CHAPTER 10

LENA PULLED INTO THE TEACHERS’ PARKING LOT at the high school, noticing that her eight-year-old Celica was the best car in the lot. She had once teased Sibyl about the fact that after spending a zillion years working on various college degrees, her professor’s salary at Grant Tech had been just five thousand dollars more a year than what Lena made as a cop. Sibyl had pointed out that Lena ran the risk of getting shot for five thousand dollars less a year than a college professor made and it had stopped being so funny.

It was no secret that Lena hadn’t exactly been a star student at Elawah High. She’d made straight Bs and Cs until high school, or more specifically, until puberty, then everything went downhill from there. She had flunked algebra twice, spending two summers making it up so she could graduate on time. The thought of quitting had never occurred to her, but she knew from Hank that the current dropout rate at Elawah was almost fifty percent. Not many kids saw the point in applied physics when they were pretty much going to end up at the tire plant slinging rubber anyway.

Charlotte Warren’s husband worked at the plant. Of course, she wasn’t Charlotte Warren anymore. Larry Gibson had graduated the same year as Charlotte. When Sibyl had left for college, the two had obviously started seeing each other. Three kids later and Larry was middle management at the tire plant while Charlotte bided her time teaching. They were well on their way to the American dream except for the fact that, according to the letters Lena had found in Hank’s office, the woman was miserable.

“What is wrong with me?” Charlotte had written. “Why can’t I be happy?”

Lena couldn’t focus on Charlotte’s marital misery now, though. She was here to find out information about Hank and what had caused him to slip back into his old ways. She needed to find out why he had lied to them and what had happened to her mother. Charlotte Warren might know his secrets. You didn’t write about the kind of secrets Charlotte had revealed in her letters to a stranger. Though the last letter Lena found was dated over a month ago, Charlotte had pretty much poured out her heart to Hank. Lena was betting Hank had returned the favor. If she couldn’t get answers from her uncle, then she would get them from his confidant.

There was no guard at the school’s front entrance and Lena was able to walk right in. There was a directory of classrooms on the front wall and Lena found Charlotte Gibson’s easily enough.

Like many rural schools, the building was a one-story structure with plenty of room to grow but no money to make it happen. Ten trailers, or “temporary classrooms,” were stacked along the back of the building and overlooking the football field. Lena stood at the open back door and looked at the sorry trailers. They might be calling them temporary, but Lena knew that at least two of them dated from her time as a senior. Some of them were on poured concrete slabs but most of the classrooms were on stilts. Weeds shot up between empty soda cans and wadded-up sheets of paper that students had thrown underneath them. Rickety wooden stairs led to open doors and she wondered if the buildings were air-conditioned. They couldn’t have been more than eight feet by fifteen and, knowing the county, the school was packing kids in there like meat. No wonder the dropout rate was so high. Lena had been here for less than five minutes and she was already anxious to leave.

She walked along the concrete walkway that fronted the trailers, thinking it was strange that Charlotte had been slotted back behind the school. Surely she had enough seniority to warrant a real classroom inside the building. Then again, the woman was lucky to have her job. Judging from the letters Lena had found, Hank had been Charlotte’s AA sponsor. Up until a year ago, it’d taken the woman a swig of gin just to get out of bed.

“Do you want to go see the principal?” a teacher’s voice bellowed from an open door, and Lena cringed, remembering the many times teachers had asked her the same thing. Not that it was a question; if you got them mad enough to ask, you were pretty much going to the office anyway.

The trailer at the very end was Charlotte’s, and it looked to be the worst of the lot. The bottom stair had rotted through and someone had placed cinder blocks on the ground to make up the step. The door was open, a screen door hanging crookedly from the jamb. Inside, Lena could see two long rows of desks facing the back of the trailer where Charlotte was bent over a stack of papers. No one else in the classroom.

Lena stood outside the door, watching Charlotte grade papers. Now that she was here, she did not know what to say to the woman. Lena felt as if she’d somehow violated Charlotte by reading her letters. Maybe she had. Charlotte’s words were deeply personal, meant only for Hank. If the shoe were on the other foot, if Charlotte had read Lena’s personal letters, Lena would have been furious.

