Free The Slow Moon by Elizabeth Cox Page B

said so. He would never leave Helen, though he never said that either. He wanted to be with Ava when he could. He wanted to love her. Still, if push came to shove, he would renounce her.
    Ava would watch Carl eat, paying attention to each mouthful he swallowed. She imagined herself being his food, his breath. She couldn’t get enough of him, and wondered, if they lived together as man and wife, whether her appetite might drive him away.
    “I would be so easy to please,” she told him one night a year ago, after they had made love. “I mean if we lived together, if we made it
not
a secret.”
    “You’re not suggesting I leave Helen, are you?”
    “I think I’ve been suggesting it for years.” She leaned back into the motel chair and smiled weakly. “You don’t believe I understand anything about marriage, do you?”
    “Not about married life with children, no, I don’t think you know that. I think you think of it as exciting.”
    “To a person who lives alone,” she said. “To someone who knows what it is to come home and not have anyone there night after night, for that person to have someone come in the door at dinnertime, to laugh at a joke, to share what happened during the day—these smallest things would be exciting.”
    “You have men in your life.” Carl turned away from her, then got up to shower. He had to go home. “Helen tells me about all the men you go out with.”
    “Don’t even start with that,” she said. “Half those men are made up, some are friends, and two are men who care about me. One asked me to marry him. So, Carl, what do you think about that?” She rose and wrapped the sheet around her. She hated what she’d just said. She knew better than to challenge Carl. He always came back with something mean.
    “Maybe you should think about it,” he said irritably. They dressed in silence. Carl kissed her before he left.
    “It’ll be all right,” he said.
    “I know,” she said. But she didn’t know anything.
                      
    Helen went to bed early. She had visited a short while at the jail with Crow. Ava offered to go again with Helen, but she said no.
    “I’ve never seen her like this,” Ava told Carl. They were both still up after Helen went to bed.
    “She took a sleeping pill,” Carl said. “I think I’m going to have to do the same.” He offered Ava a pill prescribed by Helen’s doctor. Ava refused.
    She leaned against the sink. “Listen, Carl. Maybe I shouldn’t be here. Maybe I should leave.”
    “Stay,” he said. “But this time you’re here for Helen. Not me.”
    “I thought you said you needed me here.”
    “You should be here for her,” he insisted. Something was shifting. Carl smiled, but his body wanted enormous distance between them.

Eleven
    B Y THE FIRST week in May the sky was blue, with clouds only on the horizon. Crow was indicted for aggravated rape, and today at the arraignment he heard the charge officially stated. He pled not guilty.
    When he arrived home from the Jasper courthouse, he did not go inside. Instead, he went to the backyard. Johnny followed him with a tennis ball they used for throwing. They liked to stand in a specific spot in the far part of the yard and throw back and forth—the ball going out like a breath and landing firmly in the other’s hand. They had talked like that, tossing the ball, for as long as they could remember, far enough away so their parents couldn’t hear.
                      
    The trial had been scheduled for the first week in June; and though Sophie had not yet described what had happened, the evidence looked damning for Crow. His DNA had been identified from the rape kit, along with clear evidence of multiple attackers. Butler was looking hard for probable cause to investigate other boys at the party.
    “Dad says that Butler thinks they don’t have enough of a case,” Johnny said, trying to speak about what was unspoken. “Too many unanswered questions,