Once Upon a River Page 0,62

of the fingerprints. She re-covered the body and the shotgun with the tarp.

“Margaret, honey, we’ll tell them he raped you. We’ll tell them he threatened to kill me. You said I’ve got a mark on my throat.” He reached up and felt his neck. “Let’s call them right now.”

“I’ll go to jail, won’t I?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said. “God, you’re so young, too young for this. Too young to know a man like that. When I learned your real age, I should have sent you home.”

Margo thought of Billy, how the police took him, and he was a Murray. Murrays could do about anything without paying a price.

“They’ll want to question you,” Michael said. “And me. Both of us. Let’s get in the Jeep right now and drive to the police station. Tell them the whole story.”

Margo squinted downstream into the setting sun. Darkness often crept in without her noticing, until suddenly the riverbanks were black. Now she was grateful to sense night coming on.

“Say something, Margaret. You’re scaring me.”

“You don’t have to worry,” she said.

“You’ve never done anything like this before. They won’t be hard on you. Though I hate to guess what they’ll think of me when they find out I’m with a seventeen-year-old girl.”

Margo resisted the urge to go into the house to retrieve her rifle for fear she might change her mind or lose confidence in her plan. Really she didn’t want to go upstream with Paul; she wanted to stay with Michael and soothe him, try to make him understand how dangerous Paul had been, how he wasn’t like other people. She had saved Michael’s life, but so far he wasn’t listening to her.

She took a few breaths, absorbed the river’s movement through her feet and legs. Fish and turtles and water birds were her family, she supposed, not humans, despite the comfort she might get from food and beds, from hot showers and lovemaking. Even when she had lived in her father’s house, every morning in summer and winter the river had spoken to her more clearly than he had.

She sat in the driver’s seat, started up the boat’s engine, and studied the dashboard. Gasoline fanned out on the water behind the boat, glistened in colors that became psychedelic in the fading light.

As she moved upstream in the growing darkness, she heard a crunch behind her. Cleo tore through the screen of the aluminum storm door. She jumped out through the hole she had made and ran to the edge of the river, out to the float. The last time Margo turned around, she saw Michael sitting cross-legged, hugging the fishing dog.

When she returned on foot just before five a.m., Michael was in the shower. She dug a T-shirt out of her backpack, put it on, and checked to make sure her jeans were dry before sitting on the edge of the bed. She ran her hands over King Cleo’s head and waited. When Michael entered the bedroom and saw her, he dropped the towel he’d been adjusting around his waist.

“I should go to the police,” he said. He picked up his towel and covered himself. “I’ve thought about it all night.”

“The boat is in Heart of Pines,” she whispered. “It’s tied up in his regular spot, upstream of the Gas and Grocery. They might not find him under the tarp for days. Maybe weeks.” She reached her hand out to Michael, and he automatically accepted it.

“Don’t tell me any more,” Michael said and let her hand go.

“I didn’t leave any fingerprints. I hid out until dark and then parked the boat. Nobody saw me.” Then she had walked back along the river road. She’d tied her bloody T-shirt around a rock. She’d filled her work gloves with muck and sunk them.

“You can’t kill a person and not pay the consequences.”

She pulled her hand back into her lap. She didn’t know if that was true, or whether any of Michael’s rules would hold up over the long haul. After all, Brian had gotten away with killing a man up north, until he’d stupidly attacked Cal. Maybe she would pay different consequences than the ones Michael expected.

She knew Michael hated it when she clammed up. She had hoped he would’ve changed his mind during the night, but if anything, now he was more certain they should call the police.

“Over this last year, I thought you’d changed,” he said and closed his eyes.

“Changed how? I thought you liked me how I was.”

“But you haven’t learned anything.”

“What