WE NEEDED TO TALK TO the girl’s mother. I followed Tony’s beat-up, brown Chevy Celebrity down the gravel road. It was the first unmarked car I’d ever seen with rust eating through it. I wasn’t sure how much benefit there was to having an unmarked car in Morrison County—everyone knew everybody. All the local criminals likely knew what Inspector Shileto drove.
After parking the cars in the Brennans’ dirt driveway, we started the long walk to the farmhouse. Tony glanced at my hand and commented, “You’re not married.”
“No.” Deciding to take the focus off me, I asked, “Are you?”
“I was. I married this fantasy of having a fulfilling job and some wonderful time alone with my beautiful wife. Instead, I spent long nights interrogating slimeballs, and she just got tired of being alone. When people tell you ‘we both grew apart’ or ‘it was mutual,’ you know they’re just giving you a line of crap. It’s never mutual. Someone always wants out and the other person can’t stop it.” Tony took a cleansing breath and blew it out in a white vapor. “No one likes spending a lot of time alone. I don’t hate her for leaving.”
“But you hate her for other reasons?”
Tony glanced over at me, as if trying to figure me out. “You might have some potential,” he chuckled. “Go through a divorce with a kid involved, Jon. You have reasons to hate that person. I have a boy who worshiped me once, who now can’t stand me for reasons I’m not aware of.” Tony squeezed his shirt pocket and muttered, “And I quit smoking.” He was silent for a moment, likely grieving the loss of his nicotine, then got to the case at hand. “Greg and Denise Downing picked Brittany up to go to church with them at eight o’clock this morning, as they do every Sunday. After returning from church, Brittany stayed to play with their ten-year-old daughter, Kayla, until about ten thirty, and headed home. After Brittany left, Greg Downing bundled his daughter up, and they went outside. He watched Kayla jump on the trampoline for fifteen minutes before he decided it was too chilly, and they headed back in. The Downings are a nice, Christian family. There is no evidence of any kind of a struggle in or around either the Downing home or the Brennan home. We’ve searched the barn and the sheds. To sum it up, we don’t have a hell of a lot.”
I added, “Except the jacket you found on the road?”
“We do have that. I do know the jacket was only recently left here. If it had been here overnight, it would have been soaking wet.”
WE REACHED THE FADED brown door of Al and Mary Brennan’s home.
Mary Brennan was a big-boned, sturdy woman. She had thinning, reddish-blonde hair, pale, weathered skin, and small eyes set back behind plump cheeks. She was only five years older than I was, but looked a decade beyond her years. She sat at the worn oak kitchen table with several school pictures of a petite, dark-haired girl spread out before her. A stained dish towel was bunched in chapped hands. The linoleum floor had likely started out white, but had yellowed over the years. This helped it blend with the walls, which had started out yellow, and faded closer to a shade of off-white. Gingham-checked curtains gathered to the side of double windows gave view to an expansive mowed lawn, edged by pole sheds. On a happier day, I’d expect to see an apple pie on the table.
Tony put a finger on one of the pictures and told her, “Thank you for finding the pictures of Brittany.”
Mary nodded, fighting back tears. “On Sunday mornings, we all just kind of do our own thing. I was going through our mail. Al went and checked out the south field, and came back a muddy mess. There’s just too much water in the fields to plant.”
“Where is Al now?”
“He changed his clothes, and is tryin’ to get some chores done so he can assist with the search.”
Tony thought for a moment before continuing, “Mary, do you have any proof that Al and Jason were in the yard after ten thirty?”
“Yeah, I heard Al returnin’ in the truck, a little after ten. The muffler’s got a big hole in it. It’s pretty bad when you can’t watch TV in the house because the truck’s runnin’ outside.”
Tony frowned. “That doesn’t really tell us much, because that’s before Brittany left the Downing’s home.”
“But it shut off and never started up again. You can’t ignore the thunderin’ sound of that thing startin’ up. The van isn’t runnin’, so the truck’s the only workin’ vehicle we have.”
