Daddy’s car is already in front of the Hockleys’ house and he’s sitting in the driver’s seat, waiting for me. He gets out and gives me a quick hug. “Thanks for joining me,” he says. I think this is the first time he’s asked for my help since Mom died.
On the front porch, Daddy rings the bell. Through the screen, I hear the sound of a TV, then Buddy’s voice. “Come on in,” he says.
We walk into the living room, where Buddy’s sitting in a recliner, hooked up to his oxygen, as usual. He wears blue pajama bottoms and a stained white T-shirt.
“Hi, Buddy.” I stand just inside the front door, feeling intrusive.
“Hey, Bud,” Daddy says, and while Buddy doesn’t smile, he doesn’t look particularly put out either.
“Hey, Reed.” He nods toward the sofa. “Have a seat. Kayla, honey, the girls are in the kitchen. Why don’t you go in and get your daddy and me … and you … some sweet tea from the icebox?”
“All right,” I say as my father sits down on the sofa. “Be back in a minute.”
In the kitchen, Ellie is cutting vegetables and putting them in the slow cooker, while her mother bends over the sink getting her hair washed by Brenda. The rims of Ellie’s eyes are pink behind her glasses. I’m sure she had a terrible night.
“Hey, Kayla,” Brenda says as she runs the spray head over Miss Pat’s short thin hair. “You doin’ okay after the brouhaha yesterday?”
“I’m all right,” I say.
“Who’s that?” Miss Pat says from her awkward stance as she leans over the sink.
“The girl from down the street,” Brenda says. “You know. Kayla? The one where they found that skeleton yesterday?”
“Oh yeah,” Miss Pat mutters.
I see the tightness in Ellie’s jaw at the mention of the “skeleton.” She looks at me and there’s a question in her eyes: Why are we here? “My father wants to talk to Buddy,” I say, “and Buddy asked me to get some iced tea.”
Ellie wipes her hands on a towel, then opens the refrigerator and pulls out two bottles of iced tea. She hands them to me, then nods toward the living room. “I think I’d like to be part of that conversation, too,” she says, taking a couple more bottles from the refrigerator.
I thank her for the tea. My gaze is on Brenda as she massages Miss Pat’s scalp. Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, and it’s only as I leave the kitchen that I register what I just saw: a pink birthmark on the inside of Brenda’s right wrist. I’ve seen that birthmark before, and my mind is suddenly on fire as I follow Ellie into the living room.
Brenda is the red-haired woman.
I’m both furious and confused, my hands shaking as I sit down next to my father on the sofa. I set my bottle of tea on the coffee table without opening it. What the hell is going on?
“I’m sitting in on this conversation,” Ellie says, handing one of the bottles to her brother. She doesn’t greet my father and she takes a seat in an armchair across the room, as far from him as she can get. “Have the police talked to you yet?” she asks him.
Daddy nods. He says something, but it doesn’t register in my brain. All I can think about is that the crazy woman who kidnapped my three-year-old daughter is in the kitchen. I sit on the edge of the sofa cushion as if ready to bolt. I should say something. Right now. But what?
As soon as I get out of here, I’ll call Sam.
“So have you thought any more about it, Bud?” my father asks Buddy. “Who else could have gotten my keys after I put them through that slot in your shop door?”
I think Buddy says something about racking his brain, but I really don’t know because Brenda is guiding Miss Pat into the room. Miss Pat, her thin curly hair in damp ringlets close to her scalp, seems frailer than the last time I saw her. She’s shuffling more than walking. She looks small and vulnerable. She sits down in a wooden straight-backed chair and picks up a pencil and the folded newspaper from the table next to her. I can see the square of a crossword puzzle on the paper.
Brenda lowers herself into the upholstered chair next to her. I can’t even look at her. Is she the one who littered my yard with trash? Did she toss dead squirrels into my redbud tree and steal things from Jackson’s trailer? Is she the person who didn’t want anyone to find Win’s body in my backyard? Oh no, honey, you don’t want a fence! That’s what she said to me. Of course she didn’t want me to get a fence! She didn’t want anyone digging holes in my yard.
My father catches my eye. Gives me a quizzical look. I have no idea what he just said, or what Buddy just said, or how I should be responding. My body feels like it’s buzzing.
“Are y’all still talking about that boy’s grave?” Brenda asks. “Can’t we put it to rest? I don’t see why…”
She goes on, but I’m not listening. Her sleeves are still rolled up and my eyes are drawn like a magnet to the irregular pink pattern on the inside of her forearm. She stops speaking, following my gaze to her arm, then back to my face and our eyes meet. She hurriedly rolls her sleeves down, but I can tell from her expression: she knows that I know.
I need to call Sam right now. I could excuse myself. Go outside and make the call.
