Don't Turn Around Read online

  She felt the girl’s eyes on the side of her face, watching. Don’t look at me. Don’t look. The walls pressed in tighter. She was a baby bird nestled tight inside its egg. Her lungs began to scream.

  California.

  This was a trick she’d taught herself after the first few panic attacks. If she needed to escape the confines of her mind, she would take herself to California. She pictured the palm trees arcing above the parks and the Victorian houses painted in shades of sherbet and the smell of salt water everywhere. If she closed her eyes and thought hard enough, she could conjure up the view of San Francisco from Crown Beach: skyscrapers shrouded in mist, the swell of Nob Hill, the wide arc of the Bay Bridge.

  She felt her rib cage start to relax, her breathing ease. She felt strong enough to talk. “Do you mind if I roll down the window a little? I think I need some air.”

  Cait nodded. “Sorry, I know it’s stuffy in here.”

  The air was bracingly cold, and Rebecca felt shocked back into her body with every breath.

  Cait’s eyes were still on her. “You okay? You look a little—”

  A streak of movement in the headlights. Flash of teeth and dark fur. A sickening thud. A whimper. Cait slammed on the brakes, the screech of tires on tarmac splintering the night, too late. Silence.

  “What was that?”

  Cait shook her head. She looked pale and stricken. “I don’t know. A coyote, maybe?”

  She opened the door and walked slowly to the front of the Jeep, legs shaking visibly from the shock. Rebecca followed close behind. They saw it at the same time: a smear of blood across the front end and a tuft of coarse hair caught in the grille. A mass of spiky reddish fur. A single limp paw.

  It was a fox. From this angle, lying motionless beneath the undercarriage, it looked like it was sleeping. Only the dark red blood staining the muzzle gave it away.

  “Oh, God.”

  Cait looked back to see Rebecca standing behind her. Cait shook her head. “Get back in the car.”

  “Is it—?” She didn’t need the answer. She already knew.

  “Get back in the car. You shouldn’t be out here.”

  The fox was small—probably a female, and a young one at that. Rebecca thought of the den that used to be underneath the old trampoline in her parents’ backyard. Her dad always pretended that they drove him crazy—“Mangy, overgrown rats,” he’d mutter when he found a fresh lump of scat—but she had caught him smiling at them from the back window on more than one occasion. One summer, she woke up to find the cubs jumping on the trampoline, their little legs flying up in the air as they did flips and somersaults, their mother crouched watchfully nearby. “They’re not much different from dogs,” her mother had said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Just a little wilder.”

  Rebecca reached out a hand and touched its chest. Its fur was soft underneath her fingers and still warm.

  Cait stared down at the dead fox and up at the deserted street. “We can’t just leave it here in the middle of the road.” She looked at Rebecca. “Are you okay? You aren’t hurt?”

  “I’m fine. Are you?”

  “I’m okay. I’m just sorry this happened. I should have . . .” She trailed off. The headlights cast two interlocking circles of light in front of them, stretching their shadows long. The only sounds, the hum of the engine and the faint static coming from the radio.

  Cait straightened up suddenly and dusted off her jeans. “Why don’t you get back in the car,” she said, trying to steer her toward the door. “I’ll take care of this.”

  Rebecca shook her head. “You can’t move it on your own.”

  “Sure I can.”

  “Please.” She leaned down and placed a hand on the fox’s skull. “Let me help.”

  They worked silently, Cait gripping the fox’s hindquarters while she took the neck. Together, they gathered the body out from under the Jeep and carried it over to the side of the road. It was surprisingly heavy; its fur was almost achingly soft.

  “It looks like it was quick. Painless.”

  Cait nodded. “I hope so.”

  They placed the fox at the edge of a small patch of grass in front of a trailer park. “Maybe someone will find it in the morning and give it a proper burial,” Cait said, tilting her chin toward the row of houses.

  “Maybe.”

  They both knew that was unlikely. Dead foxes were a dime a dozen on a road like this—its body would be left for the vultures to pick over or tossed in the trash for the next municipal pickup.

  Rebecca stared down at the fox and fought the sudden urge to howl. It looked so lonely there, all alone in the grass. So small. Like its mother had never licked its soft fur clean, or given it an affectionate nip while it played with the other cubs. She looked away. It was awful, this world. Sometimes unbearably so.

  She heard the sound of the Jeep’s door closing and turned to see Cait walking toward her with a bundle of fabric in her arms. An old Baylor sweatshirt. She bent down and tucked the sweatshirt around the fox’s body. The look in her eyes was both embarrassed and defiant. “I didn’t want it to get cold.”

  As they pulled out of town, Rebecca could still make out the outline of the fox’s shape in the moonlight, growing smaller and smaller. Soon it was out of sight.

  Two and a Half Years Earlier

  Rebecca’s palms were slick with sweat, and she wiped them discreetly down the sides of her dress. She was glad she’d worn black, even if Patrick had worried it would look funereal.

  “I’m going for Jackie O,” she told him as she fastened a strand of pearls around her neck.

  Patrick winked at her. “You’re gorgeous, whoever you’re supposed to be.”

