“Sure,” he said, looking worried. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
They drove for a few minutes to a spot just outside of town where they’d often gone to be together. It was quiet here, no houses in sight, and Abby got out of the car quickly. Beau came around to meet her, putting his arms around her and pulling her to him. At his touch, Abby felt instant relief, the world no longer shifting beneath her feet.
She looked up into his handsome face with its chiseled lines. “Thank you for coming to get me.”
“What is it, Abby?” he said, the palm of his hand curved against her cheek.
She buried her face in his chest then while painful sobs shook her shoulders. When she could bring herself to speak, she told him everything. That Emmy had been her real mother. That Becca was actually her aunt. That her father had been a boy named John, who died in a horrible accident in their barn.
Once it had all spilled out, Beau wrapped both arms around her and held her tight. “And you’re you,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how you came to be. What matters is you’re wonderful.”
“How can you say that?” she said, her voice breaking. “I don’t even know who I am now.”
“I know who you are,” he said, tipping her chin up and forcing her to look at him. “And I love you.”
“Beau—”
“Let’s get married, Abby,” he said, his voice soft, determined.
She pulled back and looked at him. “What did you just say?”
“I want to spend my life with you,” he said, touching her cheek. “I think we’ve gotten a pretty clear picture these past few days that there are no guarantees out there. I don’t want to define what we have by someone else’s definition of how, why, or when we can be together. I love you, Abby. You love me. That’s all we need to know.”
She leaned in and kissed him then, fresh tears running down her face. This time, though, they sprang not from sorrow, but from joy.
60
To Go Along
Impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, we make our irrevocable decisions.
- Marcel Proust
Now
The sun had started to set, light draining from the sky when Martha let herself out the front door of the house and sat down next to Becca on the porch steps.
“You told her then,” Martha said, resignation in her words.
Becca looked down at her hands, rubbed a thumb across a callous on her palm. “Emmy left a letter for her. I think she needed to know that Abby would learn the truth from her.”
“And who will it help?” Martha said, failing to hide her weariness now.
Becca looked into her mother’s face and said, “Isn’t it time the truth came out? All of it?”
Martha glanced at the field beyond the house. “Sometimes I wonder if we even know what the truth is anymore.” She paused, the silence between them weighted before she said, “There’s something I never told you, Becca.”
“What?” she asked, hesitant, as if unsure she wanted to know the answer.
Martha looked off into the distance. “Your father and I had a terrible argument the night John died. I didn’t agree that our silence would be the best thing for Emmy. I didn’t agree that we should keep what we suspected about the accident from John’s parents.”
Becca stared at her for a few moments, then said, “But I thought you both felt it was the best thing.”
“The one thing my mother told me before I got married was that in times of serious disagreement, I must let Daniel’s decision be the final one. I don’t know if what we did was right or wrong, but I couldn’t stand to see Emmy suffer more than she already had. I guess I chose to believe that Daniel was right and that our silence would be the best thing for her.” Her voice broke under the admission.
They were quiet for a while, a cricket making its lazy summer chirp in the hedge at one end of the yard. Becca reached over and put her hand on the back of Martha’s. “I know Daddy was trying to protect Emmy. But I do believe that the truth somehow always finds its way to the light.”
Martha turned her hand into Becca’s, squeezed once, then got up and went inside the house. She climbed the stairs to her room, retrieved the brown bag from her bottom dresser drawer and made her way slowly back to the porch.
A mockingbird trilled from the gutter of the house. Martha again sat down next to Becca, turning the bag upside down and letting the red and white baseball cap fall onto the apron of her dress. She held it up, looked inside. The initials W.P. were written there with a black laundry marker, the ink as legible now as it had been eighteen years ago on the night Becca had found it lying a few feet from John Rutrough’s body.
Becca stared at it for a long time before saying, “You kept it.”
“Yes.”
“Did Daddy know?”
Martha shook her head, picking the cap up and handing it to her. “No.”
Becca blinked hard, running her fingers across the embroidered Ballard County Eagles just above the bill.
“These past few days,” Martha said, her voice heavy with regret, “I’ve thought about what you told me that night when you gave me this hat. That the boy was probably looking for you and Matt, that he didn’t like that you two were seeing each other. I guess that must have been because you were different, and he couldn’t get comfortable with that. I’d like to condemn him for it, but I’ve done the same thing with my own son. I never gave Linda a chance because she was different from us.”
“Mama—”
“Let me finish,” she said. “I’m thankful that I have another chance. And that I can try to fix the damage I’ve done with Jacob. I wish the same could be true for the wrong done to John and Emmy.”
Becca reached over and put her hand on top of Martha’s, squeezing once. Martha felt a renewed link of love and understanding between them, and on its heels a surge of overwhelming gratitude.
