The Telling Read Online Free Page B

contradict her. We were a couple of miles before the narrow bridge that connects Gant Island with the Olympic Peninsula. It was the only route to take Maggie to where she lived, off the island. Maggie told the police that Ben and she were arguing. The car slowed. Maggie looked up to see why. To the right there were rocky bluffs that plunged to the island’s heaving waters. To the left there was a dark, meadowy slope that ran until a distant wall of pines.
    â€œA man appeared in the middle of the highway,” Maggie whispered.
    â€œWhere did he appear from?” Sweeny asked. “The trees aren’t close to the road. Was he hiding behind something?”
    â€œNo. He wasn’t there and then he was. He appeared ,” Maggie insisted, her voice rising. “Ben stopped the car. Rolled down the window and asked if the man needed help. Um, I think he offered his cell or asked if the guy’s car had broken down.”
    â€œDid you see another vehicle?” Sweeny asked.
    â€œDon’t think so.”
    â€œThen why would Ben ask about car trouble?”
    Maggie shrugged.
    â€œHe stopped the car, rolled down his window, and offered help. Seems strange that Ben would have been so friendly if the man just ‘appeared,’ ” Sweeny pressed.
    Maggie said, “Ben is charitable and shit. How do I know what he was thinking? He is always helping .” She rolled her eyes. “But the guy was in front of the car one second and the next he was right at Ben. And I started screaming.”
    Sweeny’s eyebrows shot up. “Did he have a weapon?”
    â€œI didn’t see it.”
    â€œWhy were you screaming, then?” Sweeny said like she’d caught Maggie in a lie.
    â€œBecause his face was red. Painted,” Maggie said. The clouds were disintegrating in the sky as she spoke, and the stars that were revealed began orbiting us. I had to work to keep my feet stationary on the road, which started buckling under me like the black, netted skin of a trampoline.
    â€œWhat kind of paint?”
    â€œHow would I know?” Maggie snapped.
    Maggie said that she hadn’t recognized the man on the road.
    â€œIs it possible you knew him and you just didn’t recognize him because of the paint obscuring his features?” Sweeny asked her that night—and probably every time she questioned Maggie over the course of the week after.
    â€œNo, I saw him clearly,” Maggie insisted. “He was a stranger. Thepaint was frightening, but I’m positive I don’t know him.”
    Maggie was asked how the attack started. She was vague and confused—traumatized, I thought initially. “He reached through the window for Ben. To get to him, to stab, I mean. Blood squirted on my face and Ben was shouting. Then the door was open and Ben was out of the car and dragged across the road. The stranger’s hand kept coming up and down, stabbing Ben.”
    â€œWhat was he stabbing him with? A knife?” Sweeny asked.
    I lurched around and vomited onto the gravelly shoulder as Maggie answered, “I couldn’t make the object out. . . . It was sharp.” She added hoarsely, “I heard it cutting skin.” I thought we were both in shock. I didn’t notice the oddness of her story until I was out of the fog of that night.
    Sweeny asked us both what happened next. I couldn’t say why I woke up when I did. I’d been pouting, and then I was lulled to sleep for the first few miles. I wasn’t dreaming exactly as much as thinking nonsense things dreamily. Somehow between watching the Cheshire smile of a tiger I’d seen on TV earlier drift through my head and sensing that I was in our dinghy on the harbor, I was struck with the conviction that something bad was happening. My eyes snapped open. I tugged the earbuds from my ears before I was fully alert. Maggie was screaming. Shrieking. The car wasn’t moving. We were on the