Safe Haven(35)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

He was searching for bicycles. Four of them, including one with baskets. He might as well have been lookingfor a specific piece of plankton in the ocean. Up one road and down the next, as the afternoon wound down anddusk settled in. He looked from left to right and back again. He knew where she lived, knew he would eventuallyfind her at home. But in the meantime the gray-haired man was out there with Erin, laughing at him, saying, I’m so

much better than Kevin, baby.

He screamed curses in the car, pounding on the steering wheel. He flipped the safety on the Glock from the offto the on position and back again, imagining Erin kissing him, his arm around her waist. Remembering how happyshe’d looked, thinking she had tricked her husband. Cheated on him. Moaned and murmured beneath her loverwhile he panted atop her.

He could barely see, fighting the blurriness with one eye. A car came up behind him on the neighborhoodstreets, tailgating for a while, then flashing his lights. Kevin slowed the car and pulled over, fingering the gun. Hehated rude people, people who thought they owned the road. Bang.

Dusk turned the streets into shadowy mazes, making it difficult to see the spindly outlines of bicycles. When hedrove past the gravel road for the second time, he decided on impulse to turn around and visit her house again,just in case. He stopped just out of sight of the cottage and got out. A hawk circled overhead, and he heardcicadas humming, but otherwise the place seemed deserted. He started toward the house but could see alreadyfrom a distance that there was no bicycle parked out front. No lights on, either, but it wasn’t dark yet, so he creptto the back door. Unlocked, just like before.

She wasn’t home, and he didn’t think she’d been home since he’d been here earlier. The house was sweltering,all the windows shut tight. She would have opened the windows, he felt sure, would have had a glass of water,might have taken a shower. Nothing. He left through the back door, staring at the neighboring house. A dump.

Probably deserted. Good. But the fact that Erin wasn’t home meant she was with the gray-haired man, had gone tohis house. Cheating, pretending she wasn’t married. Forgetting the home that Kevin had bought for her.

His head throbbed in time with his heartbeats, a knife going in and out. Stab. Stab. Stab. It was hard to focus ashe pulled the door closed behind him. Mercy of all mercies, it was cooler outside. She lived in a sweatbox,sweated with a gray-haired man. They were sweating together now, somewhere, writhing in sheets, bodiesintertwined. Coffey and Ramirez were laughing about that, slapping their thighs, having a good old time at hisexpense. I wonder if I could do her, too , Coffey was saying to Ramirez. Don’t you know? Ramirez answered back.

She let half the precinct do her while Kevin was working. Everyone knows about it. Bill waving from his office,holding suspension papers. I did her, too, every Tuesday for a year. She’s wild in bed. Says the dirtiest things.

He stumbled back to his car, his finger on the gun. Bastards, all of them. Hated them, imagined walking into theprecinct and unloading the Glock, emptying the clip, showing them. Showing all of them. Erin, too.

He stopped and bent over, vomiting onto the side of the road. Stomach cramping, a clawing in his gut like arodent was trapped inside him. Puked again, and then dry heaves and the world spun when he tried to stand. Thecar was close and he staggered to it. Grabbed the vodka and drank and tried to think like Erin, but then he was atthe barbecue holding a burger covered in flies and everyone was pointing and laughing at him.

Back to the car. Bitch had to be somewhere. She’d watch gray-hair die. Watch them all die. Burn in hell. Burnand burn, all of them. Carefully, he climbed in and started the car. He backed into a tree as he was trying to turnaround, and then, cursing, tore out on the gravel, spinning rocks.

Night would soon be falling. She came in this direction, had to be down this way. Little kids couldn’t ride far.

Three or four miles, maybe five. He’d been down every road this way, looked at every house. No bicycles. Theycould be in the garage, could be parked in fenced yards. He’d wait and she’d come home sometime. Tonight.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow night. He’d stick the gun in her mouth, aim it at her br**sts. Tellme who he is, he’d say. I

just want to talk to him. He’d find gray-hair and show him what happened to men who slept with other men’swives.

He felt like he had been weeks without sleep, weeks without food. He couldn’t understand why it was dark andhe wondered when that happened. Couldn’t remember when he got here exactly. He remembered seeing Erin,remembered trying to follow her and driving, but wasn’t even sure where he was.