I asked, “Were you messaging with anyone on the Internet this morning?” Communicating online could open up a home to a variety of predators.
The question took Mary by surprise. She glanced at Tony and then back at me before responding. “What’s that got to do with Brittany? I didn’t talk about Brittany.”
Tony asked her, “Who were you talking to?”
Mary busied herself wiping the table and avoided eye contact when she answered. “I was just checking my emails.”
She was obviously lying. Tony callously said, “I don’t care about your online boyfriends. We can’t afford to be wasting time right now. You need to be honest with us, Mary, for your daughter’s sake.” I held my breath as I considered telling Tony to show some compassion.
Mary’s cheeks reddened, and she responded, “He’s just a friend, from another state. It has nothin’ to do with this. I don’t want to be blamed for distractin’ you guys, when Brittany might still be saved.” Mary’s flushed face became a portrait of guilt. She took a shuddering breath, and tears began to trickle down her round cheeks.
I softly asked, “Where was Jason at ten thirty?”
Mary sternly answered, “Jason was in the shed tinkerin’ with the van. It’s not runnin’ because Jason’s a teenage boy, and he’s hard on things.” She softened her tone. “But he’s a good kid, and he was out there tryin’ to fix it. He came in about eleven thirty. When I told him Brittany wasn’t home, he was frantic. I think he was afraid she got hit by a car. So I called Al and told him to come in.”
Tony asked, “What time did you call Al?”
“A little after eleven thirty, and he came right away. We called the neighbors. They put off their Sunday dinners and everybody went out searchin’. Al led them and they walked the ditches the whole way, both sides, lookin’ for her.” Mary’s voice became gritty. “Please, just go find her.” Drowning in genuine grief, she put her head down.
Tony cocked an eyebrow. “You called the police before you searched? You knew something bad had happened?”
Mary was losing patience. “Brittany’s never this late.”
Tony thought out loud. “Is there an officer with Al right now?”
“Al’s doin’ chores with Jason. They’ll be in as soon as they’re done. We still need to feed our animals.”
Tony’s frustration was mounting; he slapped the table, and I jerked back in surprise.
Mary looked at him like he was crazy and implored, “Please, just go find her!”
I was in a dilemma. I wanted to tell Tony to simmer down, but as a rookie, I didn’t feel it was my role. At the same time, I didn’t want to be part of a duo of investigators who would be emotionally abusive to a woman who just lost a child. I stood up and put my hand on Mary’s shoulder in an effort to console her. In my gentlest tone, I told her, “If anything occurs to you that you think might be helpful, call. I know this is hard. We want to help any way we can.” I set a card on the table with my number on it. “Where can we find Al and Jason?”
She studied my card for a second and sarcastically replied, “I said they’re doin’ chores, Jon Frederick.”
I found her contempt toward me gratifying, as it was evidence of resilience.
Tony sat motionless. It was his way of telling me he’d decide when the interview was over. He studied Mary in silence as she wiped away tears with the back of her hand. Without another word, Tony turned and left the home.
When I stepped outside, I expected him to yell at me for ending the interview.
Instead, he simply fell into step beside me and said, “By the way, an officer checked out the van. It wouldn’t start, so that part’s true. It pisses me off that the deputies let them start the chores, unsupervised. Are you a computer expert?”
“No.”
“So you’re just a numbers-in-your-head guy. No superpowers.”
“Basically. Sean Reynolds will be here. He’ll have no problem finding what she’s been doing on the computer.”
Tony unconsciously reached to his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, but after realizing it was empty, stated, “Let’s take Al and the boy downtown for the interview, so we can record it.” He scratched his head. “Do you think she called the police pretty quickly?”
“I understand her panic. Brittany should have been home. It’s interesting that Jason initiated the search.”
Tony looked out over the road. “You never know where the break is going to come from, so you keep asking questions until you’ve asked the right one. Pay particular attention to the first contradiction in someone’s story.” Tony was now by his car. He asked, “How many cars have gone by this place since we’ve been here?”
