The Resurrected Compendium Read online

  He took the wheel, thinking only after he’d turned the key in the ignition that she might expect to drive, but Abbie just looked out the window and chewed on her thumbnail. Her hair had fallen across her face again. He liked that she didn’t feel she needed to talk.

  The drive to Marnie’s grandparents’ house took twice as long because of the wreckage still on the streets. Downed trees, emergency vehicles. He took a few back roads and wished for his pickup truck to go cross-country. Shit. He’d probably never get it back, at least not in one piece.

  “This was a bad one, huh?” Her quiet voice from the passenger seat startled him a little.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve never been in a tornado before. It wasn’t like I thought it would be.”

  “Me neither. Seen places where they went through, but wasn’t ever in one myself. But they said at the hospital it was one of the worst they’d seen in a long time.”

  She looked at him then, the pale skin of her face traced lightly here and there with faint red scratches and the outlines of a few bruises. He’d done that when he shoved her into the bathtub. Her smile tipped just on one side. “But we made it through.”

  She looked out the window again. “I didn’t know they bounced. Tornados, I mean. Apparently, they can bounce.”

  She pointed into the distance, where the wind had ripped apart what had once been a cornfield but left the surrounding fields untouched. She leaned forward to click on the radio, found static and the blurt of some loud music, then the softer tones of a newscaster. A woman’s voice, some clipped accent he didn’t recognize. She was talking about the storms, what towns had been hit. The damage that had been done. How unusual the past few days had been, with not just the strength of the storms, but the locations.

  “Wait a minute,” Abbie said. “What? New York state? Glen Wild? What? Oh my God.”

  But the story had ended, replaced by a song Cal didn’t know and didn’t like. Abbie flicked the radio with her fingers to turn it off. She let out a series of slow, hitching breaths, like she was trying hard not to cry.

  “Oh God,” she said. “I have to get home. I have to get home.”

  They’d just pulled into the end of Marnie’s driveway, but at the sound of Abbie’s despair Cal stopped the car. She twisted in her seat to look at him; she wasn’t wearing her seat belt. Her dark eyes were narrowed, her mouth grim. She reached to curl her fingers in his shirt sleeve.

  “I lost my phone,” she said. “I can’t call. I mean…I’m sure…tell me they’re okay, Cal. They’re okay, right?”

  He didn’t have to ask who. He could guess she meant her kids, maybe a husband, even though he it seemed more than likely he’d be an ex. Cal understood. He leaned to put his hand on the back of her neck, and the weight of her hair tickled his knuckles.

  “I’m sure they’re fine. We’ll find you a phone, so you can call. Okay? Marnie has a phone, if she hasn’t lost power you can use hers. Or she’ll have a cell phone.”

  The towers were down and service out here was spotty even when tornados hadn’t ripped across the country. He had no actual idea if Marnie had a cell phone, though he supposed she probably still did since it was her inability to clear her text history that had tipped him off to her messing around on him. His offer didn’t seem to soothe Abbie, who’d started tapping her fingers against her thighs and the side of the door. He didn’t know what to say to make things better. She was a stranger, after all.

  She didn’t cry, though, and that was fine with him. Crying women made Cal nervous. His mother’d been a wailer, a breast-beater. A sobber. She’d fallen apart at any little thing. It made his dad crazy when he couldn’t do anything for her, and Cal’d never learned how to do it either. He patted Abbie’s thigh though. Hoped that would be enough.

  Marnie’s house hadn’t been hit too hard, not compared to the devastation they’d seen in other places. The barn had been ruined but not completely demolished, and the big tree in the backyard had taken a beating. The house looked okay, and as the tires of Abbie’s Volvo crunched on the gravel, the back door opened.

  There she was, his ex-wife. She wore her hair shorter, to her shoulders instead of halfway down her back. Her breasts and belly were enormous under her nightgown. She raised a hand to her eyes to shade them, and he knew he didn’t imagine her smile.

  It had faded by the time Cal got out of the car and approached her. Marnie looked past him, saw Abbie. Both of Marnie’s hands went to that big belly, and her eyes narrowed. He remembered that look. She was pissed.

  “What are you doing here?” Marnie said as he put his boot onto the bottom step of her porch. “Who’s she?”

  Abbie hadn’t come closer. Cal took his foot from the step. “I came to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine.” Marnie lifted her chin and looked toward the ruins of what had been the barn. “Could’ve been worse.”

  “How’s Tony?”

  “He’s…fine,” Marnie said.

  She’d never been a very good liar. She’d only managed to pull one over on him for so long because he’d chosen not to see the signs that his wife had been stepping out on him. He’d worked long hours, pretended to believe her when she told him she was going out with her girlfriends. He’d had his own secrets to keep by that point. It was easier for him to let her go than to try and keep her, not when he didn’t want her anymore.

  Marnie looked again at Abbie. Repeated her question. “Who’s she?”

  “This is Abbie,” Cal said. “I’m borrowing her car.”

  “What happened to your truck?” A pause. A breath. “Oh. Sorry. But you’re okay?”

  “Fine. I’m fine.” Cal looked around the yard. “You want me to take a look around? Make sure everything’s okay?”

  It was the wrong thing to say, he saw that at once. Her eyes narrowed. Her lip curled. He knew that look, too. Marnie’s mouth opened, but before she could say anything, the kitchen door opened. Tony came out.

  Cal’d met the guy a few times, once or twice before he knew Tony was fucking his wife, a few times after. He was a big guy, at least three inches taller than Cal and maybe twenty pounds heavier, but Cal was never afraid to go up against bigger men. Not that he’d ever had to go up against Tony, because even once Cal’d found out Marnie was cheating on him with the other guy, he’d never so much as given Tony a nasty look. A man who’d take another man’s wife deserved her, that’s what Cal figured.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Tony said.

  Marnie didn’t so much as put a hand up to stop Tony from jumping off the porch and heading for Cal, who stood his ground. She laughed, though. Low and hoarse, her eyes bright, her smile twisted. She laughed at him, and Cal thought if he had a gun right then, he’d have pulled it out and shot her square between the eyes.

  But he didn’t have a gun, did he, and why? Because he might never have put up a fight to stop his wife from walking out the door on another man’s arm, but he’d let the stress of it distract him until he couldn’t do his goddamned job. Because he’d been distracted the day he pulled over a couple of dick-heads high on pot who thought it was a good idea to run a stop sign and sideswipe an old lady in a Cadillac and then keep going. Because when the driver stumbled out from behind the wheel, both hands up, Cal hadn’t been paying attention to their friend in the backseat who’d been high on something stronger than weed. That friend’d had a knife, and he hadn’t been shy about sinking it into Cal’s shoulder, which had made Cal pull the trigger though he hadn’t been planning on it.

  Cal had lost everything because of that pregnant bitch on the porch in front him, and the fucker who was now halfway across the yard to him. Tony had his hands up to grab the front of Cal’s shirt, but Cal wasn’t going to wait for the asshole to even get close enough to touch him. He moved forward, fists clenched.

  His throat closed as the annoying tickle that had been plaguing him became a full-blown scratch. A cough ripped from him, and his mouth burned with the taste of it, b