The Bullet

by Mary Louise Kelly

  “That’s Cheral Rooney. I met her yesterday.”

  He looked wary. “And what did she say?”

  “Nothing about a suspect! She just talked about what the neighborhood used to look like, what my mom was like. She gave me an old pair of Sadie Rawson’s earrings.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, she was under the impression—I’m sorry if this comes as yet another shock—but she was under the impression that your mama had been having an affair. And she thought this other man was someone we should question. So we did, and we thought we might be onto something, because that’s the picture you pointed at. His picture. But we couldn’t make it stick.”

  I tried to take in this latest piece of information. “Was it true? Was she having an affair?”

  “Who knows?” Beasley shrugged. “He denied it, and there wasn’t any evidence. So maybe it was true, or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the neighbor just didn’t like your mama. Or maybe she was jealous. Women can be vindictive. No offense.”

  “The newspaper said police arrested a suspect and let him go. Was that—”

  “No, no, we never arrested anybody. We questioned him and then we let him go. He had an alibi. Airtight. And we had no physical evidence, not a scrap. We couldn’t hold him.”

  • • •

  IN THE PARKING lot outside the newspaper building, a chilly rain was falling. I pulled my jacket over my head and dashed for the Mazda. Wet and panting, I climbed in and flicked on the heat and the windshield wipers. They were old and made a squeaky, scraping sound each time they shuddered across the glass. Every two seconds, they cleared a glimpse of the gray world outside, then the rain sluiced down to blur it again. I forced myself to concentrate on the wipers, to use them as a metronome. Steady. Deep breath. Everything will be okay. I willed even the throb in my neck to obey the commanding rhythm. Scrape, throb, breathe. Don’t think. Scrape, throb, breathe.

  I’m not sure how long I sat like that, staring at the half-fogged windows. I knew I needed to step on it if I was to make it to the airport with any hope of catching my flight. But I couldn’t muster the energy to shift the car into drive. When the throb had quieted to a manageable level of pain, I twisted around in my seat belt, reached for my phone, and dialed Martin.

  “Sis! How are you? Where are you? Still in Atlanta?” His voice sounded so normal, so unburdened, it seemed to come from a different world.

  “Yes,” I said dully. “Still in Atlanta. I’m—”

  “Would you do me a favor and phone Mom? She’s completely freaked-out, says you didn’t call yesterday.”

  “Sure. I will. It’s been crazy down here.”

  “Seriously, Sis. Call her. And listen, can I call you right back? I’ve got an investor on the other line, we’re trying to close on a deal this week.”

  “Martin.” I pressed the phone closer to my ear. “Hang up on him and talk to me.”

  “Sure, okay, but he’s in Abu Dhabi. We’re recapitalizing his properties in Manhattan, I’m talking hundreds of millions in office/flex—”

  “You know I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please.” My voice cracked. “I need—I need you to tell me what to do.”

  Martin is too much the classic oldest child to resist such a plea. He has always exhibited an almost parental sense of responsibility toward Tony and me. It seems to coexist easily alongside the pleasure he takes in teasing and tormenting us (and in Tony’s case, actually giving him a physical pounding from time to time). I could picture him now, pulling his shoulders back, preparing to launch into full older-brother, let-me-tell-you-how-to-fix-your-problem mode.

  Except that my current problems were not easily fixed.

  He listened in silence as I told him about Beamer Beasley and ­everything that I had learned.

  “Wow,” he muttered when I had finished.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s insane about the bullet in your neck being the same one that . . .” He broke off. “It’s hideous, actually. It’s . . . Christ, I don’t even know what it is.”

  “That’s what I said when I found out.”

  “But aren’t you thinking that maybe you could have the bullet removed? You’re going to go see a surgeon, right?”

  “I’m supposed to do that tomorrow. Will set it up.”

  “Who’s Will?”

  “My regular doctor.”

  “On a first-name basis, are we?” asked Martin suspiciously. “How old is he?”