Now I felt stupid. Tony had been observing much more than the interview during our time with Mary Brennan. He was testing me, and I had failed. Embarrassed, I reluctantly answered, “I don’t know.”
Tony smiled. “That’s a good answer,” he said. “Don’t ever pretend to know something you don’t.” Tony left me hanging for thirty seconds before he declared, “Not one car has passed by since we’ve been here. I told the police to let the traffic through, but no one has driven down this road.”
I added, “And if no one drives down this road, it has to be the people here.”
“Yeah.” Tony got on his cell phone and asked, “Where the hell are Al and Jason? They should have been accompanied by a police officer . . . Well, find them, and bring them back to the house.” As Tony listened, he motioned for me to get into his car. “Okay, all right. But let’s at least have an officer stay with them until they’ve been interviewed. I don’t want to give anyone an opportunity to destroy evidence.” When Tony hung up, he said, “We have cops stopping at all the farms in this area, to see if anyone’s noticed anything suspicious. An old farmer, Eldon Meyer, who has a farm half a mile north of here, said the bales of straw in his ditch had been moved. We’re probably the closest investigators to the scene, so we should stop there before the interviews with Al and Jason. The problem with going to people and asking them about suspicious activity is that they notice things that may have been changed weeks ago.”
Tony and I headed half a mile straight north, down the dirt road past the Brennans’, and stopped on the top of a small hill. We approached two BCA investigators standing in the middle of the gravel road by their unmarked, silver Crown Victoria. Tony swore in disgust, and then added, “Just what I need. Two more state employees to tell me how to do my job.”
I grimaced at the implication that I, as a state employee, was somehow already telling Tony how to do his job.
Officer Paula Fineday was in her early forties and slightly overweight. She had thick, shoulder-length dark-brown hair, heavy eyebrows, and Native facial features. She wore a navy-blue North Face jacket. I’d worked with Paula before. She was generally oblivious to fashion trends. I respected her effortless and unembellished style, as it contradicted her complex and labyrinthine processing of language. She was an articulate and observant woman, who gleaned information from casual conversations that other investigators often failed to catch.
Sean Reynolds was an African American man in his late thirties who maintained excellent physical condition. Sean wore his hair closely cropped and was meticulously groomed; his black pants always held a sharp crease. His attention to detail made him an excellent crime-scene investigator. Sean wore a black stocking hat and a designer black leather jacket. Sean and Paula worked very effectively as partners for the BCA.
Tony and I joined them and the four of us walked along the water-filled ditch, looking down at the bales of straw. Someone had broken a path through the bales on Eldon Meyer’s land, allowing the water to flow through and fill the ditch. A farmer would notice this the first time he drove by.
After the initial greetings, Sean asked me, “You grew up around here—can you tell us why they have these bales in the ditch?”
“When it gets above freezing, the snow melts and there’s a lot of water running from the fields into the ditches. The bales of straw help regulate the flow of water,” I explained. “They slow down the runoff, and this keeps the water from flooding the culvert at the bottom of the hill. If this happened, it could freeze water over the road.” I jogged down the hill while the other investigators followed, curious.
We had now reached one end of the culvert that ran underneath the road. Sean bent down and peered into the deep water that had covered the culvert below. At the bottom of the hill, the ditch water was almost as high as the road. The temperature had dropped just below freezing, so a skin of ice had formed over the water. Sean punched his gloved fist through the ice and said, “It looks like someone deliberately moved the straw to flood the culvert.”
The thinness of the ice indicated this water had only recently frozen—perhaps in the last hour. I quickly walked across the road to look into the water on the other side of it. This side wasn’t frozen. As I bent down, I caught a glimpse of a pink-and-white tennis shoe floating in the murky water. “She’s here!” Without thinking twice, I jumped feet-first into the icy water. The three-foot-deep water quickly muddied around me, which made it necessary for me to submerge completely underwater and feel my way to the culvert opening. With my entire body now immersed, hands quickly going numb, I felt what I believed to be a child’s leg. The cold was so absolute, I could feel sharp pains radiating through my ears and into my lungs, like claws of ice piercing through me. As I felt around blindly, I noticed Brittany’s body felt somehow mummified. I carefully pulled her out of the culvert and lifted her stiff, lifeless body above the surface. She had been tightly wrapped in a red blanket. Dark hair spilled from the top of the blanket, and when we uncovered her face, there was no doubt we were holding Brittany Brennan—a pretty face devoid of expression, with lips tinged blue against her colorless skin.
