The Only Secret Left to Keep

by Katherine Hayton

  “Jessie was a good boy. He never did any of those things that people are implying he was into.”

  Findlay closed his notebook with a snap, fed up. “What things are people suggesting Jessie was into, Mrs. Collingwood?”

  Her lip curled up into a snarl, and she waved her hand at the blank television. “I saw a report yesterday that tried to say that Jessie had something to do with that black kid, Sam Andie. Jessie was a good boy. He never hung around with that lot, not at all.”

  So, in Elana’s mind, being a good boy meant staying racially pure. Great to know but not exactly something they could lead with on the front page.

  Elana leaned further forward and put a clawed hand, shaking with a tremor, onto Findlay’s knee. He stiffened, but fought his natural instinct to curl away.

  “I heard that Sam Andie was a homosexual.”

  She pronounced the word as though it had extra syllables. Her tongue danced with it, a wicked tango that ended in a long drawl. Findlay started to file it away in the drawer already labeled racist, then stopped.

  “Where did you hear that, Mrs. Collingwood?” he asked. If there was one thing that Findlay knew, it was the information coming out on the news channels. Although he understood from a chat with Deb that Sam’s sexuality might be a factor, it hadn’t graced any news show that he’d seen.

  Elana shrugged and pressed her lips together again—a thin, hard line. She raised a finger with knuckles gnarled by arthritis to her mouth and whispered, “Shhh,” then tapped against the side of her nose.

  “If you don’t want me to print that your son spent his last days on earth hanging about with black homosexual males, then tell me where you heard that,” Findlay said. Mentally, he clocked up the hours he’d soon spend with human resources if Elana laid a complaint. It was a fair swap for the satisfaction it gave him.

  “I just heard it,” she said, her mouth contorting into a snarl after she stopped speaking. She waved her hand lazily above her head. “It was on the radio, or maybe one of the other parents told it to me when they dropped by.”

  Mildred Kenton’s house had been teeming with visitors and well-wishers, a constant supply of comforters. Judging by the single plate and glass sitting on the bench, the same wasn’t true of Mrs. Collingwood.

  Suddenly, Findlay felt a rush of sympathy for the woman. Whatever else she was, Elana was a mother who’d lost her son at a cruelly young age. Maybe, if he’d lost a child and never known the reason, his own life would distort into a foul echo of what it should be. If Elana held onto nothing but hate maybe that was because some old bastard kicked the love out of her and stomped on it until it was dead.

  “It’s not true,” Findlay said, caught between a need to set the record straight and a desire to keep his source’s words to himself. “Sam Andie wasn’t a homosexual. He had a genuine relationship with his girlfriend.”

  “Shannon killed my boy,” Elana stated, her eyes slitted so much that the irises looked black. “I don’t care what that lot”—she jerked her head toward the window—“say about it, there’s no way that her dad attacked my Jessie.”

  “Why do you say that?” Findlay asked, curiosity warring with his desire to get up and leave. “Don’t you think that Mr. Rickards was capable?”

  “I met him,” she said, startling Findlay who was expecting another weird tirade based on an exhausted belief system. “He came into the courtroom every day that we had to attend.”

  “Was that a lot?” Findlay asked. “I thought that Shannon pleaded guilty straight away.”

  “It still went on for weeks,” Elana said. “There were the original charges and the plea, then the judge sent Shannon off for a psychiatric assessment. After she passed that, he decided that she should have an attorney to talk some sense into her. I swear, it was almost like he didn’t want Shannon to plead guilty to what she’d done.”

  Elana paused, rubbing at her eyes. They looked irritated like her allergies were playing up. With the smoke still hanging around, Findlay guessed that his own eyes probably looked quite similar.

  She sighed deeply, screwing up her nose. “After that, we had to go to court to see them accept her plea and listen to some rubbish that her lawyer put in for ‘consideration’.” Elana put air quotes around the word and her lip curled in disgust. “Once that was done, we finally got to the sentencing. All in all, I reckon we were in there at least six or seven sessions.” She shrugged. “I don’t recall exactly. The whole thing is a bit of a blur.”