Still, it was clear now that Charlotte knew more about Hank than she’d let on in the library. The two had obviously shared a deep friendship. God knew the woman could keep a secret. Lena was used to getting people to blab their darkest deeds, whether it was stealing a car or murdering a spouse. She had to think of this as an interview for a case rather than something that affected her personally. Jeffrey’s words echoed in her ears: Make the suspect comfortable, make some small talk, then make her tell the truth.

Lena knocked on the screen door once before she realized it wasn’t attached to anything. It started to fall to the side and she caught it, a shard of wood piercing the fleshy part of her palm.

“Shit,” she hissed, letting the screen hit the ground.

“Splinter?” Charlotte asked. She had managed to cross the trailer while Lena wrestled with the door.

Lena sucked at her hand, nodding.

“Come on in,” Charlotte offered. If she was surprised to see Lena, she didn’t say so.

“Why do they have you stuck out here?” Lena asked, walking inside. Bright posters decorated the walls and the room was clean and orderly, but there was no hiding the fact that it was little more than a tin box baking in the sun. The floor was springy under her feet and someone had used a bright silver tape to try to seal up the single-paned windows.

Charlotte pulled the door to and turned on the air-conditioning unit hanging on the wall. She had to raise her voice over the hum of the machine when she offered, “You want me to look at your hand?”

Lena sat on the edge of Charlotte’s desk and held out her hand.

“Not too bad,” Charlotte appraised, squinting at the splinter. She was more relaxed in the classroom than she’d been in the library. She seemed like an adult here, as if she were in her element. “I can get that out with a needle if you—”

Lena jerked her hand back. “No, thanks. It’ll work itself out.”

Charlotte smiled, sitting at one of the student desks. “Still scared of needles?”

“Still scared of clowns?”

Charlotte laughed as if she’d forgotten her childhood terror. “You can get used to a lot of things.”

Except having sex with your husband, Lena thought. She looked around the trailer, saw the water stains on the ceiling, and felt the breeze from the poorly insulated windows. “Who’d you piss off?”

“Sue Kurylowicz.” When Lena didn’t react, she explained, “You’d remember her as Sue Swallows.”

“Swallowin’ Sue who used to blow guys behind the Stop ’n’ Save?”

Charlotte laughed again; another thing she had forgotten. “Sue’s the assistant principal now.”

“Jesus Christ, no wonder this place is a sty.”

“That’s not Sue’s fault,” Charlotte defended. She indicated the room, the school. “You can’t put pearls on a pig.”

“She sure did blow plenty of ’em, though.” Lena shook her head. “I can’t believe she’s your boss. God, that must suck.”

“Oh, she’s not that bad,” Charlotte murmured, smoothing down her skirt with the palm of her hand. She was more like the Charlotte from the library now: quiet, subdued. “I know it doesn’t look that way, but Sue’s been a really good friend to me these last few years.”

“Like Sibyl?”

She pressed her lips together. “No. Nothing like Sibyl.”

Lena had caught the flash of fear in the other woman’s eyes, and some of her resolve wavered. The desire to tread softly was new to her, but she tried to go with it, asking, “When did the bar close down?”

“I think it was two weeks ago,” Charlotte answered. “I read about it in the paper. The bartender was selling meth along with shots, apparently.”

“Deacon?” Lena asked, shaking her head as she said the name. Deacon Simms had worked for Hank going on thirty years now. He had a felony record and a surly attitude, which made him perfect for the bar but virtually unemployable anywhere else. Hank loved him like a brother.

Charlotte told her, “Deacon left a while back. This was some new guy.”

Hank hadn’t told her that Deacon was gone, but then he hadn’t told Lena a lot of things. She knew the bartender had a temper—he was always clashing with Hank—but over the years, Deacon had thrown up his hands a million times and sworn he was never coming back. The longest he’d ever managed to stay away was for three days. He’d run into Hank at one of their AA meetings and all was forgiven.

Lena wondered if Charlotte had seen Deacon at any AA meetings. Of course, if Charlotte was anything like Hank, she wouldn’t have told anyone if she’d seen the Pope himself there, munching on free cookies and drinking coffee. Still, she tried, “Do you know where Deacon went?”

