The door was heavy but different than the ones that had imprisoned me before. It was small, not even the full height of a person and it had an actual knob that didn’t turn when I tried it. It was filthy and damp from disuse. I put the keys into the lock one by one. The words uttered under my breath were just one long string of profanities. It was all I could do not to cry. One key slid into the lock and turned. I pulled on the door and it swung inwards on its hinges. I stood and ducked to get through.
I heard the voices before I could acclimate myself. Cora and Harrison in the next room over. I was right; I was in the pantry. A large china closet was filled with all sorts of delicate dinnerware and silver. There were shelves and shelves of food and a stainless steel refrigerator in one corner. The washer and dryer where Cora had found my checks was in a small separate part of the room. I didn’t know what time it was, but bits of daylight seeped through the partially opened door. I no longer had need for Harrison’s little penlight. My hands were brown and red. Red from my own blood. My once pale blue sweatshirt was unrecognizable. I looked down at my Nikes. The white nylon was almost black. I kept looking at my left sneaker realizing that minutes ago a rat had waddled across it. Its claws had pressed into the fabric of my sneaker, its long tail dragging across behind it. I shuddered and tried to wipe the image from my mind. I hadn’t seen anything. Only felt it. Noise was coming from the kitchen. Cora and Harrison were in there.
Flat on the floor, my shovel next to me, I peeked through the crack at them. Tea. They were having fucking tea. I could see part of the table from where I lay. Not only were they having tea but they were having some sort of formal tea from a sterling service. I saw Cora’s hand lift the lid from the sugar bowl and drop a sugar cube into her cup with silver tongs. Not loose sugar, but a cube. While I was dodging rats she was up here making like the queen of England. Such civilized people taking tea together while the peasant was chained below. Harrison’s hand lifted his cup to his mouth. I couldn’t see his face, only the back of his head.
“It’s raining. So much rain is bound to be good for the plants. Especially the roses. Wait and see in the spring,” he said.
They were talking about gardening?
“The gardeners did a good job fertilizing and covering the roses, I think but we’ll see.”
I dropped my head to my arm. This was surreal.
“If the rain keeps up it may wash out the grass seed. It may have to be reseeded. But there’s nothing we can do.” Harrison took another sip of tea. I could only see Cora’s hands and at that moment she picked up some sort of scone. My stomach growled. “I keep telling you, you ought to enter your roses in a contest. Invite the Philadelphia Horticultural Society up here next year for a luncheon.”
“I don’t want anyone on this property, Harrison. Not the Horticultural Society, not the Historical Society. Lord knows they ask every year if they can open the house for tours for their Juneteenth celebration. Is that what they call it?” I saw Harrison’s head nod up and down. “The coloreds prance up and down going into the abolitionist houses with their grape sodas and sticky watermelon fingers.” She laughed. “When I’m dead and gone, they’ll come in here, not a moment before then. Do you hear me?”
“Cora we have a mess on our hands.”
“Can’t I just enjoy my tea, Harrison?”
“No. I’m worried sick. I can’t even swallow. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Cora’s voice had dropped. “I’m still trying to figure it out. If we kill her we may get caught. Those friends of hers won’t likely let it drop.” So Samantha and Dylan had been looking for me. “But we can’t let her go. She knows so much.”
“Not everything.”
“Enough.”
“She knows James didn’t just disappear but she hasn’t figured out what happened to him.” I heard the rain beating down against the cathedral windows. “We could leave the country. Leave her here. Get a plane and go to…I don’t know. South America? Argentina?”
“Argentina?” Cora asked.
“Well, you decide. Between us we can scrape together enough cash to live for the rest of our lives. It has to be some place that isn’t going to extradite us.”
“I’m not leaving my house. You go if you want.”
“It’s not like I want to go…” Harrison’s hand reached across the table. “Let’s check on her. Get her some water. Please? Then we can come back. Have some more tea and make a plan?”
She must have agreed because they both got up and left the kitchen. I stood up and leaned in to look. I knew I only had minutes before they would see I was gone. I moved quickly, stopping only to grab a scone from the plate. I shoved it into my face like an animal, scattering crumbs in my wake. My mouth was so dry I coughed and pieces flew everywhere. The more I tried not to cough the stronger the urge became. I grabbed Harrison’s half filled tea cup and emptied it into my mouth. It wasn’t much and it was lukewarm but it was enough to encourage the scone down my throat. I strained at the kitchen door to hear voices. Nothing. I wanted to get outside and the quickest way to do that was to go through the formal dining room.
