Jonah stood in the dark living room, remembering times when the house was lit and vibrant, raucous with the two daughters’ laughs and screams, his and Rebecca’s and Maurice and Julia’s voices, the fire roaring in the fireplace, its heat warming and its light inviting.
Before him, in the shadows, slumped in a wheelchair and peering up at him, sat the man who had been his friend.
“You confessed,” Jonah said.
“Yes,” Maurice said. “And. No.”
Maurice shook his head, his eyes glassy, pupils seeming to float. “I confessed. But did not tell the truth.”
Jonah longed to sit. He felt fragile on his legs, yet wanted to remain standing, looking down on this man.
“Sit,” Maurice said.
Jonah refused. He was not sitting for this man as he had at his own kitchen table so many years ago.
“I lied. To Lucy,” Maurice said. “I— Loved Rebecca.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” Jonah said and started to leave.
“We both loved her.” Maurice sucked in a thin unwell breath. “You. Me. You know that. I didn’t hurt Rebecca. I . . . Sally . . . She was starting to look.” He swallowed, smacked his dry lips. “So much like her, when Rebecca and I first met as kids. When it was just. Rebecca and me. Before you.”
“Stop.”
“Never hurt her. Sally. Or Rebecca. I—” He shut his eyes, clacked his teeth together. “I bothered her. Scared her. Both of them. I’m sorry. My fault. But—”
Jonah tried to control his breathing, stem the anger that made him quake. “You’re sorry because the truth is out.”
“It’s not out. The real truth. It would kill Lucinda.”
Maurice struggled to sit up straight, look Jonah in the eye. “Rebecca came here. Threatened to tell you about my . . . behavior. I got. Mad. Said things. When you won her over. Betrayed me when I was at academy.”
“You were not together. Not an item. Ever. You were friends.”
“But you knew. You knew how I felt.”
“She didn’t feel that way.”
“It killed me. You knew. I told you. It killed me. And you. While I was away. I kept thinking. She’d see you. The real you.” He gasped for breath, wheezed. “Sooner or later. See the violent boy inside, fear you. Come back to me. I waited. Time passed. She never saw that violent boy, never feared you. He was dead. She killed him.”
“You wanted her to come back to you? You were never hers to come back to. All that time, all those years? You were happy. You had a wife and a daughter.”
“Didn’t matter. All that mattered. Was. One day. She’d look at me. One time. Look at me like she’d looked at you. She came that morning. Angry.” He sagged in the wheelchair, wheezing, closed his eyes, as if to remember that day. “So angry. Sally with her. Told me. She knew it was me in the woods, stalking Sally. Stalking. Said I had to stop. For her, for Sally. For all our sakes. She brought her own daughter, as a pawn.”
“So you—”
“No.” His chest heaved, his mouth gaped, as if he were about to be sick. “No. Never.”
“They’re in your cellar—”
“I wasn’t home. Was gone. Called out for stolen tractor. It’s in dispatch records. I was not here.”
“How do you know Rebecca came to see you that morning if—”
“She told me.”
Jonah wondered if Maurice were lucid, if he even knew what he was speaking about, or where he was. “How could Rebecca—”
“Julia. Told me,” Maurice said. His face turned to stone before Jonah. Not out of anger or fear, but out of restraint, as if every cell of his face was fixed against the tiniest betrayal of emotion. Jonah heard the truth in Maurice’s voice, saw the truth in Maurice’s stone face, in the torment in his eyes at having said what he’d just said. “I came home, afternoon. Before school was out. She was. Kneeling over them. Mouth open, like a roar. Silent roar. No sound. Eyes wide. Not seeing. She’d been there. Hours. Kneeling over them, rocking, drooling.”
“Julia,” Jonah said.
“She could not stand,” Maurice said. “Even with help. Knotted and stooped from kneeling over them. For hours. She told me. Rebecca came, looking for me. Demanding. Refused to leave. Shoved the drawings in her face. Shouted I was stalking Sally. Raving. She scared Julia, like that night at your house. The night Rebecca struck you. It. Scared her. Scared Sally. Julia thought it was Rebecca obsessed with me.”
“Don’t blame what you did on your dead wife, that’s—”
“The truth. Julia tried to get her to leave. Sally got between. Julia shoved her. Rebecca went wild. Swung at her.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Just. Telling you. Julia. Sally was crying, hysterical.” Maurice coughed up bloodied phlegm. “Rebecca pounded her fists at Julia. Julia. Grabbed a knife.”
“No.”
“When she turned around with it, Sally was there.”
“No,” Jonah croaked.
“The knife. It sunk deep. Julia dropped it.”
“No. No. You’re lying. You did it.”
“Rebecca fell to her knees beside Sally. But Sally. Was gone. Rebecca was wild. Shrieking. Wailing. Julia begged her to stop, begged her to let Julia call an ambulance. She tried to get the phone. Rebecca. Grabbed the knife and lunged. Julia picked up a marble paperweight. Hit her. Once. Just. To stop her. To stop it.”
Jonah’s legs gave and he caved into the chair behind him, his flesh afire as he buried his face in his hands.
“You,” Jonah whispered. “All those questions you had for me, asking if I knew of anyone, a friend of Rebecca’s, if I had any reason to think it might be someone else, you were trying to see if I knew if Rebecca had told me about you. About you bothering her.”
Maurice nodded. “I tried. To keep focus off you. I tried. So you would not be blamed. You would not pay for something you didn’t do.”
“I paid. All this time,” Jonah said. “You let me live with not knowing what happened to them.”
“It was too awful. I couldn’t—”
“Nothing is more awful than the horrors in my mind.” Jonah stood. “You lied and deceived. Went on as if you knew nothing. Kept it from me. All this time. Made me suffer. How could you do that? Cover it up, continue to protect Julia even for years after she passed. You were the sheriff. You were my friend. How could you do that?”
“She was my wife.”
Jonah paced in the suffocating darkness and heat of the room.
“Why tell me now, if you wanted to protect her name and memory?”
“You deserve it. But. I want you to keep it to yourself. Lucinda. Can’t know.”
“Why should I believe any of this? Someone who frightened my wife and child. Betrayed me. Followed Sally in the woods.”
“I didn’t. Follow her.”
“You told Lucinda just now.”
“She assumed. I did not correct her. I don’t know who the girls saw. If it was a person. Or just imagination. But it was not me in the woods.”
“Why should I believe you, about anything? How can I believe you? That you’re not just blaming Julia for what you did?”
“Because. I’m dying. And . . . I was your friend. Once.”