This time for sure, p.25
This Time For Sure, page 25
“You never know,” she said.
The officer who had called for ID had worked his way from the front of the bus to their row.
“Identification, please?”
Barbara handed him her passport and he scrutinized it before handing it back to her.
“Where are you headed tonight, ma’am?”
“New York City.”
“And the purpose of your trip?”
Barbara hesitated long enough for Jodie to notice. “I’m visiting family.”
The officer turned to Jodie. “ID, please?”
Jodie handed him her license.
He barely looked at it. “Are you an American citizen, ma’am?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Place of birth?”
“Fayetteville, North Carolina.”
He grunted something that might have been thanks, handed the license back to her, and moved to the next row.
Jodie sagged back against her seat.
“You’re all right,” Barbara said.
This was starting to annoy her. “How do you know? Who the hell are you, anyway?”
Barbara was knitting again. In the light, Jodie could see it was something in shades of green and blue, ocean colors.
“Do you know the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel?”
Oh, for Christ’s sake. She’s one of those. “I’ve never needed it.”
Barbara didn’t seem offended. “Well, it doesn’t come up much, outside of military parishes. Catholics in the military like it, because it’s all about battle.”
“My father was Army. I’ve never heard of it.”
“Oh, Fayetteville,” Barbara said. “Fort Bragg?”
“We moved when I was still a baby. I don’t remember it.”
“Not much to remember about it, though the river trail is nice,” Barbara said.
“You’ve been there?”
“I’ve been everywhere.” The needles clicked against each other, new fabric flowing from them. Whatever she was knitting really did look like water. “Anyway,” she continued, “St. Michael the Archangel.”
“What about him?”
“The idea of St. Michael is that he fights the devil, specifically. ‘Satan and all the evil spirits, who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls.’”
“Sounds like a movie.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Barbara laughed. “With Gabriel Byrne. Or maybe he played the devil in that one. I can’t remember.”
“I don’t believe in the devil.” Jodie felt the need to get that out there.
“Well, no, of course not,” Barbara said. “I’m not sure I do either, at least not as an actual creature walking around with a tail and horns. But I believe in the ruin of souls.”
She raised her eyes to look directly at Jodie as the bus lights snapped off, plunging them all back into darkness. Whatever the officers had been looking for, they hadn’t found. They’d left the bus and the driver was starting the engine again.
“People think what they do can’t matter much to other people,” Barbara said as the bus accelerated back onto the highway. “It makes them careless. People don’t listen to each other. People don’t see each other.”
“But you do?”
“I don’t know whether what I do matters. But I do look. I listen. You’re running from something.”
“How do you know?” Jodie asked.
“Because we all are,” Barbara said. “Anyone who sat in your seat would have been running from something. The question is what.”
“What are you running from?”
“That’s not your business,” Barbara said pleasantly. “But for most of us, you know, whatever we’re running from comes with us, or at least is waiting for us when we get there.”
“Get where—to New York?”
“Or to Philadelphia,” Barbara said. “But sometimes, I can help.”
“Help?”
“With whatever you’re running from.”
Jodie snorted. “You got a magic carpet? A get out of jail free card?”
“Are those what you need?” Barbara asked.
“For starters.”
“What’s in Philadelphia?”
“My job. My apartment.”
Barbara reached into her knitting bag and pulled out a flask. “Bourbon? You can have the cap as a cup, I haven’t drunk from it.”
“I’m not drinking,” Jodie said.
“Then I won’t, either.” Barbara dropped the flask back into her bag. “Are you in recovery?”
“No,” said Jodie. “I’m pregnant.”
It had been a shock. Jodie had been on the pill since she was seventeen. Who knew tetracycline made the pill less effective? She did, now.
She hadn’t expected him to be happy about it, but she felt she had to tell him in person, instead of by text or over the phone. He had office hours on Thursday afternoons, so she’d taken the bus down that morning, and hung out in the library until fifteen minutes before his office hours were supposed to end.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” he said when she knocked on his open door. “What are you doing in town?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
They hadn’t touched each other until after she graduated. He’d been her thesis adviser, guiding her research on the influence of Novalis on the March Revolution of 1848. She stayed on through the summer, working at the library before going up to Temple for their History Ph.D. program on War, Empire, and Society. Somewhere in there he’d started coming by the library late in the afternoon, suggesting she join him for a drink. And the rest, as they said, was history.
Except he was married. Except he was up for tenure. Except he didn’t love her, and she wasn’t sure she loved him.
“I have a meeting at five,” he said. “But I can meet you at The Tombs after. Six?”
“Okay,” she said.
