by Laura McHugh
“Tell me again about the day she left,” I said, dipping a spoon in the apple butter.
Birdie pulled her biscuit apart and stared at the pieces. “You haven’t asked for that story in a while.”
We ate in silence, and when our plates were empty, she started talking. “She left you with me when she went. She said, ‘Watch her for me, Birdie, please?’ The way she said it was just like she was going to the store, except she almost always took you along anywhere she went. She hated to take her eyes off you. I went over it in my head so many times after, the way she said it, the sound of her voice, the look on her face. I blamed myself, because I was the last one to see her, and maybe I could have stopped her. But there was nothing for me to notice except the fact that she wasn’t taking you along. She didn’t say ‘watch her,’ like she wasn’t coming back, like she was laying a lifetime of responsibility in my hands. She just said it like she had something to go do, something none too interesting but it had to be done, and it wouldn’t take long because she hadn’t left any of her milk for you. You squawked and kicked when I tried to get you to drink cow’s milk out of a cup, like it was the worst sort of torture and you just wouldn’t bear it.”
I’d heard this part before, how I’d given Birdie no choice but to wean me with sweet tea.
“It took me a long time to accept that she wasn’t coming back; I just didn’t believe it. She wouldn’t leave you. I knew her near as well as Carl or Gabby did, and I knew she wouldn’t leave on her own. Truth be told, plenty of folks were glad to see her gone, had no interest in looking for her, but I walked those woods every day for weeks, hoping she was somewhere lost or hurt and I could bring her back home. Your dad, they got him all talked into postpartum depression and post-traumatic stress from her living in foster care, all these ridiculous things that sounded like they could’ve been true but weren’t. They told him he shouldn’t blame himself for teaching her how to use the gun, for believing her story that she wanted to protect herself from snakes in the woods when she was really planning to shoot herself. He’d seen his mother go through so much, with her fragile state of mind, I guess he was more readily convinced that such things were possible, that it could have been going on without him seeing it. And that filled him up with guilt, near smothered him. He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it coming, but I did. There was nothing to see. She was happy. She loved you, both of you. She was troubled sometimes, but she wouldn’t say why. I figured it had to do with what happened to her right before she and your dad got married.” Her eyes sank. “I don’t suppose your dad ever said anything about that.”
I shook my head. Was it possible she was going to tell me something new after all these years?
“She was attacked, I guess you’d say. Beat up. She got bit, and it got infected. I nursed her, that’s how I knew. Nobody said anything. I don’t even know if your dad knew about the bite, though I’d guess he would have eventually seen the scar.”
Someone had bitten her? “Who was it?”
“I don’t know, not for sure. She wouldn’t say. Neither would your dad, if he knew. There was talk around town that Joe Bill Sump had been to see her. That was right before he took off, and I considered maybe that was why he left. But the bite … the mark it left … well, this is just a guess on my part, but I always wondered if it was Crete who did that to her.”
I picked at my fingernails, not wanting to look at Birdie. Sarah Cole had claimed my mother wasn’t sure who my father was. What if Crete had attacked her? What if he was the other man, the one whose child she didn’t want?
“I did like she said,” Birdie continued softly. “Kept an eye on you. I always have. I always will. You’re like a granddaughter to me, Lucy.” It was strange to hear her say that, yet it made perfect sense. “You grow up feeling the weight of blood, of family. There’s no forsaking kin. But you can’t help when kin forsakes you or when strangers come to be family. Lila found her home here. She belonged with us. She didn’t kill herself, I just can’t believe it. I don’t have proof of anything, but I’ve always had my suspicions. Crete loved her or hated her—don’t really matter which. Either one’ll drive you crazy if you let it. Now, it ain’t my place to tell you what to think of your own family, but you’ve got to look past what you’ve always been taught and listen to what you know in your bones to be true.”
