The Baptist church where John works isn’t one of the bigger congregations in the area. In the South, I’ve noticed, some churches take up entire blocks.
John’s hardly looks like a church at all. It’s a squat, ugly brick building, and only the stained-glass window of Jesus surrounded by lambs tips you off to the fact that it’s a house of worship.
I’ve dressed in one of my best outfits today, a blue pleated skirt with a white boatneck blouse, paired with blue-and-white-striped ballet flats and silver jewelry. When I’d looked in the mirror this morning, I almost hadn’t recognized myself. I didn’t look like the Jane I’d been two months ago, but I also didn’t look like I was trying to copy Emily or Campbell.
Or Bea.
I looked like … me.
Whoever that was turning out to be.
My shoulders are back as I open the door, my head high, and when I step inside, the girl sitting at the desk gives me a bright smile.
She probably thinks I’m here to donate money.
She’s half-right.
“Hiiiiii,” I drawl, sliding my sunglasses up on my head. “Is John Rivers here?”
I don’t miss it, the way her smile droops just the littlest bit.
I feel you, girl.
“He’s in the music room,” she says, pointing down the hall, and I thank her.
The church smells like burnt coffee and old paper, the linoleum squeaking under my shoes as I make my way to a room at the end of the hall where I can already hear jangling guitar chords.
John is sitting on a riser in the middle of the room, a music stand in front of him. I can see the cover of his sheet music book. Praise Songs for Joyful Hearts.
Appropriate, because my heart is pretty fucking joyful right now.
His fingers slide on the strings as he looks up and sees me there, and I register that beat, the fractional moment before he recognizes me.
He’s wearing his navy polo today, the one with the church’s logo on the chest, and his hair has been combed back from his face. He’s also wearing an awfully nice new pair of sneakers, and if I doubted it before, I now know that not all of Eddie’s money went to a new sound system.
“Jane.” John gets up, putting the guitar down, and I hold a hand up.
“I won’t be here long,” I tell him. “I just dropped in to let you know that I finally talked with your mysterious Phoenix contact.”
The blood literally drains from his face. I watch it, the way his cheeks fade from ruddy pink to a sickly sort of gray, and it almost makes the shit he put me through worth it.
But not quite.
“You know, he was actually kind of a nice guy. Especially when I explained to him that anything you had told him was bullshit.”
I can still feel the shock, the sheer fucking relief that had coursed through me as the voice on the other end of that mysterious phone number told me that he was employed by a Georgie Smith, who was looking for her sister, Liz. That Georgie thought Liz had had a daughter who had ended up in foster care in Arizona, that she might have gone by the name Helen Burns, and that Georgie would like to meet her.
I’d made myself sound regretful, almost a little wistful as I’d confirmed that I’d been in foster care with Helen, but that last I heard, she’d gotten involved in drugs, and I thought she might have headed even further west, Seattle, maybe? No, Portland. One of those. But in any case, I hadn’t heard from her or seen her in years, and—a lowered voice here, a conspiratorial whisper—I wouldn’t bother talking to John Rivers any further. John Rivers had a history of conning older women like Mrs. Smith—he’d string her along, promise he knew her niece, then he’d never deliver. The private investigator didn’t sound surprised, just said he knew the type and thanked me for my time.
When I’d hung up the phone, I’d waited for real regret, knowing I’d just snipped the one thin thread still holding me to any family. And a year ago, even a few months ago, knowing my mom had had a sister who was looking for me would’ve made me feel almost pathetically grateful. Aunt Georgie.
Now, it was just another loose end to tie up. I’d made my choice, made my family, and I was closing the door on all of it.
And most importantly, now I was certain: no one knew what had really happened in Phoenix.
I’d gotten away.
John is still staring at me, his throat working, and I wonder if this is how good he felt when he surprised me in the Home Depot parking lot.
If so, I almost don’t blame him for doing it.
“Anyway, I made sure he knew you were shady as fuck, and, just for a little extra flavor, I might’ve implied you were also kind of pervy and obsessed with me, so he will definitely not be answering any more of your calls.”
That part’s not true, but it’s too fun to watch him sweat.
Still, he’s not totally beaten yet. “You did something, Jane,” he says. “You ran from something. Or you never would’ve paid me.” He steps forward. “You never would’ve come to live with me in the first place if you weren’t on the run. We were in the same group home for what? Two months? You barely knew me. But you needed somewhere to hide. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“I don’t have to tell you shit,” I say, and he glances at the door, wincing a little.