Sean helped me gently set the small girl on the road, and I crawled out of the ditch. My teeth chattered as I told Sean, “We might be able to save her.” I had difficulty speaking, as shudders began to rip through my body. There is a phenomenon called the “mammalian dive reflex,” which emergency medical teams from cold climates are aware of. A body can survive in cold water for a long time, if the conditions are right. Mammals immersed in frigid water have an instinct which shuts off the bloodflow to the extremities, in order to preserve their hearts and brains. This can occur before they drown, and can help them survive cold water immersion. I prayed this was the case for the prone little form in front of us.
Tony had retrieved a dry blanket and spread it out on the gravel. Sean knelt by Brittany, carefully peeling away the wet blanket as he prepared to transfer her to the dry one.
I stood by, shivers convulsing through my body.
Sean cautioned me, “You’d better get in the car. We don’t need two bodies out here.”
“I need to know how she died first,” I said, clenching my teeth to still the chattering.
Sean carefully looked her over. “Let’s not decide she’s dead yet. I’m familiar with the dive reflex.”
Brittany was wearing a pink winter jacket and pink leggings. There was a large blood stain high on the left leg of her pants.
Sean turned her stiff body slightly as he told me, “It looks like she was shot in the leg. There’s an aperture wound clear through. But I don’t think she bled to death. And there are no ligature marks on her neck.” Sean opened up her jacket and pressed two fingers to her neck. “There’s no heartbeat. I need to start CPR on her. Now get in the car—I know what I’m doing.” Sean directed Tony, “Help me with CPR. Paula’s getting directions from the hospital to guide us.”
I finally got into the Crown Victoria and cranked the heat up. Shivers seized my body in spastic jerks through my limbs.
I could hear Sean tell Tony, “She has to unthaw slowly.” I reflexively opened my mouth to correct his use of the English language, but now was not the time to educate him on the difference between “thawing” and “unthawing.”
Paula drove me to my car, which was at the Brennan farm, so I could change into dry clothes. My hands shook as I fumbled out of my frigid, saturated layers.
When I returned to the scene, Sean continued to rhythmically administer chest compressions. Tony looked exhausted from his efforts to breathe life into Brittany’s lungs. I stepped out of the car and nudged him gently aside as I took over for him.
Tony coughed and then spit on the ground as he stepped away. He muttered, “Just give me a minute to catch my breath.” Tony took out his phone and directed a police officer to bring Al, Mary, and Jason Brennan to the station to have their hands tested for gun residue.
I don’t think people fully appreciate how law enforcement officers put their own health in jeopardy to save others. Brittany had aspirated her stomach contents through her mouth, which is typically the case with CPR, but Tony had cleaned most of it out. I breathed air into her lungs, and Sean followed with five chest compressions, over and over. This is the standard CPR for a child of Brittany’s age. “Come on, Brittany,” I panted, “come back to us.” I’d rather facilitate the breathing (even though it’s gross) than the chest compressions, as you had to be careful not to break the ribs of children. There was no doubt in my mind that Sean’s compressions were exactly one inch, as they were supposed to be. I wasn’t sure if it was wishful thinking, but I thought I felt an independent breath. I was tremendously relieved when the ambulance crew arrived and took over.
After a brief conversation with Tony, Sean, and Paula, I headed to the hotel. Sean thought Brittany’s heart had started beating on its own, as well. We gave Brittany a chance, and I prayed for her recovery.
I checked into a room at the AmericInn and stood under a hot shower until my chills subsided. Maurice Strock called and told me he was setting up a news conference. I told him I knew a reporter for WCCO, and he said he didn’t care who I spoke to, as long as I followed his guidelines. I decided to do an old friend a favor. I called WCCO and requested to speak to Jada Anderson.
