“What?” he asked, the word garbled around the hard candy.
Aunt Helen shook her head at him, then looked back to their visitors.
“Eve, darling, can you do something for me? Can you sit out here and keep Jonah company for a bit?”
Henry and Eve shared another glance, and Henry nodded in her direction.
Then Aunt Helen took Henry by the arm and led him inside the darkened house, taking one of the lanterns to light their way. Jonah was glad she’d left the other, and he was glad of the company. Eve was easy company. She didn’t talk much, and she never got ugly with him if he didn’t say the right things, like some people did.
“’Lectric’s out,” he said to Eve, taking a seat on the old porch swing.
She held the towel around her shoulders and took a seat next to him. The old swing creaked under their combined weight, but Jonah didn’t worry about it falling. Henry had been the one to secure it to the beam above their heads, and Henry did a real good job at that sort of thing.
“I don’t mind,” Eve said quietly.
“That’s good,” Jonah replied.
Together, they sat in silence, swinging and listening to the rain come down on the roof, watching the bugs fly at the glass of the lantern over and over again. Occasionally one flew too close to the flame, and Jonah felt a pang of sympathy for it.
The thought never occurred to Jonah that Henry and his aunt might have gone inside to keep what they were saying to themselves. If it had, he’d have told Aunt Helen she ought to shut the window that opened onto the porch from the front room.
As it was, their voices tended to carry, bringing words to Jonah’s ears that he didn’t know weren’t intended for him. Some of those words slid off, but some of them stuck. He didn’t consider whether that was a good or a bad thing—it just was—so he swung next to his friend Eve, who didn’t feel the need to talk. And that was okay with him.
CHAPTER FORTY
“I don’t want to get you mixed up in this, Ms. Watson,” Henry said.
“That’s enough of that. I’m old enough to decide for myself what I’ll get mixed up in and what I won’t. You just tell me what’s got you tied in knots and let me make my own decisions.”
Henry shook his head. “It’s not that simple. I can’t tell you. It could get you in a world of trouble if I do. Please. Just let Eve stay here, just for a few hours,” he pleaded.
Helen Sue held the lantern up to take a closer look at Henry’s face.
“I’ve already said that’s fine. I’m not gonna go back on my word. But you need to tell me what’s going on.”
Henry had known he was taking a risk coming here, putting Ms. Watson and Jonah in the middle of this, but he’d been desperate. He was desperate still.
“I can’t leave her alone, and the things I’ve got to do . . . I can’t take her with me. Please, Ms. Watson.”
“Son, I can see by the look on your face that you’re in something over your head. Your mama was a fine woman, and I considered her a friend. I consider you a friend. I’m not about to let you leave here and wade back into whatever it is on your own. Now, you tell me what’s going on, before I have to start getting mean.”
“I . . . I can’t . . .” Henry’s voice caught and he was overwhelmed by the sounds and images in his head. The crunch of the hammer against Livingston’s skull. The thud his body had made when Henry had loaded it up in the back of his truck in a panic and driven it home. The second thud, as bad or worse than the first, when he’d pushed it onto an old blanket laid out on the ground after he’d arrived.
The image of Livingston falling, then trying to rise again, with a hole in the back of his skull. The sight of the body-shaped parcel that was leaning against the wall of the shed at his house, with boxes and crates stacked up against it.
Henry put his face in his hands and tried to block it out, but it was impossible. He scrubbed the heels of his palms against his cheeks, knowing he didn’t have time for this. He didn’t have time to lose it. Eve’s future, and his own, depended on him holding it together, right here, right now.
But to pull this off, he was going to have to take some calculated risks. And in the end, didn’t Ms. Watson deserve the opportunity to throw them out? He felt certain that Eve wasn’t a threat to Helen Sue or to Jonah, but did he really have the right to leave her here alone with them, ignorant of what she was capable of, and take that chance?
Henry squared his shoulders and looked up into the earnest and worried eyes that were studying him.
“Livingston is dead,” he said slowly, saying the words out loud for the first time, and hopefully the last, in a voice that was stronger than he expected. “Eve killed him. We got into a fight, and Eve killed him with my father’s hammer.”
The slight bulge of Ms. Watson’s eyes was the only indication that she’d heard and understood what he’d said, but it was enough.
“I have to get rid of him. I’ve turned over every possibility, searching for some other way, but all of them end with either Eve in prison, or me.”
Henry stood and ran a hand through his wet hair in frustration. “And I’d gladly go. I’m as responsible for what’s happened as she is. More, really. But if I go to prison, what happens to Eve? What happens to the baby? She’s not right, Ms. Watson. She’s not right in the head, and I can’t leave her. I’m all she’s got. I’m all she’s ever had.”
“Oh, Henry. Oh, my boy,” Ms. Watson said, dropping down onto the arm of the sofa behind her.
“If you don’t want her here, I understand. I’ve got no right to ask.”
A fearsome look came over the older woman’s face. “Is that girl dangerous to Jonah, Henry? You tell me the truth now.”
Henry shook his head. “No. I mean . . . No. I wouldn’t have brought her here if I thought she could hurt either one of you, but she is a murderer. There’s no getting around that.”
