The thought sends a surge of vomit up my gullet and I manage to get out of the car before I throw up all over Vivian Benson’s lawn. I’m gasping for breath, hands on my knees, when I hear the squeak of a screen door. I look up and see a tiny woman with close-cropped, pearl-colored hair, coming down the Bensons’ concrete front steps. “Maggie O’Keefe?” she asks, squinting at me.
I nod, wiping my mouth with my sleeve. Though I haven’t seen Vivian Benson this close up in years, I recognize her immediately. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Benson,” I say. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“Don’t you worry about it,” she says, laying a hand on my shoulder. I wince from the pressure on my blistered back. I try to will my stomach to settle. “I remember when I was pregnant,” Mrs. Benson continues. “I had morning sickness morning, noon and night. Come in and rest for a minute.” She places a hand on my elbow and leads me up the front steps and into a room with faded floral curtains and a wall filled with black-and-white family photos.
I know I’ve been here before but when Nola and I came knocking on her door I wasn’t paying any attention to the décor. “Take a seat,” Mrs. Benson invites and then suddenly she is gone.
I sit down and sink into the lumpy cushions and close my eyes. Suddenly, I’m fifteen years old again and I’ve just discovered the dead body of my best friend. The best friend that I murdered. Another wave of nausea rushes over me.
“Here, honey,” Mrs. Benson says, offering me a washcloth and a glass of water. I press the damp cloth to my face. I take a small sip of water. Mrs. Benson sits across from me in a straight-back chair, her feet barely reaching the worn carpet. “I heard on the news that there was new evidence. That was an awful night,” she says. “When I opened the door to find you girls on my front step...” She shakes her head at the memory. “Seems like yesterday.” Mrs. Benson looks down at her hands. She tries to smooth the wrinkles from her knuckles with a fingertip. “It was close to ten o’clock. I remember because I was watching Picket Fences. I loved that show.”
She looks up at me as if expecting a response. I murmur something about how my dad watched it too.
“Anyway, I’m sitting right where you are when the doorbell rings, and I think to myself, Who in the world would be here at this time of night? At first I thought it might be that awful Iverson girl, Dawna, coming over to tell me that she saw a strange car coming down the street. Such a paranoid thing, always finding the bogeyman where there were only shadows.”
Mrs. Benson sighs. “I wish it would have been Dawna, but instead I found Nola standing there looking up at me with those big glasses and green eyes like some kind of click beetle.”
She leans forward in her chair, “It was ten o’clock and I just couldn’t imagine who would be ringing my doorbell at that time of night. Right away I was concerned, but by the casual look on Nola Knox’s face, you would have thought she was selling Girl Scout cookies or popcorn for her basketball team or something. But instead of asking me if I want a box of Thin Mints or Do-Si-Dos, she says, My sister is dead. She was so matter-of-fact I thought I heard her wrong. Then I saw you standing behind her, pale as a ghost.
“But she said it again, My sister is dead. She was murdered. I didn’t know if her sister was on the street outside or what so I pulled you both into the house,” Vivian says, making a motion as if tugging on a rope, “and then I shut and locked the door thinking that some crazy person must be out there. That’s when I called 911.”
“I remember,” I tell her and take another drink of water.
Mrs. Benson nods knowingly. “Then you remember how strange Nola sounded.”
I didn’t remember, I was too busy thinking about how I ended up killing the girl who was like a sister to me. How we would never speak again. I was thinking about how I was going to go to prison for murder, how this would kill my dad.
What I wasn’t thinking about was Nola. It hits me now. When Nola and I went searching for Eve, Nola knew I was the one who killed her sister, but she never spoke up. Never said a word.
“She wasn’t right,” Vivian says, getting to her feet and then joining me on the sofa. She smells like talcum powder. “And Nola was not in shock like the 911 operator thought. She said My sister is dead just like someone would say, It’s Tuesday or I had a bologna sandwich for lunch. Do you have a sister?” she asks.
