Page 15 of Sin of Love

8

Five hoursand about three hundred miles later, we reach the gas station. I know it’s the one Lyle mentioned because it has an attached diner and minimart. And it’s the only gas station we’ve seen for miles.

“Wow, it looks different,” Nate muses, leaning forward in the passenger seat. “That place used to be a two-pump, half-collapsed shithole with disgusting bathrooms and a greasy payphone.”

I arch a brow, welcoming the respite from my thoughts. “That’s an oddly specific description. Did you spend a lot of time there?”

Nate forces a chuckle past his anxiety. “Nope. Just a few hours on the night we escaped an even bigger shithole.” He sits back, staring at the road ahead and frowning. “Deirdre always had a better sense of direction. What if I can’t find it?”

He does. It takes an hour and a half of driving up and down every goddamn road in the area, but we find it.

Nate directs me down a narrow driveway bordered by tall trees and thick brush. Time has allowed roots to push back against their asphalt oppressor, buckling it along the edges.

Despite the fact it’s just past midday, the sun hides behind trees. So far the aura of this place is creepy as fuck—case in point, the junkyard wind chime over the entrance is straight out of a horror movie.

The vague sense of wrongness only increases as the house itself comes into view. Dark and dreary even beneath bright, direct sunlight, the three-story beast squats on a treeless swath of land. Most of the eastern half is charred black, sagging from collapsed ceilings and floors.

In another life, I might have admired the disturbing, injured majesty of it. Wanted to photograph it. Perhaps even sketch it or paint it.

Now I want to finish the job Deirdre started and burn it to the ground.

“Park around back. Right here.”

Nate is out of the car and running toward the house before I’ve even put it in park. My heart galloping, I yank the keys from the ignition and am out the door seconds later.

Unlike Nate, I don’t run but walk carefully toward the house, surveying the ground around me. My roommate in college could only study to reruns of Law & Order, which means I’ve seen about a thousand episodes. I’m not about to trample evidence.

Nate disappears through a busted- in door in the un-burned part of the house. I hear him shouting her name and want to tell him she’s not in there. She’s not here at all.

Faint tire tracks lead me to the half-collapsed garage, where I find Deirdre’s car, the bulk of it haphazardly buried beneath scraps of drywall and blackened plywood.

My kneecaps turn to liquid, dissolving into nothing. My ears ring. “No, no, no.”

Lurching forward, I start digging the car out. Skin splits, nails crack. I don’t care. Dust flies with pieces of wall. Wood chips litter my hair.

I just need to know… need to see…

“Gideon, stop! You did it—that’s enough!”

My bleeding hands fall to my sides. Chest heaving, I look from the exposed car to Nate, who stands outside the garage. To my relief, he doesn’t comment on my enraged Hulk routine, merely walks past me and tries the driver’s door.

I try to help, but for some reason I can’t move. He hasn’t checked the trunk. I stare at the license plate, wondering if…

If…

From inside the car, Nate unlocks the trunk. It pops up a few centimeters. He climbs out of the car and comes to the back. Our eyes meet—both crazed with the need to know and not know.

We step forward together.

Lift the hood together.

And sigh together in abject relief.

* * *

We searchthe property until dusk, then drive to the nearest motel and rent a room with two beds, a broken ceiling fan, and a mini-fridge that coughs like a smoker. Though neither of us has an appetite, we stop at the gas station diner and order burgers to-go, then eat them in silence on the curb outside our room.

When all that remains of our food are wrappers and scraps, Nate watches me in distaste as I light up a cigarette.

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