Chapter 37
Jamie
Thirteen-year-old Jamie Petree could work the dogs just as good as his older brothers, and they knew it. They let him go hunting on his own whenever he wanted, so long as he shot something they could eat. Jamie didn’t give a lick about playing with other kids, he just wanted to be out in the woods treeing coons, shooting birds, and splashing in the creek. His mama homeschooled him, mostly math and religion, so he had plenty of time outdoors. He had four hunting dogs in his pack: Josh and Calvin’s two blue ticks, his little brother Gage’s black and tan coonhound, and his own yellow cur, Custard, raised from a pup.
He was wandering the hills around Old Scratch Cavern, even though his mama had told him not to. She said the witch lady haunted that cave. She’d been saying that a good long year—ever since Lila went missing—and that was exactly what drew him here. He wanted to see the witch lady again. He remembered vividly the first time he’d seen her over a year ago, in Ralls’ grocery, when she’d rescued him from Junior and bought him a candy bar. No one ever looked at him the way Lila had. Her gaze took in everything about him, inside and out, good and bad; she had seen all that and smiled.
To his mama’s dismay, Lila had also sparked in him an uncontrollable urge to touch himself. He was hexed, Mama said, bedeviled, and she did her best to whip the evil out of him. But the witch lady had powerful spells. She wouldn’t let him be. In his waking dreams, Lila was a seductress. She crept into his sleep as well, though in those dreams, she did nothing more than hold his hand and smile.
It was his favorite time in the woods, near dusk, when everything was still and shadowed and cool, not yet dark enough for the bugs to start singing. It seemed to him the best time for spirits to show themselves. He watched for Lila. Loose rocks and dead leaves covered the ground, and the soles of his boots, worn slick, threatened to slide out from under him if he didn’t mind his footing. Some of the ravines here were so steep, they never saw sunlight.
The dogs had moved on ahead, sure-footed and eager. Jamie ran his hand along the bark of a fallen tree and knelt to see if there might be any early morels on the lee side. Then he heard a yelp and its answering chorus of bays and shot up in time to see the ruckus at the top of the rise. He didn’t get a look at the quarry, but the blue ticks were on to something, and the other two lit out after them. Was it her? Had she finally come back to him?
By the time he got to the ridge, Custard was hauling ass for Old Scratch, and the others had already disappeared inside its black maw, their howls echoing out into the holler. Jamie wasn’t sure what to do, so he waited and watched for Lila. He knew he couldn’t catch up. The dogs were smart, too smart, probably, to get themselves lost in the cave, so they might turn around and come back. But they were also determined, single-minded. They might well chase their quarry down the Devil’s Throat and never come out again. What were they after, if not a ghost? Something that didn’t naturally tree, he guessed. A mountain lion? A bear? He’d never seen one in these parts, though plenty of other folks had. He no longer heard barking.
Tears stung Jamie’s eyes, and he rubbed them away with grimy hands. The dogs would be all right. But if they weren’t? He’d only turned his attention away for a minute, to look for the mushrooms. He hadn’t expected them to go for the cave, and by the time it occurred to him to whistle and call them back, it was too late. He was trying to figure out how to tell his brothers—who’d skin him for sure, and who could blame them?—when the dogs’ muted yawps rolled through the holler. The sound wasn’t coming from the mouth of the cave, where Jamie stood. It was coming from the othe
r side of the hill.
Jamie hightailed it through the trees, slipping and skidding and catching himself and pushing on, the barks becoming clearer but less frenzied as he approached the far side of the hill. He still couldn’t see the dogs, but he followed their sound down into a gap he hadn’t explored, its entrance narrow and cloaked with underbrush. The path was steep, and he clutched roots and vines to slow his descent. When he reached the bottom, he found himself standing in a shallow creek bed. The dogs ran toward him, muzzles frothing, coats filthy, ropes of slobber draped over their snouts. Custard came up to lick his hand as the other dogs lapped the thin stream of water at their feet.
