Monday
Sara counted off the rings on the phone, waiting for her parents’ answering machine to pick up. Eddie hated answering machines, but he had gotten one when Sara came back from Atlanta just to help her feel safer. After the sixth ring, the machine whirred on, her father’s voice gruff as he asked the caller to leave a message.
Sara waited for the beep, then said, “Mama, it’s me—”
“Sara?” Cathy said. “Hold on.” Sara waited while her mother went to turn off the machine, which was upstairs in her parents’ bedroom. There were only two telephones in the house: the one in the kitchen that had a fifty-foot cord and the one in the master bedroom that had become off-limits to Sara and Tessa as soon as they had reached dating age.
Sara let her gaze fall to the skeleton on the table where just this morning Luke Swan had lain. Hoss had brought three cardboard boxes to transport the bones, and though Sara had been shocked by his lackadaisical attitude, she was not in a position to question the man’s methods. She had painstakingly put the skeleton together, trying to find clues that would help identify her. The whole process had taken hours, but she was finally certain about one thing: the girl had, in fact, been murdered.
Cathy came back on the line. “You okay?” she asked. “Is something wrong? Where are you?”
“I’m fine, Mama.”
“I was out buying sprinkles for cupcakes.”
Sara felt a tinge of guilt. Her mother only made cupcakes when she was trying to cheer Sara up.
Cathy continued, “Your daddy got called away to the Chorskes’ again. Little Jack flushed a handful of crayons down the toilet.”
“Again?”
“Again,” she echoed. “You wanna come on over and help me with the frosting?”
“I’m sorry,” Sara told her. “I’m still in Sylacauga.”
“Oh.” The word managed to convey disappointment as well as disapproval.
“There was a problem,” Sara began, wondering whether or not to tell her mother what had happened. This morning, she had told Cathy about Robert and the shooting, but left out her suspicions about who had pulled the trigger. Now Sara realized as she talked that she could not hold back, and told her mother everything, from the sear mark to Reggie’s warning to her worries about whatever Jeffrey had put in his pocket.
“Was it a bracelet or something?” Cathy asked.
“I don’t know,” Sara said. “It looked like a gold chain.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Good question,” Sara said. “I’ve been looking at the bones all day.”
“And?”
“Her cranial sutures haven’t fully closed.” Sara leaned against the table, looking at the girl, wondering what had brought her short life to such a tragic end. “The knobbed ends of her long bones haven’t completely fused, either.”
“Which means?”
“She was probably in her late teens or early twenties.”
Cathy was silent, then, “Her poor mother.”
“I put in a call to the sheriff to ask if there are any open missing persons.”
“And?”
“I haven’t heard back from him. I haven’t heard from anyone all day, as a matter of fact.” Even Deacon White had barely spoken to her when she had returned with the skeleton. Sara added, “In a town this small, I don’t imagine there’s a long list of missing people.”
“Do you think it’s recent?”
“Recent as in ten, maybe fifteen years,” Sara guessed. “I’ve been working on putting the skeleton together for the last five hours. I think I know what happened to her.”
“Did she suffer?”
“No,” Sara lied, hoping she sounded convincing. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’m not sure we’ll be able to come home tomorrow.”
“You’re going to stay with Jeffrey, then?”
Sara bit her bottom lip. She had gotten this far and decided that she might as well continue. “It seems like the more people say bad things about him, the more I want to…”
“Take care of him?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Defend him?”
“Mama…” Sara began, her voice trailing off. “I don’t know,” she said, and that was the truth. “It bothers me that you’re so set against us.” She paused, thinking of her father. “It bothers me that Daddy hates him so much.”
“I remember,” Cathy said, “back when you were four or five.”
Sara pressed her lips together, waiting for the lecture.
“We were all down at the Gulf, and your father took you fishing just to get away, the two of you. Do you remember?”
“No,” Sara said, though she had seen the pictures often enough to think she did.
“You were fishing with rubber worms, but the crabs kept coming along and clamping onto them, thinking it was food.” She laughed. “I heard your daddy screaming and cussing up a storm, yelling at the crabs to let go, that they were just holding on to worthless nothing.” She waited a beat, probably to make sure Sara understood. “He tried everything to get them to let go. He even beat them with a hammer, but their claws just kept clamped down on the line no matter what he did. He finally ended up cutting bait and letting them go.”
Sara let out a slow breath. “Am I the stubborn crab or the worthless bait?”
“You’re our little girl,” Cathy said. “And your father will come around. Eventually, he’ll cut bait and let you go.”
“What about you?”
She laughed. “I’m the hammer.”
Sara knew this all too well. She told her mother, “I just know what my gut tells me.”
“What’s it saying?”
“That I…” She was about to say that she loved Jeffrey, but Sara could not bring herself to do it.
