off? She told herself they wouldn’t do that.
Unless they were so disgusted with her that they didn’t want to see her for a while.
She couldn’t blame them.
SOMETHING ODD HAPPENED OVER THE next few days. Panda’s manners underwent a marked improvement. At first she didn’t notice the absence of all those belches, slurps, and scratching. It was only when she saw him cut a piece of chicken neatly from the bone and carefully swallow his first bite before he asked her to pass the pepper that she became thoroughly confused. What had happened to that open-mouth chewing and using the back of his hand as a napkin? As for any suggestions of sexual violence … He barely seemed to notice she was female.
They went into the town of Marshall for groceries and supplies. She bought sunglasses, kept her hat pulled low, the baby bump she’d grown to detest in place, and with Panda close by, no one noticed her.
He worked on his bike, taking things apart, reassembling. Bare chested, and with a blue bandanna wrapped around his forehead, he lubed and polished, checked fluid levels and changed brake pads. He set a radio in an open window and listened to hip-hop, except once she’d gone outside and heard an aria from The Magic Flute. When she’d commented on it, he accused her of messing around with his radio and ordered her to change the damn station. Occasionally she’d catch him talking to someone on his cell, but he never left his phone around, so she had no opportunity to check his call records.
At night, she sealed herself in her bedroom while he sat up, sometimes watching a baseball game on television, but more frequently sitting on the deck, staring out at the water. The numbness from the first few days began to fade, and she found herself watching him.
PANDA DRAGGED THE MUSKY SCENT of the bayou into his lungs
. He had too much time to think—too many memories crowding in—and each day his resentment burrowed deeper.
He hadn’t expected her to last more than a few hours, yet here she still was, seven days after he’d picked her up. Why couldn’t she do what she was supposed to? Go back to Wynette or run home to Virginia. He didn’t give a damn where she went, as long as she was gone.
