Chapter 31
“Mama? Mama!”
I burst through the back door, chest heaving, rain dripping in steady streams from the hem of my wet and sagging shirt. No matter how often I walk for exercise, I can’t seem to catch my breath after a quarter mile sprint. Behind me, Virgil pants, his heavy boots squishing and thudding at the same time as he crosses the backyard.
I blink into the room. All the lights are on. All of them. That’s the first thing that’s unusual. And the TV is off. Every lamp in the room that still works has been turned on as if to shine a light into some secret cranny where all the family skeletons hide.
My mom is nowhere in sight. Nor is Pamela, but Dixon is speaking in soft tones to four men in tan uniforms. The oldest of them, clearly the leader, wears a five pointed, non-pagan star on his chest. I’ve seen him before at the swamp, right before the rains started and dispersed a three-man salvage crew and a crowd of gawkers. He barely glances up at me as I stand heaving too hard to say another word.
Truett is his name. I’ve spoken with him on the phone once or twice, months ago when I had Fallon’s suitcases removed from Mama’s house when my cousin was doing her best to worm her way into a new financial orchard. The sheriff hadn’t been too happy with having to deal with family drama, but a restraining order is a restraining order. I don’t know if he’s a good man or a fair man. All I know is that he doesn’t care much for me but will carry out the law.
Dix, I realize, was probably the one who signaled us with the horn—an old trick among the local hunters whose wives wanted to call them away from the woods and back home in time for supper. Two of the other men look markedly like younger versions of the sheriff and enough like each other to be twins. The fourth man in a tan uniform has darker features, and he’s the only one to make eye contact with me.
“Where is my mom?” I finally choke out. “What have you done to her?”
My brain doesn’t catch up with my mouth for another thirty seconds. There could be so many reasons a sheriff and three deputies are standing in my elderly mother’s living room, but I don’t even think of any of those reasons. They could be here to let her know that they put an end to my cousins harassing her, but I have no doubt that my cousins have nothing at all to do with this visit. I’ve called the sheriff’s office more than once about them recently, and Truett’s response has been that they’re not going to get involved in family drama unless there’s a clear violation of the restraining order. More than likely they don’t want to get involved in this particular family drama. Neither do I. Truett’s already judged me to be trouble, not for causing trouble but for bothering him to do something about it.
But my mind doesn’t even go there, not at first. Maybe it’s an empathic connection with my mom or maybe it’s just instinct, but I’m positive their visit has something to do with the car buried in mud and the swamp on the backside of our property.
Finally, Truett, who is maybe five years older than I am, turns to frown at me. “We ain’t done nothing to her.” He runs his fingers through his gray and blonde hair and twists his head to one side as if he doesn’t know quite what to make of me.
For a split second, I try to imagine how he sees me through his eyes. Like a wet cat caught in a thunderstorm, which isn’t too far from the truth.
Virgil huffs his way through the back door and stands beside me, bracing against his cane for support. He’s as out of breath as I am.
Dix crosses the room quickly and takes me by the hand, pressing it against his chest as he looks around for the nearest thirty-year-old afghan my mom has crocheted and throws a faded pink and white design around my shoulders to dry me off. “It’s okay, baby.”
The afghan falls off of my shoulders. Vaguely aware that I’m ruining my mama’s floor, I step onto the afghan and let the water running out of my clothes and down my legs pool on it instead.
Dixon wraps one arm protectively around me and pulls me close. “Your mama’s all right. She locked herself in her bedroom and won’t come out. We were hoping you’d be able to convince her to come out and chat with Truett and the boys.”
I pull away from him and take two steps forward toward Truett. “My mama’s locked herself in her bedroom? My mama doesn’t lock herself in her bedroom. What have you done?”
Truett narrows his eyes so small that they practically disappear. “I told you, I ain’t—”
Virgil steps forward by my side. “Naw, Truett. I gotta agree with Laurie here on this one. No way would Miss Emma lock herself in her bedroom in her own house unless something scared her. Or someone. We all know Miss Emma, and if you are welcome at her home or doing something worthy of being welcomed into her home, you’d be sitting at her kitchen table right now with a glass of sugar-sweetened iced tea and a piece of yellow layer cake with her ‘Never Fail Chocolate Icing’ or, heaven help you, a piece of her icebox cake with cherries, raisins, and nuts so thick you’ll be picking them out of your teeth for the next two days. One of you, maybe all of you, frightened that poor ol’ widow woman. If it wasn’t you, Truett, then which one of your boys here? Everett? Emmett?” Virgil turns to the fourth of them. “DeShawn?”