Cathy picked up on it anyway. “So much for your fucking around.”
She could not put into words exactly what had happened in the cave, but she tried, “I don’t know why, but even with all that’s happened, I trust him. I feel safe with him.”
“That’s no small thing.”
“Yes,” Sara agreed. “I suppose you know me better than I think.”
“I do,” Cathy said, giving a resigned sigh. “But I should trust you more.”
Sara said nothing.
“I can’t protect you from everything in the world.”
“I don’t need you to,” Sara told her. “I may want you to, but I don’t need you to.” To soften her words, she added, “But I love you for being there.”
“I love you, too, baby.”
Sara let out her own sigh, feeling everything catch up with her. Usually, when things got bad she wanted nothing more than to sit in her mother’s kitchen and listen to her talk. Cathy had been her touch-stone for as long as Sara could remember. Now all she wanted to do was to fall asleep with her head on Jeffrey’s shoulder. The transition was startling. She had never felt this way about a man in her life. Even with Steve Mann, back when she was a teenager and everything was so emotional and desperate, Sara had not felt this same burning need to be with him. Jeffrey was like some drug that she could not get enough of. Sara was caught, and there was nothing she could do but wait it out and see what happened next.
Sara said, “I need to go, Mama. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Take care,” Cathy said. “I’ll save some cupcakes for you.”
Sara waited until her mother had hung up the phone. She went to do the same, but there was a noise on the line—someone breathing—then a second click.
Someone had been listening in on the conversation.
Sara went to the door and looked out the window into the hallway. The lights had been turned off hours ago when Deacon White had gone home. She knew there was an intern named Harold who lived in an apartment over the garage, but she was told that after hours he pretty much kept to himself unless he was called to transport a body.
She picked up the phone again and pressed the button marked “Apt.”
There were six rings before the man picked up with a bleary-sounding “Hello?”
“Harold?”
“Uhn,” he grunted, and she heard him moving around. Obviously she had awakened him. He repeated, “Hello?”
“Were you just on the phone?”
“What?”
Sara tried again. “This is Sara Linton. I’m in the building.”
“Oh…right…” he managed. “Mr. White said you were staying late.” He paused and she guessed from the sound he was yawning. “I’m sorry,” he said, then under his breath, “Jeesh.”
Sara stretched the phone cord so she could see through the window again. A car turned into the parking lot and a pair of headlights lit up the hallway. She shielded her eyes, trying to see who it was. The car had pulled into the handicap space next to her BMW, lights on high beams.
Harold sounded irritated. “Hello?”
“I’m sorry,” Sara apologized. “I wanted to leave and—”
“Oh, right,” he said. “I’ll come lock you out.”
“No, I—” she tried, but he had already hung up.
Sara looked into the hallway again, narrowing her eyes past the bright headlights, trying to see if anyone came to the door. A few minutes passed before a figure cut the glare. Harold stood in the middle of the hall, shielding his eyes as Sara had done. He was dressed in his pajamas and had his mouth open in a wide yawn when Sara joined him.
“Who the heck is that?” Harold asked, walking to the front door.
“I was—” She stopped. The car was a truck, and she could see Jeffrey climbing out of the driver’s seat. He had the radio blaring with some country music station, and she suppressed a curse, telling the intern, “Thank you for letting me out.”
“Yeah,” he said, giving another yawn that was so wide Sara could see his back molars. He twisted the lock and opened the door.
Sara started to leave, but could not help but ask the intern, “Is there anyone else in the building?”
Harold looked over his shoulder. “Nobody breathing.” He yawned again, one yawn too many, and Sara wondered if he had really been sleeping when she called.
She opened her mouth to question him, but he tossed her a wave as he locked the glass door, giving another yawn for her benefit.
Sara could smell Jeffrey from ten feet away; it was like walking past a brewery. Even without the overwhelming stench of beer, he was weaving as he walked toward her. Sara was slightly taken aback. She had not considered Jeffrey a teetotaler, but neither had she ever seen him drink more than a glass of wine or an occasional beer. Knowing what she did about his mother, this made sense, and the fact that he had chosen tonight to get drunk sent up warning signals Sara did not quite know how to read.
She gave a cautious “Hey.”
He had a silly grin on his face, and he held his finger in the air for silence as Elvis Presley’s “Wise Men Say” came on the radio.
“Jeffrey…”
He put his arm around her waist and pulled her toward him, making sloppy work of leading her in a dance.
She looked at the truck, which was probably older than she was. A long bench seat like the kind she had seen in the cave stretched from door to door, a single gearshift sticking up from the floorboard.
She asked, “Did you drive here?”
“Shh,” he said, the smell of beer on his breath so overpowering that she turned her head away.
“How much have you had to drink?”
He hummed with the song, picking up the line “Falling in love…with…you…”
“Jeff.”
