The Devil Casts a Long Shadow- Chapter One: The Truth We Know

That morning, Jena awoke as she always did, with a knot of pain lodged between her shoulder blades. It had become a familiar affliction, one that made her feel considerably older than her years. The discomfort gradually eased as she sipped powdered milk tea with microwaved boba pearls, sitting alone in the breakfast nook of her kitchen.

She scrolled through social media, watching the lives of people she had once called friends unfold on her phone. Most had long since moved away, escaping Meadow Partings and the peculiar stagnation that seemed to afflict those who remained. Their photographs depicted weddings, vacations, children, and accomplishments. Jena observed these things with the detached curiosity of someone peering through a window into a world from which she had been quietly excluded.

Her own existence had taken on the quality of a dysfunctional dream, one she inhabited without feeling entirely present.

Her marriage to Nate operated under an unspoken agreement: they would avoid one another whenever possible. It was an arrangement they had perfected over the years, requiring neither discussion nor compromise.

They had begun as high school sweethearts, drifted apart in their twenties, and eventually reunited after neither found anyone they considered a better prospect. A coworker had once described their marriage as a situationship. Jena had laughed at the time, although the word had lingered unpleasantly in her mind.

She might have learned to love Nate as something more than a familiar companion had he not spent the intervening years systematically crushing every attempt she made at becoming her own person.

Every disagreement ended the same way. Nate would emerge satisfied, having surrendered nothing, while Jena was expected to regard his refusal to compromise as a reasonable resolution. Eventually, she stopped arguing. Later, she stopped asking. Finally, she stopped imagining that anything might change.

It was a peculiar kind of living death, being both negatively acknowledged and positively ignored. Nate noticed her whenever he wanted something or needed someone to blame, but otherwise behaved as though she were an inconvenient spirit haunting his house.

Her best years were passing in this manner, consumed by debts accumulated through his vanity, indulgences, and impulsive decisions. Nate enjoyed the pleasures. Jena managed the consequences.

He was off living his dreams while she remained at home scrubbing his soiled toilet after another of his supposedly miraculous colon cleanses.

They could easily have afforded a housekeeper, but Jena had no desire to invite another person into her home to judge her. There were already enough people willing to do that without being paid.

Nate, after all, was something of an idol in Meadow Partings.

People spoke of him with the admiration ordinarily reserved for men who had performed some great public service. Jena sometimes wondered whether she might eventually benefit from his standing, perhaps ride his coattails toward some small measure of independence.

She understood how unlikely that was.

Still, despair had a way of making a person bargain with themselves. Jena had become adept at manufacturing little promises of a better tomorrow, even when experience suggested that tomorrow would be indistinguishable from yesterday.

She told herself there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

She had never seriously considered that the light might be a fire.

Once she finished wasting her morning, Jena placed her oversized mug in the dishwasher and glanced through the bay window overlooking the driveway of their barndominium.

Nate's car was gone.

She had known it would be, but the sight of the empty driveway reassured her. She would have the house to herself until late evening.

There was a strange comfort in being alone inside a home that otherwise felt occupied by something oppressive.

She wandered into the den, still wearing her hideous neon pink-and-green polka-dotted bathrobe, and switched on the cable news. Her parrot, Tiki, promptly climbed into her lap.

Jena had no work that day at the after-school childcare facility operated by her church. The position paid minimum wage, and the church possessed an uncanny talent for accidentally omitting hours from her paychecks while never once making an error in her favor.

She had complained twice before learning that the people who spoke most fervently about righteousness were not necessarily interested in practicing it.

Eventually, she accepted the discrepancies as another small indignity of life.

Enough of her needs were met to keep her comfortable, at least materially. Nate earned enough to provide that much.

It was an arrangement that resembled mercy from a distance.

Up close, it looked considerably more like captivity.

Nate was a partial owner and the acting authority of KT Construction & Affiliate Co., a company maintaining contracts throughout the state. He had established the business with a former classmate, Joel Klutz-Turner, who preferred to be called Turner.

