The Last Breath

by Kimberly Belle

  Bo shoots Cal an apologetic look. “I’m helping, too.”

  Cal’s furious expression says it all, but for the first time I can remember, he’s speechless.

  Dad ignores his brother’s fury, turning back to us with a fierce expression. “One last thing, and it’s the most important. I want you kids to promise—no, swear to me that you’ll figure out how to make peace with what happened. Find a place for it inside you somewhere and tuck it away tight, because that’s the only way you’ll ever be able to move on. Make sure your heads and your hearts are free for better things, for more important things. Things like falling in love and building a life with somebody. Okay?”

  Regret sears the backs of my eyes, and I turn to look out the window. I don’t tell him that’s what I thought I was already doing—moving on, falling in love and building a life with Jake. Because what’s left to tell him about now? Only a hollow ache in the center of my chest.

  As if reading my thoughts, Lexi slides her perfect and tidy hand into mine and gives it a squeeze.

  “Son?” Dad says, and Bo looks up, his eyes rimmed with red. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for your wedding. Cal showed me the pictures, and it was beautiful. Amy’s beautiful. As soon as you’re done here, I want you to get yourself back home to your wife and start making me some grandbabies. Promise?”

  Bo’s eyes widen and his mouth twists, just briefly, and I suspect he’s thinking the same thing as I am: grandbabies you’ll never see. His quick nod releases two fat tears that slide down his cheeks. “I promise,” he whispers.

  Dad turns to me and Lexi, still hand-in-hand on the couch, and his expression softens. “Just look at the two of you, connected at the hip again. I never understood y’all’s connection, but I’m awful glad for it, especially now. Does a father good right here.” He thumps a palm against his chest. “You’re going to need each other in the coming months, so no more fighting, you hear?”

  I nod and clutch at Lexi’s hand, but no harder than she’s clutching mine, a silent promise between sisters to never lose touch again. One I am certain, with every ounce of everything inside of me, both of us intend to fulfill.

  Satisfied, Dad lifts the plate on his lap into the air. “Now that that’s settled, who wants one of Frannie’s cookies?”

  35

  UPSTAIRS, I SLIDE Ella Mae’s letter from my pocket and spread it out on my bedroom floor. The pages are brittle with age, the edges decorated with a yellow tinge, but her script is smooth and easy to read, even on my tiny iPhone screen. I email the images to Jeffrey, along with a text message to look at them and call me asap, sit on my bed and wait.

  Less than two minutes later, my phone rings.

  “You’ve been a busy bee.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” I kick off my shoes, peel off my socks, pop the button on my jeans. I just took my last sleeping pill, and I can’t wait for it to hit so I can forget this horrendous day. “Both Cal and Dad knew about everything. The affair, Dean, even the letter. Ella Mae’s son showed it to them over five years ago. Cal said by the time he learned about Dean, it was too late to save Dad.”

  “Cal’s lying.”

  I snort, standing to peel off my pants. “Oh, you think? He gave me some bullshit about the letter being hearsay, but—”

  “No, I mean he’s lying about the timing. Allison Sullivan told me Cal came to her with knowledge of the affair before the trial even began.”

  My hands freeze and I straighten, my jeans bunched around my knees. “Then why wouldn’t Cal have exposed Dean as Ella Mae’s lover when he took the stand?”

  “Because Allison informed him Dean had an alibi.”

  His words hit me like a blow to the head. My vision goes dark and blurry then explodes in a burst of white. “What?”

  “Dean was with Allison that night, from sometime right before ten until fourteen minutes past one, which I’m sure I don’t have to remind you is a good hour past Ella Mae’s time of death. The details are stamped in her memory forever, she said, because she spent those three and a half hours tied up, while Dean beat and raped her.”

  “Oh—” My voice falters, and I have to try again. “Oh, my God.”

  “I know. She says she’s been waiting sixteen years for someone other than Cal to come and ask her side of the story. Until now, nobody ever did.” And then Jeffrey says the words my brain is still struggling to comprehend, the words that smash the last shred of hope still hanging inside me. “Dean Sullivan is an evil, abusive shit, Gia, but he didn’t kill Ella Mae.”