“I love you, Sara.”
“That’s nice,” she said, gently pushing him away. “Let’s get you home, all right?”
“I can’t go to Possum’s.”
She put her hands on his shoulders, aware that she was literally keeping him upright. “Yes, you can.”
“They arrested Robert.”
Sara absorbed this information, but did not offer an opinion. “We’ll talk about it when you’re sober.”
“I’m sober now.”
“Sure you are,” she said, glancing back to see if Harold was watching.
“Let’s go somewhere,” Jeffrey said, trying to climb into the truck headfirst.
“Hold on,” Sara said, catching him when he fell back. She braced her hands against his butt and pushed him in.
He slurred his words, saying, “Shh-ure been a long day.”
“I can’t believe you drove like this.”
“Who’s gonna arrest me?” he asked. “Hoss wouldn’t’ve arrested Robert if it wasn’t for me.” He put his hands on the wheel. “Jesus, I’m bad luck. Whole town goes to hell when I show up.”
“Scoot over,” she said, giving him a nudge.
“Men don’t let women drive.”
Sara laughed, giving him more of a push than a nudge. “Come on, big boy. You’ll still be a man in the morning.”
Beer bottles clanged onto the floor as he slid onto the passenger’s side. He leaned down, rummaging through the bottles. “Shit,” he said. “We need more beer.”
“We’ll get some,” she told him, climbing into the truck and closing the door. The metallic clang echoed in the cab. She reached down to crank the engine, but the keys were gone.
“He’ll probably get the needle,” Jeffrey said, and she could hear the pain in his voice. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, putting his hand to his eyes.
Sara stared at the front entrance of the funeral home, not knowing what to say. Thanks to her stint at Grady Hospital’s emergency room, she had dealt with more than her share of drunks. There was no use trying to reason with them when logic was the last thing on their mind.
She asked, “Where are the keys?”
Jeffrey leaned his head back against the window and closed his eyes. “In my pocket.”
Sara stared at him, feeling torn between wanting to slap him and wanting to tell him everything was going to be okay. She settled on saying, “Scooch down on the seat a little.” When he did, she put her hand into his front pocket.
He smiled, and moved her hand a little closer to center. Considering his lack of sobriety, she was surprised to find his libido none diminished.
“Hey,” he protested when she found the keys and removed her hand.
“Sorry,” she said, her tone contrary to the word as she looked for the ignition key.
“How about a blow job?”
Sara laughed as she found the clunky key. “You’re the one who’s drunk, remember? Not me.” She cranked the engine, relieved when it caught on the first try. “Put on your seatbelt.”
“There aren’t any seatbelts,” he said, sliding closer to her.
Sara engaged the clutch and put the truck into reverse. Jeffrey had positioned himself so that he was straddling the shift. She asked, “How much have you had to drink?”
“Too much,” he admitted, rubbing his eyes.
The sign on top of the building lit up the cab as she backed up, and Sara saw at least eight empty beer bottles rolling around on the floorboard. Jeffrey was wearing black boots she hadn’t seen before, and one of the legs of his jeans was pulled up, showing his hairy calf.
She waited until they were on the highway to ask, “When did they arrest Robert?”
“A little while after I left you,” he said, his head bumping back against the glass. “He wanted me to come see him. I was just glad he was talking to me.”
He went quiet, and she prompted, “What did he say?”
“That he did it,” Jeffrey said, throwing his hand into the air as if in resignation. “I was standing right there in their goddamn stupid front parlor and he looked me in the eye and said he did it.”
Sara was having a hard time following him, but she said, “I’m sorry.”
“Came back from the store and just shot him. No questions asked.”
Sara could only repeat, “I’m sorry.”
“You were right.”
“I didn’t want to be.”
“Is that true?”
She chanced a look at him. He seemed to be getting back to himself, but his breath was enough to make her turn her head back toward the road. “Of course it’s true.” She put her hand on his leg. “I’m sorry it happened this way. I know you did everything you could.”
“You won’t believe me,” he said. “I know you said Robert was lying before, and I said you were wrong, but now I think you’re right. I mean—I think he’s lying now.”
Sara stared at the road ahead.
“You’re thinking it’s because he’s my friend, but it’s not. I know it adds up. I know his story makes sense, but he’s a cop. He’s had time to think about it and get it right so that it all matches up.” He tapped his finger to his head, missing a few times. “I know it here. I’ve been a cop too long to not know when people are lying.”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she told him, knowing this was useless.
He rested his head on her shoulder. “I love you, Sara.”
She had ignored him the first time, but now she felt the need to comment. “You’ve just had too much to drink.”
“No,” he disagreed, his breath hot on her neck. “You don’t know how it is.”
She squeezed his leg before shifting into fourth. “Try to sleep.”