The company's origins were rooted in a tragedy that Nate had somehow managed to turn into an opportunity.

Turner's father, Dale, had been found unconscious in his trailer during a particularly brutal winter in northern Oklahoma. He had been operating an outdoor heater indoors, and the resulting carbon monoxide poisoning had left him beyond recovery.

Turner dragged his father outside, but the damage had already been done. Dale never regained consciousness.

His blood alcohol concentration was reportedly 0.30 that day, a figure some considered surprisingly modest given his history of drunkenness and numerous arrests for driving under the influence.

Turner's mother, Shanna, returned just long enough to authorize the withdrawal of life support and attend the funeral. Once her obligations to the dead had been satisfied, she departed for Florida, where she had been living, without even leaving her son a forwarding address.

Before disappearing, however, she made certain that any financial obligations she could avoid would fall elsewhere. Turner's inheritance included the trailer, its neglected property taxes, and the unpleasant business of settling his father's affairs.

Dale had spent his younger years working in the oil fields before abandoning the trade and eventually relying on public assistance. He died without life insurance and with little to show for a lifetime of labor.

For several years, Turner regarded the property as a burden.

He had been preparing to sell it before foreclosure when an unexpected discovery changed everything. Beneath the neglected land lay valuable oil deposits that had escaped notice when his great-grandfather purchased the property.

What had seemed a worthless inheritance became a fortune.

For once, misfortune had yielded something other than another misfortune.

Turner stood to receive enough money to live comfortably for the remainder of his life.

Nate appeared almost immediately.

The transformation in his attitude toward his former classmate was remarkable. Money that had belonged to Turner suddenly became ours. Nate began speaking in terms of we, us, and our future, as though friendship alone entitled him to a share of another man's inheritance.

Jena had watched the change with growing distaste.

There was something almost predatory about the way Nate attached himself to prosperity.

He could recognize an opportunity to enrich himself with the instinctive certainty of a carrion bird finding something freshly dead.

It was particularly distasteful considering how he had treated Turner when they were younger.

Turner had dropped out of school after his freshman year. Nate, who was then maintaining a long-distance relationship with Jena, frequently amused himself by recounting Turner's shortcomings over the telephone.

Among his favorite stories were Turner's repeated attempts to enlist in the Army. He had failed the aptitude test several times, scoring progressively worse until his recruiter eventually stopped returning his calls.

Nate had found the whole business hilarious.

Years later, he spoke of Turner as though they had always been inseparable friends.

Jena sometimes wondered whether Turner remembered the ridicule. If he did, he never mentioned it.

Nate, meanwhile, had performed well academically, albeit through online schooling. He earned a master's degree in construction management, following the example of his stepfather.

He regarded himself as an emerging figure of considerable importance, and the townspeople seemed happy to agree.

He had financed the construction of their barndominium. He had persuaded Jena to return to Meadow Partings. He had cultivated friendships and professional connections throughout the region until he became something of a central figure in its social life.

Some residents openly discussed the possibility of Nate becoming mayor.

It was an astonishing reversal of fortune for a community that had nearly disappeared after the housing crisis devastated the local economy during their childhood.

Abandoned properties were being restored. Businesses were reopening. Construction crews were once again visible along roads that had seemed destined to vanish beneath weeds and neglect.

People credited Nate with breathing life back into Meadow Partings.

Few seemed concerned that much of this revival was being financed through Turner's dwindling fortune.

The townspeople had found themselves a benefactor, and they were not particularly interested in examining the source of his generosity.

Jena had once heard a minister describe evil as something that seldom arrived wearing its true face. It came offering relief, prosperity, companionship, or salvation. Only after it had been welcomed inside did the price become apparent.

She wondered sometimes whether Meadow Partings had made a bargain without knowing it.

Then she dismissed the thought as melodramatic.

There were enough real problems in her life without inventing supernatural ones.

Jena had fled Meadow Partings as soon as she graduated from high school.

