The Killing Vision - By Will Overby Page 0,22

and watching the minister but thinking of Wade.

Yesterday he had staggered to bed at five in the morning, reeking of pot and sex. She pretended to be asleep until she heard him snoring, then she sat up in bed, staring out at the early gray dawn as her eyes brimmed with tears.

She wondered where he had been and with whom, although it probably didn’t make much difference. She looked down at his head of dark curls, his tanned shoulders, his muscled arm ringed with the tribal tattoo peeking just above the sheets. She tried to remember how it felt to love him, how she had felt when they were younger and she would hang on to him for all she was worth when he made love to her, pulling him as deep inside as she could. But now all she could feel was a painful loathing.

Why did he stay? What good was it possibly doing for him to hang around? Maybe he simply enjoyed the sadistic kick of making her miserable, of hurting her, of making her feel like a caged animal. Maybe that was it.

She had dragged herself out of bed and made her way to the kitchen, where she sat at the table in her T-shirt and panties while the coffee brewed. She had noticed his clothes were not in the floor where he usually dropped them when he crawled into bed, and she thought that odd; then she wondered if he had hidden them from her. But why would he? He didn’t care if she knew he was out with other women (he most assuredly had been), and he didn’t care if there were telltale signs somewhere on his clothes (there probably were). What was worse was that she didn’t care either. So why would he hide them from her? She had thought about asking him when he got up just before lunchtime, but when he stumbled through the kitchen to the porch, he looked like walking death, and she thought it wise to simply ignore him.

After Joel stopped by, Wade had come back in and cleaned up. “I’m goin’ into town,” he told her. He climbed into his truck and barreled out of the driveway, his rear tires spitting gravel. She had not seen him since.

This morning when he was still not home, she started to call the police because he might have had an accident of some kind. But she didn’t. It was, after all, not the first time he had disappeared only to return later with no explanation. He was like a tomcat out searching for a female in heat. It made her sick. But she did not want to worry about it because that was what he wanted her to do. She knew he hoped she had been awake all night waiting for him, expecting him to call and say he was in trouble. Or worse, for the state highway patrol to show up on her doorstep with bad news.

Instead, she called Joel. She only meant to ask if he had seen Wade, but instead she found herself sobbing over the phone and telling him that his brother had been out God-knew-where for the past two nights, and that she had no idea who he had been with or what he had been up to. And Joel had been angry; he hadn’t said so, but she could hear it in his voice. He told her not to worry, that Wade was probably all right, that the two of them would have a chat, and for her to call as soon as she heard anything. She hung up feeling more than a little embarrassed, and somewhat fearful that Wade would be furious with her for calling Joel.

It wasn’t fair. If Wade didn’t give a damn about her, he should at least think of Derek. A boy needed to have his father around.

She looked over at him now, sitting complacently next to her in his crisp white shirt and khakis. There were times when she worried dreadfully over him. She smiled at him, and he caught her eye and smiled back. He really was a handsome boy, she thought. He had his father’s dark curly hair and her dark eyes. He was a looker already.

“A-men!” shouted the man behind her, making her jump. Derek looked at her. Some of the teenage girls in the back had seen her and they snickered. Damn them, she thought. Damn them to hell.

When the service was over and she