“I don’t want to sleep,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow.” She slowed at an intersection, trying to remember which way to turn. A billboard pointing to a bank looked familiar, and she took a left.
She asked, “Is this the right way?”
“People only say what they mean when they’re drunk,” he told her. “I mean, being drunk doesn’t make you say things you don’t mean.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said, glad to recognize a gas station from this morning. The store was dark and, like everything else in town, had probably closed hours ago.
“I love you.”
Sara laughed because that was all she could do.
“Turn here,” he said. When she didn’t turn quickly enough, he grabbed the steering wheel.
“Jeffrey!” she said, her heart jumping into her throat. He had turned them onto a gravel road.
“Just keep going straight,” he told her, pointing ahead.
Sara slowed the truck. “Where are we?”
“Just a little farther.”
She leaned closer to the steering wheel, trying to make out the road ahead of her. When she saw a fallen tree in the distance, she stopped. “The road’s blocked.”
“Little more,” he said.
Sara put the truck in neutral and stepped on the parking brake before turning to him. “Jeffrey, it’s late, and I’m tired, and you’re dru—”
He kissed her, but not the way she was used to. He was rushed and sloppy, his hands clumsy on the buttons of her jeans.
“Hold on—”
“I want you so much.”
She could tell, he was like a piece of steel against her thigh, but even though Sara could feel her body reacting to his, sex was the last thing on her mind.
“Sara,” he sighed, and kissed her so deeply that she could not breathe.
She managed to soften the kiss, and when his lips moved to her neck, she said, “Slow down.”
“I want to be inside you,” he said. “I want it like last night.”
“We’re parked in the middle of nowhere.”
“Let’s pretend,” he said. “Let’s pretend we’re at the beach.” He scooped his hands under her bottom and she gave what could only be called a yelp as she suddenly went horizontal, her feet splayed out against one door and her head bumped into the other. Sara had not been flat on her back in a parked truck since the tenth grade.
Jeffrey tried to move down on her, but considering they were both two grown adults of above average height stuck in a space that was barely five feet long, his attempt was far from successful.
“Sweetheart,” she said, trying to reason with him. She forced his head up to look at her, surprised to see the raw need in his eyes.
“I love you,” he said, leaning up to kiss her again.
Sara returned the kiss, trying again to slow him down. He took the hint, and his kiss was not as probing. When he came up for breath, he moaned, “I love you.”
“I know,” she said, stroking the back of his neck.
He looked up at her again, and she watched as his eyes seemed to focus on her for the first time since she had walked out of the funeral home. He looked forlorn, like the world had abandoned him and Sara was his only hope. “Is this okay?”
She nodded, not knowing what else to say.
He repeated, “Is it okay?”
“Yes,” she said, helping him slide down her jeans.
Even though her body was ready for him, Sara braced herself when Jeffrey entered her. She put her hand behind her, trying to keep her head from bumping into the armrest as he moved inside of her. Overhead, she could see an index card tucked into the sun visor. A woman’s hand had hastily scribbled a grocery list on the card, and Sara read the items silently to herself between thrusts. Eggs…milk…juice…toilet paper…
She turned slightly, trying to keep the gearshift from stabbing her thigh. That was all Jeffrey needed to finish the job, and he collapsed like dead weight on top of her.
Sara dropped her hand to her forehead, wondering how she had gotten herself into this. She said, “Well, that was romantic.”
Jeffrey did not respond, and when she put her hand on his back he turned his head and let out a heavy breath.
He was asleep.
Sara woke up with a pounding headache that started at the back of her neck and worked up her head like a vise. She could not begin to imagine what Jeffrey felt like this morning, but part of her hoped he was in agony. God knew that she’d had some bad sex in her life, but last night ranked right at the top of what was, thankfully, a rather short list.
She felt for her shoes as she rose from the couch, wondering what time it was. Sunlight was streaming in through the windows and Sara guessed it was almost ten. The clock told another story: it was nearly noon.
“Crap,” Sara mumbled, stretching her arms up to the ceiling. Her back felt as if all the muscles were knotted into bows, and her spine probably resembled a hook from the way she had slept on the couch.
She continued to stretch her back and shoulders as she walked through the house, looking for Nell. The kitchen was empty, pots and pans drying in the sink. She looked outside and saw Nell standing in the neighbor’s yard with an ax raised over her head. As Sara watched, Nell brought down the ax on the chain that staked the dogs to a tree.
“What was that?” a voice behind Sara asked. She spun around and saw a young, dark-haired boy standing in the doorway. He was dressed in shorts with no shirt, his skinny chest concave in the center.
“Jared?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, looking around the room. “Where’s my mama?”
“She’s outside,” Sara told him, wondering if Nell would want her son to know what she was up to. Truth be told, Sara was a little curious herself.
