The Killing Moon: A Novel

He carried the revolver back inside and returned with a shovel from the garage, scooping up the dead crow and walking it to the deepest part of the yard, pitching it into the woods near the spot from where Sinclair had snapped the photograph of his house. Maddox stood there a few moments, the weight of the shovel in his hands, looking into the trees. He realized that the crow indeed had flown out of the woods to tell him something. Something important.

It was time to let Sinclair go. To give up needing to believe in his innocence. Maddox's fear of the thump reminded him that Dill was as capable of murder as any man. Whatever his father had put him through, whatever had happened to him in that house at the other end of the street: it happened to Sinclair, not to Maddox. Dill had made his own choices since then. The rest was up to Hess.

Maddox went back inside. He picked up the phone and called Tracy. "Let's talk," he said, inviting her for dinner. He could sense, in the way she so casually affected to resist him, the hurt infecting her like a cold. But she did agree to come over that evening, then hung up without saying another word.

Outside, the air was stifling, the humidity at its breaking point, and yet Maddox felt good suddenly. He felt a change in the wind.

On his way to Pinty's house, he came upon Ripsbaugh patching a pothole and pulled over. Branches waved overhead, leaves flippering behind the sweat-drenched man. "About as bad as it gets, huh?" said Maddox through his rolled-down passenger window.

Ripsbaugh bent over to see inside, shovel in hand. "You can taste the lightning coming."

"Hey, about yesterday at the cemetery. My grand theories? Just forget about all that."

"Yeah? How so?"

"It is what it is. I'm not sure why I had to try and make more of it."

Ripsbaugh looked almost suspicious. Maddox worried that he had awakened a conspiracy theory. "Just forget it altogether."

"I have."

Maddox thought about saying something to Ripsbaugh about Val's visit yesterday. But enough. Val had made her choices too, whether she could admit it or not. Maddox drove away, leaving Ripsbaugh leaning on the long handle of his shovel under the darkening sky.

Inside Pinty's house, a stillness hung like the moisture. On a desk inside the upstairs bedroom that used to be Pinty's home office, an oval-framed photograph showed a younger, bare-armed Pinty standing with his hand on the shoulder of his towheaded, ten-year-old son, Gregory.

Maddox sat down in Pinty's chair, holding the photograph. Every community, it seemed to him, lost its "innocence" on a fairly regular basis, usually once per generation. Each new age required its own poignant milestone, its pedigreed moment of loss, marking the passage of child into adult. A dividing line between the way things used to be and the way things are now. Maddox's father's murder thirty years before at the hands of Jack Metters had been such an event. But Black Falls never recaptured its putative innocence. What followed instead was one loss after another, a decline growing more precipitous with each successive year. All tracing back to that one fatal moment in time.

Maybe the town's regenerative powers were gone for good. Maddox thought of Metters's gun blasting its way through his peacoat pocket, the rounds cutting hot into his father's chest, thudding into Pinty's hips and waist—and their trajectory continuing through the years, right into today.

57

TRACY

ROSALIE WAS JITTERY, what with the wind blowing through the barn and the early darkness and thunder heralding the coming storm. Tracy had come out to the old cowshed to sit with her, to console the pregnant llama with her presence as they prepared to weather the cloudburst together. She leaned over the stable door to touch noses with Rosalie, as the females liked to do, Tracy smelling the sweet hay and the dung of Rosalie's stall and the sweaty essence of her coat, reaching up gently to stroke her long, proud neck.

What did Donny want to meet for? What could they possibly have to talk about? Hey, it was great, it was fun, let's keep in touch?

Part of her personal theory of reverse therapy—where she tore herself down instead of building herself up, the idea being to get so low that there could only be betterment ahead—involved making short, punchy "No More" lists:

No more lazy nights together.

No more rum and Diet Cokes (negative taste association).

No more curling up with him on the sofa.

No more deep, half-remembered conversations while watching bad TV.

No more allowing herself to get silly in front of him, or anyone—ever.

No more falling asleep in Donny's bed.

No more of his lips on her back and shoulders.

No more Donny.