She attended the nearest state university before accepting a two-year position teaching

English in New Guinea through a nonprofit organization resembling the Peace Corps.

She had imagined the experience would be the beginning of a life filled with adventure.

Instead, the modest salary and difficult travel arrangements left her feeling more isolated than she had ever been in Oklahoma. The language barriers were greater than she anticipated, and meaningful friendships proved difficult to establish.

By the time her contract ended, she had lost contact with most of her college friends and had accumulated few connections overseas.

She was lonely, uncertain, and running out of money.

That was when Nate found her online.

His sudden interest had seemed flattering at first, although Jena later concluded that his motivations were less romantic than practical.

He had spent too many years enjoying casual relationships without committing to any of them. By the time he considered settling down, most of the women he knew had already married.

Meadow Partings was a place where remaining single past thirty invited a certain amount of suspicion.

Nate needed a wife.

Jena needed somewhere to go.

Neither mistook the arrangement for a great love affair, although both were content to allow others to believe otherwise.

They married during a whirlwind vacation, arranging their elopement through a brief ceremony near the Manila airport rather than involving their families.

At the time, Jena had considered Nate a friend. She saw nothing particularly objectionable about marrying someone whose company she could tolerate.

She had not yet understood that toleration, when demanded indefinitely, could become its own form of suffering.

Their histories were common knowledge in Meadow Partings. To outsiders, their marriage appeared almost idyllic. Nate was successful, charismatic, and generous in public. Jena was quiet, agreeable, and apparently content to remain in the background.

Behind closed doors, they lived like strangers sharing a waiting room.

The irony was not lost on her.

She had once wanted adventure while Nate had craved stability. Yet Meadow Partings had transformed him into a restless social climber and her into a recluse.

Somewhere along the way, the life she had chosen became the life she could no longer imagine escaping.

She sometimes thought of the town as a place where roads led outward, but people inevitably returned.

As though something beneath its foundations exerted a slow, patient pull.

That afternoon, Jena packed a gym bag and prepared to leave for her parents' house several hours east.

Before departing, she took Tiki to stay with her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Flossie, who had always been kind to the bird.

Nate's fortieth birthday celebration was scheduled for the weekend. Employees from KT Construction would arrive early the following morning to install a temporary dance floor over the tacky shag carpet in their living room.

Jena had no intention of attending.

She disliked being around Nate's employees, many of whom had developed an openly

hostile attitude toward her.

Nate had a habit of complaining about his marriage to anyone willing to listen. His accounts were elaborate, often bearing little resemblance to the events Jena remembered. He portrayed himself as the long-suffering husband of an unreasonable woman, conveniently omitting his infidelities, cruelty, and refusal to compromise.

His audience rarely questioned him.

Why would they?

He paid their wages, bought their drinks, and presented himself as the sort of generous man who had been saddled with an ungrateful wife.

Some employees seemed especially eager to demonstrate their loyalty by mistreating her.

Jena had been deliberately bumped into, shoved aside, and subjected to humiliating remarks. On more than one occasion, she had been pushed hard enough to lose her balance.

The men would laugh, exchange glances, and pretend the incidents were accidental.

She had never asked Nate to fire them.

Part of her understood that they were acting upon the version of events he had supplied.

Had she heard the same stories from someone she trusted, she might have developed an equally poor opinion of the woman he described.

That realization did not make their behavior less cruel.

It merely revealed how easily cruelty could be manufactured, distributed, and justified.

In Meadow Partings, Nate's word carried the authority of scripture.

Jena's objections were treated as evidence of her wickedness.

The more she defended herself, the more convincingly she played the role he had written for her.

It was a remarkably efficient arrangement.

Nate enjoyed the admiration of the town while she absorbed its contempt.

She had begun to wonder whether damnation required flames at all. Perhaps it was enough to be condemned by people who believed themselves righteous, with no opportunity to appeal their judgment.

Leaving before the party would spare her another weekend of humiliation.