A store loomed on the right, looking like a house with a porch out front. GAS FOOD, the sign said. He rememberedthat from earlier, but how long ago he couldn’t say. He slowed the car involuntarily. He needed food, needed tosleep. Had to find a place to stay the night. His stomach lurched. He grabbed the bottle and tilted the bottom up,feeling the burn in his throat, soothing him. But as soon as he lowered the bottle, his stomach heaved again.

He pulled into the lot, fighting to keep the liquor down, his mouth watering. Running out of time. He skidded to astop alongside the store and jumped out. Ran to the front of his car and heaved into the darkness. His bodyshivered, his legs wobbled. His stomach coming up. His liver. All of it. Somehow, he was still holding the bottle,hadn’t put it down. He breathed hard in and out and drank, using it to rinse his mouth, swallowing it. Finishinganother bottle.

And there, like an image from a dream, in the darkened shadows behind the house, he saw four bicyclesparked side by side.

39

Katie had the kids take a bath before getting them into their pajamas. Afterward, she showered, lingering underthe spray and enjoying the luxurious feeling of shampoo and soap rinsing the salt from her body after a day in thesun.

She made the kids their pasta, and after dinner they sorted through the collection of DVDs, trying to find onethat both kids wanted to watch, until they finally agreed on Finding Nemo. She sat between Josh and Kristen onthe couch, a bowl of popcorn in her lap, their little hands reaching in automatically from either direction. She worea comfy pair of sweats that Alex had laid out and a worn Carolina Panthers jersey, tucking her legs up under heras they watched the movie, utterly at ease for the first time that day.

Outside, the heavens bloomed like fireworks, displaying vibrant rainbow colors that faded to pastel washesbefore finally giving way to bluish-gray and then indigo skies. Stars began to flicker as the last shimmering wavesof heat rose from the earth.

Kristen had begun to yawn as the movie progressed, but every time Dory appeared on-screen, she managed tochirp, “She’s my favorite, but I can’t remember why!” On the other side of her, Josh was struggling to stay awake.

When the movie ended and Katie leaned forward to turn it off, Josh raised his head and let it fall to the couch.

He was too big for her to carry, so she nudged his shoulder, telling him it was time for bed. He grunted and whinedbefore sitting up. He yawned and rose to his feet and, with Katie by his side, staggered to the bedroom. He crawledinto bed without complaint and she kissed him good night. Unsure whether he needed a night-light, she kept thelight in the hallway on but closed the door partway.

Kristen was next. She asked Katie to lie beside her for a few minutes, and Katie did, staring at the ceiling,feeling the heat of the day beginning to take its toll. Kristen fell asleep within minutes, and Katie had to forceherself to stay awake before tiptoeing out of the room.

Afterward, she cleaned up the remnants of their dinner and emptied the bowl of popcorn. As she glancedaround the living room, she noticed evidence of the kids everywhere: a stack of puzzles on a bookshelf, a basketof toys in the corner, comfortable leather couches that were gloriously spill-proof. She studied the knickknacksscattered about: an old-fashioned clock that had to be wound daily, an ancient set of encyclopedias on a shelfnear the recliner, a crystal vase on the table near the windowsill. On the walls hung framed black-and-whitearchitectural photographs of decaying tobacco barns. They were quintessentially Southern, and she rememberedseeing many of these rustic scenes on her journey through North Carolina.

There were also signs of the chaotic life Alex led: a red stain on the runner in front of the couch, gouges in thewood floor, dust on the baseboards. But as she surveyed the house, she couldn’t help smiling, because thosethings, too, seemed to reflect who Alex was. He was a widowed father, doing his best to raise two kids and keep atidy, if imperfect, house. The house was a snapshot of his life, and she liked its easy, comfortable feel.

She turned out the lights and collapsed on the couch. She picked up the remote and surfed TV channels, tryingto find something interesting but not too demanding. It was coming up on ten o’clock, she noted. An hour to go.

She lay back on the couch and started watching a show on the Discovery Channel, something about volcanoes.

She noticed a glare on the screen and stretched to turn off the lamp on the end table, darkening the room. Sheleaned back again. Better.