Unlike the father and sons, DeShawn holds up his palms and shakes his head. He mouths an emphatic “No!” but says nothing.
Dixon steps in front of me to place one hand on his little brother’s shoulder. “Truett’s right. Nothing inappropriate happened here. Miss Emma heard somebody at the door and Pamela opened it and, at Miss Emma’s suggestion, let them in. She thought it was you and Laurie coming back. She saw the sheriff and his deputies here and went into wild-ass panic. No reason for it. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I push between the two brothers and step all the way up to Truett until I am barefoot to shoe with him and dripping on my mama’s good carpet. “My mom is in no condition for visitors. You can talk to me. Now, why are you here?”
I already know. I can feel it in my gut. That doesn’t mean I’m going to invite any of them to have a seat. Not as long as Pamela is kneeling by the door of the master bedroom and knocking ever so gently as she calls to my mom. Sure, I could coax my mom to come out. Probably. But she’s safer in there.
We are both safer with her in there.
Truett releases a long sigh as if he might not under other circumstances allow me to try his patience. The problem is, however much he might be okay with ignoring me or talking down to me, Truett knows better than to disrespect me in front of the Caine brothers. They may have spent their lives away from our tiny hometown, just as long or longer than I had, but for their money and heritage, they’ll always be revered here. As the former high school quarterback and prom king, nothing smelly sticks to Dixon, and Virgil’s disability from a career in the military garners enough respect that most people back home pretty much will ignore his eccentricities.
One of the twins—Everett, I think—steps as close to me as I am to his father. A smirk plays at the corner of his mouth. His blonde hair is still perfectly curled over his forehead, whereas I look like a drowned rat. “We know what you’re hiding,” he whispers.
I do nothing except raise one eyebrow. “If that’s your way of talking my mom into giving your mom her chicken-and-dressing-with-mushroom-gravy recipe, it won’t work. Or, to put it in terms that all the local yokels back home would understand, ‘that dog won’t hunt.’”
A hush falls over the room. I’ve definitely said something I shouldn’t have, no matter how clever I thought my response was. Everyone, including Virgil and Dix, seem startled. Even Pamela side-eyes me from where she kneels at the bedroom door. I don’t know what I’ve done but I’ve definitely gone too far.
Everett starts to say something, but Truett, suddenly red-faced, punches his shoulder. “Son, I told you to keep your mouth shut. You’re still on probation with this job.”
“But what she said about Mom—”
“Shut it, son!”
Everett grumbles under his breath and steps away. I, on the other hand, haven’t budged an inch.
“Look,” Truett begins, “Laurie—Lauren? I’m not sure what you go by.”
“Either will do. I’m the only child of Emma Hartford in the room.” Frankly, I don’t care what he calls me—bitch, boss—as long as he doesn’t upset my mom.
“Okay, um, Laurie. I, um—”
A few feet away, Everett is still muttering under his breath. Most of it is unintelligible, but then he gets just loud enough to sling a few cutting words in my direction. “And I don’t need your mama’s cranberry sauce recipe, either.”
“Good!” I cut him off. “Cause anybody who knows my mama, knows the best cranberry sauce is straight out of a can and still has the ridges from inside the can on it.” I don’t know what it is about my hometown that makes me suddenly speak in the drawl of my teen years or gets my hackles up. Maybe it’s having grown up as something of an outcast for thinking differently, but I’m always on edge when it comes to the place I grew up and the people who grew up here around me. Shoot, I was triggered the minute I burst through the back door, even before Everett’s smart-ass allegation.
“Son. Do I need to tell you to shut up again?”
“No, Daddy.” Everett sinks his hands in his pockets and slinks away.
Truett clears his throat. “Laurie, you probably already know that we found something unexpected on your mom’s farm. We were hoping to talk to Miss Emma about it, but she doesn’t wanna talk to us.”
