by Laura McHugh
Becca drew in a breath and sighed. “I wonder if she did this before or after Shane.”
I buried the dish back in the cupboard and found a plain tin pan to use instead, one with no memories attached, an unsentimental object that wouldn’t get passed down to anyone.
* * *
—
Charlie showed up to get the Firebird just before we started in on dessert. When I opened the door, I spied Leola waiting in the truck and waved them both in for pie. Leola resisted at first, on the grounds that she hadn’t dressed up or brought anything, but relented when I told her that Mom had been wanting to meet her. The house felt warm and full when we all sat down together, extra chairs squeezed in, Becca’s boys sitting on her and Jerry’s laps, Gravy asleep beneath the table.
The Burdetts fit right in. Becca quizzed Charlie with the zeal of a nosy mother, asking about school, his favorite classes, his dorm, his future plans, barely giving him time to chew. After a tentative start, speaking gingerly about Shane, Leola talked about the loss of her own son, and Mom slowly began to open up to her, staring at her plate as she spoke, and then, as she grew more comfortable, meeting Leola’s empathetic gaze. It was good for Mom to have someone to talk to, not just someone who knew Shane, but someone who knew how it felt to lose a child. I couldn’t help thinking what it would have been like if we’d been able to get together, Leola and Charlie and all of us, when Shane was still alive. It made me hurt for Hannah, too, who’d refused my offer to join us and was spending the holiday alone.
When Becca finally eased up on her interrogation long enough for Charlie to finish his plate, I went outside with him to see if he could get the Firebird started. Together, we peeled back the tarp and admired the silver car.
“I remember the first time I saw it,” Charlie said. “When I smashed the taillights. Boy, was he pissed. Figured I was in for a beating.” He shook his head. “Never thought it’d be mine.”
He swung open the heavy door and settled into the driver’s seat. The key turned, and the engine grumbled and roared. “He took good care of it,” Charlie said, gripping the steering wheel.
“How much gas have you got?”
“Nearly a quarter tank.”
“Let’s go fill it up. My treat. So you’ll have enough to get back to school.”
He drove extra slow at first, like I imagined he did when Leola was with him, but couldn’t help himself once we reached the highway. He bore down on the accelerator, grinning as the car leapt forward. I clicked on the radio. It was tuned to a classic rock station from the city and grainy with static. The barren fields slipped by, and I imagined Shane driving to work in this car, along this same highway, then remembered him saying he never commuted in the Firebird because it burned through too much gas. I wished that he’d had more time to enjoy it, that he’d driven it every day. Maybe he would’ve, had he known what was coming.
“This’d make him happy,” I said. “You, with his car, out on the open road.” We crested a low hill and Led Zeppelin screeched through the speakers, the reception suddenly clear, at least until we dipped back down.
“Hey, Charlie, did Shane ever talk about Roger Calhoun?”
“That guy they found?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Not to me. Why?”
“They were friends, or used to be, anyway. Crystle mentioned him. I just wondered.”
He shot me a sidelong glance. “Henley’d probably know. She was around him more than I was lately.”
“Henley?”
“Crystle’s cousin. Good friend of mine. She’s not like the rest of ’em.”
The rest of them. The Pettits, I assumed. I wondered if she was the girl I’d seen at Shane’s funeral, the one who’d looked at me, made eye contact, if briefly. The only one of the Pettits who genuinely appeared to be grieving.
“Do you think maybe she’d talk to me?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “She might. I can give you her number. Just watch what you say. She’s close to her family, but she always liked Shane.”
* * *
—
Charlie and Leola headed home as daylight faded, Leola not wanting to drive after dark. Mom sank into her recliner, exhausted from socializing, and we settled the kids on the couch with popcorn to watch The Wizard of Oz. When Becca and Shane and I were growing up, it had been on TV every year around Thanksgiving, and Becca found comfort in tradition, prodding us to keep nostalgic rituals alive, still making Grandma Keller’s coconut-covered lamb cake every Easter, though no one in our generation even liked to eat it. I might have shrugged at the Dollar General Thanksgiving menu, but Becca had been horrified, as though one missed tradition might have dire consequences for our family. And maybe she was right. Shane and I had always been lazy in that regard, relying on her to remember elderly relatives’ birthdays, to know which rose bushes or recipes had been passed down from whom, to take pictures at gatherings and send copies to everyone. I wondered, if something happened to Becca, whether the family would fall apart—no Wizard of Oz, no sage stuffing, nothing to hold us together anymore.
I excused myself to run a plate of leftovers to Hannah. I stopped at home first, to grab some of Gravy’s food in case he got hungry for dinner. He hadn’t touched the turkey broth I’d given him at lunch.
I’d stowed all of his things in the pie safe after I’d brought it home from Shane’s—bags and cans of food, the treats he wouldn’t eat, the toys he wouldn’t play with, the blankets he’d chew up but not lie on. I remembered how the cabinet had caught Crystle’s eye when she’d come over. She’d probably been shocked to see something she’d considered too hideous for her own home prominently displayed in mine. I unlatched the doors with the punched-tin panels and opened them up. Everything was in its place. I hadn’t even thought to check after the break-in, knowing there was nothing valuable inside. When Grandma had left the cabinet to Shane, she’d probably pictured him getting married, his wife placing fresh pies on the shelves, never guessing how things would turn out, her favorite piece of furniture now serving as storage for a dog. Eventually, Mom’s green pie plate would end up inside. Both she and Grandma would be gone and this would be my inheritance, everyday things they had used and loved, the bittersweet notes they’d left behind.