Jared walked to the back door, his sneakers shuffling across the floor. Sara was more than familiar with this curious phenomenon that plagued young boys—most of them did not learn to pick up their feet when they walked until they reached their twenties.
Sara trailed him outside, keeping well back to avoid the dust his shoes were stirring up. He reminded her of Pigpen in the Peanuts comics.
Nell was on the back porch at the neighbor’s, putting leashes on the dogs. She saw Jared and said, “What are you doing out of bed?”
“I’m bored.”
“You should’ve thought about that before you said you were too sick to go to day camp.” Nell smiled at Sara. “Did you introduce yourself to Dr. Linton?”
“Doctor?” he asked, a hint of fear in his voice.
Nell said, “You best get back in that bed before I make her take your temperature.”
There was something so familiar about his reaction—the set to his mouth, the annoyance that flashed in his eyes—that Sara caught herself staring at the boy, her mouth open.
“What?” Jared asked, giving her another familiar look.
Sara shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. His resemblance to Jeffrey was startling.
Nell saw the look on her face, and shooed Jared away. “Go on, now. Take Mama’s ax.”
He shuffled back to the house, dragging the ax behind him, and Sara pressed her lips together, biting back the obvious question.
Nell clicked her tongue and tugged on the leashes. The dogs stood at attention. “You look like you’ve got something to say.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“That’s never stopped me.” Nell led the dogs around to the front of the house as she told Sara, “Jeffrey doesn’t know.”
Sara nodded, acknowledging that she had heard her but still not trusting herself to comment.
At the front of the neighbor’s house, Nell sat on the porch with a sigh. “Possum and I got married a few weeks after Jeffrey moved away to Auburn.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“So he’d come back and marry me?” she asked, petting one of the dogs. “Not much point in that; we would’ve both killed each other the first week. I got on his nerves because I was always telling him he was wrong, and he got on mine because he wouldn’t admit that I was right.”
Sara could only stare.
“He would’ve done the right thing,” Nell said. “And I didn’t want anybody to marry me because it was the right thing.” The dog rolled on its back, and Nell scratched his stomach. “I love Possum. I liked him at first, but then he stepped in when Jeffrey was gone and we had Jared and Jen came later—not much later.” She gave a private smile. “But we have a family now, a life together. Possum is a good man. He works less than five minutes away and he still calls if he’s gonna be late. He doesn’t mind picking up Motrin or tampons for me at the Piggly Wiggly and he’s never said anything makes me look fat, even when I wore overalls for three years straight after I had Jen. I know where he is every second of the day, and I know if I fart in church he’s gonna take the rap.” She gave Sara a pointed look. “I like my life exactly how it is.”
“You don’t think Jeffrey has a right to know?”
“To what end?” she asked, and she had a point. “Possum’s Jared’s father. He changed that boy’s diapers and walked the floor with him while I was passed out from exhaustion. He signs his report cards and coaches the Little League. There’s nothing either of them wants for, and no reason to rock the boat.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I won’t tell him,” she said, wondering how she could keep such a secret.
“It’s not good for Jeffrey being back here right now,” Nell said. “God knows I was mad at him for staying away so long, but there’s too much history here. Too much has happened.” She slipped off her flip-flop and scratched the other dog with her toes. “Jeffrey’s turned out all right. He really has. There’s something about him inside that’s good, just like with Possum, only you have to scratch the surface to get to it. I don’t know what you’d call it, but he’s grown into the person I always thought he could be if he just got away from…” She indicated the street. “From this place where everybody thinks they know your story and they don’t give a never-you-mind about filling everybody else in on what they think about it.”
“Reggie Ray gave me an earful.”
“Don’t listen to that old redneck,” she chastised. “He’s the worst of the lot. Keeps saying he was born again. He needs a couple of more rebirths before he turns into a decent human being.”
“He seemed all right.”
“Then you weren’t looking close enough,” Nell said, an edge of warning to her tone. “There’s two things you need to know about this town, Sara: the Rays think their shit don’t stink and the Kendalls are pure white trash.” She indicated her own front yard. “Not that I can say much with all that crap Possum put in the yard, but at least my kids show up to school in clean clothes.”
“Who are the Kendalls?”
“They run the fruit stand outside of town,” she said. “Mean bastards, every one of them.” She added, “Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being poor—me and Possum’s brought it to an art form—but that doesn’t mean you can send your kids out with dirt on their faces and muck under their fingernails. You see them at the store and you have to hold your breath, they’re so filthy.” Nell paused, shaking her head in disapproval. “A few years ago, one of them showed up to school with lice. Infected the entire ninth grade.”
“Has anyone called children’s services?”