“A brother,” I say dumbly.
“Then you know,” she says with finality. “You would be devastated if something happened to your brother, right?”
“I should go,” I mumble. “Thank you, for the water. I’m sorry about your lawn.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she says. She walks me to the door and wishes me good luck with the birth of my baby and I thank her.
Before I step outside, Vivian lays a hand on mine. It is soft, cool. “I should have spoken up twenty-five years ago but no one asked my opinion,” she says. “So I’m going to say it now. I know it sounds crazy, but that girl killed her sister or knows who did it.”
I almost laugh out loud. If she only knew. Then I go back to my car and start to cry again.
* * *
I need to compose myself before I head home for the day so I decide to drive around for a while. There’s something calming about driving the back roads. The gentle twists and turns edged by ditches filled with waving black-eyed Susan and Queen Anne’s lace.
I can’t believe I considered, even for the briefest of moments, running away or killing myself. I could never do that to my baby, to Shaun. But I also never believed that I could murder my best friend. For years I was afraid to fall asleep, scared that Eve would come to me in my dreams. I was afraid to close my eyes and find her staring back at me with those dead, unseeing eyes.
The nightmares came, but not in the way I thought they would. Eve would come to me as her seven-year-old self, all red hair and knobby knees while I continued to age. She’d smile at me, her front tooth missing, her freckles forging a path across her nose, her scarf wound around her neck. In my dreams Eve would hold her hand out to me and though every fiber of my being told me not to take it, I always did. Together we’d run toward the caves and once there we’d stop and peer into the black hole at the mouth of the cave. Come on, Eve would urge. I would shake my head and beg her not to go inside. She pleaded but I refused until she released my hand and went forward without me.
Don’t go, I cried and in desperation I grabbed at her scarf and pulled and pulled. Eve’s eyes bulged and her lips turned blue, her fingers scrabbled at her neck, but still I pulled until Eve dropped to the ground, her red hair spread out against the ground like a cardinal’s wings. Then I would wake up, crying.
I’m not a bad person, at least that’s what I tell myself. If it was just me, if I didn’t have Shaun and the baby, I think I could turn myself in. But I do have them and why blow up the lives of two innocent people? Four, really, if you include my dad and brother. Nola has offered me a way out. All I have to do is frame a not-so-innocent man for murder.
I find myself driving past Sacred Heart High School. I think of what Colin told me about Cam Harper being a softball coach for the girls’ high school team. I pull into the parking area that sits between the soccer field and the softball fields. On one side a horde of teen boys is running footwork drills warming up for a soccer match and on the other the softball team is running laps around the bases.
And there he is, grasping the chain fence that surrounds the field. Cam Harper is wearing a Sacred Heart Stallions T-shirt, khaki shorts and holding a clipboard. He spits off to the side and shouts something at the girls that I can’t hear. I look at the girls, ponytails swinging. They look so young. Just babies really—fourteen, fifteen years old. Just like I was.
I watch as Cam comes around the fence and toward a girl with long dark hair who is standing off on her own, away from the team practicing her swing. Cam talks to the girl who looks like she is tr
ying to adjust her feet based on what he’s saying. Finally, he comes around behind her and begins to move her hands, repositioning her fingers along the shaft of the bat. He places his hands on her hips and thighs, adjusting her stance. His fingers linger too long, slide along her bare legs. The girl seems to lean into his touch. She looks up at him with adoration. Cam Harper definitely has a type. I turn away in disgust. He was back at it. He probably never stopped, just cycled through girls until they reached a certain age and then started all over again.
I know I wasn’t a likely target for someone like Cam. I was the daughter of the police chief for God’s sake. But Cam saw something in me. Something sad and broken and lonely. Somehow he knew I could keep a secret. If only there was someone who could have told me to watch out, to beware. Would I have listened? Probably not.
