Sorrow Road

by Julia Keller

  So as Bell sat and waited for Carla to tell her the reason for her tears, she realized that no matter what Carla said, most likely it would not be the real story.

  It would not be a lie, but it also would not be the real story. Carla would be vague, and she would give her the short summary version. The real story would be a while in coming—days, maybe, or even weeks. Carla, she knew, would understand that she owed her mother some explanation for having kicked over the barn of her current life and winding up in Acker’s Gap on a cold winter afternoon—but the long story, the thorough one, the one with all the loops and turnings, was not going to be forthcoming. Not today, anyway.

  Carla opened her eyes. She offered Bell a tiny smile, a sheepish one, one that seemed to say: Can you even believe what a ridiculous baby I was just a few minutes ago? Crying like that? I mean—Jesus. Her cheeks were still shiny-wet with the ghost trails of the tears.

  “God, Mom—sorry I lost it there for a minute.”

  “It’s okay.” Bell let her eyes rove over Carla’s thin face. Her eyes seemed slightly sunken, ringed by smudges of fatigue. “You’re exhausted.”

  “Yeah.”

  Bell waited. With Carla, you could not come on too strong. You did not push. Pushing was counterproductive. It irritated Bell sometimes, having to be patient until Carla finally decided to open up, but this was the only way.

  “In fact,” Carla said, adopting a breezy tone out of the blue, “that’s the problem. I’m, like, really tired. I could barely keep my eyes open on the drive over. The thing I said about being scared—that’s just drama queen stuff. I’m not really scared of anything. I’m just whipped. I haven’t been sleeping very well.”

  “So you came all this way for a nap?”

  That was a mistake. Carla shook her head. She sighed; she was annoyed. She spoke to an invisible witness in the room. “Same old Mom.”

  “Look.” Bell leaned forward. She reached across the distance between them and touched Carla’s knee with two fingers. “You don’t have to tell me anything. Not unless you want to. You’re always welcome here, no matter what. You know that. But you can’t blame me for asking a few questions. And if there’s anything I can help you with, anything I can do or—”

  “There’s not.” Carla’s voice was as blunt and non-negotiable as a DEAD END sign. “I just want—I just want to chill. I don’t know for how long. I want to move back into my old room again and just be here, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Carla was plainly ready to change the subject. She looked around. “I kind of thought you’d have another dog by now.”

  “A dog.”

  “Yeah. I mean, you and Goldie hit it off so well.”

  Last year Bell had kept a dog that belonged to a defendant. Initially she had been reluctant to invite a strange animal into her home, but by the time the man—now exonerated—returned to collect his companion, Bell had grown to love Goldie. Watching her leave that day had been an excruciating emotional ordeal. Many people had predicted that Bell would be haunting the Raythune County Animal Shelter the very next weekend, searching for a new pet.

  But they didn’t understand. She could no more have replaced Goldie than she could have gone out and found another stubborn, smart-talking teenager to replace Carla once the latter left for D.C. It didn’t work that way. Loved ones weren’t like interchangeable parts. Love was a singular event, and every love was different. That was what made it special.

  “I go out and see her from time to time,” Bell said. She hadn’t really addressed Carla’s point, which was a deliberate strategy. “Royce lives way out in the middle of East Jesus, but it’s worth the drive,” she added, naming Goldie’s owner.

  “Bet she goes crazy when she sees you, right?”

  Bell nodded and smiled. “Oh, sure. Just about licks me to death.” That was true, but the reality was—a reality she did not share with Carla—that with each visit, Goldie’s enthusiasm waned a bit. Goldie was letting go. Gradually, she was forgetting about the time she had spent with Bell, and at some point in the future Bell would be just another visitor, her arrival greeted with curious barks and mad sniffing and then a reassuring tail wag: You’re okay, the wag would imply. I’ve thoroughly vetted you. Feel free to advance at will.

  “One of my roommates has a dog,” Carla said. “She’s sort of annoying.”

  “The roommate or the dog?”