Tony stopped by to pick me up. We went to the sheriff’s office to make our statements, then to complete our paperwork at our BCA makeshift headquarters, which was still in the process of being set up in the basement of the Morrison County courthouse.
Jada Anderson arrived at the courthouse with a camera crew, and quickly worked to set up the interview. Jada’s mocha brown eyes, slightly curved nose, and bright smile were camera-friendly. Her thick, black hair was combed back, and her dark skin was flawless. Her gray suit jacket, gray slacks, and red sweater fit her perfectly. We hadn’t seen each other since our break-up, so after some awkward greetings, we addressed the press conference. Jada confessed she was a little nervous, but excited for the opportunity. She excelled in the limelight, and I had no concerns over how this would go.
Jada interviewed me on the steps of the government center. She gave me a quick, friendly wink before we started, and then was all business. As instructed, I said nothing of Brittany’s aperture wound or of her being wrapped in a blanket. I stated that we were optimistic for a full recovery for Brittany, and that the doctors had indicated she was showing promise. The truth was the doctors told us that, at this point, she had about a fifty-percent likelihood of surviving. Maurice wanted people to believe she would survive, because he wanted the perpetrator to sweat over the possibility that Brittany could identify him. He thought it might get someone who had information to come forward. I didn’t like doing this to the family, but it wasn’t my call. I stated that the quick discovery was made possible by the BCA working closely with local law enforcement. This allowed everyone to receive credit. As anticipated, Jada was at her best, both genuinely concerned for Brittany and appreciative of the work of law enforcement.
When my interview was done, Jada continued to speak to the camera while I snuck out. I was exhausted, cold, and had a headache. Maurice ordered me to take Sunday off. I returned to my hotel room. Numbers began swarming around in my brain like angry hornets, and it took me a minute before I realized the timeframe of Brittany’s disappearance and discovery was tormenting me. I wasn’t aware of any cold-water immersions where someone had survived after being submerged for hours on end. The paramedics confirmed that we got her heart beating. It was faint, but it was there. This meant her body had been submerged for fewer than thirty minutes. If this was the case, Brittany didn’t go into that culvert until after the police arrived at the Brennan farm. Someone had wrapped an eleven-year-old girl in a blanket, entombed her in a culvert, and then flooded the culvert, less than a mile from where I was standing. It was disturbing, and my soul ached for Brittany.
I AGREED TO MEET MY PARENTS at St. Joseph’s Church in Pierz. I loved driving into the town. In 1888, early Pierz settlers erected an enormous brick Catholic church on a hill in the middle of town. The community then grew around it. The result was a beautiful view of the church, rising above the houses from every direction. It was a common practice in Germany to make the church the highest structure in the community.
Driving into Pierz always made me think of Serena Bell— sharing an ice cream cone with her at Sue’s Drive-In or just walking Main Street in the small town, which consisted of a handful of houses and businesses. I considered that the best-case scenario today would have Serena married to a nice Christian man, and mother to a couple of healthy kids. She would be the kind of loving parent who always put her children first. She had probably put on a few pounds and had let herself go a bit; she would talk about her children incessantly. The worst-case scenario would be that she was still a thin, available, ravishing beauty, because it could mean some other factor might have kept her single, like gambling, alcoholism, or sex addiction. By the way, this is what obsessive folks do. If we fear rejection, we convince ourselves that we never really wanted to see them anyway (rather than accepting that most single women are healthy and stable). Serena could be all kinds of wonderful, but for my own purposes, I reduced her to two potential scenarios: married and frumpy, or beautiful but deeply disturbed.