It would also spare Nate the inconvenience of pretending to enjoy her company.

Neither had any reason to object.

Jena seldom visited her parents anymore.

The drive was straightforward, following a long stretch of highway through the countryside, but the destination filled her with a familiar melancholy.

Her father, Murray, had developed dementia several years earlier. The family had initially ignored the warning signs, hoping his increasingly strange behavior might somehow resolve itself.

It did not.

Eventually, Murray became violent.

He began striking his wife, Sue, who concealed the abuse because she feared he would be sent to a nursing home.

The situation deteriorated until Jena's older brother, Beau, intervened during one of Murray's attacks. Murray turned on him instead.

Only then did the family acknowledge that something had gone terribly wrong.

By the time an intervention persuaded Sue to accept help, Murray's condition had advanced beyond what she could manage at home.

He was placed in residential care.

Jena remembered the terrible expression on her mother's face when she finally agreed to it.

Sue had spoken as though she were betraying her husband, although the man she remembered had already been slipping away for years.

There was something especially dreadful about watching a familiar person become unrecognizable while continuing to inhabit the same body.

Jena disliked thinking about it.

Her father's decline had taught her that evil and suffering could wear remarkably similar faces, and that sometimes the people left behind were forced to endure both without knowing where one ended and the other began.

Beau had moved into Sue's small cabin with his partner, Thallea, to help care for her.

Sue's own health was deteriorating after decades of chain-smoking, and the house was increasingly crowded.

Beau had three sons from a previous relationship, and Thallea was pregnant with another child.

The two-bedroom, one-bathroom cabin was bursting at the seams. The living room floor had begun to buckle, and belongings were piled into trash bags along the walls.

Jena had borrowed Nate's old truck, which had a camper shell over the bed, so she could sleep there if necessary.

The autumn weather was cool enough to make the arrangement tolerable.

She envied the boys' access to the countryside, but little else about their circumstances.

During warmer months, they slept in tents behind the cabin. In winter, they crowded into the living room with sleeping bags, taking turns using the foldout couch or finding space on the floor.

Thallea frequently insisted the arrangement was temporary.

Jena wondered what she imagined would change.

No one in the household was currently employed, although Beau hoped to return to long-haul work soon. Sue's health was declining, and there was little prospect of anyone finding a larger home.

Jena suspected that Thallea was waiting for Sue to be moved into residential care, just as

Murray had been, so she and Beau could claim the largest bedroom.

The thought made her uncomfortable.

There was something ugly about imagining another person's decline as an opportunity for personal advancement.

Yet Jena had encountered that same ugliness often enough to recognize it.

In her experience, people rarely announced their worst intentions.

They simply waited for circumstances to make those intentions respectable.

Despite the evening breeze, the boys chose to sleep outside, leaving Jena the couch.

Beau built a small campfire and prepared peanut butter s'mores for them. His eldest son, Rowell, helped supervise the younger boys, Gage and Evan.

For a little while, the children seemed happy.

Their laughter drifted through the trees, mingling with the crackling of the fire. The smell of burning wood carried across the yard.

Jena watched the flames consume the logs, reducing something solid and useful to glowing embers and ash.

She wondered whether the boys would remember evenings like this fondly or whether they would eventually recognize how much of their childhood had been spent making the best of deprivation.

Later, after Beau checked on his sons for the final time, he joined Jena at the kitchen table.

Thallea had retired to the bedroom after watching a rerun of Cheers.

The cabin had settled into an uneasy silence.

Jena glanced toward the trash bags containing the boys' possessions.

"How's it going here?" she asked quietly. "Really?"

Beau followed her gaze.

"Thallea isn't taking it well, living out in the sticks. She has good days, but mostly it's been bad lately."

He rubbed his face wearily.

"I'm not sure she won't run off on me once I start doing long hauls again. At least school keeps the boys out of her way during the day. This summer got really bad. I've been trying to keep them out of her sight as much as I can."