“I haven’t seen him around.”

“There was this guy,” Lena began. “I saw him outside Hank’s house. He had a swastika tattooed on his arm.”

“In plain sight?” Charlotte looked outraged. “That’s disgusting. Who was it?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Lena admitted. The guy was going to be harder to find than she’d thought. Lena was getting close to the point where, short of driving aimlessly around town looking for the thug, she was going to have to get some help. She just had to figure out how to ask Jeffrey for assistance without implicating Hank. It wasn’t like Lena could call up her boss and ask him to help her track down her uncle’s dealer.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” Charlotte said softly.

Lena shrugged off the apology. “Why do you think Hank’s using again?”

“Who knows?” she answered, picking at an invisible spot on her skirt. “Maybe he’s just tired of feeling things.”

She sounded like someone who knew what she was talking about. And, of course, Lena knew the truth behind her words. “I found your letters.”

Charlotte laughed again, but this time there was no joy in the sound. She looked at her hands, then the floor—anything but Lena. “I suppose you read them?”

“I wish I hadn’t,” Lena admitted.

Charlotte let out a slow stream of air between her lips. “There were so many things I said in those letters. Things I’ve never told anyone.”

“You tried to kill yourself.”

She nodded and shrugged at the same time.

“Why?” Lena asked. “If you’re so miserable here—”

“What, just leave?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s so easy for you,” Charlotte began. “You don’t have kids or a house you worked on making a home or a husband who loves you so much he’s willing to give up everything or…” She stopped herself, reining in her emotions. “I love my husband. I really, really do. I can’t tell you what my life would be without Larry. He’s stood by me through all this crap I’ve dragged my family through. Even when I…” Her voice trailed off. “When I took those pills, he was there. He’s the one who called the ambulance. He was the first one I saw when I woke up in the hospital. He took a leave of absence from work even though it cost him a promotion. He cleaned the house and fed the kids and did the shopping and at night he worked part-time at the God-awful motel so we could afford for me to keep seeing the therapist. He did everything while I laid up in bed feeling sorry for myself.”

“Six years ago,” Lena recalled from the letters. “When Sibyl died.”

Charlotte gave a weak smile. “You know, it wasn’t even about her. I mean, yes, of course I was devastated. She wasn’t just dead, but the way she died just made it so much more awful.” She stopped, collecting herself. “Sibby was so gentle, and for her to go that way…”

Lena didn’t want to think about it, to remember the details. “I understand,” she said. “You know I understand.”

“It made me look at how my life had just happened without me even paying attention. Did that happen to you, Lee?”

Lena had never thought about it, but she guessed that it had.

“Suddenly, I was this grown-up married woman, driving a minivan and trying to coordinate picking up my kids from soccer practice between finding time to cook dinner and scheduling a date-night with my husband.”

Lena felt claustrophobic just listening to the description, but she felt the need to say, “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Exactly,” Charlotte agreed. “Here I was in this perfect life, and all I could think about was that if I had to go to one more church potluck or softball game, I was going to kill myself. And one morning, I woke up and decided to follow through.”

“Does your husband know about Sibyl?”

“Larry knew we were close, but not anything more than that.” She finally looked up at Lena. “I think it would destroy him if he knew. Not for the reason you’re thinking, but because he knows…he knows something is missing and he tries so hard to…”

“Did you talk to your therapist about it?”

“The Christian therapist who’s also the minister at our church?” Sarcasm clipped Charlotte’s words. “Oh, yeah. We talked it out and he prayed for me and Jesus took it away like magic.” Tears fell from her eyes. “It’s my cross to bear, Lena. Make your bed and lie in it, right?”

“But, if you—”

She shook her head stubbornly. “If Larry found out, he would be devastated. I can’t do that to him. You have to understand that I really, really love him. He could deal with just about anything—another man, even—but this, this is something he can’t compete with, and it would just kill him.”

Lena tried to tread carefully. “Does he need to compete with it?”