* * *
When I get home Shaun is sprawled out on the living room floor, a large cardboard box, tools and pieces of what could be a baby swing strewn around him. I stand in the doorway and watch him for a minute as he sorts screws into neat little piles. There’s so much I’ve kept from him. So much that is unforgivable. Shaun could never find out about Cam Harper or Eve. He’d never look at me the same way again. “What’s all this?” I ask, stepping into the room.
“Baby swing,” Shaun says, looking up from the direction pamphlet. “This thing can actually detect when a baby starts crying and then adjust its settings to try to get her to stop.”
“Wow,” I say. I lean against the doorjamb. I’m drained of energy.
Shaun looks at me with concern. “You okay?” he asks.
“If something happened to me you’d still take care of the baby wouldn’t you?” I ask thinking of Nola’s warning to me: And what do you think your husband will do once he finds out that the mother of his child is a monster? Do you really think he’d want the baby? Off to foster care she’d go.
Shaun sets down his screwdriver and gets to his feet. “Are you feeling okay, Maggie? What’s going on?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “But if something happened to me and I couldn’t be here to take care of the baby, you’d look out for her, right?”
Shaun stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “Of course I would. She’s my baby. Our baby.” He pulls me into an embrace. “What’s going on? Was it the fire? Did you find out who set it? Have you gotten more phone calls?”
“No,” I murmur into his shoulder though it’s so much more than the fire and the calls. It’s the new evidence, it’s Nola’s threats, it’s the knowledge that everything I love could be taken away from me. I could be going to prison. “Just promise me, okay?” I squeeze him tight, tears flooding my eyes. “Just promise me that you’ll always be there for her, no matter what.”
Shaun promises and this makes me feel better, that maybe this will all turn out okay.
I know one thing for sure. Nola isn’t going away but an idea has already begun to form. Just a seed but it’s been planted. Maybe there’s a way I can keep Nick Brady out of this after all. And more important, maybe I can protect my family and even keep myself out of this entire tragic mess.
NOLA KNOX
Thursday, June 18, 2020
Nola parked her truck on Juniper, waiting for just the right time to make her move. It was still dark, that shadowy space between night and morning. Except for the bakery, the stores along the street were not due to open for a few hours. Nola wasn’t worried about being seen. In fact, it was important that she was. She needed a reason to be on this street at this time of morning.
She stopped in the bakery and examined the case filled with frosted and filled donuts and pastries. She wanted the chocolate one with sprinkles but that could be too messy for the job she needed to do so she settled on the plain cake donut. She pulled it from the paper bag and took a bite.
Nola was a bit surprised by Maggie’s reaction to her bombshell about what she’d witnessed at the caves. Nola thought it would take more convincing to get Maggie on board with the plan to bring Nick Brady down. Sure, Nola could go to the police and tell them what she had seen and heard that afternoon at the caves, but Maggie was right, it would be a hard sell.
Maggie was a well-respected cop and the daughter of the beloved former police chief. She was married to a hometown boy who sold Christmas trees for God’s sake. And there was the meager little detail that Nola hadn’t said anything about what she saw and heard at the caves for twenty-five years.
But Maggie, it seemed, after a brief hesitation, was all in with framing Nick for Eve’s death. Maybe the two of them were more alike than she thought. Maggie could see what a scumbag Nick was then and probably still was. People don’t change. That’s one thing Nola had learned over the years. Once a predator, always a predator. Why should Nick have gotten away with treating girls the way he did? Though Eve never admitted it to her, Nola knew that Nick hurt her. She saw the bruises.
Then there was the day in the girls’ locker room. She would never forget the feel of Nick’s hands on her head as he forced her downward, never forget the hyena-like laughter of his friend. They had touched her in places and tried to make her do things that still made her face hot with shame. But why should she be embarrassed? She hadn’t done anything but try to gather her dead sister’s things.