  Findlay waited for the connection, but it appeared that Elana had forgotten why she started the summary. He gave her a small push. “You met Bob Rickards?”

  “Yeah.” Elana nodded. “He was in court for all those times, too. He came up to me on the first day and apologized. Said he couldn’t know what I was going through, but he was sorry that his daughter had caused me such pain.”

  For the first time, a tear cracked through the concrete façade of Elana’s unexploded rage and trickled down her face. When she wiped the tear away, it was with a puzzled frown, as though she couldn’t imagine why her face would be wet.

  “I didn’t think I’d like him, but he was so courteous. When I said I didn’t know where to sit or what to do, he made a point of finding out for me and explaining it whenever I forgot.”

  Elana shook her head and put a trembling hand up to her brow, wiping back the hot, sticky strands of hair that had fallen down over her eyes.

  “His wife was sick at the time. Really ill, I mean. Cancer or something.” She wiped a finger under her nose and felt in her pocket for a used tissue, blowing hard. “Yet, he still took the time to talk to me at every court date. He checked in with how I was. Bob was the only person who ever questioned me about Jessie and what he was like. Everyone else stayed away from mentioning him. They wiped him out of existence.”

  Findlay shivered as a sudden chill swept over his body. He knew exactly what she meant. If nobody ever mentioned or reminisced about a dead loved one, then they faded out of sight altogether. With no one else to prompt a journey through bittersweet memories, they never got visited at all.

  “And that’s why you don’t think Bob Rickards could have killed your son? Because he was kind to you and talked to you about your boy?”

  The fury came back, igniting a flurry of sparks in Elana’s eyes and a thundercloud of smoke across her brow.

  “No, that’s not all!” she insisted, then floundered for something else to back up her conviction.

  “I believe you,” Findlay said. “It’s just plain weird if he went out of his way to make contact with you, days after brutally killing your boy. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  Elana relaxed at his agreement, her stiffened shoulders softening as she leaned back into the couch. “I don’t even know why the press is bothering to print all that nonsense. If they looked at all the facts, those reporters would quickly reach the same conclusions.”

  From her words, Findlay guessed that she’d forgotten he fell squarely in the middle of that camp. “It’s not as though the journalists made this story up,” he reminded her. “The case only reopened because Bob Rickards confessed to the murder without any prompting. Nobody would have thought to look at George and Jessie’s murder again if it weren’t for that.”

  “He’s an old man,” Elana said, waving her hand. “Poor Bob probably doesn’t realize what he’s saying.”

  Findlay didn’t see any benefit in arguing the point with her. If Bob had killed her son, then it would do no good for Elana to know that. Not after so many years of thinking of Bob as kind and Shannon as evil. To reverse the tables, tossed so much ingrained rhetoric into the air that Elana might not have the lifespan to reformulate her thinking to encompass it.

  After the awful event that had clouded her life, better that she had one good thought to fall back onto. And if Bob actually had acted with such kindness back in the day—something Findlay had no reason to doubt—then it opened up the question of what had he been doing. If B
ob knew that he’d killed those boys, then what psychopathy would draw him closer to the victim’s mother.

  No sane reason and beyond that, Findlay didn’t care to dwell.

  As he let himself out the front door, he heard calls of laughter, quickly hushed for solemnity, from down the street. Mrs. Kenton’s front yard was packed full with friends and relatives throwing her a barbecue in support. In her hour of need, they’d rallied around without a second thought.

  Findlay looked back at the quiet house he’d just vacated and thought of the small, anger-filled woman inside. She would take his pity between his teeth and munch on it for sustenance. A meal that, like all others, Elana would dine on alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When the taxi pulled up outside Matthew Jamieson’s company, Ngaire was still scribbling furiously in her notepad.

