by Amy Engel
When the woman at the ticket counter asked me where I was headed, I looked over at the big map of the United States, crisscrossed with bus routes, and picked the farthest point. If I was lucky, nothing in California would remind me of Cooper. I would have my baby and give her to a family who would raise her under mild, sunny skies and watchful smiles. My granddad would never lay eyes on her. I would stand in the ocean and let it wash Roanoke away, leaving me clean and new. I would start again.
Apparently, Tommy wasn’t the only idiot.
The hyoid bone is small. Most people have never heard of it. I never had before Tommy called and told us the news. Now I’m sitting in front of Granddad’s computer, my gaze fastened on an image of the U-shaped bone at the base of the throat. The single bone coroners examine to determine if someone has been strangled. A lot of times it doesn’t break, even when a person’s life is throttled out of her. But Allegra’s did break, before her body disappeared into the dank water of the swimming hole. Allegra was murdered, strangled, her hyoid bone snapped. They found it tangled in the rotted skeins of her hair. Tommy was professional on the phone. His voice broke only once, near the very end.
—
I’m going to be late to her funeral if I don’t pull it together and find something to wear. Gran laid out a plain black dress on my bed this morning, one culled from her own closet. But I don’t want to look like a version of Gran. All I can focus on is Allegra, her flare for the dramatic, her love of making an entrance. I want to honor her memory. I want to make my grandparents uncomfortable, punish them a little, and a sensible cotton-silk blend won’t cut it.
So here I am, standing in Allegra’s closet, fingers flipping through her collection of clothes. They aren’t much different from when we were teenagers, most of them too tight, too short, too much. I lean forward and bury my face in a handful of her shirts, breathe in the faint smell of her skin. My shoulders shake and my throat burns, but I don’t cry, can’t afford to give in to tears. She wouldn’t approve of puffy eyes and blotchy cheeks.
In her collection of dresses, I find the perfect one. Black, short, low-cut so my boobs threaten to spill out of the neckline. I pull my hair up on top of my head, slip a pair of Allegra’s giant gold hoops into my ears. I sit at her vanity table and slick my mouth with a tube of her red lipstick, dab her perfume behind my ears. My reflection in the mirror isn’t my own, it’s Allegra’s, and I smile, already relishing the pain I will cause. I run my fingers across her message to me, , before I stand. “Just a little longer,” I promise her.
Gran sucks in a startled breath when I appear at the top of the stairs, and Granddad turns away. I’ve never seen him in a suit before, and he looks more dashing than he has a right to. “Oh, Lane,” Gran says as I sweep past them toward the car on a pair of Allegra’s stiletto heels.
“What?” I say, light, mocking. “You don’t like it?”
Gran doesn’t answer me, just gives her head a swift shake.
“Well, Allegra would like it. And since it’s her funeral, I figured what the hell.” I wrench open the back door of Gran’s Mercedes and slip inside. Charlie has already turned on the car, the air-conditioning running full blast, and the cool leather makes goose bumps crawl along my bare arms and legs.
The funeral is taking place at the Methodist church in Osage Flats. The summer I lived here we went to church exactly twice. Just enough to keep the Bible thumpers from condemning us, not so much that people actually started expecting us to show up regularly. I’m surprised my grandparents had the nerve to go at all. The walls should have crumbled the second we walked through the wide double doors, all of us dead in a hail of fire and brimstone. But I guess God likes to dole out his punishment slowly instead, the better to really make it hurt.
The church is already full as we walk down the center aisle. I think it’s more a case of gawking, the news of Allegra’s murder already having made the rounds, than from any genuine love for her. No one can resist being part of the excitement now, the chance to pull out the fake pearls and the button-down shirts and share stories of the last time they saw her. To pretend they’re sorry she’s gone. I keep my eyes straight ahead, my shoulders back, and think about Allegra, how much she would love the shocked murmurs my appearance is causing, how hard she’d laugh about it later.
“Interesting choice,” Cooper says under his breath, eyes on my dress, when I ease in next to him on the pew behind my grandparents.
I give him a half smile. “Thanks.”