The weight of his stepfather’s body was too recent in his arms for Henry to forget that.
“You said you got into a fight?”
“Of sorts. Livingston punched me. I said something about Mama, and what she’d have to say about his bullshit, then he hit me, and I let him. Then he hit me again, and I let him. I shouldn’t have.”
Henry stood and paced, thinking useless thoughts about what he should have done differently.
“I never considered Eve seeing it, how she might react. I just wanted to give him a way to get rid of all that anger and grief he was carrying around. So I let him hit me.”
“And Eve was protecting you?” Ms. Watson asked slowly.
He looked her in the eye.
“Yes,” he said. “I didn’t need protection. God knows, I didn’t need or want that kind of protection, but yes, in her mind, she was protecting me. And now there’s no going back.”
The two unlikely friends stared at one another while they digested that immutable truth.
“All right,” Ms. Watson said, and took a deep breath before letting it out in a slow push. “All right. Now let me tell you what we’re gonna do.”
While Helen Sue Watson laid out her thoughts on how to go about helping Henry and Eve get away with murder, Henry had the fleeting thought that in spite of their obvious differences, his mother and Ms. Watson weren’t so different, when push came to shove.
And push had most definitely come to shove.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The night that followed crept past, carrying Henry with it. For the most part, his mind was able to stay shrouded in a misty fog of self-preservation, focusing only on the next step needed and blocking out everything else. But there were breath-stealing moments when the stark and morbid reality of exactly what he was doing punctured his defenses.
Twice, he was forced to stop the task at hand and heave up the contents of his stomach.
The first time, he was sitting in the pirogue alone, floating silently through the marsh. The rain had given way to a heavy, humid mist, and he could feel his still-damp clothes cl
inging to him. He’d taken the boat, loaned to him by Ms. Watson, and made his way almost a mile down the slough to where the traffickers’ shack sat along the banks. Coming on the dilapidated building from the water was a perspective Henry rarely saw, and it rose up out of the marsh, menacing and strange.
This was arguably the most important variable of the entire night. If the shack was occupied, an unpredictable possibility, then the entire plan crumbled in his lap. Everything hinged on the old place being empty of everyone save the ghosts of the past, and maybe a few of the present.
Henry was glad no one was around to see his nerves get the best of him as he pushed the pole against the bottom of the marsh.
The place was dark and silent. There were no vehicles parked out front, no lights coming up the road that led out of the woods, and none of the normal noise that could be heard all the way to his own home when the place was in use.
It was empty. This first crucial box, the one Henry had absolutely no control over, could be checked off.
The relief was sickeningly palpable, and like that of a child who’s eaten too much candy on Halloween, Henry’s stomach began to churn. With only the bullfrogs as witness, busily croaking their disinterest, he leaned over the side of the pirogue and vomited into the marsh. Wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, Henry had no way to rinse the taste of bile off his tongue.
He pulled the pirogue up to the shore, very near the place where Mari and Del had tricked him so many years ago, Del rising from the marsh disguised as the swamp witch and triggering Henry’s fight-or-flight instincts.
He’d fought at six, in spite of his terror. And he would fight now. He’d already tried to run but found he couldn’t do it. He belonged here, with Eve. It was that simple.
Henry stepped out into the soft muck that ran along the edge of the marsh and took out of the boat the metal barrel he’d brought along. It was the barrel that Jonah used to store bait for the gators, and Henry dreaded having to open it when the time came.
Because alligators preferred rotten meat over fresh. Oh, they’d take the fresh if they had the chance, but their habit was to push it underwater somewhere and let it rot, then come back for it later.
If you wanted to really get a gator’s attention, the putrid stench of rotten meat was your best bet.
But that could wait. At least for the moment. Henry would never make it through the now if he focused too closely on what was waiting ahead. Instead, he set the barrel, still thankfully sealed, on the bank and pushed the boat back away from the shore.
The night was passing, and he had many things to do before he could sleep.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
As he passed by in the borrowed boat, Henry saw the light shining in the distance from Ms. Watson’s lantern hanging from a nail on her porch. He could make out the shadow of a lone figure standing watch. Helen Sue Watson herself, he supposed, correctly.
He hoped that Jonah was sleeping the sleep of the innocent somewhere inside the darkened house, beneath his rocket ship blanket.
And Eve. He suspected Eve wasn’t sleeping and wouldn’t until he returned for her. He only hoped the demons that lived inside of her gave her some peace as she watched the hours tick past.
He’d brought a flashlight with him, though he hadn’t turned it on up to this point. But he did so now, flashing it on and off twice in the direction of the Watson house. The signal they’d decided on earlier.
Henry wasn’t headed back there. Not yet. But his heart stayed with them even as he continued on.
He pulled the flat-bottomed boat along the shore where Jonah usually left it when he went into town and found his truck where he’d parked it earlier. He twisted the key in the vehicle’s ignition, and the familiar feel of the truck coming to life below him was reassuring, in spite of the noise it spewed into the quiet night.
It was a toehold back to solid ground, something Henry desperately needed.