Charlotte gave her a sharp look. “You mean was it all just a phase?” Her bitter tone implied she’d heard this explanation before. “Being in love with someone, feeling connected with someone, like your heart is part of theirs, that’s not a phase.”

“I know,” Lena said, because it sounded like what Charlotte needed to hear.

“I’ve been with other men, Lee. It’s not like I just haven’t met the right one.”

“I’m sorry,” Lena apologized. “I wasn’t saying that.”

Charlotte looked at her hands. Her wedding ring was a rock, glittering in the crappy trailer. A man didn’t buy a woman a ring like that unless he was head over heels in love. She told Lena, “When Larry and I first started dating, he knew that I was getting over someone. He just didn’t know it was a woman.”

Lena had been the sighted one, but she’d ended up being more blind than her sister. Sitting in Hank’s shack of an office, reading Charlotte’s deepest feelings, Lena had remembered all the times Sibyl had shut the door to their room, asking Lena to leave her and Charlotte alone so that they could study. Lena had never guessed exactly what they had been studying.

For years, Lena had blamed Sibyl’s lesbianism on Nan Thomas, the woman she had been living with when she died. It had taken a long time for Lena to accept that her sister’s sexuality was not going to change. Lena had even developed a kind of friendship with Nan. Somewhere in the back of her mind, though, Lena had still thought of Sibyl as some innocent who had unwittingly been plucked from the straight world. If it had started as far back as Charlotte Warren, then her whole notion of why Sibyl had changed was thrown out the window.

The truth was that Sibyl hadn’t changed at all. She had always been that way, only Lena had been too stupid to see it.

Lena asked, “Does your husband know that you’re in AA?”

“It’s kind of hard to hide when you get suspended from your job for being drunk.” She laughed, though there was nothing funny about what she was saying. “This was back when I was in the building instead of stuck out here in the trailer park. I fell flat on my face in full view of the newspaper staff. If it wasn’t for Swallowin’ Sue I would’ve lost my job.” She smiled. “I guess you could argue that it was the middle of the year and it’s nearly impossible to find anyone who’s willing to teach anymore, but I like to think she let me continue teaching because she believes in me.”

“You’re acting like this is all some kind of joke.”

“Oh, Lee. If I didn’t laugh about it, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning.”

“Why did you start drinking?”

“Because it was a slower, more socially acceptable way to kill myself.” She added, “And it helped anesthetize me. I didn’t want to feel anything.”

“That’s the same thing you just said about Hank.”

“Yes. It is.” Charlotte’s throat worked. Now that she was looking at Lena, she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of her. “You’re so much like Sibby, you know?”

Lena shook her head. “I don’t look like her anymore.”

“It’s inside,” Charlotte insisted, holding her hand to her chest. “Y’all were always the same inside, too.”

Lena had to laugh. “Sibyl was nothing like me. I was in trouble all the time. They probably have a chair outside the principal’s office named after me.”

“She was just better at getting away with it,” Charlotte countered. “Remember how she used to mouth off to Coach Hanson in biology class?”

Lena felt herself smiling. “She ran circles around him. He hated her guts.”

“Remember that awful music she used to listen to? God, she had such a crush on Joan Jett.”

“Was it Sibyl who—I mean, was she the one who—” Lena felt her face turning beet red. “Christ. Never mind.”

“It was mutual,” Charlotte supplied. “We were both studying on the bed. We had the window open and it started raining outside and I reached over to close it and one thing led to another and it just…happened.”

Lena felt her stomach drop. Sibyl’s bed was by the wall. They had made out on Lena’s bed.

“Are you okay?”

Lena nodded, trying to block the image that came to her mind.

Charlotte took Lena’s reaction the wrong way. “She never thought you would accept her.”

“I didn’t,” Lena admitted, feeling a familiar sadness. “I do now, but I didn’t when it mattered.”

“She knew you loved her, Lee. She never doubted that.” Charlotte stood and walked over to the window. “What’s Nan like?”

“Nan?” Lena echoed. “How do you know about Nan?”

“She called me when Sibyl died.”

“Oh.” Lena felt ashamed for not making the call herself.

Charlotte seemed to pick up on this. “You had a lot going on, Lee. Don’t worry.”