  “Both, come to think of it.” Carla grinned. The grin looked good on her face, and Bell hoped it would last a while longer. It didn’t. “So you’re okay,” Carla went on, “if I just hang out for a while? Stay in my old room?”

  “Of course.”

  Bell waited for more, even though she sensed there was not going to be more. Not now, anyway. And not, for the time being, about anything that really mattered. They sat silently for a brief run of seconds. They were like two cars stuck in snow.

  At last Carla said, “So what’s been going on around here? Other than the crazy weather?”

  “Plenty,” Bell said. Briefly, she told her daughter about Darlene Strayer’s death the night before. She had mentioned Darlene to Carla over the years. Tracked her success. Sitting at the kitchen table in this very house and seeing a wire story in the paper about a significant case and how instrumental Darlene had been in seeing it through, Bell would tap the headline with a finger and murmur, “Local girl.” Hoping Carla got the message: You can be from here and go anywhere. Do anything.

  “So it was the same road you’d just gone down a few hours before your friend’s accident,” Carla said. She seemed a little shaken by the idea.

  “Yes. But I wasn’t drunk.”

  Carla reacted with her eyebrows.

  “Won’t sugarcoat it,” Bell said brusquely. When Carla was in high school, Bell had lectured her and her friends endlessly about driving while drunk or stoned. As far as she knew, Carla had never done so. But there was a lot that mothers never found out about, unless a night ended in disaster. Bell knew that. Lecturing about dangerous things was one of those activities that mothers were hardwired to do, effective or not. “Turns out,” Bell added, “Darlene probably had an alcohol problem going way back to law school. Or maybe before. I don’t know. She kept it hidden. And kept herself under control.”

  “Until last night.”

  “Until last night.” Bell nodded.

  More silence.

  “Do you see much of Aunt Shirley?” Carla asked.

  “Not as much as I’d like.” Shirley was Bell’s older sister. She had returned to Acker’s Gap after serving a long prison sentence for an act of violence. The violence was thoroughly justified, but the law didn’t see it that way. Now she lived two counties away with her boyfriend, an aspiring songwriter named Bobo Bolland. She worked as a clerk in an auto parts store. She hated it but, as she’d once told Bell and Carla when the three of them were having dinner, you were supposed to hate it; it’s when you stopped hating that kind of job, when you settled into it without a fight, that you needed to start worrying.

  “She posts a lot of funny stuff on Facebook,” Carla said. “Bobo has a fan page.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah. He’s got a bunch of Likes.” Carla checked out the living room with her gaze, as if she needed to make sure it was still the place she remembered: fireplace, picture window, bookshelves, coffee table. Then her eyes came back around to her mother.

  “How’s Clay?” Carla asked.

  This was tricky, and so Bell hesitated. Carla knew all about her relationship with Clay Meckling. That wasn’t the tricky part. The tricky part was that Bell could not answer Carla’s question—because she had not spoken to Clay in a week and a half. Not since the moment when her lover had caught her so completely by surprise, when he had startled her so profoundly that she had been forced to wonder: Who was the real Clay Meckling? Was it the gentle good man with whom she had fallen in love four years ago—or was it the man who had stood before her in that shattering moment, having just r
evealed a part of himself that she had never suspected could live inside him, amidst all the decency and casual gallantry?

  “He’s fine,” Bell said. She would tell her the truth later—or part of the truth, anyway. As much as Carla needed to know. Too much truth could be as bad as too little.

  Jesus, Bell thought wryly. And I wonder where Carla learned about evasiveness and the artful deployment of partial facts.

  Carla’s voice was apprehensive. “And he’ll be okay with—with me, like, living here again? I mean, I won’t be in the way or…”

  “Sweetie.” Bell’s eyes blazed with conviction. “This is your home. Your home. That’s the only thing that matters, okay? So it doesn’t matter who else is in my life. Doesn’t matter how long you’ve been gone. This place will always be here—right here—waiting for you. This house—and me. Clear?”