  I swallow the bile rushing up my throat and whisper, “Then who?”

  “I don’t know, but maybe...” He sighs, and I hear all sorts of things I don’t want to hear behind it. Doubt. Regret. Suspicion. “Maybe I need to take another hard look at my research.”

  Thank God the bed is behind me, because at that moment my legs give out. I half moan, half grunt as my butt hits the mattress.

  “Look, I’m not saying I think your father is guilty, but maybe neither is Cal. Sounds like he kept the affair with Dean under wraps because he knew Dean was innocent. At that point, the only thing introducing testimony around the affair would have done is give your father a motive.”

  “Which, clearly, he had.”

  “Let’s not jump to any concl—”

  A woman’s singsong voice interrupts him, something about powering down his phone. Jeffrey responds with a humph.

  “Are you on a plane?”

  “Yeah, still on the ground in Chicago but headed your way. I want to take another hard look at my research, but after that you and I will sit down and—” His tone turns choppy and annoyed. “Look, lady, this conversation is important, okay? I’ll be off in just a minute.”

  Her reply comes through loud and 4G clear. “Sir, now!”

  Another sigh. “I’ll call you when I know more.”

  The line goes dead and I curl into a ball on my bed, staring at the wallpaper for so long the tiny burst of pink and purple flowers blurs. Jeffrey’s words echo in my mind. I’m not saying I think your father is guilty. But instinct tells me that by saying those words out loud, Jeffrey just said exactly that, that he thinks my father might be guilty.

  Nausea swirls and rolls in my belly.

  An alibi. Dean Sullivan had an alibi, which means the affair is not only hearsay, it’s irrelevant hearsay. And the more I think about it, the more I realize his alibi wiped away any hope I had that my father was telling the truth. Because if Dean didn’t kill Ella Mae, that leaves only one person who had both motive and opportunity.

  And just like that, my father shifts back up to prime suspect in my mind.

  * * *

  The sleeping pill does its work, because someone shakes me awake later that same day. Is it the same day? Outside my window the sky is purple with either dawn or dusk, I have no idea which. I roll over and see Lexi looming above me in today’s (yesterday’s?) clothes, my cell phone in her hand.

  “What’s up?” I ask. “Is Dad okay?”

  “The same.” My sister hands me my phone. “These things work better if you actually answer them, you know. I’ve been listening to it beep for the past hour.”

  I bolt to sitting and snatch it out of her hand, checking my missed calls. Four from Jake, a couple from local numbers I don’t recognize and exactly none from Jeffrey. I check the time and see it’s almost six. Jeffrey should be back by now. Why hasn’t he called? My stomach sinks at the thought of what his silence might mean.

  Lexi sinks onto the bed next to me. “I made things awful hard on you this past month, didn’t I?”

  I pat her knee. “Like Dad said. You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

  “No. No, it’s not. I did it all on purpose, you know. Skipping out on you in Roadkill, running off at the bank, letting you take care of
Dad all by yourself—”

  “How about the vomiting? Was that on purpose, too?”

  “Public vomiting is never on purpose. But getting drunk and causing a scene, that was on purpose. All my way of getting back at you for leaving.” She glances at me through her lashes. “Juvenile, right?”

  “A little.” I butt her with a shoulder, load my words with a teasing tone. “But nobody’s ever accused you of being mature.”

  She purses her lips into the teasing pout she perfected back in high school. “Uh, hello? Ella Mae used to always say I was too big for my britches.”

  I giggle. “That’s not what she meant and you know it.”

  Her smile fades just a tad, and she reaches for my hand. “I’ve missed you, sis.”

  “I’ve missed you, too. More than you could ever imagine.”

  “Then stay.” She twists on the bed to look at me then, not letting go of my hand, her smile on the verge of crumbling into tears. “Just for a little while. I know you still have mountain water in your veins, I can smell it on you. And I don’t think I can go through losing Dad and you again. It’s too much.”