Jena felt a familiar heaviness settle in her chest.

There were three children sleeping outside because the adults inside could not bear the inconvenience of their presence.

She wanted to offer Beau somewhere for them to stay, but knew Nate would never permit it.

Their house had plenty of room. They had more than enough money to accommodate the

boys comfortably.

Yet none of it was truly hers to offer.

Nate had arranged their finances so that nearly everything was tied to the business. He had often reminded her that, should they divorce, she would find it difficult to claim much of anything, even through litigation.

It was another of his little precautions against being wronged.

"I'm sorry, Beau," she said. "I noticed the tension before. I was hoping she'd worked through it by now."

She hesitated.

"What does Tawny have to say about all this?"

Tawny was the boys' mother, although motherhood had become little more than a biological distinction in her case.

She had drifted from one drug house to another for years, gradually abandoning the responsibilities and relationships that had once anchored her to ordinary life.

Beau maintained that her addiction had become severe around the time she was pregnant with Evan.

Jena suspected the problem had begun much earlier.

Gage, the middle boy, looked nothing like Beau. She had wondered more than once whether Beau had noticed the same thing and chosen not to acknowledge it.

If he had doubts about the boy's parentage, he had never allowed them to affect his treatment of him.

Whatever else Beau lacked, he possessed enough decency not to abandon a child who had already been abandoned by his mother.

Tawny occasionally called in tears, promising she was going to get clean and begging to speak to the boys.

She knew Beau would not allow her near them while she was high, so she rarely attempted to visit.

Beau lowered his voice, glancing toward the bedroom.

"Haven't heard from her since last Christmas. Her mom says she's been calling every now and then asking for money."

Jena stared at the tabletop.

It seemed that everyone in the family was waiting for someone else to become better, healthier, kinder, or more responsible.

Meanwhile, the children kept growing.

Their childhoods were being spent in the narrow space between promises and disappointments.

She wondered how much damage could be done to a person before anyone considered it an emergency.

"Beau," she finally asked, "what can I do?"

He shook his head.

"Until Thallea calms down, I was thinking I could turn Dad's old carport into an addition for the kids. Give everybody a little breathing room."

He paused.

"Do you think you could ask Nate if he's got any leftover lumber from his jobs? Anything he doesn't need? I could come pick it up. Anything would help."

Jena knew exactly how Nate would respond.

He would either refuse outright or offer to sell Beau the materials at wholesale prices while congratulating himself on his generosity.

If he did provide anything for free, he would make certain the entire town heard about his charitable contribution.

And Beau would owe him.

Nate was very particular about debts, especially those that could not be repaid with money.

"I'll see what I can do," she answered.

She had already decided to purchase the materials herself using her savings.

It would be easier than involving Nate.

She disliked lying to Beau, but she disliked the prospect of exposing him to her husband's benevolence even more.

There were favors that resembled gifts until the recipient discovered the chain attached.

The following morning, Jena went into town and purchased as many groceries as the little cabin could accommodate.

She took the boys shopping for winter clothing, then treated them to a movie so Thallea could have the house to herself for several hours.

That evening, she took the entire family out for pizza.

It should have been a pleasant occasion.

The boys were delighted, Sue seemed grateful for the change of scenery, and Beau made an effort to keep the conversation light.

Thallea, however, remained irritable throughout the meal.

She complained about the restaurant's temperature, the waitstaff, the seating arrangement, and the noise the boys made while eating.

Beau repeatedly interrupted his own dinner to soothe her.

Jena watched the exchange with growing discomfort.

Thallea's complaints were trivial, but the effect they had upon the family was not. Every irritation demanded attention. Every displeasure became an emergency. The others adjusted their behavior around her as though she were a dangerous animal that might turn violent if startled.

Sue kept her eyes on her plate.

Later, she explained that acknowledging Thallea's behavior only made it worse.

Jena understood.

She had spent years practicing the same kind of silence with Nate.

It disturbed her to see the arrangement reproduced in another household, particularly one with children.

