back to Lubbock like the Sisters said I would, and I swear to God I will never breathe a word of this to another soul. Okay?”
Rebecca was silent. In the moonlight, her hair was almost silver. Cait couldn’t take talking to the back of her head anymore, and she reached out and spun her around. Rebecca’s face was streaked with tears, and her eyes were pink and swollen. She looked . . . desolate. “What do you want from me?” she cried, her voice thickened with grief. “My baby is dying. Isn’t that enough for you? Why are you doing this?”
Cait ducked her head. “It’s not because of you. It’s because of your husband.”
Rebecca’s lips were white and stretched tight across her teeth. “Oh, I figured that out already. A quick buck writing about the famous Patrick McRae’s wife having an abortion? I can see the headline now: ‘Politician’s Wife Murders Own Baby.’ I bet that would get you enough money to stop pouring drinks for a while, huh?” She shook her head and spat into the dirt. “You make me sick.”
Cait felt a surge of anger. That was the truth, wasn’t it? People like Cait had been making people like Rebecca sick for as long as there’d been stars in the sky. Okay, so she’d screwed up. Royally. Okay, so she’d intended on exploiting this woman, but hadn’t her husband done exactly that while this woman stood behind him, smiling that pretty smile of hers? Cait tightened her grip on Rebecca’s arm. “That speech he made, the one where he talked about Me Too and Jake Forsythe, the one that went viral? I was the one who wrote that article. After your husband said that about me, someone hacked into the website’s server and released my name. They found my home address, too, and they made it a point to terrorize me. I got death threats in the mail, people calling my phone at all hours, coming to my apartment . . . Every single day, I live in fear, and it’s your husband’s fault. I thought that you were just some hypocritical politician’s wife looking to sweep a scandal under the carpet. I didn’t know about your baby’s . . . condition. If I had known, I never would have planned it.” She took a breath. “So I’m sorry if I acted like an asshole, and I’m sorry that I recorded you without your knowing about it, and I’m sorry that I was going to write that article, but you have to understand that Patrick McRae ruined my life. You have to understand that.”
For a few moments, the only sounds were the distant cries of a bobcat and the two women’s thundering breath.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Rebecca said stiffly. “I’m sure Patrick didn’t do it intentionally.”
Cait forced herself to let this go. “I’m sorry I betrayed your trust.” She shoved the recorder toward her. “Here. Take it. I don’t need it.”
Rebecca stared at her for a hard minute. “Are you still going to write the article?”
Cait shook her head. “God, no. Of course not.”
“And you’ll still drive me to Albuquerque?”
Cait nodded. “If you’ll let me.”
Rebecca took the tape recorder, tossed it on the ground, and stamped on it until it broke, and then she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and started walking back toward the Jeep. Cait hurried to catch up with her. “I really am sorry, Rebecca. I swear, if I’d known—”
Rebecca held up a hand to stop her. “Let’s just get back on the road, okay? We’ve already lost too much time tonight. I can’t afford any more delays.”
The two women climbed into the Jeep without another word and were soon back on the road, heading west.
Patrick
Patrick sat in the greenroom of a local TV station, waiting for the man with the clipboard to wave him through to the set. It was his third interview in as many days, and he had reached the point where he’d become his own mimic. He felt disembodied from the sound of his own voice, and the words that came out of his mouth felt foreign and strange, like he was listening to them on the radio rather than speaking them himself.
It had been a week since they’d learned the baby was sick, and he hadn’t slept longer than a couple of hours.
He hadn’t slept the previous night or the night before that. Instead, he had lain awake in the bed he shared with