“The truth is in your hands now, Becca,” she said, the burden of deceit lifting from her shoulders, as if she had finally done what she should have done eighteen years ago. There was no way to know how things might have turned out had she made this choice then. And that was the part from which there was no escape, a single question she would have to live with for the rest of her days.
61
Evidence
“Things that are done, it is needless to speak about; things that are past it is needless to blame.”
- Confucius
Now
Sheriff Lynch let Matt and Wilks cool their heels in the county’s finest holding cells until nearly five o’clock. Matt resisted the urge to dig a deeper hole for himself and sat out the waiting period without saying a word. When a deputy came to open his cell door and told him he was free to go, he forced himself to walk out of the jail without waiting to see if Wilks was being let go at the same time.
He walked the half-mile back to the Exxon station where his Land Rover was parked. He drove to his grandmother’s house and went straight upstairs to take a shower, glimpsing in the bathroom mirror afterward the bruise blooming on his left cheek.
Dressed in fresh jeans and a cotton shirt, which he left untucked, he went downstairs and picked up the phone, dialing the number still seared in his memory.
His heart pounded with the knowledge that he was stepping over lines, but he could no more stop himself than he could erase the circle of questions looping through his head. He had to see her.
Mrs. Miller answered the phone. He recognized her voice instantly. “This is Matt Griffith, ma’am. May I please speak to Becca?”
She didn’t answer for a few moments, hesitating long enough for Matt to think she might have hung up on him. When she finally spoke, the words were edged with resignation. “She left a little while ago. I suspect she went out to the lake house.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Matt said and hung up.
He drove the stretch of road between Ballard and the lake at th
e upper end of the speed limit, hoping Becca’s mother was right about where she had gone. Pulling into the driveway twenty minutes later, he exhaled a sigh of relief at the sight of the white truck.
He got out and knocked at the back door. When there was no answer, he let himself inside, walking through the kitchen and calling her name. He found her outside on the porch facing the lake.
He stood for a moment, letting himself drink in the sight of her. “Becca,” he said.
She looked up at him then, her blue eyes clouded with conflict. “You shouldn’t have come, Matt.”
He sat down next to her on the high-backed wooden bench, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, looking out at the lake beyond. “Are you all right?” he said.
“I don’t know what I am,” she answered softly. “I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
He turned to her and said, “I want to know what Aaron meant, Becca. I think you owe me that.”
She didn’t say anything for a good bit, but then stood and walked inside the house, returning a couple of minutes later with a brown bag in her hand. She handed it to him. He looked up at her, then reached in and pulled out the contents.
He stared at it for a moment, recognizing it instantly, even though it had been nearly two decades since he’d seen it. He picked it up, knowing who it belonged to, even before he saw the initials written in the rim.
“I gave this to him,” he said. “I drew that baseball bat on the side. I don’t understand. Why do you have it?”
“I found it beside John’s body in the barn the night he died.”
Matt stared at her, shaking his head. “Wilks was there?”
“Yes.”
“And what?” he said, shaking his head. “You think he killed John?”
“I don’t know exactly what happened. I just know John and Emmy weren’t alone there that night. After you left, I went upstairs to get ready for bed. Emmy wasn’t in her room or anywhere else in the house, so I went outside to look for her. I found her at the barn, sitting next to John’s body. She wasn’t able to tell me what happened. She never did.”
“Becca.” He reached for her then, pulling her against him and wrapping his arms tight around her. “Why didn’t you come forward with the evidence then?” he asked, his voice low.
“My parents believed Emmy would be forced to relive what had happened again and again if someone were charged with John’s death and there was a court proceeding. They didn’t want to put her through that after we saw how Emmy had been affected.”
“And so all this time you kept the hat?”
“I gave it to Mama that night. My father asked her to throw it away, but she kept it. She gave it back to me today and said it was up to me what to do with it.”
Matt didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t imagine that Wilks would ever have actually done anything to cause another boy’s death, and yet he held in his hand evidence of his involvement. He remembered then the times he had defended his friend to Becca. The remarks he’d made, remarks Matt had written off as harmless. “Becca,” he said, feeling suddenly sick inside. “I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Matt.”
“I could have talked to him—”
“Maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe not.”
He stared at the hat, realizing this was something he would never know. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I’ve asked myself that question over and over again. Maybe it’s better to just leave it all alone.”
“Do you really believe that?”
She looked at him then, her eyes brimming suddenly with tears. “No,” she said softly.
He reached for her hand, laced his fingers with hers. “I’ll go with you,” he said.
She stared at their interlocked hands, then looked into his eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”
62
Good-byes
Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.
- George Eliot
Now
They drove in their separate vehicles, and there were moments during the trip back to town and the walk through the parking lot to the sheriff’s office when Becca wasn’t sure she could go through with it.
Matt walked beside her, holding her arm the entire way, standing behind her chair when she placed the hat on the sheriff’s desk and told him everything she knew.