St. Joseph’s had large, arched stained-glass windows of saints all along the sides, and when the sun was out, as it was today, the windows glowed in a glorious display of colors. As I turned to make the sign of peace in church, I spotted her two rows back. Worst-case scenario. Serena’s long, brown hair flowed with a natural curl past her shoulders. Her green eyes were radiant, framed by her olive skintone. At a diminutive five-foot-three, she was still petite, but was now a stunning twenty-eight-year-old woman who instantly took my breath away. Her black wool coat was open, revealing a peasant-style blouse, decorated around the edges with colorful embroidered flowers. Serena had a classy, if a bit folksy, style.
Serena was waiting on the steps as I exited the church. With a combination of heart-hammering excitement and disbelief, I blurted, “What are you doing here?”
She bit her lip, and I was transported back to high school, fondly remembering how that little mannerism used to make my stomach flip. “This from the man who used to tell me religion should be a way of life, not something you attend.”
The Shakespeare sonnet, “If I could write the beauty in your eyes, and with fresh numbers, number all of your graces, in days to come they’d say this poet lies,” came to mind. Like Shakespeare, I found this woman unbelievably ravishing. But instead of saying anything along those lines, I clumsily said, “I didn’t realize you still lived around here.”
Serena smiled. “I don’t. My parents were renting out their old place, but now that they’ve lost the renter, they’ve decided to sell it. I drive back to Pierz from St. Paul, when I have time, to make it look nice for them. So, I’m staying at our old house tonight.” She cocked her head to the side and added, “You look good, Jon.”
“You look amazing.” I was a little embarrassed over how easily the words left my lips.
She hesitated for a second, then extended her arms for a hug.
I savored her warmth and felt my spirit recharge. It felt wonderful to hold Serena. Her presence and clean scent felt as fresh as the air after a much-needed summer rain. Without conscious awareness, we held hands for a moment after the hug ended, before we both glanced down and awkwardly let go.
I swallowed nervously. “I’ve been thinking about you,” I admitted. “I’ve often wondered how your life turned out. I imagined you were married and had a couple kids by now.”
“Well, I haven’t been married and I have no children. I have business management and psychology degrees from St. Ben’s, and I’m managing a clinic for Fairview now. The MNsure insurance stuff is a huge headache at the moment. This system doesn’t work, and, instead of making IBM fix the crappy system they created, the state has simply hired more people to answer the phone and apologize to people who can’t get help.” She stopped herself. “But I enjoy most of my work, and the people I work with are great. I was living in Eden Prairie, but I let my lease end and moved in with my parents in St. Paul until I find a house. I’m ready to buy.”
“I knew you would do well.” If she was ready to invest, she didn’t have gambling issues.
I invited Serena to dinner at my parents’, then spent the day with her at her parents’ old farmhouse.
LATER THAT NIGHT, we were sitting on the floor in front of her parents’ old brown couch playing Scrabble. We had quickly lapsed into comfortable conversation, and it felt as if no time had passed since we last saw each other. She had been working on the same glass of wine all evening, so she wasn’t an alcoholic. I loved the way Serena’s eyes lit up when she shared stories about her family. She had always made me feel like I was an important person, even though I’d honestly never been one. I reveled in her affection and did my best to reciprocate it. Suddenly, our conversation reached an awkward silence.
She fussed with the hem of her blouse, then met my eyes and quietly asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“I’m thinking of asking if I can kiss you.” Although we never defined our relationship ten years ago, we had shared more than a few kisses, and I felt we had once mastered the art of kissing. I wanted to be close to her again.
Holding my gaze, Serena slowly leaned forward, then hesitated just before our lips met. I took that as a “yes,” and closed the distance. What began as a tentative kiss quickly intensified. As I leaned into her, Serena responded by reclining to her back on the floor. Our breathing deepened as our kissing became more passionate. After several minutes, I tenderly brushed her hair to the side of her face and gazed into her eyes. “God, I’ve missed you.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, softly kissed me, and then gently pushed some space between us. “I’m sorry, Jon. This is just too fast. I have so many questions.”
We worked our way back to a respectable arrangement, side-by-side, on the couch. She probably wasn’t a sex addict. I admonished myself, thinking, Why did I have to interrupt this wonderful kiss by talking? Like most guys, I didn’t want to talk about a relationship. I just wanted to have one. But I took a deep breath and prompted, “Ask away.”