Nola remembered the power she felt when she shoved Nick into the trophy case, the crack of the glass as it shattered into a million pieces. She didn’t even care that Nick had dragged her down with him. She welcomed the bite of pain as the jagged shards penetrated her chest. But even as she was being stitched up in the hospital she knew that no one would believe her side of the story, so she took the punishment. She endured the psychological evaluations and the expulsion and the counseling sessions. She told them what they wanted to hear eventually, murmured an apology and waited. Waited for the right time to strike back. And now was the time.
Half-hidden in the early morning shadows, Nick Brady approached the door to Grotto Gifts & Things and pulled out a set of keys. He fumbled and dropped them to the sidewalk, bending over to retrieve them. With effort, Nick picked up the keys unaware that someone was watching. Nola pulled the long, narrow plastic case from the glove box then reached for her phone and punched in three numbers. She could use a little chaos in order to get what she needed. What better way than to get the Grotto PD on the scene?
“Yes,” she cried, her voice shrill and panicked. “Someone is breaking into Grotto Gifts on Juniper. I think he’s armed. Please hurry.” Nola disconnected and watched while Nick finished unlocking the door and went inside. She waited for the cavalry to arrive.
She took the gold-plated lancing pen out of its plastic case, inserted the disposable needle into the pen cartridge, twisted the protective cap and rotated the pen until the lancer was screwed in. There, Nola thought. Who knew that blood collection tools came in pen form—for discreet blood testing, the description said. It was just what she needed. It was amazing what you could purchase at the local pharmacy. She held the pen tightly in her fist. Nola had two goals: to collect a sample of Nick’s blood without being detected and to not get arrested while doing so.
It didn’t take long. Two minutes at the most when a Grotto PD police car appeared and came to a slanted stop in front of the shop. Two officers hurried from the car. Nola was a little disappointed to see that their weapons remained holstered.
Curious, Nick returned to the entrance to see what was going on. After a short conversation with the officers, Nola stepped from her truck and started walking their way. Nick looked toward the street and his eyes narrowed in understanding. He gestured toward Nola and the two officers turned.
“I’m the one who made the call,” Nola said apologetically. “I thought I saw a man trying to force the door open.”
“He’s the owner of the shop, ma’am,” the officer explained. “There’s no break-in.”
“You knew damn well it was me,” Nick said
. Circles of sweat darkened the armpits of his shirt and he mopped his forehead with the back of one hand. Beneath the streetlight the raised, puckered scars on his arm glared white against his ruddy skin.
“I didn’t,” Nola said, contrite. She turned to the officers. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to waste your time. I had no idea it was Nick.”
“Bullshit,” Nick said. “She’s crazy. She thinks...” Nick finally noticed the small crowd of curious onlookers that had gathered outside the bakery across the street and paused to watch.
“I think what?” Nola asked. “That you killed my sister,” she finished for him. “That you beat her up and strangled her because she broke up with you?”
“Jesus, Nola. Can’t you get it through your head? I’m sorry about what happened to Eve. But. I. Didn’t. Kill. Her,” Nick said with disgust. “I loved her.”
This was it. This was the time. Nola leaned into the arc of his waving finger and it grazed her cheek. “Hey,” she exclaimed. “Don’t you fucking touch me.” She swatted away his hand with one hand and with the other, keeping the pen concealed beneath her sleeve, shoved the tip of the pen into his forearm.
“Ouch, dammit, you scratched me, you bitch,” Nick said, instinctively grabbing onto Nola’s arm. The momentum caused them both to lose their balance and Nola fell forward, striking Nick’s face with the crown of her head.
Blood exploded from his nose. “Jesus Christ,” he cried, pressing his fingers to his face.
“He touched me first,” Nola insisted, dropping the pen into the deep pocket of her cardigan before anyone noticed it. “You saw it,” she said to the police officers who were trying to step between the two. Blood coursed down Nick’s face and dripped to the sidewalk. “He grabbed my arm and I fell into him.”
This Is How I Lied Page 19