He folds my hand into his, rests it on his leg, and I let him. Tommy and Sarah are on his opposite side, and Tommy glances at me before his eyes dart away, barely able to make eye contact. He is wearing his police uniform, freshly starched, his hat balanced on his knee. Sarah doesn’t even look in my direction. I feel a momentary stab of regret. I didn’t consider how hard it would be on Tommy to see me this way—a version of Allegra who’s still breathing.
The service is banal and boring, has nothing at all to do with who Allegra was. Of course, no one in the entire church would want to know her true story. How the love of her life was the sixty-something man sitting in front of me. The man who groomed her to be his lover from probably the time she could talk. Her father. Her grandfather. Two for the price of one. A sob that sounds dangerously close to a laugh spills out of me, and Cooper squeezes my hand, pulling me back from an edge he doesn’t even know I’m teetering on.
When it’s over, everyone shuffles down to the church basement, cinder-block walls and flickering fluorescent lights. The overpowering smell of Pine-Sol from the freshly mopped linoleum starts a headache beating right behind my eyes. Someone has pushed a few long folding tables against the far wall, and they are already burdened under dozens of cheese-and-mayonnaise-clogged casseroles and platters of gooey desserts. My grandparents are standing together in the center of it all. A flock of sympathizers hover around them, offering food and drink, a few quick pats to their shoulders, but nothing more familiar than that.
“Can we get out of here?” I ask Cooper.
He doesn’t ask questions, just nods and follows me up the stairs, his hand on the small of my back.
“Are they coming here after?” he asks me once we’ve turned down the lane to Roanoke.
I nod. “To bury her.”
Cooper clears his throat. “You want me to stay?”
“No, that’s okay. Only family for this part, I think.” A party of three forming a gothic little tableau around Allegra’s grave.
Cooper pulls over in front of the house. “You’ll be all right?”
I look at him. “I’ll be fine.” I don’t make any move to get out of the car, though.
Cooper takes a toothpick from the stash in his ashtray and pops it between his teeth. “Has Tommy said anything about leads?”
“He hasn’t talked to me about that,” I say. But I don’t need to speak with Tommy to know some random stranger didn’t kill Allegra, to know the answer is probably very close to home. I think of Allegra’s slender neck, her delicate hyoid bone. And my granddad’s strong and capable hands.
—
After Cooper leaves, I bypass the house and head straight for the tiny family cemetery, let myself in through the wrought-iron gate. There’s a Bobcat parked in the distance, not close enough to be vulgar, but its purpose is obvious given the yawning rectangle of Allegra’s soon-to-be grave and the mound of fresh earth next to it covered with a blue tarp, which flaps lightly in the wind.
My high heels sink into the ground as I walk, not toward Allegra’s grave but to my mother’s. There are pink roses in a small vase at the base of her tombstone. CAMILLA EVELYN ROANOKE. HOME AT LAST. B: 11–15–71 D: 4–22–04. It’s the first time I’ve ever visited her grave.
“Hey, Mom,” I say, run my fingers over the shiny stone. “Sorry it took me so long.” A hot tear rolls down my cheek. “Sorry I was such a shitty daughter.” I wrap my arms around my stomach, trying to hold myself together. “Sorry for all of it, really. This who
le fucked-up mess of a life.” Roanoke looms behind me, its shadow falling across my back. I hate that this is where she ended up, stuck forever in the one place she tried so hard to escape. Entombed where he can visit her every day if he wants, sit on the ground above her bones and touch the grass growing there. Water her flowers with his tears.
“I wish I’d known the truth,” I tell my long-dead mother. “Back then. Maybe we could have helped each other.” The vibrant prairie sun bakes the skin of my neck, burns through the black fabric of my dress. “It wasn’t your fault,” I whisper, “what happened to you. And it was all right that you loved him. That wasn’t your fault, either. I hope you know that.”
I doubt she ever did know that, but I want to say the words anyway. I wish once upon a time someone had said them to me.