She had once believed that suffering made people more compassionate. Experience had taught her otherwise.

Sometimes suffering merely taught people how to inflict it.

By the time they returned to the cabin, Jena was certain Thallea wanted her gone.

She could feel the woman's resentment in every clipped response and disapproving glance.

Rather than prolong the visit, Jena announced that the couch had aggravated her back and that she would be leaving a day early.

Beau protested mildly, but Thallea did not attempt to conceal her relief.

While everyone was occupied, Jena slipped into Sue's room and tucked the cash she had withdrawn from the ATM into her mother's purse.

She included a small note telling them she loved them.

It was not enough to change their circumstances.

It was barely enough to ease them.

Still, it was something she could give without asking anyone's permission.

Jena preferred the prospect of driving through the night to spending another evening listening to Thallea make irritated remarks about her presence.

There was little more she could accomplish by remaining.

Sometimes, she thought, the kindest thing a person could do was remove themselves before their presence became another burden.

She said her goodbyes and climbed into the truck.

The cabin's windows glowed warmly against the gathering darkness. From the road, the place looked almost inviting, a little island of domestic comfort surrounded by fields and trees.

Appearances were deceptive.

Jena knew how easily misery could hide behind illuminated windows.

As she pulled away, she caught one final glimpse of the boys' tents in the backyard.

They were small, dark shapes beneath the trees.

The campfire had burned low, leaving a dull red glow among the ashes.

For an instant, the embers reminded her of watchful eyes.

Then the trees obscured the property, and the cabin disappeared behind her.

The road ahead stretched into darkness.

Jena switched on the radio, but the reception deteriorated as she traveled farther into the countryside. Voices dissolved into static, occasionally emerging in fragments before vanishing again.

She turned it off.

The silence was preferable.

She had no intention of calling Nate to announce her early return. His birthday celebration would likely be well underway, and she had no desire to interrupt it.

Instead, she planned to enter through the garage, park the truck, and sleep inside the camper shell until morning.

The garage would provide some protection from the noise, and the truck's locked doors would afford her a small measure of privacy.

It was a peculiar thing, having to sneak into one's own home.

More peculiar still was the relief she felt at the prospect of sleeping in a vehicle rather than entering the house she shared with her husband.

In the morning, she would collect Tiki from Mrs. Flossie's.

The bird was the only companion she genuinely missed.

She pictured him perched on his favorite stand, tilting his head at her with that peculiar, inquisitive expression of his.

The thought made her smile.

Outside, the darkness deepened.

The headlights illuminated the road in a narrow corridor, beyond which the countryside appeared to have ceased existing altogether. Occasionally, a distant farmhouse emerged from the blackness, its windows shining like little furnaces before disappearing in her rearview mirror.

Jena drove on, thinking of nothing in particular.

She had spent so many years moving between unhappy places that the journey itself had become the nearest thing she knew to freedom.

For a few hours, nobody could demand anything of her.

Nobody could accuse her of ingratitude, insist that she apologize, or make her responsible for the consequences of their decisions.

She was alone, and the solitude felt almost sacred.

It did not occur to her that there were different kinds of solitude.

Nor did she consider that a person could spend so long accommodating evil that she might eventually lose the ability to recognize its approach.

She believed she was returning to a house full of drunken partygoers, petty humiliations, and the familiar misery of her marriage.

Those were evils she understood.

They belonged to the ordinary world, where cruelty could be explained away as selfishness, weakness, or poor judgment.

Jena had never seriously entertained the possibility that some things were wicked for no reason at all.

That there might be something in the world which did not seek wealth, admiration, pleasure, or power.

Something that wanted only to ruin what was good.

And that such a thing, given the opportunity, might find a remarkably hospitable home among people who had already learned to excuse everything.

The highway carried her westward, toward Meadow Partings.

Toward the bright lights of Nate's celebration.

Toward the house she had once mistaken for a new beginning.

And toward a night whose consequences she could not yet imagine.