I embrace my wife. Kiss her on the cheek. She smiles limply before returning her attention to the stove.
I go to the table and sit down at the head of it, where the father is meant to sit. At the other end are my oldest and youngest children, the youngest in her high chair, the older girl feeding her.
“How’s my pumpkin flower today?” I ask.
“Oh, Daddy!” says my eldest. She seems pleased and embarrassed, will not meet my gaze. She will grow into a real beauty, prettier even than the girl in the woods. I will be around to enjoy every minute of it.
My wife comes to table, sets before me a plate covered with a paper towel. Underneath it are strips of bacon, six, lined side by side, grease still bubbling upon them.
The twins come down the stairs together, stumbling over one another’s feet.
“Good to see you, boys,” I say heartily.
They look at each other and smirk.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Nothing,” they say, both of them at once.
My wife brings the frying pan over to the table, begins dishing eggs overcooked and sticky with cheese onto the plates. She finishes, returns the pan to the stove, comes to sit down, tightening the sash of her bathrobe.
“Jack?” I say to one of the twins.
“What?” he asks.
“You know what,” I say, making a show of pressing my palms together.
“Oh,” he says. “Oh yeah.”
He bows his head, stiffens his hands, the rest of us following.
“Our Father in Heaven,” he prays. “Thank you for my family. Please bless the food. In the name of the Lamb, amen.”
By the time I open my eyes, Jack has already grabbed his fork and started into his eggs, a long thread of cheese strung to his plate. He is a glutton. I will have to teach him to control his appetites or they will have the best of him.
“Has anyone seen the paper?” I ask.
“Jack, fetch your father the paper,” says my wife.
“Why do I always have to do it?” Jack says. “I already had to say the prayer.”
“Mark, get your father the paper,” says my wife.
“Aww, Mom,” says the other twin.
“Do as you’re told, Mark,” I say. “Don’t talk back to your mother.”
He gets up mumbling and stomps out of the room.
“Is anything wrong with the eggs?” my wife asks.
“No,” I say. “Quite the contrary. These eggs are delicious.”
“Don’t feed me that,” she says, frowning. “You haven’t even tasted them.”
I am considering how to respond in a way that will assert my authority when Mark returns with the paper, dropping it in my lap on the way past.
“There’s your stupid paper,” he says.
“Is that any way to talk to your father, Mark?” my wife asks.
Mark shrugs without looking at her. He climbs into his chair, begins to eat his eggs. I roll the rubber band off the newspaper, flatten the pages on the table. On the front page is a blurred spread of the girl’s body, the privates, neck, and eyes marked out in solid black triangles. “Murder in the Woods” the headline reads.
“I think you should apologize,” my wife says to Mark.
“No,” I say. “That’s okay. Maybe I shouldn’t have made him get it.”
My wife turns to me, looks at me hard. I gesture with my eyes down to the newspaper, turn the headline to face her way. She squints, examines it a moment, her pupils moving down the column.
“Oh my God,” she says, and folds the paper closed.
“Mom!” says our eldest.
“Dad, Mom swore!” says Jack. “Don’t swear, Mom.”
“Not far from here,” I say softly to my wife. “Just in the woods behind Barton’s field. I’ll have to go talk with the parents.”
“Dad, who are you talking about?” says our eldest.
“Nothing,” I say.
“I’m sorry I swore, Jack,” my wife says. “It just came out.”
“I think you should wash your mouth out with soap,” says Mark.
“Mark,” I say, “that’s enough.”
“Well, I do,” he says.
“How old was she?” my wife whispers.
“Fourteen, I think,” I say. I make a point of bringing my eggs onto my fork and pushing the fork into my mouth. “Yes, fourteen,” I say.
“You guys just aren’t making any sense,” says Jack.
“We’re not talking to you, Jack,” I say.
“Who are you talking about?” my eldest yells.
“Nor to you,” I say to her. “Stop asking questions and finish your breakfast.”
“Do they know who did it?” my wife asks.
“No,” I say. “But I think I might.”
“You do? How do you know?”
“Did what?”
“Didn’t I tell you to eat your breakfast?”
“I ate it already,” my eldest says.
“Go upstairs and brush your hair,” says my wife.
“It’s combed,” she says. “See?”
“It doesn’t look combed,” my wife says. “Comb it again. Go on.”
“Mom!”
I put down my fork. “Listen to your mother,” I say. “Upstairs.”
My daughter makes a show of leaving, smashing her chair back into the wall, looking at us to see what we will say, climbing the stairs slowly, backwards, looking at us the whole time.
“You boys too,” my wife says. “Go upstairs and get ready for school.”
“I’m still eating, Mom,” says Jack.
“Go,” she says. “And wash your face.”
Mark goes and Jack follows, groaning. My wife pulls Jack’s plate onto the tray of our youngest’s high chair. Our youngest takes up the plate, clatters it onto the floor. My wife gropes absently under the table for it, her eyes still on me, the baby grabbing at the clip in her hair.
“Who killed her?” my wife says.
“I shouldn’t say anything,” I say. “Clergy’s confidentiality.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I don’t know for certain,” I say. “If I tell you, I don’t want to hear it from the neighbors when I get home tonight.”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll keep it to myself.”
“I think it was her brother,” I say.
“Her brother?”
“He got her pregnant. She told me herself.”
“Her own brother?”
“Yes.”
“Was it a half-brother?”
“How should I know? Would that make a difference? I think he was her full brother.”
“Lord, that is awful,” she says. “But if he is capable of incest, he’s capable of murder.”
“We don’t know for certain he did it,” I say. “We shouldn’t judge the boy.”
“No,” she says. “I guess not.”
She opens the paper again, reading down the column, the picture of the girl in the clearing riding beside her thumb, staring at me. The girl is faceup in the photograph, though my recollection is facedown. I left her facedown, her body anyway. They’ve moved her head back around, away from where I left it, made it look still attached, ruining the tableau.
A pretty piece of work, if I do say so myself. But she’s saved. I’ve done her a favor.
“What are you going to do?” my wife asks.
“Go to the office. I should have left already.”
“About this, I mean,” she says, tapping the girl’s face. “About the brother.”
“I can’t prove any of it.”
“You should mention the brother to the police,” she says.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I say. “I imagine they’ll figure it out on their own.”
“Go to them today,” she says.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I say. “Forget I said anything.”