Holding my breath, I measure my words. “What did you… find? If it’s about Mama dumping the contents of four of her storage sheds onto the wetlands on her own property, I can explain that. It’s not something she would normally do, but she’s had a couple of strokes, and they are affecting her mind. We just discovered it recently, and that’s why we had a crew come in to clean up the swamp and try to undo what she did when she wasn’t in her right mind.”
Truett skews his jaw to one side as if he is chewing on an imaginary piece of straw. “Um, yeah, I’d heard she was in a bad way. And the dumping issue, well, as long as y’all are getting it cleaned up, I think we can all work around that. But the problem is we found something else there that we need a little more explanation on.”
I hold my breath. Bobby’s car. They found Bobby’s car. I knew it when I’d seen them digging, though how it got there or why it was buried up in the swamp, I have no idea. The last time I saw it, it was sitting in a clearing in the woods, near the edge of the swamp, and half-full of camping equipment and the rest of the equipment scattered over the pasture where Bobby wanted the tent set up.
But I didn’t sink it in the swamp, so who did? Surely not my dad. Mama?
“Yeah, we’d just found it when the big thunderstorm came in. It’s been too mushy back there to get heavy equipment in there to pull it out, but it dried off just enough today that we could pull it out of the ground.” Right on cue, thunder rumbles outside. “Before this rain started up again.”
“Pull what out of the ground?” Dixon asks from over my shoulder.
“Automobile. We were able to run the plates on it. Belonged to a Robert Hartford. Do you know who that is, Laurie?”
“Hmm. I had an Uncle Bobby on my dad’s side of the family.” I was never really certain what Bobby’s name was, but it makes sense that “Bobby” was short for “Robert.” I’ve never thought much about it. Still, I sense Virgil stiffen beside me. He knows I’m not lying, but he can sense my shields just as surely as I can sense his.
“Do you know where your Uncle Bobby is now?”
“I haven’t seen Uncle Bobby in years.” Still not a lie. But do I know where he is? Oh, yes!
Truett kicks at the aging carpet under his feet but not quite enough to touch my bare toes. “Um, we thought we might have found his body in the car. We weren’t able to extract the vehicle completely, not yet, but we could get inside it and into the trunk. Just a bunch of old tents and stuff. Rotten bedding like sleeping bags or something. We suspect there might’ve been foul play. We need Miss Emma to enlighten us if she can.”
I distinctly remember the tents on the ground where we’d started pitching the first one before Bobby wanted to take a break and command me to fondle him. Who put the tents back in the car? I’m positive there weren’t more than the ones Bobby removed from the trunk.
“Mama doesn’t know anything.”
“Oh? You answered that awfully quick. How can you be so sure, Laurie?”
“Because my mom’s had several strokes now and she doesn’t know anything. Even if she did know at one time—and I’m not saying she did—she doesn’t know anything now.”
“Well, that’s why we need to talk to her. To make sure.”
“Psssst!” Pamela waves from where she kneels in front of the master bedroom door, her left knee pressed to the wood paneling. “Laurie! Your mom’s asking for you.”
Knowing Mama will be concerned about why I’m dripping all over the floor, I sprint to Pamela’s side and press my ear against the door. I can make out my name, but everything else sounds like whimpers.
Lightly, I tap my knuckles against the door. “Mama? It’s me. Lauren. I’m here. Are you ready to come out?”
No answer.
I try again. “It’s okay, Mama. Everything’s all right. I’m here.”
Still no answer from behind the door. Only sobbing, as if the storm outside also rages in her chest and throat.
“Move.” Everett scoops up a flathead screwdriver from the sewing machine cabinet at the corner of the living room and pushes me out of the way. “I’ll get her out of there.” He wedges the blade of the screwdriver into the top hinge and bumps it with the butt of his palm. Before I can say anything, Everett does the same to the other two hinges while glaring at me. “We’ve got real work to do. We don’t have time for this bullshit.”
Free of its hinges, the door twists sideways before he can grab it. It swirls around the doorknob before the weight of it sends it crashing down against the door frame and the floor, splinters flying everywhere.
On the other side, crouching on the bedroom floor, my fragile mother looks up at us, wild-eyed, terrified. She lets out a blood curdling howl and falls from a crouch into a shuddering fetal position at my feet.
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