  “I don’t know. Fortyish.”

  “Married?”

  “Martin, for God’s sake.”

  “I repeat, married?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I knew it. Next you’re going to tell me he wears black, skinny jeans and that he chain-smokes Gitanes. Where do you find these guys?”

  “Very funny. If you’re trying to cheer me up, it won’t work.”

  “Not at all. Farthest thing from my mind. I am curious, though, whether Dr. Sprockets has taken you techno dancing yet?”

  Despite myself, I smiled. “Trust me, he’s not the skinny-jeans type.”

  “Or should I call him Dieter?”

  “Martin! He drives a Jeep and he listens to Johnny Cash.”

  “Aha! So you’ve been in his car? Front seat or back?”

  “Will you listen?” I exploded. “I’m not dating him. I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you about a serious subject—”

  “Fine. Want to know what I think you should do?”

  “I’m beginning to regret asking, but yes. Go ahead.”

  “I think you should get your butt on a plane back up here and go see that surgeon. The one Dr. Sprockets has hooked you up with. Personally, I would have done that before jetting off to Atlanta, but whatever. Go see him and schedule the surgery to get the bullet removed. And before you do any of that, for chrissake, call Mom.”

  I sighed. “I know. It’s just—I thought I was finished down here, and suddenly it feels like I’m not. Think about it: I’ve found out more about my parents since I woke up this morning than I have in the last thirty-four years combined—”

  “Your birth parents.”

  “My what?”

  “Your birth parents. Not your parents. Because that would be Mom and Dad.”

  “Of course,” I said more gently. “My birth parents. That’s what I meant. But that kind of underscores my point. My whole life I’ve thought that we had this idyllic, perfect childhood—”

  “We did, basically.”

  “No. You did. I think we can agree that mine turns out to have been quite a bit darker than that.”

  “But hang on, how does it—”

  “Could you shut up and listen for a minute without getting defensive? I’m saying I always believed I had the perfect childhood in Washington, and it turns out that that was a mirage. And then I come down here to Atlanta, and—and I guess I constructed another version. That my birth parents were this storybook couple, gorgeous and in love, and tragically cut down in their youth. And now it emerges that maybe that wasn’t true, either.”

  “Why not? Because maybe Sadie Rawson had an affair?”

  “Yes.”

  “But who cares if she did? Who cares if she wasn’t an angel? I mean, not to sound harsh, but does it matter at this point?”

  He was right, but I was still upset. I struggled to find the words to make him understand. “The cop—Beasley—he said Sadie Rawson pushed me down behind her. That it looked like she had tried to protect me.”

  “Well, it sounds like she did.”

  “Right, but what if it was from a threat that she brought into our home? Don’t you see, Martin?”

  “Not really.”

  “The neighbor told police that she was cheating on my dad, and that they should question the man she was sleeping with. And then apparently I poin
ted at a picture of the same guy. The same guy! If it’s true, and if it’s in any way related to the shooting . . . then sure, she protected me,” I said bitterly. “Kind of like a mother hawk protecting her young from a live snake that she herself has dropped into the nest.”

  Eighteen

  * * *

  Cheral Rooney looked surprised to find me on her doorstep again.

  After hanging up with Martin, I had checked my watch and calculated that I might yet make my flight if I floored it to the airport. That would be the sensible thing to do. My brother was right: I needed to get home, get my neck seen to, and forget about the past. But I couldn’t do it. Not yet. Instead I backed out of the newspaper parking lot, pointed the car toward Cheral’s house, and stepped on the gas.

  From the car I made two phone calls to Washington. The first was to my mother, to reassure her that I was still alive. The second was to Will Zartman, to let him know I wouldn’t be on the flight this afternoon after all. His response was uncharacteristically subdued. He didn’t protest and he didn’t ask why. He merely inquired into how I was feeling, and whether I needed a refill on painkillers. He hung up before I’d even said good-bye. Strange. I wondered whether I’d misread his intentions. The way he had touched my hair the other day, and that comment about my body. I’d been sure he was building up to something. But today, he could not have sounded less interested.