She waited for him in a booth on the bar side, where they were less likely to be seen. She ordered an iced tea and a bowl of artichoke dip, thinking of it as rent. She opened her satchel and pulled out a biography of Mansa Musa she was reading for an Empires of Africa course, but she couldn’t focus. She opened her planner and traced the weeks on the calendar—ten weeks back, thirty weeks forward. Forty weeks altogether. Less than one percent of her life, if she lived to be eighty. Nothing, compared to the twenty-two months elephants spent pregnant.
He slid into the booth opposite her, briefcase first. “A short one, for once. Finals start next week.” He looked at the dip and the glass of iced tea in front of her. “Do we have a waiter, or should I go to the bar?”
“I just ordered from the bar.”
“Okay, that’s what I’ll do. Do you need anything?”
“No,” she said. “And I paid, I’m not running a tab.”
He returned to the table with his usual: bourbon straight, water back. She watched in silence as he scooped three ice cubes—always three, never more, never less—into his drink, then used a straw to add exactly twenty drops of water. He swirled it once and set it on the table.
“Let it open up,” he said, as if she didn’t know.
How had she ever thought that was charming?
“Hey, I got good news this week,” he said. “The Journal of Military History accepted my article on the Polish Legions.” He held his glass up for a toast.
She obliged, clinking her tea glass with his whisky. “That’s great,” she said. “I’m pregnant.” It was the first time she’d said it aloud.
He bobbled his glass, nearly dropped it, and set it down without drinking.
“Well,” he said. “Congratulations, I guess. Who’s the father?”
She slapped him, grabbed her bag, and walked out of the bar.
He caught her on the stairs before she reached the sidewalk. “Jodie, wait. Wait. I’m sorry. Are you—are you saying this is mine?”
“Who else could it be?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know your life. For all I know, you’ve got a boyfriend in Philadelphia.”
They were on the sidewalk, and night had fallen. It was cold, and 36th Street was almost empty of traffic, automotive or pedestrian.
“You know I don’t,” Jodie said. “Forget about it.” She turned toward Prospect and the Exorcist stairs. She could walk to the Ballston Metro.
“Do you need money—you know—to take care of things?”
It stopped her. She’d assumed she’d have an abortion, of course. But somehow, his assumption that she’d have an abortion was outrageous. Enraging.
“Fuck you,” she said. “No, wait—I already did that.”
“Jodie,” he said. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, like—” He raised his hands.
“Like tell your wife? Like tell the dean? Like write a letter to The Hoya? Like stand in Red Square with a big scarlet A on my chest?”
His hands dropped. “Yes. Like that.”
“No.” She rummaged in her bag for her keys, ready to hold them between her fingers in a fist as she walked to the Metro.
“What do you want from me?” he asked. “What am I supposed to do here?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know why I came here. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. You’re the adult here.”
“You’re not a child,” he said. “You’re a grown woman. What are you, twenty-two?”
“Twenty-one,” she said. “I skipped a grade.”
She crossed Prospect Street, and he followed her.
“Plenty of women your age have children,” he said. “Or at least, they know what to do if they don’t want them.”
“You’re right,” Jodie said. “You’re absolutely right. I shouldn’t have come here.”
“Wait,” he said. “Wait. What if—”
“What if what?”
“My wife and I have been talking about adoption for a couple of years. If you’re willing, I could pay you—we could even say you’re a surrogate.”
“Seeing red” was not a metaphor, Jodie discovered. With her keys in her fist, she punched up and at him, catching him just under the chin and knocking him back against the brick wall at the top of the Exorcist steps. His head made an audible thunk as it hit the wall, and he slumped to the ground.
He didn’t get up.
Jodie didn’t stop to check whether he was breathing. She ran down the stairs, to the traffic lights at the corner of M Street, and dashed across as soon as the light turned yellow. She ran across Key Bridge, bag slung over her shoulder, across more lanes of traffic and to the Metro station, where she scanned her card and disappeared down the long escalator to the subway.
On the train platform, she turned off her phone. She wouldn’t turn it on again until she got home.
“So you don’t know how badly you hurt this man,” Barbara said, still knitting, knitting.
“No,” Jodie said.
“What’s his name?”
“Lester. Dominic Lester.”
“Okay, then.” Barbara laid her knitting on her lap and pulled a phone out of another of her pockets. She opened a news app and typed in the name. “Nothing so far,” she said.
“What if—what if I killed him?” Jodie asked.
“What if you did?” Barbara said. “You probably didn’t. It’s not as if people don’t walk by there all the time. I’m sure someone found him in time to get help. And he’s hardly going to turn you in.”
She was right, Jodie realized. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose by accusing her.
“But what if he’s dead?” she asked.
“If he’s dead, he’s dead,” Barbara said. “You can’t fix that. You go on. Live your life. Have your baby. Be free. Imagine your best self.”
I could do that, Jodie thought. She wondered what her mother would say when she told her about the baby. The baby. My baby. What was it her mother always said?
“Babies bring their own,” Jodie said.