  The driver waited, impatiently drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, while she felt in her pocket for the book of chits she’d been given. If it had been up to her, Ngaire would just have flung money at him and get out of there, but she didn’t need a month worth of phone calls chasing up a missing expense claim.

  Finally, her fingers stumbled over the pad, and she ripped off a slip and passed it over. Then, it was her turn to fidget as the driver gave a sigh and laboriously filled out the details from the ride.

  The property, or joint community by the look of it, was formed of three main buildings with smaller houses dotted in between. Ngaire walked up to the center one, the only sign she was in the right place a small silver plaque saying The Sons of God on the wall underneath the bell.

  To her surprise, a woman answered, sporting a wide and welcoming smile beneath a pleasant face line with tight brown curls. “Hello,” she said. “How may I assist you today?”

  “Is Matthew Jamieson available?” Ngaire asked, taking a step toward the door. “I don’t have an appointment.”

  “That doesn’t matter, we don’t stand on ceremony much around here,” the woman replied, waving Ngaire inside. Judging by the immaculate entrance and the tidy grounds, her sentiment wasn’t entirely accurate.

  “I’m Emilia, Matthew’s wife. If you take a seat here, I’ll see if he’s available.”

  Ngaire sat while Emilia walked off, feeling a tad bemused. Did she not care why a woman had turned up on her doorstep wanting to see her husband?

  A man burst through the front door behind her, no knock or ringing of the bell to announce his presence. “Where’s Matthew?” he called out to Emilia’s back, then strode down the hall to catch up.

  “Andrew, take a seat. I’m sure he’ll be out to see you shortly.”

  From the calm way that Emilia accepted his physical interruption, Ngaire guessed they were either very close, or Andrew held a critical position.

  “I must see him immediately. I can’t stand being here a moment longer.”

  To Ngaire’s astonishment, Andrew burst into tears. His sobs were loud and violent, jerking him forward and rocking him back on his feet.

  “Do you mind waiting a while longer?” Emilia called back down the hall. She had slung her arm around the man and patted the side of his head. “We just have a small emergency.”

  The door to Emilia’s side opened, and a man who Ngaire presumed was Matthew, stood. After a moment of stillness, while he took the sight in, he stepped forward and pulled Andrew away from Emilia, leading him into the room and closing the door.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Emilia said, returning down the hall to Ngaire. “Sometimes our clients here have very emotional responses to our treatment. Can I fetch you a cup of tea while you wait?”

  Ngaire nodded and asked for milk and no sugar. After a few minutes behind another closed door, Emilia returned with a tray.

  “What is it that you treat here?” Ngaire asked, her curiosity piqued by the display. “I thought this was a Christian Center of some kind.”

  “Oh, yes. We’re doing the work of God, no doubt about that,” Emilia said, taking a seat beside Ngaire. There was a saucer of biscuits on the tray, and she picked one of the shortbreads up, nibbling it with tiny teeth.

  “May I ask why you wish to see my husband if you don’t know what it is he does here?” Emilia asked after a few moments.

  “I’m following up on an incident that he may have been involved in years ago,” Ngaire said, skirting around the edges with the grace of an elephantine ballerina. “When he lived down in Christchurch in the eighties.”

  Emilia’s nibbling teeth slowed down for a second and then sped up again. With her small uptilted nose and large eyes, Ngaire thought she just needed whiskers, and the woman would look just like a mouse.

  “I didn’t realize that Matthew lived in Christchurch,” she said. “I thought he was a born and bred Dunedinite.”

  Ngaire shrugged. “Perhaps it wasn’t him, then. If that’s the case, I’ll be finished up here sooner.” At Emilia’s frown, she added, “Not that I imagine it will take long in any case. Are you also from Dunedin, or did you move here from elsewhere?”

  The question put Emilia back at ease as she expanded on her family history, bringing Ngaire through the long chain of events until she wound up here, in the present day. When she seemed to be running to a stop, Ngaire repeated her question from earlier. “What is it that you do here?”