  My staying is, of course, inextricably tied to Jake. But the fury I felt at discovering his lie no longer pulses in my chest. The pain I felt at his betrayal no longer pinches my heart. The grudge I held up between us like armor has melted, soft and useless, at my feet. Because how can I resent him for anything when I’m back to suspecting—no, believing—my father was his mother’s killer?

  But I can’t tell my sister any of this, because then I’d have to tell her about Dean’s alibi. The only reason she’s here is because of the affair, and the tiny cracks it made in her conviction that our father was absolutely, without doubt guilty of murder. If I remove the possibility of Dean’s hand in Ella Mae’s death, I remove Lexi, and likely Bo, as well, from this house and what’s left of Dad’s life. And as selfish as it sounds, I’m not ready to lose either of them yet.

  I settle on ambiguity. “I can’t stay, Lex. This town is too small for both me and Jake, and running into him every day would be too much. The pain would kill me.”

  My sister wraps an arm around my waist and presses her head to my shoulder, and her compassion burns at the backs of my eyes. “You really don’t think you’ll ever be able to move past his lie?”

  I don’t answer, mostly because I can’t tell her my leaving is no longer about the lie. We fall silent for a long moment.

  And then from somewhere outside, I hear voices. Men’s and women’s, low and high and everywhere in between. At first it’s just a jumble of words, then slowly, melodically, they come together as one in song.

  Lexi sits up straight, cocks her head. “Is that ‘Kumbaya’?”

  I crawl to the window and look out over the yard, where a good fifty people stand huddled, their candles flickering in the fading light. Behind them Maple Street is a parking lot, its edges lined with their cars and SUVs and vans and trucks. Jake’s truck, parked by the mailbox. My gaze flits back to the crowd and there he is, front and center, with a Starbucks cup in one hand and a candle in the other, watching me in the window.

  “It is,” Lexi says, coming up beside me. “It’s freaking ‘Kumbaya.’ Jeez, couldn’t they have chosen a less cliché song? Next thing you know they’ll break into ‘Amazing Grace.’”

  Her words may be snarky, but her tone is anything but. My sister grips the windowsill with both hands and looks out over the scene on the lawn—folks we’ve known all our lives, friends and former classmates and neighbors—and her pretty pink lips curl into a smile.

  She nudges me with an elbow. “You seein’ who I’m seein’?”

  My voice is barely a whisper. “I’m seein’.”

  Jake catches us watching and lifts the candle in a wave.

  “Maybe writing the eulogy will help.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She looks over at me. “It’s supposed to be about forgiveness, right? Maybe you’ll figure out how to give him some of yours.”

  I turn back to the window, my gaze sliding automatically to Jake. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”

  Lexi wriggles her fingers in the window, and Jake smiles—a beautiful smile, a devastating smile—up at us in the window.

  “If you forgiving him means I get to keep you here with me, never.”

  I look away from my sister, settling my focus anywhere but the familiar curve of Jake’s mouth. Pain pierces my heart and shreds my stomach. The truth is, Jake is already forgiven. I no longer care that he lied.

  What I’m more concerned with is how repulsed he would be at the thought of lying next to the daughter of the man who murdered his mother.

  After a long moment, I push off the bed, pull on my jeans and leave the room.

  * * *

  That night, thanks to the afternoon’s drug-induced coma, I can’t sleep. Long after the sky turns black with night, long after Jake and the others on the front lawn climb into their cars and return to the warmth of their homes, long after the house is dark and quiet and still, my body hums with energy.

  Jeffrey had called earlier, and the news hadn’t been good. He’s dropping the chapter about my father’s case, removing his story from the book entirely. Jeffrey was more than a little surprised when I told him I’d honor my promise for an interview, but not until after my father’s memorial, which, according to Fannie, will be any day now. Hopefully by then I’ll know what I want to say.