Jamie sank down and clung to Custard, bawling with relief. He wiped his face on the dog’s fur and sat back to take in his surroundings. He couldn’t see the opening where the dogs had left the cave, though he knew it had to be there, that perhaps this very stream trickled out of it. There was no sign of their quarry, either. “Lila,” he said. She’d protected them, but she wouldn’t show herself.
Flowers filled the little glen despite the lack of sunlight, purple and blue and yellow, frilly things Jamie had no names for. He pressed his hands into the stream to rinse them off, rubbing them over the stony bottom to scrape away the dirt. He noticed one rock with a strange shape, like some sort of fossil, and held it up to the fading light. It wasn’t a fossil, he decided. A bone. A small one. He lined it up with his own finger and came close to a match. Something panged within him. He didn’t know what animal it came from, but it looked different, special. He ran one gentle fingertip over the length of it, examined its delicate contours, considered taking it home to sit on the bedroom windowsill with his other treasures: a four-leaf clover pressed in waxed paper, a shell lined with mother-of-pearl, a Matchbox car he’d stolen from a kid at church.
The dogs whined, anxious to get home and eat. Instead of putting the bone in his pocket, Jamie set it back down in the stream. On his walk home through the darkening woods, he imagined a big rain coming, a good old gully washer. He pictured the underground river in the cave flooding, gushing out into the ravine, and lifting the bone along with it. Who knew how far the bone could go, from the stream to the North Fork, from there to the Mississippi, way down through the port of New Orleans, the Gulf, out to sea. Not that it mattered where the bone went, because he could tell when he held it that the spirit had been washed free.
Chapter 38
Lucy
The next day was humid and still. We ate tomato sandwiches for lunch, and Birdie studied her Bible. I sat on the porch for what felt like hours, trying to read the condensed version of Old Yeller and wondering how Reader’s Digest decided which parts to cut. I had trouble rooting myself in the make-believe world on the page. I was thinking about Crete. I couldn’t reconcile the two different images in my head: the uncle who loved me and the man Birdie suspected of attacking my mother. I tried to remember what the noises in his basement had sounded like, but I wasn’t sure I could trust my memory not to be overwhelmed by my imagination. Another thought surfaced, over and over, but I did my best to push it back down. I didn’t want to think about the possibility that Crete could be my father.
Birdie came out on the porch late in the afternoon and took down her bird feeder. “It’s gonna blow later,” she said. “Storm’s coming in.” I helped her move the hanging petunia onto the porch floor. We sat down on the steps to watch the clouds bloom in the sky to our west.
“Bess and I were talking about Holly Castle yesterday,” I said. “Remember her?”
“That poor girl.” Birdie shook her head. “Such an earnest little thing. Didn’t she win a blue ribbon for one of her rabbits at the fair way back when?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Bess and I didn’t even place.”
“I know you didn’t,” Birdie said. “You and Bess should’ve taken lessons from Holly. I always did feel sorry for her, though, having Becky for a mother.”
“Bess said Holly’s gone to live with her grandparents. So maybe things’ll work out better for her there.”
Birdie fixed her gaze on me. “That girl don’t have any grandparents. Becky never knew who the dad was, and her own folks passed a long while back. Your dad buried ’em.”
I shrugged. “Maybe it’s some other relatives, then.”
“I thought her other family lived in town.”
“No clue,” I said.
Birdie clicked her tongue, ruminating. “Well, I guess she couldn’t do worse than Becky.”
I wondered if it was a relief to Becky, doing whatever she wanted now that Holly was gone … somewhere. It was easy for girls like Cheri or Holly to slip away, to vanish, without anyone asking questions. No one was looking out for them. No one would guess that they might be locked away in a trailer. Or a basement. The noise I heard at Crete’s—could it have been Holly pounding on the door with those spindly arms that I still pictured clutching a rabbit cage?
It sounded crazy, and I was probably wrong, but I knew in my heart that it was possible. I couldn’t keep on doing nothing if there was even the slightest chance that Crete had someone in his basement. If Holly or some other girl were in there, I had to help her. It couldn’t wait. She could end up like Cheri if I waited. I needed to call Ray and have him contact the state police. They were more likely to listen to such a bizarre claim coming from him.
