Cicada Song
Page 31
Chapter 30
Sara Campbell was sprinting through the town of Anderson, running from her grief and anger. No discernible words were muttered, only sobs, her mind shattered by one simple revelation: Office Clem did not shoot Jacob Ramsey. She reached Jake’s house, but instead of knocking or using her key, she began climbing the garbage cans like she’d done in her youth. Atop the garage, she made her way to the window and pried it open without looking inside. She fell into the room with a cry and clamored toward the bed.
“Jake,” she cried out. “Oh, Jake.”
Tears overtook her as movement sounded from downstairs. Her irrational mind hadn’t considered Rachel, and the last thing she wanted was an audience. She quickly shut and locked the door and found her way to Jake’s side once again. She took his hand and attempted to sit quietly, but a glance at the scar below his hairline drove her into a frenzy. She screamed and thrashed at the equipment attached to his arms and head. Some teetered and others fell down.
“How could he?” she screamed as she threw a vase across the room.
“Sara?” Rachel’s panicked voice said from behind the locked door. The handle rattled but the lock held. “Sara, let me in. What’s wrong?”
Sara collected the machinery that she’d flung about, regretting her moment of wrath, and attempted to put it back the way it was. None of it affected Jake’s health but they were still his. Once finished, she sat beside him again and cried into his chest, ignoring Rachel’s desperate raps on the door.
“Open this door right now, Sara Campbell!”
She didn’t respond, and Rachel’s knocking soon stopped as her footsteps faded down the stairwell. She was likely calling Ms. Beverly but it didn’t matter. Sara’s body felt numb. She barely noticed the blood running down her forearm, cut from either the fall into the room or the flinging about of machinery, and her mind, she could barely grasp it. She crawled into the tiny bed and lay beside Jake, crying into his neck. There was no energy left for volume, only tears.
Time passed and the door soon jarred with knocking. The knob rattled again but nothing gave.
“If you can hear me, Sara, stand back,” came a male’s voice that didn’t register in Sara’s numb mind.
A force slammed into the door, breaking it open, and she heard her name called by several voices. Faces surrounded her but she didn’t see them. She heard Rachel saying her name vaguely, but it was her mother’s voice that finally broke the spell.
“What is it, Sara?” Ms. Beverly asked, kneeling beside the bed and combing the tear-soaked hair from Sara’s face.
Sara looked at her mother blankly for a moment before suddenly reaching for her, the sobs returning. Ms. Beverly scooped up Sara and cradled as if she were a mere infant.
“Mom,” Sara said through tears, but Ms. Beverly didn’t press her to speak. She simply held her daughter and assured her that everything would be alright.
“Is he okay?” Percy asked Rachel.
“He is unhurt,” Rachel answered while patting Jake’s hair nervously.
Percy sighed and rubbed the shoulder that he’d obviously used to break the door open with. He took a chair from across the room and positioned it beside Rachel, but his concerned eyes remained fixed on Sara. Ms. Beverly continued to cradle her until she calmed herself and sat up on her own.
“I’m so sorry, Rachel…”
“Never mind that, young one,” Rachel answered. “Why are you here? What were you doing?”
“It was all a lie,” Sara said after some hesitation. “All of it. It was made up.”
“What was made up?” Ms. Beverly asked.
“Phil saw it,” she said with a strained voice.
“Phil?” Percy asked. “What’d he do now?”
Sara shook her head, forcing the words out. “Office Clem didn’t shoot Jake.”
Silence fell across the room. Percy and Rachel both looked at Jake while Ms. Beverly stared at her daughter. Sara began to cry again, but Ms. Beverly held her out and looked directly into her eyes.
“Look at me, Sara. Stop crying and tell me what Phil told you. What do you mean Office Clem didn’t shoot Jake?”
Sara looked from her mother, to Rachel and Percy, and then back again. Then she broke down as she told the story that Phil had shared with her. The story brought Rachel to tears, and the commonly kind Percy swore loudly and began pacing the room.
“And Phil told you that?” he asked sternly.
Ms. Beverly simply held her daughter as she lost herself once more.
Evening came and the room was silent, void of the beeping machinery due to Sara’s fit of rage. The green lines were still jumping in rhythmic intervals but none of it mattered. Sara sat beside Jake, and Ms. Beverly sat beside her. There were no words spoken between them. There didn’t need to be.
A faint knock at the front door told Sara that Arthur Harris had finally arrived. Footsteps echoed up the stairs a moment later, and it was a tired-looking Percy who stood in the doorway.
“Bev? We need you downstairs for a minute.”
Ms. Beverly kissed Sara on the cheek and followed Percy downstairs. She found it odd that Arthur Harris wanted to speak with her mother first, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t long before the footsteps returned.
“Sara,” Ms. Beverly said. “There’s someone here to see you.”
“I don’t want to see anyone.”
“Sara?” said a male’s voice and it stilled her.
Her mother entered the room with a man Sara didn’t recognize, but following him was the person who had spoken her name—the man who, before today’s revelation, had resided firmly in her thoughts.
“Sara,” Ellis Barnes said softly, “we need to talk.”
“Ellis?”
“Your mother’s filled me in on what Phil told you. He led me to believe something similar right before I left, so I made a stop. I got Office Clem’s side of the story, and it matches Phil’s perfectly. I think they’re telling the truth.”
Sara stared blankly at Ellis without speaking. His words ran through her mind but nothing seemed to stick. Then she remembered what Phil had told her.
“How could he do it, Ellis?” she asked just above a whisper. “How could Stan lie to me all these years?”
And with that, she leaned into her mother’s shoulder and sobbed once more.
STAN