  “We take men who have wandered off the path that God set for them and bring them back into the light,” Emilia said with an angelic smile on her face.

  Ngaire felt a measure of appreciation at how little that answered her question. If she were deliberately obfuscating, then Emilia was a master. Unfortunately, Ngaire didn’t believe that was the case.

  “How would they have strayed from the path?” Ngaire kept her fingers crossed that couching it in the same language would earn a clearer response.

  Emilia looked down at the saucer for another biscuit and Ngaire nodded in encouragement. She picked one up, licking a few crumbs from the side of her mouth as she did so, her tongue darting out before tucking itself safely back away.

  After some of the interviews she’d dealt with, Ngaire had no problem letting silence fill the space between them. She could feel Emilia shifting in her seat as she let the question hang in the air, unanswered. As Emilia looked back down to the saucer again, Ngaire picked up the last biscuit and polished it off in two big bites.

  “Matthew does most of the work in the center,” Emilia said at last. Her voice was halting, hesitant, but the affection for her husband was evident in every word. “Apart from the men, of course. They also have to work hard, each and every day.”

  Ngaire sipped from her cooling cup of tea. Inside, her nerves from that earlier in the day had reignited, jumping and squirming around like they were attached to electric currents. The biscuit sat heavy in her stomach. Dread piled its weight on top.

  “We don’t have to deal with the hopeless cases,” Emilia continued, “though Matthew, bless him, would say that nobody is a hopeless case. We deal with men who never came out to their families and proudly declared their depravity to the world. We deal with people who know that how they feel is wrong and are willing to do the work to change that.”

  A chill swept down from Ngaire’s shoulders, covering her arms and back in goose pimples and stretching further down, to poke icy fingers into the back of her thighs. What had the doctor said just that morning? I think the legacy of conversion therapy has shown us that.

  Dr. Sanderson had referred to it in the past tense because who, in their right mind, would believe such a thing to work nowadays? Now that people had access to the internet. Now they understood sexuality wasn’t a choice that someone made to be contrary.

  Except, one small scratch and what did you find under the surface? A hark back to the good old days when you could punish people out of their natural state and create two unhappy parties to a marriage.

  Don’t judge. It might not be how you’re thinking.

  The voice inside Ngaire didn’t have much strength to it.
Not in the face of a grown man’s breakdown in the corridor. The calm way that Emilia had dealt with it, proof positive that it was a typical reaction in this place.

  “Are you a Christian?”

  Ngaire shook her head. “I’m not anything,” she said. “My mom and dad weren’t fans of any religion.”

  So true. Ngaire’s mother’s belief had been solely invested in the Hollywood dream. Her father’s, the wish for a comfortable life. Sunday mornings were for sleeping in and watching children’s cartoons on the telly while tracking the receding hangover from devastation back to standard pain.

  “It’s never too late to turn to God’s love,” Emilia said. “Our whole society is based on the rules drawn from the bible.”

  “That’s true,” Ngaire said in idle agreement. “Does the work take a lot out of your husband?”

  Emilia sighed and leaned forward, putting her face into her hands briefly before she crossed her arms around her knees. “It does. It takes a lot of him, and it takes a lot out of our family.” After a short pause, a beatific smile crossed her face. “It gives a lot back to us both, though, and not just us. Other members of the center and the wider congregation. Taking steps to do something in an area where so many others have given up, it is truly a gift from God. One that’s hard to carry, but also one that is worth its own weight.”

  Ngaire went back to sipping her tea and sitting in silence. She needed to save her energy for Mr. Jamieson rather than tackling his wife. The lack of sleep still dragged at her, pulling her mind down into blankness when it should be framing up a list of potential questions.

  The door down the corridor opened, spilling Andrew back out in a wet slump. Although his tears were no longer streaking his cheeks, he’d apparently continued to cry for a long time after the door closed behind him. His nose was bright red, matching the rims of his eyes. Bright red capillaries streaked the whites of Andrew’s eyes.