  Cheral Rooney, by contrast, lit up when she saw me.

  “Caroline!” She pulled me in out of the rain. “Come in, come in. You’ll get soaked out there.” She stood back and inspected me. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again. I thought you’d already left town? Let me put on a pot of coffee. Or, no, you’re partial to tea, aren’t you?”

  “Cheral. Leave the drinks for a minute. Come here and sit down.” I led her back into the living room where she’d received me yesterday.

  “Did you see the article in this morning’s paper?”

  She nodded.

  “Apparently a lot of people did. And one of them told me some things about Sadie Rawson that I didn’t know. Some not very nice things. He told me that before she died, she might have been having an affair.”

  Cheral stiffened. “Who told you that?”

  “One of the cops who investigated the murders. He said you were the source for that. That you were the one who told police about it. Is that true?”

  She was looking strangely at me. “Does it matter? Why would that even come up now?”

  “Because I was asking him about suspects. So, is it true?”

  She pursed her lips in apparent annoyance. “Well, I can’t think why a police officer would want to dredge all this up. Why he would want to tarnish a daughter’s memory of her mother. You want to know what’s true? Sadie Rawson was beautiful, she was funny, she loved you. Everything I told you, it’s all true. I really think that’s all you need to know, Caroline.”

  I reached forward and touched her knee. “Thank you. For trying to be kind. But I’d rather know the whole story, all of it, even the bad parts.”

  Cheral stared into the corner of the room for a long moment. “Oh, I don’t know what the right thing is to do,” she murmured.

  “Look, you said yourself, none of this probably matters now. But since I’m here, and since I’m asking, I think I deserve an answer.”

  Several seconds passed, then Cheral began to speak. “I didn’t know your mother before she was married. I knew her type, though, and so do you. You only had to talk to her for five minutes before you guessed that she’d been the prom queen, and the prettiest girl in her sorority, and that a dozen boys had dropped down to one knee and begged her to marry them, before she picked your daddy. She had that way about her, you know? A mystique.”

  I nodded.

  “I was flattered that she wanted to be my friend, if you want to know the truth. I mean, it was only because we were next-door neighbors. Her best friends were still her sorority sisters. They were mostly up in North Carolina, though, and she was down here and stuck home with a baby.”

  “And so this other man—” I interrupted, hoping to hurry her along.

  “But it was like she couldn’t stop,” said Cheral, ignoring me. “She was so used to having men buzzing around her. Like flies drawn to honey. The four of us—Rick and me and your parents—we would go to a party together, and she would be dancing and flirting and carrying on. She wasn’t happy unless every man in the room fell a tiny bit in love with her by the end of the night. Scarlett O’Hara had nothing on your mother, I tell you that.”

  “She was young.”

  “She was old enough to have a husband and a child. She was old enough to know better.” Cheral heaved a deep breath. “Sadie Rawson did love you, she really did. She was sweet when she was pregnant with you. She wanted a girl. She wasn’t much better at sewing than she was at baking, God knows, but she stitched together dresses for the two of you. Red and white gingham, with fancy, red bows at the waist. Mother-daughter dresses, so you two could be all matchy-matchy. Before she even knew whether you would be a boy or a girl! She just knew she wanted a girl, and Sadie Rawson always got what she wanted.”

  The bitterness in Cheral’s voice was now unmistakable. “Wouldn’t you know she bounced right back, got her figure back in about four seconds flat? And I don’t know exactly when, but sometime after that, somewhere around the time you learned to walk, she started carrying on with Tank.”

  “Tank?”

  “He was a football star in high school. Notorious for rolling over the other team like a tank. I guess the nickname stuck.” Cheral rolled her eyes. “He and Sadie Rawson used to flirt like crazy. I’m sure it drove Tank’s wife nuts. But then, after a while, I noticed Sadie Rawson was ignoring him. We’d all go out, and she wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t even make eye contact with him.”