“I should have let you know. You were…” Lena didn’t know how to characterize Sibyl’s relationship with Charlotte. “I should have called you.”

“She sounds kind of snooty on the phone.”

“Nan?” Lena shrugged. “Not really. Sometimes she gets prickly, but she’s okay most of the time. I lived with her for a while.”

“Hank told me,” Charlotte said. “We had a good laugh over that one.”

Lena felt her stomach drop. “What else did Hank tell you about me?”

“That he was worried about you. That there was this guy you were seeing who was really bad, and he was worried you wouldn’t get away from him.” She paused, hesitating before adding, “That he went to Atlanta with you.”

A lump came to Lena’s throat. “Is that why he started using again? Because I…” Lena couldn’t say the word, couldn’t talk about what had happened at the women’s clinic.

“Listen to me,” Charlotte ordered, her tone sharp. She waited until Lena looked up. “You cannot make someone use drugs, just like you can’t make them stop. You don’t have that much power over Hank or anybody else. Hank started using again for his own reasons.”

She sounded just like one of his AA pamphlets. “Did he tell you his reasons?”

Charlotte shook her head again. “Mostly, he just listened to me. I was so wrapped up in myself that I didn’t see what was going on with him until it was too late.”

“When did he start back?”

“I’d guess three months ago, maybe four or five if he started slow.”

“Did he say anything in your meetings?”

“I can’t tell you what he said in meetings, Lena. You know that.” She held up her hands, as if to stop the next question. “I can tell you that two months ago he told me that he couldn’t be my sponsor anymore. I was hurt, I didn’t really question him like I should have because I was too busy feeling angry and rejected. Part of me was glad when he didn’t show up at the next meeting or any of the ones after that. Sometimes, he’d drive over to the ones in Carterson and I just assumed he was going to those.”

Carterson was about fifty miles away, not a long drive for someone like Hank, who liked to be on the open road.

Lena asked, “When did you realize he had stopped going to meetings?”

“A few weeks ago. I got over myself and asked a friend in Carterson to tell Hank I said hi and she told me she hadn’t seen him in forever.”

“Did you ever see a white SUV outside his house?”

“No.” She added, “Larry and I go for walks after supper. We pass by Hank’s almost every night. I’ve never seen anyone there. As a matter of fact, I wondered if you had come to get him. His car was in the driveway, but there were never any lights on except the usual one in the kitchen.”

Hank always left the kitchen light on as a deterrent to thieves; not a good strategy if the entire neighborhood knew the trick.

Lena asked, “When did you last see him?”

“Four days ago—that’s why I called you. He was outside trying to fix his mailbox. Somebody put a cherry bomb in it, probably one of those kids from a couple of streets over getting a head start on Halloween. Larry offered to help but Hank cursed at him, told us both to go away, so we did.”

Lena mulled this over. “He’s been holed up in his house for how many months and the only thing that got him outside was a broken mailbox?”

“He was so high, Lee. I’m surprised he could stand up on his own, let alone walk the twenty feet to his mailbox. His skin was awful. He obviously hadn’t bathed in a while. A fool could see what he’s doing.”

“Which is?”

“Trying to end it.”

Lena felt her voice catch. “End his life?”

Charlotte shrugged. “End his misery, maybe.”

“What’s changed? What happened that set him off?”

“I have no idea. That’s the truth. My focus every day when I get up is not taking another drink. I’m an alcoholic. We’re not known for our altruism.”

Lena doubted that was the case with Charlotte. She pressed, “But you saw he was having problems two, maybe three months ago?”

“I don’t know,” Charlotte admitted. “Maybe I saw that he was depressed or preoccupied or acting differently, but all I cared about was me. School had started back and I was in this hellhole with kids snickering behind my back and teachers snickering in front of it. I was struggling to stay sober. My focus was on what would keep me on the right path.” She held out her hands as if she were helpless. “By the time I realized something was wrong with him, it was too late. He wouldn’t talk to me, he wouldn’t return my phone calls, he wouldn’t answer the door. He just kept telling me to leave him alone and let him do what he wanted to do.”

Lena was familiar with the refrain. “That’s when you started writing him the letters?”