Nell snorted. “Hoss has been trying to run the whole family out of town for years. The old man was horrible. Beat his wife, beat his kids, beat his dogs. Best thing he ever did was drop dead of a heart attack mowing the grass back behind the seed store.” She shook her head again. “Still left his wife with one in the oven, and that one’s the worst of all. Thank God he’s not in Jared’s grade. He gets thrown out of school every other day for fighting or stealing or God knows what. Punched a girl last week. Little bastard’s just like his father.”
Sara said, “Sounds horrible,” but still, she could not help but feel sorry for the child. She often wondered if kids like that could straighten themselves out with the right parent around. She had never completely bought the “bad seed” theory, though Nell’s appraisal that the apple had not fallen far from the tree was probably shared by everyone in town.
Nell changed the subject, saying, “Y’all got in late last night.”
“I hope we didn’t wake you up.”
“I was already up with Possum,” she said. “Fool man slammed his chin against the counter at work. Don’t ask me how he did it, but it gave him a toothache all night long. Tossing and turning till I about strangled him.”
A car with a woman and a young boy coasted by the house, the woman holding a sheet of paper in her hands like she was trying to read directions.
Sara said, “Jeffrey had a little too much to drink.”
Nell’s surprise was obvious. “I’ve never seen him drink much.”
“I don’t think it’s a habit.”
Nell studied her, like she was trying to figure Sara out. “Was it about Julia?”
“Who’s Julia?”
Nell looked out into the street, where the car that had coasted by earlier had backed up and was parking in front of the driveway.
“Who’s Julia?” Sara repeated. “Nell?”
Nell stood up. “You need to talk to Jeffrey about that.”
“About what?”
She waved to the woman getting out of the car, saying, “You found it.”
The woman smiled as her son ran up to the dogs and threw his arms around them. “They look just like the pictures.”
“This one’s Henry,” Nell said, indicating one of the dogs. “This is Lucinda. Truth be told, she only comes to Lucy.” She held out the leashes to the boy, who gladly took hold.
The woman opened her mouth, looking like she was about to protest, but Nell reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “This should cover the cost for having them fixed. My husband and I never got around to it.”
“Thank you,” the woman said, the cash obviously helping to make up her mind. “Is there any particular food they like?”
“Anything,” Nell said. “They just love to eat and they love kids.”
The boy said, “They’re great!” with that enthusiastic tone children use when they’re trying to convince their parents they will become future astronauts or presidents if only they get the thing they are asking for.
“Anyway.” Nell looked at Sara then back to the woman. “I should be going. We’ve got to finish packing up the house. Movers will be here at two.”
The woman smiled. “It’s a shame you can’t keep them in the city.”
“Landlord won’t allow it,” Nell told her, holding out her hand. “Thank you kindly.”
“Thank you,” the woman said, shaking her hand. She shook Sara’s, too, then told the child, “Honey, say ‘Thank you.’ ”
The boy mumbled a “Thank you,” but his attention was squarely set on the dogs. Sara watched them bound toward the car, the boy jogging to keep up with the rambunctious animals.
Sara waited until the woman was in the car, but Nell held up a hand to keep her from speaking. “Put an ad in the paper,” she said. “No sense letting those dogs waste away out back when there’s people who know how to care for them.”
“What are you going to tell your neighbor when he gets home from work?”
“I guess they broke their chains,” Nell shrugged. “I’d better go check on Jared.”
“Nell—”
“Don’t ask me questions, Sara. I know I talk too much, but there’s some things you need to hear from Jeffrey.”
“He doesn’t seem interested in telling me much of anything.”
“He’s over at his mama’s,” Nell said. “Don’t worry, she won’t be home for another few hours. She grabs lunch at the hospital on Tuesdays.”
“Nell—”
Nell held up her hand, walking away.
After walking up and down the street twice, Sara realized she could always look at the mailboxes instead of trying to remember what Jeffrey’s mother’s house looked like. She found the one marked “Tolliver” five houses down from Nell’s and hoped to God no one had been watching her make a fool of herself. She felt especially stupid when she recognized Robert’s truck parked in the driveway.
In the daylight, the house looked more run-down than Sara had thought the first time she had seen it. Several coats of paint had been added over the years, giving the siding a rippled effect. The lawn was a depressing brown and the spindly tree in the front yard looked like it was about to fall over.
The front door was wide open, the screen door unlocked, but still she knocked, saying, “Jeffrey?”
There was no response, and Sara walked into the house just as she heard a door slam in the back.
She repeated, “Jeffrey?”
“Sara?” he asked, coming into the family room. He had a hand-held propane torch in one hand and an adjustable wrench in the other.
“Nell said you were here.”
“Yeah,” he said, not exactly looking at her. He held up the torch. “The pipe in the kitchen burst about two years ago. She’s been washing dishes in the bathroom ever since.” She did not respond, and he motioned her back to the kitchen. “I’m gonna finish up with this, then go over to the jail and check on Robert. I just don’t buy what he said yesterday. I know there’s something he’s not telling me.”