I wondered if Grandma’s note to Shane was still there, where we’d found it. I wanted to read it again, to see her familiar handwriting. I yanked at the stubborn lower drawer and worked it back and forth until I was able to remove it, then flipped it over, dumping out the spare leash and the printouts Theo had given me about Gravy’s various ailments.
There was the note card that Grandma had attached, the edges brown with age. For Shane, who always tried to get the pie before it cooled. I noticed that someone had pressed shiny new pieces of packing tape over it, and I doubted that Shane, who wasn’t terribly sentimental, had done that to preserve it. As I ran my fingers over it, I felt the slight protrusion of something underneath. My pulse quickened. I picked at the tape until I could get my fingernails under one end and peel it back, carefully removing Grandma’s note. Beneath it lay a folded piece of paper, and when I opened it up, a small silver key fell to the floor. The paper was similar to the piece Mom had taken from Shane’s notepad, with the sketch of Gravy, the block letters appearing to match the indentations I had seen. The full message was unmistakable, etched firmly in black ink: This is the gun that killed the Calhouns.
I mouthed the words, whispered them in the silent house, weighed them on my tongue. A sharp pain burned in the center of my chest, like an axe splitting my sternum, making it hard to breathe. I had to face what this might mean. At the very least, Shane had intimate knowledge of the murders. At worst, he had committed them. Either way, he had hidden the evidence and left more questions than answers. Why had they been killed? Where was the gun? If he wasn’t responsible, why hadn’t he gone to the police?
Once, when
I was about thirteen, Dad had taken Shane and me into the woods to fell a deer. We needed the meat. The washer was broken, and Becca had stayed at the house with Mom to wring out the laundry by hand and hang it near the stove. Our clothes turned stiff when they dried that way and smelled of smoke.
Dad left us at the top of a rise and headed down the draw to check for tracks. Shane had carefully raised the gun to his shoulder, following Dad with his scope. He had a fading bruise the color of a Golden Delicious apple on his cheek.
What do you see? I asked, looking out over a landscape of dead leaves. Any deer?
I could do it, he murmured. I could pull the trigger and it’d all be over.
Shane?
I could shoot him. It’d look like a hunting accident.
It wouldn’t. You’re too good a shot. They’d take you away.
He kept his breath slow and measured, one eye squinted, but his finger slipped away from the trigger.
I could do it, I said.
No you can’t. The tension in his shoulders fell away and he lowered the rifle, keeping it firmly in his grip. If it’s anyone, it’ll be me.
Maybe Shane had gone after Roger to protect his wife, like she’d said. Maybe something had gone wrong. I held the key in my palm, ticked the notches with my fingernail. It didn’t belong to one of his gun safes, which had digital locks and were sealed with large pins like a bank vault. Crystle had already cleared those out, anyway. It could be for a gun case, something portable, though there was nothing to indicate where it might be.
Shane hadn’t been the best at thinking things through—not the version of him that I knew—but he’d clearly done this for a reason. He knew I loved the pie safe. He’d chosen to hide the note and key in the one piece of furniture that Crystle had hated, knowing she wouldn’t want to keep it for herself, that it was the most likely of his possessions to find its way back to his family. He had trusted us to find this. He had wanted us to know the truth, whatever it was. But it also seemed, in a way, that he was planning for his death, like Grandma or Mom when they hid their notes—an odd thing to do at thirty-six. Maybe he had taken his own life, as Crystle had implied. Either that, or he’d feared that something was going to happen to him.
I left the plate of food at Hannah’s door and texted her as I drove away. I couldn’t face her, knowing what I knew. She’d want me to turn the note over to Kendrick, and what else could I do? No one could give me the answers I needed. Shane was gone, and I didn’t trust Crystle to tell the truth. I pulled into a dark field, turned off my lights, and dialed the number Charlie had given me for Henley Pettit. It was a last resort, because I didn’t know if I could trust her, either. The phone rang and rang, but Henley didn’t pick up.
Junior had been agitated all day. There was a lot of chatter on the police scanner, and he’d taken a six-pack into the office and shut the door. Henley didn’t dare knock to tell him goodbye. He knew she was leaving and wasn’t particularly pleased about it. It made things more complicated for him, given what she knew, that she wouldn’t be in range of his watchful eye. Warnings weren’t necessary; she understood what was expected of her and had witnessed his skill in carrying out threats, hunting people down.
Raymond topped off the Skylark’s oil and antifreeze and rechecked the tire pressure, warning Henley not to keep all her cash in one place when she was traveling, in case she got mugged at a rest stop or someone broke into her car. Then he decided she should avoid rest stops altogether now that it was getting dark, only stopping someplace well lit, like a Casey’s, where the restrooms were indoors. He looked forlorn when she drove away, his frown lines cutting deep, but he told her everything would be fine, to get away from Blackwater and disappear for a while or more. He hugged her and she pressed her face against his flannel collar, inhaling the familiar sweat-and-tobacco scent and telling him not to worry.