Turning the truck around and making the mile-long drive back to his house, Henry kept his mind purposefully empty, focusing only on the circular beams of the headlights bouncing along the ground in front of him.
When those beacons came to the end of his drive, he pulled the truck up to the shed, brightening the doorway with washed-out light. He caught the two gleaming eyes of a raccoon frozen in the beams before it scuttled away.
Leaving the truck running and the lights burning, Henry stepped out and pulled the door to the shed wide with a creak, allowing the truck headlights to shine in.
And there in the corner, just where they’d left him, poorly hidden behind several crates of homemade liquor, was the body of the man that Henry had most often mentally referred to as not my father.
He probed his feelings on the matter for a split second, double-checking to see if Livingston’s brutal death had changed them, but he still found it impossible to think of the man any other way. There were some things that even murder couldn’t erase, it would seem.
Still, as he moved the crates out of the way and squatted in front of Livingston’s prone form, he couldn’t help but feel a deep and abiding sense of regret for the spark that had been extinguished when his life had ended.
He’d never have the chance to hold a grandchild. He’d never have the opportunity to tell his real son that he was sorry for the pain his grief had brought down upon their heads, or that he was proud of the man that he’d become. He’d never have the chance to make things right.
There was an infinite level of sorrow to be found in those wasted chances that would never come again.
With a sigh, Henry whispered the words “I’m so sorry.” It didn’t change anything, but it was a truth that he couldn’t hide from.
With a heave, Henry picked up the body of his stepfather and walked out into the night. He set down his burden just long enough to take a bag from his toolbox and fill it with what he’d need, then kill the engine and the lights on his truck.
With the bag slung over one shoulder, and the bundle containing Livingston’s body across the other, under the dim light of the crescent moon hanging low in the sky, Henry made his way across the field and into the woods.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Death was heavier than Henry expected. More than the sum of its parts, it would seem.
He shifted the load on his shoulder, wishing he could unknow what was wrapped inside the bundle he struggled with. He had to find a way to shake free of it—the knowing. If he didn’t, it would keep adding weight, pressing his feet farther into the ground, pushing until he sank below the surface of the earth and finally disappeared altogether.
The shack loomed ahead, balanced precariously on aged, water-marked piers, jockeying for a piece of the night sky among the stately cypress that dripped Spanish moss—a struggle it was always going to lose.
Forcing one foot in front of the other, Henry moved toward the rickety steps. He pictured himself sloughing off his doubts, his horror, and his regrets in a trail of moldy bread crumbs behind him.
Henry knew what he had to do. Wishing otherwise served no purpose. That would only fill him up, leaving no room for the strength he needed to dig deep and find somewhere, somehow.
The steps creaked beneath his feet, giving a voice to the night that stood witness to his actions. A reminder, in case he’d forgotten.
As if he could forget.
The door, which hung crookedly on its hinges, swung wide as he pushed it with his foot, revealing a mostly empty space. Moonlight shone through the windows, save for the dark lines of the iron bars installed over the cracked, dirty glass. The place greeted him, and his heavy load, with the resignation of a bookie who knows desperation when he sees it, or a drug dealer who can spot a junkie at a mile. The place knew the score.
Henry could smell it, clogging his nostrils—the thick stench that fear leaves behind. It was rolling off him, mingling with what was already there.
Tonight would be different, but no less the same.
Dropping the bundle on th
e floor with a thud that echoed through the bare room, Henry took a moment to catch his breath.
A mistake.
Unbidden, thoughts of his mother crowded in. He didn’t want her here, but he was powerless to stop her. The smile lines around her eyes crinkled as she sent him that look, the one that said she knew what he was thinking. The wink she’d toss his way when she slid the last pancake onto his plate at breakfast.
Henry squeezed his eyes shut.
“There’s no other way, Mama,” he whispered to no one, wondering if she’d understand if she were there.
Putting a thing off never made it easier, Henry heard his mother whisper in his mind, something she’d said to him countless times.
Wishful thinking, maybe, but it was the closest thing to absolution he was going to find.
It would have to do.
Grasping the corner of the blanket at his feet, he pulled, rolling out the body cocooned within, flipping it until it broke free and sprawled, lifeless and indignant, in front of him.
Steeling himself, he reached into the bag slung over his shoulder and removed the tools he’d need, setting them neatly in a row.
There was no going back. It was too late for that.
His only hope, the one he clung to during the long nightmare that followed, was that these atrocious acts he was committing had a purpose. That they fanned a distant flame of flickering light at the end of a deep tunnel.
Or so he wanted to believe.
So it was necessary to believe, as he was faced with the remains of his stepfather’s body that he’d taken apart, piece by piece. Trying his damnedest to tamp down the roiling horror in his mind, Henry kept on with the task at hand, until the job in front of him was done.
He didn’t notice the tears streaming down his cheeks, mixing with the blood and gore. The place was a mess, and so was he, but he wasn’t done yet.
After retrieving the crumpled blanket from the corner, Henry put the parts that had once been a man back on the blanket. Tying the corners together in a knot and removing the immediate visual of what he’d done should have made things easier, but he was beyond that point.
The Unremembered Girl: A Novel Page 18