  “Clear.” The word sounded muddy. Carla needed to get something out of her throat. “Clear,” she repeated. Stronger this time.

  “Good,” Bell said, reaching out and giving Carla’s knee a light double-pat at the same time she said it, as if to seal the deal. “You remember that.”

  “Mind if I take my stuff upstairs?”

  “’Course not.”

  They rose in unison. There was so much more Bell wanted to ask her, so many questions she had about the reason for Carla’s return and the source of her daughter’s emotional tumult—but she reminded herself that she could not do it all at once. She’d have to bide her time. Pick her spots.

  There would have to be a few house rules. Some structure. All of that could be worked out in the days to come.

  “So I’ll see you later,” Carla said.

  “At dinner. Chicken okay?”

  “Sure.” Her daughter turned and started trudging toward the staircase. She retrieved her backpack from its spot by the door. She didn’t sling it over her shoulder. She held it at her side by the thick strap, so that it dangled like a hunter’s bounty.

  “Hey. One more thing.” Bell had to speak. Their entire conversation had felt stilted, unnatural; just a little while ago Carla had been sobbing in her arms. Now she was nonchalant. The change was jarring. Something was wrong. Just because Carla would not tell her what it was did not mean that it wasn’t important. “The offer stands, okay?” Bell said. “I mean—to talk about whatever’s bothering you. Whenever you feel up to it.”

  Carla had paused at the initial “Hey.” She had not turned around; she simply stopped walking.

  Now she did turn. She looked as if she was about to say something, but had lost her nerve. “Can I, like, just live my life for a while, Mom? With no questions until I’m ready? Promise I won’t be in your way. I’m going to get a job. Already have an interview set up for tomorrow morning.”

  “Fine. But at some point, I’d really like to sit down and have a good long talk about—”

  “Got it, Mom.” Carla gave her a thumbs-up sign. “Full disclosure. Soon.”

  She did not mean it, and Bell knew she did not mean it, but an important part of parenting was stopping yourself from saying, “You don’t mean it.” Because an even more important part of parenting was perpetual hopefulness, the abiding belief that Carla really would decide eventually to tell her what was going on in her life.

  Bell listened to her daughter’s steps as she climbed to the second floor. Those steps sounded slow and ponderous and heavy—heavier, certainly, than should have been the case for someone as light as Carla, someone who used to make short work of that staircase, taking two and three steps at a time, never touching the handrail, a lively, black-haired blur on fire with ideas and passions and crushes and everything, everything that caught her eye or snagged her heart, which could mean a book or a boy or a song or a social cause or all of the above.

  Not now. Now she moved with a dull, deliberate plod that sounded like the aural embodiment of dread. She was carrying a lot more these days, Bell thought uneasily, than just a backpack.

  Only one thing could account for the invisible weight. Only one thing was substantial enough to be burdening Carla to this extent: a secret. Or several secrets.

  * * *

  What the—

  Bell, blindly thrashing, knocked the alarm clock off her bedside table. Her head was still under the covers. She had heard the landline ring once, twice, three times, and then on the fourth ring, her right arm poked out from under the edge of the blanket and began swiping the air in wild pissed-off arcs. She struck the clock. It made a solid thunk when it hit the hardwood floor. Finally she located the receiver.

  “Elkins,” she muttered.

  She heard breathing, and then a slight rustle. The breathing was thick and clotted. The caller had been weeping. Bell knew that sound well. Once, just for sport, she’d tallied up the number of times that a crying person had called her; the total was in the double digits. County prosecutors were akin to priests, in some people’s eyes, and the phone was as good as a confessional.

  “Elkins,” she repeated. She did not say it impatiently; she wanted to give the person time to recover. She looked around the dark room, seeing nothing. God, it had to be the freaking middle of the freaking night. Another time, she’d added up the number of occasions that she’d been yanked out of a heavy sleep by a phone call.

  Again: double digits.