She purposely waited until the last minute to text Jason, who was furious as expected but quickly honed the edge of his anger into a conciliatory tone, begging her to come talk it over. Finally, when she refused, he backed off, asking her to at least come say goodbye in person, that she owed him that much.
She relented, once he assured her that Earl wasn’t home, and drove her Buick into the Sullivans’ driveway for the last time, parking by the barn.
Jason greeted her at the door, his eyes rimmed red, and took her hand to lead her up to his room.
“I’m gonna miss you so much,” he said, snaking his arms around her waist.
“I’ll miss you, too,” she said, though she wasn’t entirely sure that she would. While she’d felt as bored and isolated as Jason when they’d first gotten together, she’d come to realize that he was desperately lonely in a way that she wasn’t, and she was excited at the prospect of being on her own.
“Why does it have to be tonight?” he asked. “Can’t you at least wait until morning? Stay with me. Just one night.”
“I can’t,” she said, knowing he only wanted more time to sway her, to convince her to stay. He was good at that. It wouldn’t work this time.
“Why not?”
“There’s just a lot going on. I feel like I can’t breathe here. Like if I don’t get out now, this place’ll swallow me up and I’ll never leave. I already told everyone I’m going. I said goodbye.”
She couldn’t bear to wake up to another day in this town. If she started driving now, she’d be in Colorado by sunrise, in time to see the first rays hit the peaks, the snow lit up like flames. Fire and ice. At least, that was how she imagined it.
“I’ll come with you, then.”
She shook her head and took a step back, already thinking of working her way out the door.
“We talked about it. I can take the jewelry—Dad probably wouldn’t even notice it was gone.”
“I can’t do that. I can’t let you do that.”
“But you need money,” he said. “I know you don’t have enough. You said so.”
She pressed her fingers to her lips, as though that might keep the secret in. “Earl called me,” she said. “After what happened. He called and he wouldn’t quit calling, and he wanted to pay me off and I let him.”
His jaw twitched, muscles tightening in his neck and down his arms.
“Jason. I’m going, and I’m going alone. It’s something I need to do.”
He shook his head, the anger draining away, hurt taking its place. She remembered how she had felt in the beginning, before his attention had overwhelmed her—there had been something real between them. She might not have loved Jason, exactly, but she had come close, and she knew he had felt it, too.
“I’m not saying I won’t be back, but I have to clear my head for a while. You understand, don’t you?”
“There’s nothing left for me here if you’re gone,” he said. He looked bereft, almost childlike, tears filling his eyes, and she thought of his mother dying and leaving him behind. Missy had taken Daphne’s place, but she’d never been terribly reliable, her attention likely focused on Earl, and now Henley was leaving, too. It wasn’t her job to stay and make up for everyone who’d abandoned him, but she felt a stab of guilt nonetheless. She still cared about him.
He seemed to sense her hesitation and drew her into his arms, holding her to his chest. He kissed her neck, her lips, tenderly and then insistently. The familiar warmth began to spread through her body, though when he went to bend her back onto the bed, the memory of Earl lurched into her mind. Her reaction was swift and visceral. She shoved him away from her, but his hands locked onto her biceps, his strong fingers curling all the way around. His teeth gritted together.
“I thought you loved me.”
“What did you think was gonna happen?” she snapped, thrashing out of his grip. “Did you think we’d get married and be the king and queen of Blackwater and wait for your dad to die so we could live off his money? In this hous
e? In this room? It was never gonna work.”
“I wanted us to be together. I thought that’s what you wanted, too.”
“Grow up and stop being such a fucking idiot! You don’t even know me.”
She turned to walk out, and he thrust her onto the bed in a rage, pinning her down before she could move. “I know you better than anyone!” he roared, spit flying in her face.
His hands were at her throat, choking out anything she might have said in return. She was owl-eyed and jerking, tears spilling down into her hair, clawing and kicking and pleading wordlessly as he held her tighter and tighter and tighter, his heart a bellows feeding a fire, his insides filling with molten ore that burned through the love and the pain and then finally, finally, began to cool.
* * *
—
She was limp, her eyes partly closed, and he didn’t think that she was breathing. He scrambled backward, flinging the blanket over her so he didn’t have to see her, and then he stood in the middle of the room, scrubbing his face with his palms, not knowing what he’d done, or what to do.
He turned on the stereo, pushing the volume and the bass high enough to throb in his chest like a second heartbeat, drowning out everything so he could think. He tried not to imagine Henley’s body cooling and stiffening on the bed, the scent of death absorbing into the bedding. He didn’t want to have to look at her, or touch her, but he knew he had to move her out of his room, out of the house before his father came home. If everyone thought she’d left town, no one would be looking for her, no one would know she was missing. He could drive into Kansas City, dump her at Kaw Point, near the West Bottoms where the Kansas River spilled into the Missouri. Make it appear that something had happened to her on the road, a random crime, a vulnerable country girl slain in the city.
