She makes it a question, so I’m honest. “I haven’t. What do you need from me, Marlene?”
She doesn’t get right to the point. I recognize the tendency; she wants to circle around the point, work up her courage. She tells me about her town, about her frustrations with her job, about the patch of grease she just can’t scrub off her wood floor. I wait her out. Sam finishes the dishes. He writes me a note and slides it over. Got some work to do. He heads back toward our shared office. We have partner desks in there now, set a decent space away from each other. Sam’s both working freelance as a laborer on construction projects, and running a couple of small commercial jobs for a firm out of Knoxville; I’m maintaining an online accounting business that takes a few hours a day, with some graphic design on the side. I’d be more financially secure with a day job, but then again, I like being home with my kids, especially during these epic long, hot summers. And I like the idea that I can—even now—drop everything and run at a moment’s notice. It’ll take a while for me to gear down from that impulse. If I ever can.
I finally judge that she’s winding down, so I cut in. “Marlene? How did you get this number, exactly?”
“A lady said on social media about how you weren’t no monster like some say, and you helped her. I asked her if you might help me too. She said you might and gave me your number.”
“In the open? On her social media?”
“By email,” Marlene says. She sounds even more nervous. “Was that wrong?”
At least it wasn’t posted on the internet, but still: I need to change this number. Or get rid of the landline completely. “Who was it?”
“Don’t know her real name, but she goes by Melissa Thorn.”
Melissa and I are going to have a talk. “Okay,” I say. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
I expect her to say something about her boyfriend, her husband, someone else in her family. Even a friend. But she says, “It ain’t wrong with me exactly. It’s more . . . it’s more like it’s this whole damn town. Well, some people in it, I guess. Though this place here has never been good land. Got blood soaked in it from the jump.”
This is going nowhere, and I’m starting to think I’m being played. Maybe she’s just a lonely time-waster. “I’m giving you one more minute to tell me what I can do for you. Then I’m gone and I won’t take your call again. Understand?”
She pauses. “I understand.” But she doesn’t go on. Silence stretches. She finally says, all in a rush, “So if something bad’s happening around here, what can I do? Can’t go to the police, no way. What do you do if you don’t trust folks in town?”
“I can help you with some state agencies to call, if that’s what you’re asking, but you’d better be ready to tell them what your problem really is,” I tell Marlene. “First, are you in any physical danger right now?”
“I . . . I don’t think so. But it’s just . . . it’s hard. I don’t know what to do about it, or where to go. I just don’t want to get myself in worse trouble than I’m already in.” She sighs heavily. “I’m a single mother, and my girl, she’s a handful, you know? I got no people here. Nobody to help out. I got to be careful. It’s real complicated.”
It always is complicated, from the inside. People on the outside looking in seem to think it’s simple to cut ties, walk away . . . but there are so many ropes holding a person down. Children. Extended family. Friends. Jobs. Money. Obligations. Guilt. And fear, so much fear. The most dangerous time in any woman’s life is when she’s separating from a partner, particularly an abusive one. Women instinctively know that, even if they’ve never seen the blood-drenched statistics. Sometimes it feels safer to endure the devil you know.
“I know it can feel like you’re in a trap with no way out,” I tell her. “But that’s not true. You always hold the key to your own cage, okay? You just need to find the courage to use it. Is the problem with your husband?”
She sniffles, as if she’s on the verge of tears. “No. He’s dead.”
“A boyfriend? Someone you dated?”
“No.”
“Okay.” That’s pretty new. Most calls I get are about husbands or domestic partners. Occasionally about unknown stalkers. “So specifically, who is threatening you right now?”
“It ain’t . . . it ain’t threats. Not exactly. And I can’t say no names,” she says. “It’s just . . . if I tell somebody, and it comes back on me and my daughter, it’ll be real bad, you know? And if I don’t tell nobody . . . I don’t know how I live with that.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. Gently as I can. “But I’m not a therapist, or a lawyer, and whatever you tell me might cause legal problems for you in the future if you’ve been part of something illegal. Understand? If you want to talk about something that frightens you, but isn’t a crime, let me put you in touch with a psychologist or psychiatrist—”
“I’m not going to any shrink!” She sounds offended. Small, rural towns haven’t exactly embraced talk therapy.
“Okay, if you think it might be criminal, Marlene, why do you think you can’t go to the police?” She doesn’t answer that. Just silence on the line. “Are you afraid of them?”
“I’m afraid of everything,” she says.
“What about the state police?”
She sucks in a breath, then lets it out. “Maybe. Maybe that’d be okay, I guess. Not sure if they’d believe me about this, but I could try.”
“Then I urge you to make that call. Sometimes lives can be lost if you wait, and then you have to carry that responsibility forever.” My mind is racing to fill in the blanks: Is she talking about a neighbor under threat? A friend? Something else? I can’t tell.
“Yeah,” she says. I can hear her pacing restlessly. “Yeah, I know that. But this is a small place. Hell, half the town is related. I guess I have to figure this out myself and—” She stops on a dime, and I don’t even hear breathing. When she talks again, it’s in a hushed, rushed whisper. “I got to go. Sorry.”
“Marlene, if you can’t tell me what’s going on, I don’t know how to help you.”
“Come up here,” she says. “Come up here and I’ll show you everything. It ain’t far where they buried the wreck. You decide what to do about it.” The wreck? Buried? That doesn’t make any sense.
“You mean, come to Wolfhunter? No. I can’t.” No way am I going to some isolated rural location. Armed or not, ready for a fight or not . . . No, the risk isn’t worth it. Not anymore. “Call the state police. Will you do that?”
She doesn’t answer. With a quiet click, she’s gone. Call ended. I shake my head as I hang up. It’s unsettling, but I don’t know what I could have said or done differently. Whatever’s going on with her, it’s strange, and I can’t help but be suspicious. I just found a snake in my mailbox. Now a mysterious caller is trying her best to get me to drive off into the lonely hills.
I’m not getting drawn into a trap. I’ve got enemies.