—
Tommy waits a decent interval after the burial before he comes knocking. I’ve managed to choke down a bit of food and changed out of Allegra’s dress, back into jean shorts and a tank top that feel more familiar but make Allegra seem farther away. Tommy isn’t alone when he shows up. He’s flanked by an overweight edge-of-retirement type who flashes a badge in my direction and introduces himself as County Sheriff Mills as he lumbers inside. They both follow me toward the living room, where Gran and Granddad have already gathered.
“I know we talked about this on the phone,” Tommy says, stiff inside his uniform as he sits on the couch where Gran points him. “But I thought I should swing by, see if you all had any questions.”
“I have questions,” I say from my spot in the doorway. “Questions like: Who killed her? When? Why?”
“Yes, Lane,” Gran says. “Those are the same questions we all have.”
Tommy takes a deep breath, and I imagine he’s slipping on his cop persona like a set of clothes, covering up the Tommy who loved Allegra and setting him aside. “First off, I wanted to let you know the county sheriff’s office is taking over from here on out.” Tommy gives Sheriff Mills a quick nod. “We’re not equipped for this type of investigation, and it’s probably better this way, considering my past relationship with Allegra.”
I can’t tell if he’s simply referring to all the years he dated Allegra or if he’s told Mills the entire story, and Tommy’s refusing to meet my eyes, not giving anything away.
Sheriff Mills shifts forward from his position on the couch. “From the condition of Allegra’s body, the medical examiner is fairly confident that she was killed around the time she disappeared, and her body put in the swimming hole almost immediately.”
“So she wasn’t…kept somewhere before she died?” Gran asks.
“No, there’s no evidence of that,” Mills says.
“Was she pregnant?” my granddad asks, voice scratchy. He’s taken off his tie and suit coat, undone the top button of his white dress shirt and rolled up the sleeves. He’s hunched over, forearms balanced on his knees, his eyes on the glass of scotch between his hands. He looks so goddamn handsome, like some portrait of grief from an old black-and-white movie. I want to go over and punch him in the face, rip him to shreds with my bare hands.
“She was,” Tommy says, his voice remarkably steady. “Yes.”
My granddad still doesn’t look at anyone, just nods and throws his head back. Drains his drink in one gulp.
“How do you know?” I ask. “Her body, it was…” I wish I’d listened to Cooper and not looked, because now when I think of Allegra, all I can see are slimy bones and tattered, rotten flesh. From that one quick, horrifying glimpse, I’d assumed her body wouldn’t have much left to tell us. Which is maybe what the person who dumped her was counting on, too.
Sheriff Mills clears his throat. “We drained the pond and found a length of chain at the bottom, still wrapped around her left tibia. We’re working on the assumption she was weighted down when she was put into the water. That kept her below the surface long enough that it delayed decomposition. Partial kidney, most of her uterus, some skin and ligaments were intact, along with her bones, of course.”
No one speaks, and Tommy shifts uncomfortably on the too-soft couch, sinking back into the cushions against his will.
“Can you figure out who the father is?” I ask. “From the fetus, I mean.”
“Not yet,” Mills says. “The fetal remains might be too compromised for any sort of DNA testing. But it’s a possibility if we get a lead on who the father might be, have his DNA to test against the fetus. Was she seeing anyone?” Mills continues. “A boyfriend? Any ideas about the father?”
Tommy looks at me, white lines of strain bracketing his mouth, begging me with his eyes. I stare back at him, waiting to see how deep his cowardice runs, until he drops his gaze to the floor.
“No,” Gran says, “no recent boyfriend that we know of. But Allegra wasn’t the type to bring men here to meet us.”
Mills nods, scratches something into a tattered notebook.
“Is that what we’re thinking?” I ask. “Her murder had something to do with the pregnancy?” That gets everyone’s attention, both Tommy and my granddad snapping their heads in my direction. Even Gran stiffens against her chair. I feel like we’re all balancing on a house of cards, no one quite brave enough to say fuck it, and topple the whole thing to the ground. Not even me.
Mills looks up from his notebook, and I can practically see the question mark forming over his head. “We’re not thinking anything at this point,” he says. “Still gathering facts. I’m sure you all would have mentioned it already, but was she scared of anyone? Had she been feeling threatened?”
Gran frowns. “No. She never said anything like that.”