The door swung open with my push and I ran to the series of French doors. The velvet curtains were thrust aside and I stepped outside. It wasn’t raining. It was more like a downpour. The sun was obscured behind storm clouds but it looked fairly low in the sky. My best guess was that it had to be twilight.
Freedom. It had always just been another word in the English language. Until now I hadn’t understood or appreciated the full meaning of the word. I didn’t get to savor it for very long because I heard voices in the distance getting closer. I dropped to the ground and crawled within the protection of the greenery. Cora and Harrison hurried by with a flashlight. They were dressed in rain gear. They didn’t say anything that I could hear, their voices were low and they were talking fast. They were looking for me. My face was flush with the mud as they passed. The light skittered across the bushes, some of it illuminating my left hand. I held my breath. I curled up and pressed my back to the stone wall and waited. They seemed to hesitate near where I lay. The light bounced back and forth over the bushes. I had come too far to get caught now. After an eternity and a minute they moved forward again picking up their pace.
Something Cora said kept playing through my mind over and over again. It was when she’d been talking to Harrison and I pretended to be asleep. She said I had been in the cemetery talking to Ginny and that I might put the pieces together and go back there. The answer to everything was in the cemetery. It wouldn’t take me long. I knew it was insane but it was as if I were being pulled by some unseen force. I had to go to the cemetery and find the answer for myself. Then I’d go to Dylan’s.
I lay on my side in the mud behind the bushes with the rain coming down on me but I didn’t move. I wanted to. Everything in me told me to get up and run but I had to make sure Cora was really gone and the only way to do that was to stay where I was. The mud was going into one nostril so I tried to breathe through my mouth. Finally the moment of no return came. I crawled out on my hands and knees looking carefully both ways before standing to full height and running across the lawn as fast as I could, shovel still in hand.
Once in the woods, the trees provided some protection from the rain. I was very aware that this was near the spot where I’d been hit the other day. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I found the cemetery and opened the gate with my keys. I took a moment and kissed them. I hadn’t known when I had taken them from Ginny’s room that they would actually save my life. I pushed them back in my pocket.
The grave of Edward James Monroe II looked bleak especially with the rain coming down so hard. I looked up and said a silent prayer and asked for forgiveness for what I was about to do. Then I started to dig. The ground was soft from the rain but didn’t yield easily to my rusty shovel. My stomach had stopped telling me it was empty long ago but my strength was waning. Everything was an effort. My movements were slow and methodical but I was trying to hurry. I glanced around me every few seconds to make sure I was alone. How much more macabre could it get? Digging up a grave in a secluded cemetery in the pouring rain with a madwoman and a madman after me. I was almost able to laugh but I didn’t have the calories needed to make my lips turn upwards. I saw something amongst a shovel full of dirt. I leaned over and picked it up. Blackened metal. I held it out and let the rain wash it clean of mud. A rosary. Why a rosary? They weren’t Catholic. I put it in my pocket and kept digging.
I stared into the hole. I hadn’t dug all that far down. Not even two feet but I stopped. I dropped the shovel and backed up to the gate. My hands went to my mouth, my lips open but no sound came out. I was emotionally spent. I didn’t have any tears left, no anger, no outrage. Nothing. I knew in my heart that I hadn’t made the wisest choice by coming to the cemetery instead of leaving the property and going back to civilization. I knew Cora and Harrison would find me missing and when they did, this would be the first place they’d look.
I wasn’t even surprised when I looked up to see Harrison standing outside the gate staring in at me. I looked back at him impassively. I waited to see if Cora would come up behind him but she didn’t.
“Mackenzie, you had a chance to escape. Why didn’t you go?” He didn’t come into the cemetery. He spoke through the bars of the gate. He wore a windbreaker with a hood. It was pulled up over his head to protect him from the rain. His eyes were expressionless.