“Yes.” She paused, lost in her own thoughts. “It was awkward at first, but then when he didn’t write back it was almost freeing. I just wrote whatever I wanted. I’ve never done that before, just said what was on my mind.”

“You talk a lot about Sibyl, what it was like when you were together.” Some of the passages had been so hard to read that Lena had found herself staring out the window, lost in another time. Charlotte had managed to capture the essence of Sibyl: her good nature, her loving kindness. Even after Lena had finished reading the letters, the feelings had stuck with her, so that it was almost like Sibyl was alive again.

Charlotte said, “Hank is the only one who knew about her. Us. What we felt for each other, that it was love and not something grotesque.” She leaned her back against the window, arms crossed low over her waist. “But you know what? A long time ago, he asked me what would’ve happened if Sibyl and I had made it work. I could have transferred to Georgia Tech, you know. They wouldn’t have offered me a full ride like they did with Sibby but I was already in college, doing pretty well, making the honor roll. I was miserable living with my folks and having to drive back and forth to Milledgeville. I could’ve transferred and gotten a job in Atlanta or got student loans or something to make it happen, but I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I guess it scared me. Everything scared me back then. Atlanta’s so big, so anonymous. I felt safe here. And it would’ve killed my parents.”

“It was easier for us to leave home than it was for you,” Lena tried. “Your folks were—”

“My folks would’ve never talked to me again if I’d followed her to Atlanta. They caught us together once. Did you know that?” Lena shook her head, shocked that Sibyl had never told her. “It was fall break of my sophomore year and Sibby was about to go off to Tech. My parents were supposed to be visiting my aunt Jeannie for the day but they got into a fight. They were always fighting back then. This was around the time Mother found out he’d been screwing Mrs. Ford from the church for about the last five years.” She laughed at the irony. “So, they came back early and found us…Well, you can imagine how they found us. They called Hank at the bar and made him come over right then to confront us. He was furious—but at them, not Sibyl. He said we were both adults and that it was none of their damn business.”

“‘Let he who is without sin…’” Lena quoted. It was one of Hank’s favorite verses. He was always throwing it out right before he told you that what you were doing was wrong.

Charlotte said, “Y’all were so lucky to have him.”

Lena laughed. “Are you kidding me? I would’ve killed for your parents when I was growing up.”

“You can have them.”

“Okay,” Lena allowed. “What they did then was bad, but they never accidentally locked you out of the house all night or forgot to feed you or left you alone with strangers and they sure as hell never got so drunk they ran over you with their car and—”

“What?”

“You know what Hank did.”

Charlotte looked confused. “What did he do?”

“He blinded her. He took away Sibyl’s sight. How can you—”

“Lena, that wasn’t Hank.”

Lena felt her heart stop mid-beat. “What are you talking about?”

Charlotte stood in front of her, still confused by Lena’s reaction. “I was there that day.”

“No you weren’t.”

“You and me and Sibby were playing in the front yard with an old tennis ball I’d stolen from my brother. You threw the ball over Sibyl’s head and she ran into the driveway and—”

“No,” Lena insisted. “You weren’t there.” Even as she said the words, she could picture the day: throwing the ball over Sibyl’s head, making her chase after it. And there was Charlotte Warren on the other side of the driveway, scooping up the ball and tossing it back to Lena. “No.” Lena shook her head as if she could clear the memory. “You weren’t there.”

“I was, Lee. I saw the car backing up. I yelled, but she didn’t stop. The bumper hit Sibyl’s head. I saw her collapse in the driveway.” As she spoke, Lena saw it happening again. Sibyl running into the driveway, Charlotte screaming. “There was just this thin line of blood.” Charlotte traced her finger along her own temple, down her jaw, exactly where the blood had been on Sibyl. “You started sobbing, you were hysterical, and Hank came running out of the house and your mother just—”

“My mother?” Lena felt light-headed. She leaned back against the desk. “What are you talking about? My mother was there? She was there when Sibyl…?”

“Lee,” Charlotte began, putting her hand on Lena’s shoulder. “It wasn’t Hank. Your mother was driving the car. She’s the one who blinded Sibyl.”