I picture Sarah and Allegra standing on the front porch. What did Sarah really say to Allegra that day? How far was she willing to go to protect her marriage? My eyes dig into the top of Tommy’s skull, but he’s returned his gaze to the floor.
“How was her mood in the days before she disappeared?” Mills asks.
“She was perfectly happy,” my granddad says.
I snort out a laugh, and Tommy’s eyes finally fly to mine. But now it’s my turn to look away. I duck my head and count to ten. “Aren’t most murder victims killed by people they know?” I ask, once I have myself under control.
“Well, I don’t know the exact statistics,” Mills says, brow furrowed. “But yes, plenty of murders are committed by people the victim knows.” There is so much subtext bouncing around the room, just out of his reach, it’s no wonder he looks confused.
“Why don’t you leave asking the questions up to the professionals?” my granddad says to me. “Let the man do his job.”
“I am letting him do his job. But I want to help.”
Tommy shakes his head. “Not sure there’s much you can do.”
I hate it that I can’t take a single word out of Tommy’s mouth at face value now, always wondering if he’s protecting himself, protecting Sarah. I knew I couldn’t trust my grandparents, but it hurts to have to add Tommy’s name to the list. “I want to keep looking around,” I find myself saying. My granddad stares at me for a second before he speaks. When he does, his voice is very gentle. “I thought you already did that. And you didn’t find anything.”
Run Lane. “I stopped. I should have kept looking, I should—”
“Lane,” Tommy interrupts. “There’s probably no point.”
“I have to do something,” I say, my voice breaking. I’m holding on to the doorjamb behind me with both hands, white-knuckling my way through this entire conversation. If I were smart, this is where I’d vomit out everything I know, about Tommy, Sarah, my grandparents, this whole fucked-up family. Leave the whole sordid mess for Mills to sift through. But I’ve lost whatever shred of faith I had that anyone in this room really cares about what happened to Allegra. For Mills, she’s just one more case, a number on the top of a file. Would he be dogged enough to see through my granddad’s manipulations, to look beyond my gran’s self-serving view of Allegra? And covering his own ass is clearly Tommy’s priori
ty, deflecting suspicion from himself and Sarah, even at the expense of Allegra. Or maybe it’s a mix of guilt and hubris that keeps me from opening my mouth, the belief that solving Allegra’s murder is the way I can finally make amends to her, that I’m the only one who can figure it out. The only one she trusted. But whatever the reason, I’m not ready to give up yet, my gut urging me to keep Allegra’s secrets a little while longer.
—
I spend two days literally tearing Roanoke apart, room by room. I look everywhere, even places I know Allegra would never carve. She favored wood, but I look on all the appliances, the undersides of toilet lids, upholstered furniture. When I’m done with the house, I concentrate on the barn, pulling aside hay bales with my bare hands until my fingers are bloody and Charlie leads me away.
Tommy calls a couple of times to check in, but I barely speak to him. I’m too focused, too single-minded, to hold a competing thought in my mind. Cooper gets ahold of me on the third day, after Tommy fills him in, to see if I’ve had any luck.
“You don’t think I’m nuts?” I ask him.
“No,” he says. “I’m not saying I’m convinced she left any sort of message. But it makes a crazy Allegra sort of sense. And if she did, I would think she hid it for you to find.”
I pause in my frantic search of the linen closet shelves. “Why would you say that?”
“If she suspected something bad was about to happen, she would’ve known you’d come back if it did. She would have wanted you to be the one to figure it out.”
A cold breath whispers down my spine. “How could she have known I would come back?”
“Because she understood the power of Roanoke,” Cooper says. “The hold it has over all of you. She probably knew it would draw you home.”
“You make it sound like a cult.” I try too hard for a laugh and end up with a shaky cough instead.
“Isn’t it?” Cooper says, voice so quiet I have to push the phone against my ear to hear him.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, suck in a shuddering breath through my mouth. We are silent for a long moment, listening to each other breathe. “Are you ever going to tell me what goes on out there, Lane?” He already knows. It’s there in his voice. Maybe not the ugly specifics, but the general outline, which is bleak enough.