“Lot of that going around,” Sara mumbled.
“What?”
She shrugged, looking at the mess on the floor. He had taken apart the entire faucet just to replace the pipe. She asked, “Did you turn off the water?”
“That’s what I was doing outside,” he told her, sitting on the floor. He took some sand cloth and sanded an end piece of copper pipe with the methodic precision of an amateur.
Sara sat across from him, trying not to be critical of the work he had already performed. Had her father been here, he would have called Jeffrey a girl.
There was a note of pride in Jeffrey’s voice when he said, “I went ahead and replaced everything.”
“Hm,” she mumbled. “Need help?”
He cut his eyes at her, and she gathered this was something like driving in that only men did it. Considering her father had taught both Sara and Tessa safety procedures for using propane and acetylene torches before they could comfortably say the words, this was more than slightly insulting.
Still, she let it pass, saying, “I didn’t tell you last night—”
“About that,” he interrupted. “I’m really sorry. I promise you, I don’t usually drink like that.”
“I didn’t think you did.”
“As for the other…” His voice trailed off, and Sara picked up the can of flux, needing to do something with her hands.
She said, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hold you to it.”
“Hold me to what?”
She shrugged. “What you said.”
“What did I say?” he asked, his tone of voice wary.
“Nothing,” she told him, trying to open the can.
“I was talking about what we did,” he said, then corrected, “I mean, what I did.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” he said, taking the flux and opening it for her. “I’m not…” He paused, as if searching for a word. “I’m not usually that selfish.”
“Forget about it,” she told him, but somehow his half-ass apology made her feel better. She dipped the brush into the flux and daubed it onto one of the elbows he had already sanded. “I want to talk to you about the skeleton.”
His attitude changed completely, and she could see his defenses go up. “What about it?”
“It’s a woman. A young woman.”
He gave her a careful look. “Are you sure?”
“The shape of the head is obvious. Men usually have larger skulls.” She took the measuring tape and measured the distance from the sink to the cutoff valve at the floor. “Men’s skulls are heavier, too. Usually with a bony ridge above the eyes.” She measured a length of pipe and clamped the cutter at the correct spot. “Men have longer canine teeth and wider vertebrae,” she continued, spinning the cutter until the pipe broke. “Then there’s the pelvis. Women’s are wider for child-bearing.” She lightly sanded the pipe. “Plus, there’s the sub-pubic angle. If it measures less than ninety degrees, then it’s male, more than ninety, it’s female.”
He put flux on the pipe as Sara slipped on a pair of safety glasses. His face remained blank as he shoved the elbow onto the pipe, and he waited until Sara had used the flint striker to light the torch before asking, “How do you know she was young?”
Sara adjusted the torch before waving the flame over the pipe, heating it enough to make the flux boil. “The pelvis tells the story. The public bones meet in the front of the pelvis. If the bone surface has bumps or ridges, that means it belongs to a young person. Older people have smoother bones.”
She turned off the torch and threaded out the solder, watching it melt into the joint. She continued, “There’s also a depression area in the public bone. If a woman has given birth, there’s a notch where the bones separated in order to allow room for the baby’s head.”
Jeffrey seemed to be holding his breath. When Sara did not continue, he asked, “Did she have a baby?”
“Yes,” she told him. “She did.”
Jeffrey put the pipe down in front of him.
“Who’s Julia?”
He exhaled slowly. “Didn’t Nell tell you?”
“She said to ask you.”
Jeffrey sat back against the cabinet, leaning his hands on his knees. He would not look at her. “It was a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Ten years, I guess. Maybe more.”
“And?”
“And she was…I don’t know, it sounds bad now, but she was kind of like the town slut.” He wiped his mouth. “She did things. You know, touched you.” He glanced at her, then looked away. “Rumor was she’d give a blow job if you bought her something. Clothes or lunch or whatever. She didn’t have much, so…”
“How old was she?”
“Our age,” he said. “She was in the same class as me and Robert.”
Sara saw where he was going with this. “Did you ever buy her anything?”
He looked offended. “No,” he said. “I didn’t have to pay for that kind of stuff.”
“Of course not.”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
“I want you to tell me what happened.”
“She just left one day,” he said with a forced shrug. “She was there one day and gone the next.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“I can’t…” He let his voice trail off. “I found this yesterday in the cave,” he said, taking something out of his pocket. Sara saw a necklace with a charm on it.
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
He opened the locket and looked inside. “I don’t know. I just—” He stopped. “I just didn’t want you to know one more bad thing about me.”
“What bad thing?”