I pointed to the grave. “I did what my husband asked of me. I found James.” I walked back to the grave and pulled on a piece of dark colored material in the mud. I didn’t anticipate that I had pulled part of a shroud and that the shroud contained flesh. I quickly let it go.
“I know.”
“You put him there?” I picked up the shovel and began to put some of the dirt back.
“Yes.” His voice was clear. Matter of fact. He still stood outside the gate. I had no idea what I was going to do but James deserved to be covered. “I put him there.”
“You killed him?” I stared at him.
He shook his head. “Heavens no. I’ve just spent a lifetime covering it up”
“Cora?”
He laughed. He looked deranged standing outside the gate staring through the bars in his hood. His eyes were crazy. “Not exactly.”
My hands flew out to my sides. “Not exactly? Then who?” I was starting to get angry. “Who, Harrison?”
“Do you really want to know, Mackenzie? You didn’t really know your husband at all did you?” I said nothing. “He didn’t tell you what he did?”
I stared back at him. “Nick? No. Nick was only six or so.”
“Yes, he was six. He’d spent six years with Cora, day in and day out. It took four years for the idea to be planted. Four years for the manipulation, the twisting to finally take shape.”
I didn’t believe him. I wouldn’t. I knew Nick. They were blaming him. But he was the one person that couldn’t defend himself now.
“Four years to plant hate.” He went on. “Cora was an expert. Her father did it to her. Killing James herself would have been too easy. Why not have Nick do it? It would bond Cora and Nick together forever. And that is exactly what Cora wanted.”
I stumbled backwards and fell against the iron bars. “How?” I whispered. “How?”
“Lured him into the woods. Just like his mother told him to. Out to the old swimming hole. Long since been filled in. It wasn’t too far from here.” He hesitated. “Then tried to drown him. A bit of a struggle.” He wrapped his finger around the iron bars and stared in at me. “Buried him hours later. He’s still in his bathing suit. You can look if you want.”
I stepped back and leaned over. I thought I might vomit. Not Nick. “Cain and Able? How biblical. But why the burial in secret? Why not just say it was an accident? Everything above board? “ I spat.
“That was the plan. An accident. Only Nicholas, Cora and I would know the truth, but it didn’t work that way.” He clenched the bars tighter. “See, your loving husband killed his brother a little too enthusiastically. I don’t know exactly what happened in those woods. Nicholas would never talk about it. Not to me or to his mother but James was not just drowned. He was severely beaten, his head smashed right open. He was covered in blood. It could never have been an accident.” His words flew out faster, “and the whole plan was ruined. Cora and I did what we had to do. We covered it up. For years…”
I stumbled back. “I don’t believe you. I don’t, Why did Nick keep that old picture?” I looked around shaking my head. I was trying to piece it together. “Why?”
Harrison shrugged. “So strange how the human mind works. Guilt? A small remembrance? A tie to hold over Cora’s head? Who knows? Cora would never let him talk about it. Got so angry when Nick rebelled against her. She wanted to wipe James’ memory from everyone’s mind. He’d bring it up sometimes to talk about it… To make us all remember. She’d lock him up as a punishment. To make him remember that we are family and that we stick together.”
“Cora forced him to do it?”
“Not forced. Coached, yes coached. It took care of two problems at once. James was gone and Nick was bound forever to this family.” He hesitated.
My mind swam. In a flash all my memories of Nick came flooding forward. Was there anything about him that would have given away this awful secret? Anything? Did he cry in his sleep? Did he shy away from water, or children? I came up blank.
“She never wanted Bradford’s baby.” He went on, “She didn’t want to be like her mother, forced into a pregnancy. She hated it, And then her father, trying to ruin everything with his will. Leaving most of his money to James. She was so upset. Her father didn’t realize that he had done the one thing that would jeopardize his grandson’s life. I don’t think he thought Cora would really be able to kill her own flesh and blood but he didn’t consider what the child’s brother was capable of, did he?”
I felt sick. “But you destroyed both children at once, don’t you see that? Look at this.” I said pointing around me in a half circle. “What did this get you? You have no children left. You’ve committed murder. All of you. Your plan, no, your life, has been for nothing.”