  “I need to talk to you,” the caller said. “It’s urgent.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “You don’t know me.” A slow intake of breath. “My name is Ava Hendricks.” Another pause. “Darlene Strayer was my partner. We’d been together for fourteen years. And she told me that if anything ever happened to her, I should get in touch with you right away. You’d know what to do.” Another deep breath and then a much longer pause, as if more courage had to be retrieved from some distant storeroom in order for her to continue. “I just got the notification about Darlene. I wasn’t home and they had to find me first. Track me down.” She stopped talking. Her breathing was heavy, rusty-sounding.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss.” Bell sat up, pushing away the blanket. Her thoughts were starting to clear, like a foggy windshield after the defrost has been activated. “Where were you? Why couldn’t anyone reach you?”

  The caller’s voice snapped to attention. Gone was the soft anguish. “I’m a neurosurgeon, Mrs. Elkins. I spent the day removing a glioblastoma multiforme from the brain of an eight-year-old girl. It was an extremely complicated procedure. I wasn’t reachable until an hour ago.”

  Bell switched on the lamp by her bed. Instantly a small area of light leapt to life inside the black room, like a struck match held between cupped hands.

  “I’m so sorry about Darlene,” Bell said. “Never easy to get that kind of news.”

  Her mind was working fast: Had she known Darlene was involved with a woman? Or with anyone, for that matter? No. She hadn’t. It did not matter, one way or another, but it reminded Bell all over again how little information she had ever really had about her former classmate. The alcoholism wasn’t the only surprise on this night of surprises.

  And the surprises just kept on coming.

  “The thing is, Mrs. Elkins,” Hendricks said, “Darlene was convinced that someone wanted to kill her. The same person who killed her father. This wasn’t an accident.” No emotion in her voice. Just a cold certainty.

  Suspicion kicked in. How could Bell be sure this woman was who she said she was? Anyone might call her and claim a close association with Darlene Strayer. Until she had confirmation, she would only say what was already public record.

  “Look,” Bell said. “The facts are pretty clear here. Darlene missed a turn on a snowy road and crashed into a tree.” She did not mention the blood alcohol level. She wouldn’t, unless Hendricks persisted. Hendricks surely knew about Darlene’s issues, and there was no point in piling on until she had the lab report in hand and could use it to swat away the protests and denials. “That’s all. And I’ve not had a chance yet to look into her concerns about her fa
ther’s passing. I will. But for now, all I can offer you are my condolences.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Well, it’ll have to be. I hope you’ll let me know when any services are planned. I’d like to attend. And if you want a copy of the accident report, you’re welcome to call my office at the Raythune County Courthouse and request one. My secretary’s name is Lee Ann Fri—”

  “No.” It was a slap, not a word. “And frankly, I’m rather surprised at your attitude. Darlene always said you didn’t like her. I told her that probably wasn’t true. Now I believe it.”

  Hendricks might have been a neurosurgeon, but she would’ve made a dandy psychiatrist, Bell would decide later, when she looked back upon this conversation—one that proved to be so crucial to all that came after.

  Because nothing got to Bell Elkins faster than the galling accusation that she was letting her emotions cloud her professional judgment. Nothing riled her up quite so much. Or guaranteed that she would do everything she possibly could to prove it wasn’t so—to prove that she took each case as it came, and made her decisions about it based on rigor and cool rationality, on evidence and precedent, and not on the wildfire of her feelings.

  Hendricks had sensed that. Or maybe Darlene had told her enough about Bell for her to figure it out. In any case, Ava Hendricks played her. It was for a good cause, as Bell would later acknowledge to herself—and to Hendricks, too—but she had played her, just the same. Hendricks knew exactly which buttons to push, and she pushed them at exactly the right moment.

  “You don’t have any idea how I felt about Darlene,” Bell snapped. She couldn’t keep the fury out of her voice. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway. It doesn’t matter who is involved. If there’s even a hint of a crime—if there’s even a single unanswered question—we investigate.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I will.” And just like that, Bell realized, she had committed herself to taking a second look at the death of Darlene Strayer.