“If a big storm’s coming,” I said, “I should get over to the house and make sure all the windows are closed.” I didn’t want to explain everything to Ray on the phone with Birdie listening in. It had been hard enough the first time, with Daniel.
“Good idea,” Birdie said. “I’ll drive you.”
“The sun’s still shining, worrywart. I’ll run home and check on things, and as long as the weather stays clear, I’d like to get some work done in the garden. I bet it’s already full of weeds. If you want, I’ll bring back some zucchini and tomatoes, and we can do some canning later. “
Birdie glanced at the horizon. “Keep your eye on the weather. I expect you back before a drop hits the ground.”
I set off at a jog, taking nothing with me. The humidity sapped my strength, mimicked dreams where I ran in slow motion, the landscape barely moving no matter how hard I pushed myself. What I was about to do could tear my family apart. I wasn’t prepared for that. But I knew it had to be done.
Finally, I reached the house. It looked more abandoned than usual, as though the moment we left, paint had sloughed off, dry rot spread, shingles peeled and dropped. Queen Anne’s lace had reclaimed the yard, the frilly heads bobbing in the breeze. I walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone to dial Ray. His secretary answered, and I discovered why he hadn’t called me back. He’d blown out his knee playing golf in Branson and was staying at his lake house there while he recovered from surgery. “I’ll give you the number,” she said after I swore it was an emergency. “But I guarantee he’s out on the boat.” She was right, apparently, because no one answered.
I hunched over the phone, trying to decide whether to call Bess or my dad or Deputy Swicegood, who played poker with Crete once a month. Lucy. A voice wavered in the stillness of the empty house. I didn’t know whether I’d heard it or if it was only in my head. I turned around, and a shape materialized in the shadows. It was Jamie Petree. Fear tingled across my chest and down my spine as my body prepared to fight or flee. I hadn’t seen Jamie since the day at the river when he’d kissed me, but I recalled the crush of his body against mine, the vise of his arms, with clarity.
“I don’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I been waiting to get you alone.”
Not the best choice of words if he didn’t want to scare me.
“I almost had you yesterday, at Birdie’s. In the woods.”
“You’ve been watching me?” I judged the distance between us, weighed it against the number of steps to the gun rack in the hall. Jamie eased closer, and I saw a flash of brushed m
etal peeking out from the waistband of his jeans. A handgun, the kind I’d seen only on TV.
“We need to go now,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” My voice sounded wispy, unconvincing.
Jamie held up his arms like he was surrendering. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he said.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the gun, and he realized that I had noticed it. Slowly, he lowered one hand and slid the weapon from his waistband, repositioning it at his back, out of sight, as if that would ease my fears.
“Just listen, okay?” I couldn’t do much else; my feet were not convinced that I should run. “I have a business meeting I thought you’d be interested in. You remember the guy I told you about? Well, he decided he wants some of my inventory. And he don’t want to pay for it. So he offered up a trade, a pretty little girl with long white hair, all mine for one evening only. Because she’s such a prized pussy, she’ll soon be moving to larger markets. His words.” He watched for my reaction. Holly had to be that white-haired girl: at fourteen, barely more than a child. “The meeting,” Jamie continued, “is at your uncle’s house.”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked him. “What do you care about helping that girl?”
He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple dipping and rising in slow motion. “It’s not her,” he mumbled. “It’s you.”
“You want to help me?”
He looked away uncomfortably. “You ever have the same dream over and over? Like it won’t leave you be? Like it’s trying to tell you something?”
I watched him expectantly, waiting for more.
“Forget it,” he said. “Just returning a favor, I guess.”
Jamie didn’t owe me anything. Our exchange on the riverbank, when we kissed, had been an even one. There was a possibility that he was lying to me, luring me into any number of undesirable situations, but when he met my gaze, I saw something there and knew he was telling the truth.