With sadness in her eyes, she responded, “Why did you stop talking to me?”
I considered how to present this. “Have you ever slept with someone you shouldn’t have?”
Serena busied herself trying to smooth new wrinkles from her blouse, and without looking up, said, “I’m a Christian, but honestly, I haven’t been a great Christian. But I keep trying, and I hope there’s some redemption in that. Maybe I’m even the cliché of the hypocritical Catholic girl. So, have I slept with someone I shouldn’t have?” She looked up and shrugged. “Honestly, yes—and yes.” She slowly shook her head back and forth, as if settling an uncertainty, and then added, “And yes.”
I thought, Okay. Point made. I wasn’t sure if this meant everybody she had slept with, or just the people she shouldn’t have slept with. Regardless, I needed to surge forward.
Serena sat posture-perfect and turned to face me as I sat next to her, leaning forward. I was simply going to be honest with her and let it play out. “Okay. Mandy and I had sex on the first night we were together.”
Serena nodded. “I assumed that.”
“She said she was on birth control, but I don’t know that she was. I was worried she might get pregnant, so I stayed with her. I needed to be responsible for the choice I made.” If Serena would have slept with another guy at that time, I would have been devastated. But I was too immature and self-centered to have considered this back then. “When it was clear that Mandy wasn’t pregnant, I ended it . . . and she disappeared. After everybody started accusing me of murder, I didn’t want to burden you with my garbage. You’re just nice enough that you would have stood by me, and you didn’t deserve that.”
Serena studied me for a moment, and with genuine compassion, she sighed, “Psalm Thirty-One.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t going to pretend I knew what she was talking about.
“It reads, ‘My life is spent with grief. I am repulsive to my acquaintances. I am forgotten like a dead man. I am a broken vessel, for I hear the slander of many.’ It was all so unfair.” When I didn’t respond, she added, “You should read Psalm Thirty-Two.”
Okay, maybe she was still single because she was a religious freak. It’s interesting that we never refer to atheists as “freaks.” After all, isn’t it incredibly egocentric to only believe in what you can comprehend? I smiled sadly and said, “I have nothing against reading the Bible, but it’s not going to solve this for me. I didn’t kill Mandy Baker.”
“I know,” she sighed. “I’ve missed our long walks and conversations by the fire, huddled in a blanket.”
I agreed. “I should have confided in you. It seems so obvious, now, but at seventeen, everyone else’s life seems so far from your own.”
Serena softly conceded this. “Yeah.” She placed her hand on my knee. “I didn’t know you were going to leave, for good, the night after graduation.”
I looked over the scars on my arm I had earned from working construction as I replied, “I didn’t have you to talk to anymore, so there was no reason for me to stay. After the graduation ceremony, my family came home to the word ‘Killer’ painted on the side of our house. Dad said, ‘That’s enough. I’m getting you out of here before one of these judgmental zealots shoots you.’ The next day, I moved in with an uncle who lived two hours away, and worked in construction until I started college.”
With a sad acquiescence to opportunities lost, her shoulders sank in resignation. “Have you ever heard of Facebook?”
“Do you have any idea how tired my family is of mindless gossip about my involvement with Mandy Baker? I wouldn’t go on social media for their sake.”
I saw a painful sorrow in Serena’s eyes as she sadly said, “In the Hmong language, they’d say ‘Kuzee.’ It means a lost opportunity with someone you admired. It’s spelled k-h-a-u-rx-i-a-m. Not how I would have spelled it.”
I couldn’t stand seeing her so melancholy. I took her in my arms, held her close, and said, “I’m sorry.” For a moment, I wanted us to be who we used to be. I wanted to lie next to her and not think about anything other than how good it felt. Serena was neither married nor damaged. She was just a normal, beautiful, healthy, single woman. After a long embrace, I finally ended our silence, once again, by offering, “I think tonight, the best thing I can do for you is to make sure you’re safely secure here and head back to my hotel to get some sleep.”