  “And so you assumed something must have happened between them?”

  “She seemed to think it was a game,” spat Cheral. “That having an affair was a great big funny game. She didn’t seem to get that what she was doing was . . . wrong. That she was hurting people.”

  So this was the sour undercurrent I had sensed. Cheral had watched my mother cheating and had disapproved. Maybe she felt protective of my father and me. Or maybe she was jealous, as Beamer Beasley had suggested.

  “But are you sure something happened, something more than flirting?” I pressed.

  “Oh, honey. They were in love. They were discreet enough, but sometimes I’d see his car parked in your driveway. He’d pull all the way up, so you couldn’t see the car from the street. But my upstairs window looked right out over your parents’ backyard.”

  I pictured Cheral scowling out her window at the driveway next door. Tried not to picture what must have been going on inside Sadie Rawson’s bedroom, with me asleep in my crib down the hall. “Do you have a photo of him? I want to see what he looked like.”

  “Maybe somewhere.” Cheral shrugged. “Our old albums are boxed up in the storage unit. I keep meaning to clean it out.”

  I pressed my fingers to my lips, thinking. “What about Boone? Did he know?”

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I don’t think so. I never saw the car except on nights when your daddy was flying overnight somewhere. And Sadie Rawson kept her mouth zipped shut. She didn’t talk about it, not even to me, not until after she ended it.”

  “Ended it—you mean, ended the affair?”

  Cheral nodded yes. “She eventually came to her senses, decided she wanted to try to make things work with your daddy. I’ll give her that.”

  Relief washed over me. I couldn’t tell you why it mattered, but it did, to know that at the end my mother might have been faithful to Boone. To believe that, maybe, at the end they had been happy.

  Then Cheral spoke again. “She was terrified, that’s why she talked to me. Scared out of her mind.”
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  “Scared? Of what?”

  “Of Tank! He wanted them to run away together. Wanted her to leave Boone, and he was going to leave his wife, and they would run away. But Sadie Rawson wouldn’t do it. She could be so damn stubborn, your mother. When she broke things off for good, he went crazy.”

  “Crazy how? Threatening to tell Boone?”

  “Oh, worse than that. He hit her. He was a big guy, as the name suggests.”

  “He hit her?”

  “That’s when she finally told me everything. She came over and sat down in my kitchen and cried and cried. She didn’t know what to do. I told her she’d made her bed, literally”—a sad laugh escaped Cheral’s lips—“she made her bed, and now she had to lie in it. But she was scared.”

  I felt sick.

  “I’ve thought about this, so many times. Whether there was something I could have done. Somebody I should have told. But I don’t think even Sadie Rawson believed he would really harm her.”

  I frowned in confusion. “You said he hit her. It sounds like he harmed her plenty.”

  “He said he would kill her,” Cheral whispered. “Tank said he would kill her before he would lose her. And then she was dead.” Tears began to fall down Cheral’s cheeks. “She was dead, and I knew he had kept his word.”

  Nineteen

  * * *

  There is a ring road that circles Atlanta. It functions like the Beltway in Washington, separating the core of the city from its surrounding suburbs. In Atlanta, this road is called I-285. Locals refer to it as the Perimeter. I had learned this at the Hertz desk three days ago, when I picked up my rental car, and the agent instructed me to avoid the Perimeter like the plague at rush hour.

  “Un-frigging-believable that a sixteen-lane highway can get backed up, but it does,” he’d advised. “Better to take Georgia 400. Otherwise you’ll be stuck in mind-numbing traffic forever, wishing you could slit your wrists.”

  I had made a mental note and kept away.

  But as I drove away from Cheral Rooney’s house, I noticed a sign marking an I-285 entrance ramp, and on a whim, I took it. Frankly, mind-numbing traffic sounded appealing. Mind-numbing anything, for that matter. I was desperate not to think about what I’d just heard. I steered down the ramp and into the stream of cars, which—sure enough—was barely crawling.