As I think about what I’d say, my gaze drifts toward the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. I can see the side door, the entrance to the house that Ellie led me through that first day when she made me a cup of tea. I see the faded images of rolling pins and sacks of flour on the ancient wallpaper. I see the old wooden key rack on the wall next to the door, two sets of keys hanging from the knobs. I have a sudden thought.
“Mr. Buddy,” I say, interrupting whatever he and Daddy are discussing. My voice has a shiver in it. “Where did you keep the keys to your car shop back then?”
“In my pocket,” he says.
“Did you ever keep them on that key rack in the kitchen?”
“That ol’ rack!” Buddy lets out a laugh that turns into a coughing fit. We wait. Daddy looks at me, eyebrows raised. He’s catching on. “I made that ol’ thing in a woodworking class when I was … I dunno … fourteen, maybe?” Buddy says. “Been hangin’ there ever since.”
“Did you ever keep the car shop keys on it?” Daddy repeats my question.
“Nah, I always kept them in my pock—”
“Yes, you did, Buddy.” Ellie leans forward. “Back when I lived here you surely did. All the time.”
Buddy wrinkles his brow. Adjusts the oxygen tubing in his nose. “You might be right,” he says. “Before I got that fancy lock on the shop door, maybe I did. So long ago.”
“Who the hell cares where Buddy kept his keys a hundred years ago?” Miss Pat slaps the newspaper on the end table. “Just listen to yourselves going on and on about the ancient past! I knew as soon as Ellie showed up back here in Round Hill everything would go to hell.” She looks at her daughter. “You were a pain in the backside as a girl and you’re a pain in the backside now. You’re sixty-five years old, for heaven’s sake! When are you goin’ to grow up? You don’t see me moonin’ around over your daddy killin’ himself, do you?”
“Mama—” Ellie frowns, but her mother plows over her.
“Yes, it hurt, havin’ him shoot his damn head off,” Miss Pat says. “But I just kept goin’, didn’t I? Put one foot in front of the other.” She shakes her head at Ellie. “Why do you always think the world revolves around you? What the hell’s wrong with you that you’re so stuck in the past?” She points a trembling finger toward her daughter. “If you must know, Eleanor,” she says, “everybody was there that night. Back in the woods. Every goddamn body! Everybody was disgusted by you and that boy.” She shudders, as if sickened by the thought of her daughter and Win together. Then she turns to Brenda, who looks like a deer caught in headlights. “Even Brenda was there that night,” she says, “though she stayed in the truck, her bein’ expecting and all. Didn’t you, honey?”
“Mama…” Brenda’s voice is small, but the word sounds like a warning.
“Mama what?” Miss Pat asks, but it’s not really a question. She frowns at Brenda, who seems frozen in her chair. We’re all frozen. But then Brenda suddenly finds her voice. She looks directly at my father.
“Just admit you were driving your damn truck and get it over with, Reed,” she says. “Everybody knows it. They’ve known it for forty-five years.”
Next to me, my father stiffens. “That’s not true,” he says.
“Oh, bullshit.” Miss Pat wears a mocking smile, and for the first time, I have the tiniest sliver of doubt about my father’s innocence.
“I was not driving that truck,” Daddy says. “I had nothing to do with whatever went on in the woods.”
Ellie doesn’t seem to hear him. Her face has gone white. She’s looking across the room at Brenda. “You were my best friend,” she says. “How could you have been part of it all?”
“Mama’s not well, Ellie,” Brenda says. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.” She rests her hand on Miss Pat’s arm, but Miss Pat snatches her arm away from her.
“I’m perfectly fine,” she says. “Sane and sober.”
“Her memory is off,” Brenda continues. She looks at Miss Pat. “You know how you are, Mama. You can’t remember where you put your glasses two seconds after you take them off.”
“You’re the one with the memory problems,” Miss Pat argues.
My father leans toward me, hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right, Kayla?” he asks softly.
I don’t answer him. I glare at Brenda. “You’re the woman who took my daughter,” I say. “You were the woman in my office who tried to scare me away from Shadow Ridge.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Brenda snarls, and I hear a bit of the gravelly voice she used in my office. “What is wrong with everybody today?”
“Seriously, Kayla.” All of Ellie’s attention is on me. “What do you mean?”
“You shot a bunch of squirrels with a pellet gun and threw them on my redbud tree.” I’m guessing now.
“That was Brenda?” My father sounds astonished. I don’t answer him. I’m too busy staring her down.
“You’re insane,” she says.
“Leave Brenda alone,” Miss Pat says. “I thought you were a nice girl, but you—”
“You went to tremendous lengths to try to prevent anyone from finding that grave,” I say to Brenda. “Why? What’s your connection to it?”
Brenda laughs. “You’re completely out of your mind,” she says. “You’re so obsessed with your ‘Shadow Ridge Estate’ that you can’t think straight.”
“You tried to scare me away,” I say. “It had to be because of Win.”