“Talk,” he said, meeting her eyes. “It’s just talk, Sara. The same old bullshit that’s been following me around since I got here. You get to a point where you’re guilty of one thing and people think you’re guilty of another.”
“What do they think you’re guilty of?”
Jeffrey held out the chain. “I showed it to Hoss. He didn’t want anything to do with it.”
Sara looked at the cheap gold heart and the pictures inside. The children were still infants, probably only a few weeks out of the hospital.
Jeffrey said, “She wore it all the time. Everybody saw her with it, not just me.” He gave a harsh laugh. “The thing was, nobody knew what she had done to get it. No one would cop to it, you know? She’d show up in a new dress at school one day and we’d start talking shit about who bought it for her, what she did to get it. This”—he indicated the necklace—“she showed it to everybody. She didn’t know any better. She thought it was expensive. It’s not even solid gold, it’s plate.” His shoulders dropped. “There’s no telling what she did for it.”
“It looks old to me,” Sara told him. “Not an antique, but old.”
He shrugged.
“What about the photographs?”
He took back the locket and looked at the pictures inside. “I’ve got no idea.”
“So, yesterday in the cave, you knew it was her?” Sara asked, wondering why he had not said anything at the time.
“I didn’t want to think it was her,” Jeffrey said. “I’ve been feeling guilty all my life for things I didn’t do. Things I had no control over.” He gave a long, sad sigh. “My parents, the house I lived in, the clothes I wore. I always felt so ashamed of everything, wanted to show people a better part of me than my circumstances.” He looked around the kitchen. “That’s why I left here, why I was so anxious to get away and never come back. I was sick of being Jimmy Tolliver’s son. I was sick of walking down the street and feeling everybody’s eyes on me, waiting for me to mess up.”
Sara waited.
“You see the better part of me.”
She nodded, because she could not deny this, despite what reason would dictate.
“Why?” he asked, and he seemed like he really wanted to know.
“I don’t…” She let her voice trail off, giving a shrug. “I wish I could say. My brain keeps telling me all these things….” She did not elaborate. “I just feel it in here,” she said, tapping her fingers to her chest. “The way you make me feel when you make love to me and the way you double-knot my shoes so they won’t come untied and the way you listen—you’re doing it now, really listening to what I have to say because you honestly want to know what I’m thinking.” She thought of the soldier’s letter he had read to her what seemed like a lifetime ago, and couldn’t explain it any better than, “I guess that you see me, too.”
He put his hand over hers. “This thing with the bones. It’s going to blow wide open.”
“How?”
“Julia,” he told her, and it seemed to take great effort for him to say her name. “I need you here, Sara. I need you seeing me the way I really am.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t,” he told her. She thought she saw tears in his eyes, but he looked away. “It’s a mess,” he said. “I thought maybe Robert had…”
“Robert had what?”
She saw his throat work as he swallowed. “Robert says he killed her.”
Sara put her hand to her chest. “What?”
“He told me yesterday.”
“Morning?”
“No, after we found the bones.” Sara started to tell him that the sequence did not make sense, but Jeffrey continued, “I showed him the necklace and he said he bashed her head in with a rock.”
Sara sat back, trying to absorb what he was saying. “Did you tell him that her skull was broken?”
“No.”
“Then how did he know?”
“He might have gotten it from Hoss. Why?”
“Because that’s not how she died,” Sara said. “The skull fracture came at least three weeks before she died.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Sara told him. “Bone is living tissue. The fracture was already healing when she was killed.”
“It looked like she’d been hit in the head.”
“That was from something else. Maybe a rock fell in the cave or an animal…” She did not want to tell him what the animals could have done. “Absent scalp and tissue, I can’t tell you whether or not she was hit in the head immediately before she died, but even with that, her hyoid bone was broken.”
“Her what?”
“The hyoid,” she said, putting her fingers to her throat. “It’s here, a U-shaped bone in the center. It doesn’t just break on its own. There has to be significant pressure there, some sort of blunt force or manual strangulation.” She watched Jeffrey, trying to gauge his reaction. “It wasn’t just fractured, it was broken in two.”
He sat up. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll show you the bone if you want.”
“No,” he said, tucking the necklace back into his pocket. “Why would he say he killed her when he didn’t?”
“That was my next question.”
“Maybe if he’s lying about that, he’s lying about the other night.”
“Why?” Sara asked. “Why would he lie about either?”
“I don’t know,” Jeffrey told her. “But I’ve got to find out.” He indicated the sink. “Can you finish this?”
Sara looked at the mess. “I guess.”
He started to leave, then turned around. “I meant it, Sara.”
She looked up. “Meant what?”
“What I said last night,” he told her. “I do love you.”
Despite the horrors of the last few days, she felt a smile on her face. “Go talk to Robert,” she told him. “I’ll finish this and meet you back at Nell’s.”