She watched for a few minutes, barely aware that every time she blinked, her eyes stayed closed a fractionlonger. Her breath slowed and she began to melt into the cushions. Images began to float through her mind,disjointed at first, thoughts of the carnival rides, the view from the Ferris wheel. People standing in randomclusters, young and old, teens and couples. Families. And somewhere in the distance, a man in a baseball hat andsunglasses, weaving among the crowd, moving with purpose before she lost sight of him again. Something she’drecognized: the walk, the jut of his jaw, the way he swung his arms.

She was drifting now, relaxing and remembering, the images beginning to blur, the sound of the televisionfading. The room growing darker, quieter. She drifted further, her mind flashing back again and again to the viewfrom the Ferris wheel. And, of course, to the man she’d seen, a man who’d been moving like a hunter through thebrush, in search of game.

40

Kevin stared up at the windows, nursing his half-empty bottle of vodka, his third of the night. No one gave him asecond glance. He was standing on the dock at the rear of the house; he’d changed into a black long-sleevedshirt and dark jeans. Only his face was visible, but he stood in the shade of a cypress tree, hidden behind thetrunk. Watching the windows. Watching the lights, watching for Erin.

Nothing happened for a long while. He drank, working on finishing the bottle. People came through the storeevery few minutes, often using their credit cards to buy gas at the pump. Busy, busy, even out here, in the middleof nowhere. He moved around to the side of the store, gazing up at the windows. He recognized the flickering blueglow of a television. The four of them, watching TV, acting like a happy family. Or maybe the kids were already inbed, tired from the carnival, tired from the bike ride. Maybe it was just Erin and the gray-haired man snuggling onthe couch, kissing and touching each other while Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts fell in love on the screen.

Everything hurt and he was tired and his stomach kept churning. He could have walked up the stairs andkicked the door in, could have killed them half a dozen times already, and he wanted to get it over with, but therewere people in the store. Cars in the lot. He’d pushed his own car forward with the engine off to a spot beneath atree at the rear of the store, out of sight from passing cars. He wanted to aim the Glock and pull the trigger, wantedto watch them die, but he also wanted to lie down and go to sleep because he’d never been more tired in his lifeand when he woke up he wanted to find Erin beside him and think to himself that she had never left him.

Later, he spotted her profile at the window, saw her smiling as she turned away and knew she was thinkingabout the gray-haired man. Thinking about sex and the Bible says Those who gave themselves over to

fornication and strange flesh are set forth for an example and suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

He was an angel of the Lord. Erin had sinned and the Bible says She shall be tormented with fire and

brimstone in the presence of holy angels.

In the Bible there was always fire because it purified and condemned, and he understood that. Fire waspowerful, the weapon of angels. He finished the bottle of vodka and kicked it under the bushes. A car pulled up tothe gasoline pumps and a man stepped out. He slid his credit card in and began to pump gas. The sign near thepump informed people it was illegal to smoke, because gasoline was flammable. Inside the store, there was lighterfluid for use with charcoal. He remembered the man in line ahead of him earlier, holding a can of it.

Fire.

Alex shifted and adjusted his hands on the wheel, trying to get comfortable. Joyce and her daughter were in thebackseat and hadn’t stopped talking from the moment they’d gotten in the car.

The clock on the dashboard showed it was getting late. The kids were either in bed or soon would be, whichsounded good right now. On the drive back, he’d had a bottle of water, but he was still thirsty and debatedwhether to stop again. He was sure that neither Joyce nor her daughter would mind, but he didn’t want to stop. Hejust wanted to get home.

As he drove, he felt his mind drifting. He thought about Josh and Kristen, about Katie, and he sifted throughmemories of Carly. He tried to imagine what Carly would say about Katie and whether Carly would have wantedhim to give the letter to her. He remembered the day he’d seen Katie helping Kristen with her doll, and recalledhow beautiful she had looked on the night she’d made him dinner. The knowledge that she was at his housewaiting for him made him want to floor the accelerator.

On the other side of the highway, distant pinpricks of light appeared at the horizon, slowly separating andgrowing larger, forming headlamps of oncoming cars. They grew brighter until they flashed past. In the rearviewmirror, red lights receded into the distance.

Heat lightning crackled to the south, making the sky blink like a slide show. Off to the right was a farmhouse,lights on downstairs. He passed a truck with Virginia plates and rolled his shoulders, trying to shake off thefatigue he felt. He passed the sign indicating the number of miles to Wilmington and sighed. He still had a ways togo.