  For sixteen years, I’ve been trying to outrun my doubt, pretending that ignoring the feeling would make it grow tiny enough to shove in the back of a closet, or under the bed. When the possibility of Dean’s hand in the murder presented itself, I latched on to it with both hands. I treated it like my salvation. But what is it Lexi told me? Reasonable doubt is still doubt. I should have listened better to mine.

  I lie here in my old room, watching shadows dance on the ceiling, and realize I’m listening now.

  36

  THERE IS AN immeasurable gulf between what donors think humanitarian aid is capable of, and what it delivers. What our websites and brochures will never tell you is that your twenty dollar donation won’t fix poverty or end hunger, in fact won’t even come close. We won’t reveal that places that sucked before the disaster will still suck three years later. We’ll neglect to mention that relief organizations screw up, frequently and spectacularly, because by definition disasters are chaotic and unpredictable and humans are...well, human.

  We’ll never say any of these things, because aid organizations do make a difference. By providing food and water and medicine, we are making things a little more bearable, a little less awful, for a short period of time. Even if we’re doing it all wrong, we’re at least doing something, and that’s one step closer than doing nothing at all.

  Which is what I tell myself as I sneak down the stairs in my sweats and bare feet. That by going to confront my father in the middle of the night with what I think I know, I’m at least doing something.

  Like every night, Fannie’s left the oven light burning in the kitchen before disappearing up to her room. Its golden glow works its way across the living room floor, falling into shadows halfway to Dad’s bed, blanketing the rest of the room in splotches of black and gray. I stop in the doorway a moment in order to allow my eyes to adjust to the inky darkness.

  A breathy but rhythmic rattle tells me my father is the lumpy form on the hospital bed, sound asleep. I go to him, tugging on the elastic holding my hair, letting my curls fall loose and free all around my shoulders. A niggle of guilt pushes at the lining of my belly but I ignore it, reaching for Dad’s arm instead. It takes a few shakes, but then Dad opens his eyes with a snort.

  “Huh?” He whips his head up and swivels it back and forth, searching for me in the dark. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s just me.
” I wrap a palm around his forearm and grip until he stills. I want him to be paying close attention when I say my next words: “Ella Mae.”

  He jerks back as though I just poked him with a live wire, and then his dying muscles give out. His limbs, his head, his jaw all go slack. Only his eyes move, the lids blinking rapidly at me. “What?”

  “It’s me. Ella Mae.”

  Dad’s mouth snaps shut and his nostrils flare. The sound of his heavy breathing fills the room. He shakes his head violently. “You can’t be here. You’re dead.”

  “No, Ray, it’s real.” I pick up his hand, hold it in mine. “I’m real.”

  He snatches his hand away, his lip curling in either horror or disgust. “Are you here for revenge? ’Cause I’m already dyin’.”

  My heart heaves and cracks at the mean edge to both his mouth and his tone, aimed at the woman I loved like my mother. I choke back my tears, dipping my chin and cocking my head a tiny bit to the right the way she used to do, and I disguise my lie in a Tennessee drawl. “I know the truth, Ray.”

  His eyes go wide, and they stare dry and unblinking into mine. “You can’t know. Nobody knows but me and Cal. I was so careful.”

  “Not careful enough. I saw you.”

  “Liar! You couldn’t have seen me. I had on different clothes. I was wearing a ski mask. You never knew it was me!”

  Just because I was expecting a confession doesn’t make it any easier to hear. I sway, and sixteen years’ worth of suspicion and sorrow slides down my cheeks. I open my mouth to tell him that I hate him for stealing Ella Mae from me. That he deserved every one of those sixteen years in prison, and I wish he would live to see at least sixteen more. That he is going to burn in hell for what he did.

  And then his face curls inward and he reaches for me with both hands, his fists latching on to the hem of my sweatshirt, and the words die in my throat.

  “I loved you, Ella Mae.” Her name catches in his chest, emerges on the tail end of a sob. “I would’ve stayed with you forever if only you’d loved me back. Why couldn’t you love me back?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer, just hauls air into his lungs and wails loud enough to wake the whole house. “Why didn’t you love me back?”