When she was done, Sheriff McBride folded his hands across his considerable stomach and said, “You do realize that I could file charges against you for not bringing this forward at the time of the incident?”
“Yes, Sheriff,” Becca said.
“Sheriff,” Matt began.
The sheriff raised a hand. “Stay out of this, Matt.”
“It’s all right,” Becca said. “I understand.”
He picked up the hat, turned it over once, and then looked up at Becca. “I’ll see what I can work out with the D.A.,” he said.
“Thank you, Sheriff,” Matt said.
“Thank you,” Becca repeated softly.
THE TWO OF them walked outside together, stopping next to Becca’s parked truck.
It was dark now, the light from a street lamp throwing shadows across the pavement.
“John and Emmy both deserve to have the truth known,” Matt said. “You did the right thing.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
Becca looked up at him then, her eyes wet with tears. “There’s something else I need to tell you, Matt.”
“What?” he said.
“Emmy was pregnant with John’s baby. She gave birth to Abby the following March after he died.”
Matt blinked wide, as if he’d been completely blindsided. “But I thought—”
“I’ve raised her as mine,” she said. “Aaron and I.”
Matt didn’t speak for several moments, and then finally said, “Is that why you married him? To give the baby a name? To help your sister?”
She struggled with the answer, compelled to offer one that would inflict as little pain as possible. But then she had no idea what that would be. And so she chose the truth. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
“Becca.” He cupped her face in his hand, his eyes dark with emotion. “There are so many things I want to say.”
“I know,” she said, putting a finger to his lips. “But you can’t. We can’t.”
“Is this how we’re to end it then?” He raked a hand through his hair, made a sound of frustration. “Becca, I love you. I’ve always loved you. It nearly killed me the first time to let you go, but I did because I thought it was what you wanted. Now . . . now I don’t think I can let you do it again. This time, it has to be your choice.”
“But it’s not really,” she said, shaking her head. “I have other people to consider. If it were just me—” She stopped, not letting herself finish the sentence.
“If it were just you?”
She leaned in then and lifted her face to his. He lowered his head at the same time, and they kissed with a kind of desperate longing, tempered with the unspoken awareness that this was good-bye.
Becca pulled away first, fully aware that if she did not, she might never bring herself to do so.
“Becca,” he said, his hands on her shoulders.
“I have to go,” she said. “Good-bye, Matt.” She made herself walk away then and get inside the truck.
It was only when she reached the edge of the lot that she let herself glance up at the rear-view mirror. And when she saw that he was still standing there, watching her go, she began to cry, grief for Matt and grief for her sister a single rising tide inside her, the crest so high and wide that she wondered if she would ever manage to find her way above it again.
BECCA SLEPT DOWNSTAIRS that night.
She couldn’t bring herself to go up to the room she shared with Aaron, aware that her actions would only be a lie when compared to the turmoil in her heart.
The living room couch did li
ttle to entice sleep, and she mostly turned from one side to the other until the grandfather clock struck four. When she opened her eyes again, the clock was striking the hour as five. She sat up to find Aaron sitting in a chair a few feet away, watching her, silent.
“Is this where we are then?” he asked, his voice surprisingly even.
“Aaron. I never wanted to hurt you.”
He looked off, his gaze on the window where morning light was beginning to replace the dark. “The sad thing is I know that. But what I don’t understand is why you can’t close the door on what you feel for him. Your life is here, Becca.”
“I’m not leaving,” she said.
He stared at her for several long moments, and then said, “You already have.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“I guess I always believed that love could be a choice. I know now that isn’t true. Because I know that you’ve tried to love me in the same way you love him. But you don’t. And I would be a fool to let myself believe for a moment longer that you ever will.”
Tears welled in Becca’s eyes, emotions clogging her throat so that she couldn’t speak. When she finally found her voice, she said, “We’ll get through this.”
“Ah, Becca,” he said, shaking his head. “Last night when I lay awake waiting for you to come to bed, I told myself exactly that. That we would get through this. But then I realized that’s not enough. Marriage has to be about more than getting through. And then it hit me that I’ve been ignoring the truth all along. The truth is that when something doesn’t begin right, it can never end right. I wanted you so much that I was willing to overlook what I knew to be true. I knew you didn’t love me in the same way that I loved you. And maybe you thought I was playing the hero, marrying you to give your sister’s child a name. But I wasn’t that selfless. I married you because I wanted you for my own. However I could have you.”
Tears streamed down Becca’s cheeks now. She wanted to deny everything he’d just said, but her heart was heavy with the realization that she could not. She did love Aaron, for his goodness and steadfastness. For the good father he had been to Abby. For his kindness with the animals on the farm. For so many things. But just not in the way he needed her to.
Crossing Tinker's Knob Page 26