He hesitated and I could only see the top of his hood because he was looking down. “Perhaps it turned out badly. Once the boy was dead she was remorseful. She buried her mother’s rosary with him and took to her room with her Bible. But she’s a survivor. Put it all behind her, erased all evidence of it and pretended he was never there in the first place.”
I listened to Harrison ramble. I offered no opinion. “Nick, I think, adjusted. The media attention about the missing child died down. The whole thing just seemed to go away. You know, money and prominence have a certain power of their own. Things were fine.”
We both said nothing, a moment of almost reverence at the little boys grave.
“But,” he said suddenly, “Nick broke the cardinal rule. He talked. He told Bradford the truth. He told him years later. I have no idea why. And Bradford couldn’t handle it. Had another heart attack. Nick should have known that he couldn’t handle the stress…then Nick disappeared. After all that, He just left. And then you got in the way.”
“Me?”
“Nick wasn’t supposed to die in that accident. He was supposed to learn a lesson.”
“I’m not sure staging a car accident is the most reliable way of teaching someone a lesson. How much did you have to pay the driver?”
“Obviously not enough or you wouldn’t be here. You were in the way, Mackenzie. Nick should never have gotten married. He knew that eventually Cora would find him. He put you between them. Why?” He wasn’t really asking the question. He was just thinking out loud. “To think he could just forget…everything. And,“ his voice got louder, “we did it all for him. And then you come here,“ he pointed at me,. “and start poking into things.” My breath caught in my throat. “Asking questions, so bold. And Cora went off into a tail spin. She hasn’t been like that in years. She had to put you in your place. I couldn’t stop her. So, “he put his head down, his voice lowered, “she hit your friend. On one of her drives.”
“Why? Why Samantha?”
He shrugged. “To make you suffer. You didn’t seem overwhelmed with grief at losing your husband. She wanted you to feel what she’s feeling.”
I felt a rage welling in my gut. “But you created all of this. You act like I killed Nick. You sick bastard. You and Cora deserve each other.”
His fingers wrapped around the bars; he stared in at me. The rain was coming down hard beating against his hood. I tried to figure out my options. He was probably much stronger than me. If he got his hands on me it would be all over. The only thing I had in the way of protection was my rusted shovel. I was waiting for him to come into the cemetery but he just stood at the bars, staring at me blankly. I stared back. Then he moved slowly, shaking his head back and forth as if I were nothing more than an inconvenience.
One hand was still wrapped around the bars while the other went for the handle on the gate. I reacted without thinking. I swung that old shovel as hard as I could and aimed directly at his fingers. He howled with pain and backed up, almost doubled over. In that split second I sprinted to the far side of the cemetery and grabbed the bars with both hands. The fence was difficult enough to climb when it was dry out and I had energy but this was my only chance. The property on the other side didn’t belong to Cora. The only way for Harrison to get to me would be to climb the fence after me or go all the way to the front gate and around to the adjoining property. He had the advantage of having grown up here and probably knew the surroundings like the back of his hand. But it seemed he had all the advantages. And no conscience whatsoever.
It was then that I noticed a separation in the bars. A small separation but then I was small, and getting smaller everyday. I squatted and pushed my shoulder through. It was tight fit and it hurt but I had no time to think about pain or scrapes. My body moved through next, though the bars felt like they were squeezing the life force out of me. My head went through last. I bruised and scraped my already throbbing nose. My shoulder almost felt dislocated, but I was on the other side. I refused to turn and look back to see where Harrison was but I could feel his presence behind me. His fingers touched mine briefly but slipped away as I made the last push through safely on the other side. He wasn’t attempting to get through the opening. We stood for a moment looking at each other mirroring the scene only moments before, only this time I was outside the cemetery and he was inside.
The struggle had taken the wind out of me and I bent over slightly trying to breathe.
“Why are you making this so difficult, Mackenzie? You don’t even know where you are. I can find you in no time.”
“Find me then.” I said back between wheezes. “And when you do I’ll kill you. Worthless old man.” I was angry.
But I would have done better keeping my words to myself because they seemed to spark him on. He muttered an obscenity and darted quickly into the darkness. I really didn’t have any idea where I was, where these woods led or in which direction to head. Common sense told me to move away from Cora’s house. I swore to myself that if I made it through this I would never ever look at another tree again. I pulled out my little pen light and ran blindly ahead.