Page 88 of Forever Dark
ONE MORE NIGHT OF MERCY
The red and gold ink looked too bright under the parking lot light.She shoved it back down quickly and closed the zipper.No reason for that to embarrass her, but lately it had.Maybe because she could already hear her sister laughing if she ever found out Tara had spent two evenings sitting under a tent listening to a preacher tell crowds there was still hope for broken people.
Then again, the world had not exactly been overflowing with hope.
Two women dead in less than a week.Both found at night in Harlan County.Both staged in places people used to hold dear.The details had spread fast, half rumor and half fact, until everybody in the county seemed to know enough to be frightened and not enough to feel safe.
Tara unlocked her car and got in.
For a moment she just sat there with both hands on the wheel, looking at her own face dimly reflected in the windshield.Tired eyes.Hair flattened from the shift.Exhaustion and strain where there should have been a person.She had meant to call her sister back yesterday and had not.Meant to buy groceries.Meant to stop looking at herself in harsh light and thinking she had started to look older all at once.Men had always looked at her.Desired her.But now she could see that slipping, and she wondered what would be left when it finally all evaporated like stale milk.
The engine turned over.
Headlights washed across the far edge of the lot as another car moved toward the exit.Tara backed out, nodded once at the guard without being sure he saw, and drove out onto the county road.
Town disappeared fast at that hour.
One minute there were closed storefronts, the all-night gas station, and the weak promise of civilization.A few turns later the road opened into black fields and drainage ditches and stretches of fence where nothing moved.This was her drive every night.Left at the old feed mill.Straight through the low bend near the creek.Past the house with the broken porch swing.Past two mailboxes standing close together where the road narrowed and the shoulder fell away.
Familiarity had always made it easy.
Tonight it sharpened things instead.
A few miles out, Tara glanced in the rearview mirror and saw headlights behind her.
Nothing strange there.Somebody else heading home.Another shift worker.A farmer out early.A delivery van taking the long way around.The county was sparse, not empty.
She looked forward again and rolled her neck once.
Another mile passed.The same headlights remained there.
Still nothing, she told herself.
A mailbox reflector flashed in her lights and vanished.Trees leaned over one stretch of road and threw bars of shadow across the hood.Off to her right, a field lay flat and black all the way to a fence line she could no longer see.The car behind her neither gained nor fell back.
Tara checked the mirror again.
Same distance.
Her hands shifted on the wheel.
“Get a grip,” she murmured, though the sound of her own voice did not help.
At the next bend she thought about the sermon she had heard two nights earlier, Elias Croft standing under warm lights telling a tent full of people that fear lied to them, that despair liked to pretend it was final, that the king always had one more move.At the time she had felt foolish for finding comfort in it.Driving home now, with those headlights still there, she felt more foolish for remembering.
The road dipped.
The concrete surface bobbled under one tire when she edged too far right, and the sound startled her enough that she jerked the wheel slightly back.Heat climbed her throat.Embarrassment more than fear.At least that was what she called it.
Another look in the mirror.
Still there.
“It’s nothing,” she said under her breath.
Without deciding to, Tara slowed a little.
The headlights behind her slowed, too.