I look over my shoulder, remembering the girl at the desk, remembering where we are, and almost laugh. “Are you … worried about me swearing? In this conversation about you blackmailing me?”
I move closer, my new expensive handbag dangling in the crook of my elbow, Eddie’s ring winking on my finger.
“You are smarter than I ever gave you credit for, I’ll allow that,” I tell him. “But this is over now. You don’t call me, you don’t call Eddie, you forget you ever knew me or that I ever existed.”
His face is sullen, but he still says, “Forget you? Or forget Helen Burns?”
My heart still thuds heavily in my chest when I hear that name.
It’s over.
She’s gone now.
“Get fucked, John,” I tell him sweetly, and then glance up at the picture on the wall, another portrait of Jesus, this time with a bunch of kids around his feet instead of lambs.
“Sorry,” I mouth at him with an exaggerated grimace, and then I walk out.
As I pass the desk again, I see the girl watching me with obvious curiosity on her face, and I give her another smile as I pull a checkbook out of my purse.
“My fiancé and I had heard your church was in need of a new music system.”
I leave the church several thousand dollars poorer, but a truckload smugger. Let John ever try shit like this again now that his boss, the Reverend Ellis, came out to shake my hand and thank me effusively for my generosity, promising me that both Eddie and I will be thanked in every church program from here on out.
I want John to see that every Sunday.
Mr. Edward Rochester, and his wife, Mrs. Jane Rochester.
Okay, maybe I jumped the gun a little with the wife bit, but we are getting married. Eddie is innocent. And I’m—free.
I get into the car, my hands wrapped around the steering wheel, and I take a deep breath.
It isn’t like I killed Mr. Brock, after all. Killing someone and letting them die are two different things.
He deserved it.
He let Jane die. The real Jane, the one I loved, the one who was the best friend I ever had, my sister, even if we didn’t share any blood. We’d shared a home, though. We’d shared a nightmare.
She was always puny, always small. Always getting whatever cold or stomach bug went around our school. Usually, I could help. Vitamin C, orange juice. Taking notes for her so she didn’t get behind.
But that last time, she got sick and didn’t get better. The cough got wetter, deeper. Her fever ran higher.
You have to take her to the doctor, you have to, I’d begged the Brocks, but they’d make excuses, like they always had.
She’s fine, she’s faking, it’s not that bad.
Jane died in my bed, huddled next to me, her body glowing so hot I could hardly hold her.
But I did hold her. I held her as she gasped for breath and shook and finally went still.
Pneumonia. It might have killed her even if the Brocks had gotten her to a hospital. She was so weak already.
I would never know.
So it had felt like a kind of poetic justice, that night that it was just me and Mr. Brock in the house. Mrs. Brock was at bingo, and by then, I was the only foster kid in their care.
He’d been watching TV, a baseball game, and some call had pissed him off. Sometimes that had meant one of us got hit, but that night, he’d just stood up, screaming at the television, his face red.
I’d been sitting at the kitchen table, filling out paperwork for a shitty fast-food job when he’d suddenly gasped, clutched his chest.
He’d had heart issues for a while. I never knew what was actually wrong with him, but I’d assumed a diet of whiskey, fries, and Pure Fucking Evil hadn’t helped.
He had pills for it. Big ones in an orange bottle, and he’d choked that word out as he turned to me, his face the color of old milk.
Pills.
I hadn’t gotten them.
He’d hit his knees, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, his eyes bugging out of his head.
Mr. Brock wasn’t a big man, wasn’t much bigger than me, really, but I still liked him there on his knees. I’d gotten up, stood over him while he stared at me, uncomprehending.
The word had come so easily to my lips.
Die.
I wanted him to die. For Jane.
So, I stood there, and watched him struggle and gasp, and when he tried to reach for his pills, just there on the little table between the two recliners, I’d taken them. Held them in front of him. Let him see that I had them.
And then I’d gone into the kitchen and poured them down the sink with shaking hands, turning on the garbage disposal for good measure.
I only left the house when I was sure he’d stopped breathing.
For the past five years, I’ve run from that night, from the knowledge that surely people remembered I was the only one at home when Mr. Brock dropped dead.
But I’d forgotten how disposable people like me really were. No one connected me leaving with him dying.
He had a heart condition, after all. And Helen had simply left town. She’d been just shy of her eighteenth birthday, a high school graduate, ageing out of the system already.
I’d left with Jane’s ID in my purse. Jane, who looked enough like me to be my real sister.
And I’d started over.
Successfully, it turned out.
Smiling, I start the car and head home. My new home.
My real home.