Free Still Mine by Amy Stuart Page A

says.
    “Jason,” Clare says. Instantly she regrets it, whatever small power this tidbit gives Sara over her, a clue to place in her back pocket.
    “And this Jason, you’re done with him?”
    “I hope so,” Clare says.
    “I’m not sure we’re ever done with them. You know what I mean?”
    “I do.”
    “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
    “I’m not sure it’s about luck.” Clare edges her chair closer to Sara’s. “Will you do me a favor?”
    “Sure.”
    “Don’t tell Charlie that. What I just told you.”
    Sara nods without looking at Clare, an incomplete promise.
    “You certainly ask a lot of questions,” Sara says. “Maybe you’ll wring it out of us while you’re here.”
    “Wring what out of you?”
    “I don’t even know.” Sara turns back to the fire. “The truth?”
    Clare puts her second empty beer bottle down beside her lawn chair. She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it. She understands that Sara is not to be pushed, that this conversation is over. Still, they will stay here for a while yet, finish the beers cooling in the fridge. The fire is nearly three feet high now, its warmth licking at Clare’s cheeks.

There is this photograph taken the day before the mine exploded. It was my birthday and we were all at Ray’s. Nothing was ever good enough. I’m not smiling and neither are you. I blew out the candles and we lined up on the dance floor to pose. Sara and I stood at the bar and she took a shot with me even though she was out-to-here pregnant. I bought her the shot, then judged her for drinking it. Charlie was there with his brothers, and they got drunk and Charlie snatched the paring knife from behind the bar and waved it until one of his brothers landed a punch square between his eyes. You held him and stifled the bleeding with your shirt.
    Remember the quiet? It went so quiet. We stood in a circle looking at each other, looking down at Charlie as he bled and barked at us. Like we knew what was coming. The ground was already collapsing beneath us, all of us trapped, even then.
    My mother once said that tragedy alters a person’s constitution. She meant it in defense of my father and how he’s changed. But I look at that photograph and I see that the spite was always there. The mine changed the town, it changed our circumstances, but it didn’t change any of us. The good people left. We were never the good. This was in us all along.



SATURDAY

C lare drives with every window open, wind whipping through the car so that her hair dances. Blackmore is behind her and she is heading south, following the directions she traced with pencil onto her road map, her GPS long ago broken. Moines River Picnic Area, Hwy 117 south. After three days alone grabbing blindly at clues, searching for this stranger, Clare’s brain swirls with angry questions for Malcolm.
    Malcolm will be there before her, Clare knows. Even if she’s early, he’ll be earlier. At the sign for the picnic area she slows and follows the gravel turnoff along its steep descent. There is one car in the lot, a blue sedan she can’t be certain belongs to Malcolm. She might have remembered Malcolm’s car to be silver, but then she recognizes the dream catcher dangling from the rearview mirror, the one detail she took in before she left him in the motel parking lot days ago. Clare cuts the engine and smooths the creases in her jeans with her hands. Her head aches, her stomach rolling with the queasiness of a hangover. Last night she and Sara drank the twelve beers between them and talked well past midnight.
    This picnic area is shaded with a gurgling stream at one end. Moss grows in clusters on the outhouse and the tables, the sun an infrequent visitor down here, trees as thick as houses and stretching high in search of light. Clare sees Malcolm standing at a distance. He wears a gray golf shirt tucked into dark pants, a leather case in his right hand and his jacket in his left. In the days since she last saw him, Clare has