  The campaign manager he’d had for a few weeks—Rich Cadogan, one of the best in the business, according to Patrick—strolled in and handed Patrick a few notecards. “Make sure you hit the beats,” he said, slapping him hard on the back.

  Patrick ticked them off on his fingers. “Lower taxes for hardworking families. Better health care. Community outreach. Stricter penalties for repeat offenders. ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.’”

  “You got it!” Rich beamed. He turned his attention to Rebecca. “Lose the pearls,” he said, shaking his head. “People will think you’re elitist, wearing them. Same with the shoes. Remember, people have to like you as much as they like Patrick. And the people love Patrick. Am I right, my man?”

  Patrick grinned. “Only thanks to you.” He caught the look on Rebecca’s face and tempered his smile. “I think Rebecca looks great, though. Classy. Like Jackie O.”

  “The Kennedy thing doesn’t play down here. We need to appeal to the suburban moms, and with you guys not having kids of your own, we’re already at a disadvantage. If she goes out there looking like that, they’re going to assume she’s a bitch.” Rich threw her a look. “No offense.”

  Rebecca felt her cheeks grow hot. “This is the only dress I brought. I don’t have anything else to wear.”

  “Let me see what I can do.” Rich slid out of the room, leaving a gust of Tom Ford in his wake.

  Patrick watched as she unfastened the pearls. “He doesn’t mean anything by it,” he said, putting a tentative hand on her arm. “He’s just doing his job.”

  “I know.” She felt hot tears swelling behind her eyes. “I just want to get it right.”

  He turned her around and pressed her against his chest. “You will, sweetheart. You will.”

  But not yet. That’s what he was saying, wasn’t it? She would get it right in the end, but she hadn’t gotten it right yet. The worst of it was that she knew he was right. The week before, Rich had arranged for a journalist to stop by the house to interview them as a couple, and as soon as the woman stepped over the threshold, Rebecca could feel her weighing up every inch of the place and finding it wanting. The kitchen was too sterile. The living room, with its open bookshelves and lack of television, was stuffy and try-hard. The cookies Rebecca offered her—bought specia
lly from the nice bakery on Eighty-Second Street—were greeted with a polite grimace, and Rebecca knew instantly that it would have been better to have baked a batch of Betty Crocker chocolate chip from a boxed mix.

  When the profile finally came out, Rebecca winced at the woman’s description of her. She was “poised” and “reserved,” and her blond hair was twice described as “sleek.” (Lazy copyediting, Rebecca had chided, before she could catch herself.) Much was made of the fact that she’d been born and raised on the West Coast and educated at Berkeley. “Rebecca McRae spent six years teaching English at a progressive high school in downtown San Francisco.” She could hear the eye rolls from ten miles away.

  Patrick, on the other hand, had been painted as a returning hero, a local boy who’d fought off the demon coastal elites and returned triumphant to the Lone Star State. The writer described his eyes in elaborate detail and made particular mention of his strong forearms, visible thanks to his rolled-up shirtsleeves.

  Rebecca had locked herself in the bathroom that night and stared at her reflection. Was this really who she was now: a stuck-up housewife with bad taste in baked goods? She should have pushed harder to find a teaching job in Lubbock, but transferring her credentials had been more difficult than she’d anticipated, and by the time she was certified, a new school year had begun and nobody was hiring. And then Patrick had been tapped to run for Congress, and he told her she’d be too busy helping him campaign to work.

  “Once I’m elected, you’ll have a platform to talk about education,” he said. “You can use your brilliance to help thousands of kids in Lubbock, not just the thirty who are lucky enough to get you in the classroom.” He’d reached out and held her chin in his hand. “We’re going to make one helluva team, you and me. Texas won’t know what hit it.”

  Now Rich flew back into the room and tossed a baby-blue cardigan and a pair of ballet flats toward her. “I stole them from the intern,” he said.

  She slid the cardigan on—the intern wore Shalimar, which had always given her a headache—and squeezed her feet into the too-small shoes. Patrick smiled. “You look perfect,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.

  Rich gave her a thumbs-up from across the room. “It’ll work for today. I’ll get a wardrobe consultant on board for next time.”

  Rebecca looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She didn’t recognize the woman staring back.

  She heard Patrick’s name being announced and the swell of applause and felt his hand around hers as he tugged her out onto the stage. She stood behind him, chin tilted down, face carefully arranged to project pride and seriousness and approachability and family values and all the countless other attributes Rich had coached her on. She didn’t have to speak—in fact, they would prefer if she didn’t—just stand there and look at the back of Patrick’s head adoringly as she sweated quietly into the intern’s cardigan. Her feet already ached.

  Patrick approached the lectern with a practiced wave and launched into the speech she’d heard him rehearsing in the shower that morning. “Good afternoon. My name is Patrick McRae, and I’m here with my beautiful wife, Rebecca, to ask that you elect me your next congressman for the great state of Texas!”

  Muleshoe, Texas—253 Miles to Albuquerque

  Rebecca hadn’t said a word since they’d left the fox by the side of the road, and the mood inside the Jeep was grim. Her silence felt pointed. Judgmental. Like she blamed Cait for what had happened, even though it had clearly been an accident. That said, if she hadn’t been so caught up in her own thoughts, maybe she’d have seen the fox in time.