“Don’t say that name!” Miss Pat nearly shouts, and I ignore her.
“You didn’t want anyone to find him,” I say to Brenda. I’m trembling, afraid of her. She took my daughter. She told me she wanted to kill someone. What is she capable of? Yet, I can’t stop talking. “You probably were there the night everything happened, like Miss Pat said. You knew Win was buried in my yard, didn’t you?”
She glares at me, opening her mouth as though she’s about to say something, but she can’t seem to find the words, and I keep talking. I look at Ellie.
“Your uncle Byron,” I say. “Remember how he wanted to buy my lot?”
I can practically see the light bulb going off in Ellie’s brain. Her eyes fill with horror.
“Uncle Byron?” Buddy asks. “Why the hell would he want land in Shadow Ridge? He was knockin’ at death’s door for two years before he passed.”
“Byron knew the grave was there,” Daddy says quietly.
“Well, you figured it out. Congratulations.” Miss Pat slaps her hands on her thighs. “Of course Byron knew the grave was there. He should have. He’s the one who dug it.”
“Hush, Mama. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Brenda tries once more to put a hand on Miss Pat’s arm, but the old woman slaps it away.
“But Uncle Byron was at a poker game with Daddy that night.” Buddy looks perplexed. “He and Daddy took Garner to the hospital.”
At the mention of her husband, Brenda leans forward, her cheeks suddenly bright red. “They did take Garner to the hospital,” she says, “but not from our house.” She turns to look at Ellie. “Garner didn’t fall off the ladder at our house! That was a made-up story we told the hospital. He was with everybody else at the circle in the woods, ready to put an end to you and your so-called boyfriend, and you killed him!” She picks up her bottle of iced tea and throws it at Ellie. Daddy is quick to get to his feet as though he can somehow reach Ellie in time to protect her, and I suddenly realize that after all these years, all these decades and all her distrust of him, my father still cares about her.
The bottle strikes her on the shoulder. She’s stunned but not hurt, but I feel the shock wave in the room. Dead silence follows Brenda’s words as we all try to make sense of them. I reach for my father’s hand. Tug him back to the sofa again.
“What is wrong with you?” Ellie leans toward Brenda. “How could I have killed Garner? I would never—”
“Listen to what she’s saying, Ellie,” Buddy interrupts her. “She’s sayin’ there was no poker game. It was made up to…”
“As a cover-up,” Daddy says. “Because Byron and your father … they were there in the clearing. So was Garner. It sounds like the whole damn town was in the clearing, like your mother said.”
“Except you!” I add, because I’m completely certain now that whoever drove my father’s truck, it wasn’t him.
“But why would you say I killed Garner?” Ellie turns to Brenda, who’s gripping the arms of her chair now, her knuckles white.
“You killed him, Ellie. You killed Garner and made me lose my baby—the only child I’d ever have! Garner was climbing the steps of the tree house and you kicked him off and destroyed my whole world, all for that stupid boy you’d only known for a month.”
Ellie gasps. “That was Garner?” she asks. She sounds like a wounded child.
“Oh, don’t give me that innocent crap!” Brenda stands up. “And then you have the nerve to show up here, all these years later, saying ‘Can we be friends again? Can we start over?’ Like hell! I would just as soon kill you as be your friend! God, I loathe you!”
“That’s enough, Brenda,” Daddy says. He’s on the edge of the sofa as though ready to jump up again. His voice is firm, but not angry. I hear pity in it.
“Don’t you get it, Ellie?” Brenda asks. I feel her shaky rage, though her voice isn’t loud now. It’s worse than that. The rage is coiled inside her, ready to spring. “Your father couldn’t wait to put an end to the boy who was dragging his family through the mud, and he had a whole lot of help from the rest of Round Hill.”
Buddy makes a gasping sound as he tries to sit up straight in the recliner. “Daddy could’ve gotten the key to my shop off the rack in the kitchen, like Kayla said.” He looks at Brenda, a wounded expression on his doughy face.
Ellie’s cheeks are shiny with tears. “I can’t believe Daddy would do that.”
“You’re right about that.” Miss Pat nods. “He was a weak man. He went along with it, but he didn’t know the whole plan. We kept it from him. He didn’t know that boy would end up killed. He couldn’t take it, either. He wasn’t the same afterward.”
My father frowns. “But if he drove my truck, he had to know—”
“I just said he was a coward, didn’t I?” Miss Pat sounds impatient. “I’m the one who drove your damn truck, Reed! I’m the one who did what everybody else was afraid to do!”
For the first time in fifteen minutes, a hush falls over the room. We stare at Miss Pat, who turns her head away from us, red blotches high on her cheekbones. Still no one speaks. Finally, Brenda reaches over to rest a hand on Miss Pat’s.
“Oh, Mama,” she says quietly. “Now you’ve gone and done it.”