Barbara had started knitting again, but seemed to be closing off the row she was working on, dropping the blanket from the needles stitch by stitch. “That’s exactly right,” she said. “Here, I’m finishing this. You can take it with you for the baby.”
“What if I’m a murderer?” Jodie said.
Barbara laid a hand on Jodie’s. “It wasn’t murder, it was self-defense.”
“Self-defense,” Jodie said.
“Self-defense,” Barbara repeated.
The bus pulled up alongside Penn Central, and the interior lights came on again. Jodie took the blanket Barbara had given her and folded it over the top of her messenger bag, since it wouldn’t fit inside.
“Good luck, Mary,” Barbara said.
Mary? Jodie had forgotten she’d given the woman a fake name. “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”
“And don’t worry. Everything gets easier from here,” the white-haired woman said. “Only the first murder counts.”
Back to TOC
ABOUT THE EDITOR
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the USA Today bestselling author of thirteen psychological thrillers, and has won thirty-seven Emmy awards for her television investigative reporting. Her books have won five Agatha Awards, four Anthony Awards, and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. Reviewers have called her “a master of suspense” and “a superb and gifted storyteller.” The Murder List (2019) won the Anthony Award for Best Novel. The First To Lie (2020, with a starred review from Publishers Weekly) is now nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Anthony Award. Her Perfect Life (with starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus) will be published in September 2021. She lives in Boston.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
SHARON BADER is a transplanted New Yorker-Floridian-Californian who lives and writes in North Carolina, where she is currently researching and writing a historical mystery novel. Her stories have appeared in two collections published by Anchala Press and the Triangle Sisters in Crime. She holds a Master of Science degree in geological oceanography.
DAMYANTI BISWAS is the author of You Beneath Your Skin, an Amazon-bestselling crime novel, now optioned for a major motion picture by Endemol Shine. She supports Project WHY, a program that provides quality education to underprivileged children in New Delhi. Her short stories have been published in magazines in the U.S., UK and Asia. She also helps edit the Forge Literary Magazine.
CLARK BOYD currently lives and works in the Netherlands. His short fiction has appeared in High Shelf Press, Scare Street, Havok, After the Kool-Aid is Gone, Fatal Flaw Magazine, and various Jazz House and DBND horror anthologies. Before turning to fiction, he spent two decades reporting, writing, editing, and producing international news stories for The World, a daily program produced at WGBH public radio in Boston. Clark’s currently working on a book about windmills. Or cheese. Maybe both.
LUCY BURDETTE (aka Roberta Isleib) is the author of nineteen mysteries, including A Scone of Contention, the latest in the Key West series featuring food critic Hayley Snow. Her books and stories have been short-listed for Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. She’s a past president of Sisters in Crime, and currently serving as president of the Friends of the Key West Library.
KAREN DIONNE is the #1 international bestselling author of The Marsh King’s Daughter, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the U.S. and in twenty-six other languages. Praised by the New York Times Book Review as “subtle, brilliant, and mature…as good as a thriller can be,” The Marsh King’s Daughter took home the Barry and Crimson Scribe Awards for Best Novel and is in development as a major motion picture starring Daisy Ridley. Karen’s newest psychological suspense, The Wicked Sister, is also an international bestseller and was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Thrillers of 2020.
ELISABETH ELO is the author of the suspense novels Finding Katarina M. and North of Boston, selected by Booklist as a year’s best crime novel debut. Her Pushcart-nominated short stories have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and other publications. She is a former magazine editor, high-tech project manager, and halfway house counselor. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.
A former English and drama teacher, ELIZABETH ELWOOD spent many years performing with music and theatre groups and singing in the Vancouver Opera chorus. Having turned her talents to writing and design, she created twenty marionette musicals for Elwoodettes Marionettes and has written four plays that have entertained audiences in both Canada and the United States. She is the author of six books in the Beary Mystery Series, and her short stories have been featured in EQMM and Malice Domestic’s Mystery Most Theatrical. Born in England, Elizabeth lives on British Columbia’s beautiful Sunshine Coast.
ALEXIA GORDON is a physician by day and an award-winning, own voices crime novelist by night. A Virginia native who grew up in Maryland, she’s lived all over the U.S. and currently resides in New England with her cat, Agatha. She’s into early American history, distilled spirits, embroidery, and good ghost stories. The fifth novel in her Gethsemane Brown mystery series, Execution in E, was published in March 2020. Alexia is a member of Crime Writers of Color, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and Mystery Writers of America.
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author HEATHER GRAHAM majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. After a stint of several years in dinner theater, back-up vocals, and bartending, she stayed home after the birth of her third child and began to write. Her first book was with Dell, and since then, she has written over two hundred novels and novellas including category, suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult and Christmas family fare. She has sixty million books in print. Heather is the Chair of the 2021 Bouchercon Convention.