  She had to admit, she’d been surprised when Rebecca had gotten out of the car after the accident, and even more surprised when she’d insisted on helping carry the body to the side of the road. She didn’t seem like someone who would be comfortable getting her hands dirty. Seemed more like a sidelines kind of woman, used to other people doing things for her. Especially the nasty stuff.

  But she’d helped, all right—had barely even flinched as she lifted the fox’s shoulders. Cait could still feel the weight of it in her arms, the soft fur tickling the insides of her elbows.

  Guilt twisted her stomach. She should have been paying closer attention to the road.

  She shook away the thought. Keep it light, that was her motto. If you let it get on top of you, you’ll drown.

  “Well, that wasn’t exactly an auspicious start to the trip.” She was trying for flippant, but when she sneaked a glance at Rebecca, she worried she’d missed the mark. The woman’s face was as still and solemn as one of those ceremonial death masks.

  A beat went by. “I’ll be marking down your Uber rating, that’s for sure.”

  Cait was quick to catch it. “Hey, don’t forget I offered you bottled water earlier. That’s worth at least a couple of stars.” The joke surprised her: she hadn’t pegged Rebecca as the joking kind, either. It was good, though. It was an opening. She could work with it. “So, terrible driving service aside, how are you feeling? Do you need anything?”

  Rebecca shook her head. “I’m okay for now, thanks.” The smile disappeared.

  Cait nodded, easy. “Okay, well, just let me know. That’s what I’m here for.”

  “I will.”

  Silence. She rode it out. She could sense Rebecca wanting to say something, felt it welling up inside of her. She just had to be patient.

  Finally, Rebecca took a breath. “Have you ever had something bad happen?”

  Cait looked at her. “Driving, you mean?”

  Rebecca nodded.

  Cait reached over and fiddled with the radio dial. Nothing but static. She was stalling for time. “Nothing serious.”

  “So something has happened?”

  Cait shrugged. “One woman’s boyfriend chased her out of the house with a baseball bat. I don’t know if he was meaning to use it, or if it was just for show, but we didn’t stick around to see. She dove into the car and I drove off as fast as I could.”

  “Jesus. Anything else?”

  Cait shook her head. There was no point in scaring the poor woman. So she didn’t mention the brick somebody had thrown through her windshield, as technically, that hadn’t happened during a drive. A technicality, maybe, but an important one.

  “Did the woman go back to him?”

  “The boyfriend?” Cait shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried to tell her that we could provide her with other services, that our help wouldn’t just end once the procedure was finished, but she didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to talk at all, actually—as soon as she was in the car and away from that house, she closed her eyes and slept all the way to Albuquerque. I don’t know if she was faking it or if she really was that exhausted.” Cait thought about it for a minute. “Probably both.”

  “So you dropped her off back at the house when it was finished?”

  Cait heard the implied criticism and felt a flash of irritation. “We’re here to help as much as we can, but we’re also here to do what the client tells us. She told me to drop her back at the house, so that’s what I did.” I did my job, she added silently. Just like I’m doing now.

  “Was the boyfriend waiting for her?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see him. I waited at the curb for a few minutes after she went inside, just in case, but . . .” She shrugged again. “Nothing.”

  She could still remember the feeling of powerlessness as she’d watched the woman walk up the drive, the gentle slope of her shoulders signaling nothing but resignation. Cait had wanted to jump out of the Jeep and grab her and shake her. Instead, she just watched her disappear into the darkened house, and after sitting outside for ten minutes, she’d driven back to Austin and spent the evening sinking beers and trying to forget.

  It was a feeling she was all too familiar with.

  Nine Months Earlier

  It was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek personal essay: nothing more. It was a little clickbaity, maybe, but that’s how Internet journalism worked. You w
rote a piece about something, your editor stuck a controversial headline on it, and you got eyeballs. Eyeballs meant advertiser money, and advertiser money meant the website could pay their writers. Not much, obviously. Five hundred dollars was the most she’d ever gotten for a story, and that was a spon-con thing for a hotel chain. The stuff she’d cared about got much less—sometimes nothing.

  She got a hundred dollars for this one.

  She typed up the story as soon as the Lyft dropped her back at her apartment, the alcohol wearing off after a strong cup of coffee, leaving her buzzing and jittery. She wrote the whole thing in an hour and sent it to her editor—well, the woman she hoped would be her editor—at a website that specialized in confessional essays and gossip.

  “Thought you’d like this,” she wrote, and after she hit send, she took a long, hot shower and went to bed.

  She didn’t have high hopes for it—Jake was well known in Austin, but he was only starting to break out nationally, and country music was generally considered pretty niche. But the timing worked in her favor, and editors were clamoring for Me Too content, especially when it involved a famous (or even semi-famous) man and salacious sexual details.

  In the morning, there was an email waiting in her inbox: “Loved this,” the editor wrote, “but I think we should publish anonymously. I spoke to our legal team and we can’t cover your liability. We’ll pay you two hundred for your trouble. Sound okay?” She said it would go live later that day.