Chapter 47
I follow Everett back to the house and watch from the back porch as he goes inside alone, scratching at the back of his neck until a thin line of blood appears. He unknowingly smears it across his tan collar.
I’m not sure what I’ve allowed my angry energy to stir up other than wasps and fire ants, but those things I generally don’t have to worry about. Normally, I set my intention and don’t worry about the “how” of the manifestation. Magick has a way of finding the easiest path to inflict change. If I pour a small bucket of water onto the street at the top of the hill, it will run until it finds a crack or crevice in the pavement and then follow that predetermined line to its end. My magick is like that. I don’t have to think about which path it takes, only the outcome.
I sink my bare toes into the dewy grass and flex them a few times. I may not have my phone on me or my car keys to flee the scene, but I have other ways of calling for help.
Concentrating hard, I push my energy out the soles of my feet, into the ground, to the roots of the grass, to the roots of the trees, and out as far as they can reach. The earth has its own network.
Unfortunately, I’m cold again. I was warm when I was releasing energy—so often like a hot flash—but now that the energy surge is gone, the fact that I’m in a skimpy nightshirt and wrapped in a thin blanket isn’t enough. Fortunately, I have a solution to that, too.
Every time I have a ritual fire, campfire, or bonfire, or even just light a candle outside, I always forget to take the heavy-duty camp lighter back in the house. They’re not that expensive, and it saves me a trip back into the house to find it. Within fifteen minutes, I have a roaring bonfire going, and I’m toasty warm.
Virgil’s red car careens into the backyard, squealing to a halt twenty feet from where I stand at the fire pit. His tires leave black marks on the same grass he cuts for me once a week.
Jumping out, cane in hand, Virgil frowns at me in my nightshirt and blanket by the bonfire and then at the house. “Damn, girl,” he says as he half-runs toward me. “I was with your mama, but I could feel your energy reaching out to me from three miles away. And that!” He flings one hand in the direction of the house. “I can see that bubble of purple from half a mile away.”
Good thing no one else can.
As he reaches me, he throws his arms around me and drags me tightly against his chest. “What’s going on? Wait, why are all the deputies here? Especially that one without pants. Are you okay?”
I nod. “Is Mama—?”
I know the answer by the look in Virgil’s eyes. “She’s still hanging in there. One of my staff is sitting with her right now.”
It takes me less than ten seconds to fill Virgil in on the events of the past hour.
“Aw, hell no,” he says as he weaves his fingers through mine and pulls me toward the house.
He raises his fist to pound on the back door just as Everett emerges, one of my mom’s notebooks in hand. Everett ignores Virgil and makes a beeline for me on the steps. “This! Y’all want to explain what this is?” He thrusts the open composition book at my nose, too close for me to read.
I grab at the notebook for a better look. It’s the blue one with ruled lines that my mom keeps in a drawer next to her favorite chair where she sits—I mean, used to sit—to watch TV or talk on the phone.
Everette pulls it away from my grasp. “Ah-uh, not a chance! I ain’t lettin’ you touch it one bit. This here’s evidence, and you can look at it while I hold it. Jus’ tell me what it means.” He holds it too far for me to see without reading glasses.
Leaning in for a closer look, I don’t recognize the handwriting. “That’s not my mom’s penmanship. I—” Frowning, I do my best to discern the words as he flips pages from the end to the beginning. “Whoa.”
My mom’s delicate cursive writing at the beginning of the notebook, dated over a year ago, morphs into something nearly illegible by the end of it. Shaky. Messy. Every letter an effort. But some words are still discernible. To me. And to Everett.
“Yeah, you see it, too, doncha?” He jabs his finger at Bobby’s name, again and again and again.
I stare as Everett flips from beginning to end this time. “Dated entries from before my dad’s death. Dated entries afterward, between Christmas and my return home. Very few later. The change in the penmanship she’d taken such pride in. Then mentions of Virgil and Dixon visiting her and what they talked about. The lists of subjects to talk to me about on our regular phone calls, all checked off except Bobby’s name. Calls to other people, but with his name checked off.
My heart sinks. Each entry in the month before my return home was carefully scripted for our short phone calls to hide her wandering mind. I remember all of these phone calls, four minutes exactly, and the carefully constructed sentences she must have checked off as she said them to me so she would neither forget nor repeat herself. All this effort to hide her fading memory from me. Not just from me, but other people, too. Questions to ask others about whether Bobby was seen again, or if his car was ever found, or if anyone knew whatever happened to him.
Because she couldn’t remember, and something about it was important.
“I see a lot of scribblings by an old woman terrified of losing her mind to multiple strokes,” I say calmly. “She wrote down her conversations and spiraling thoughts because she gradually couldn’t keep track of the questions in her own mind. That’s not an admission of guilt about anything. It’s an admission of the horror she was going through and scared to tell anyone.” My voice hitches, my last words swathed with grief.
Everett rolls his eyes as he scratches hard at his neck. His fingernails are tinged with his own blood. “My gut tells me sumpin’ ain’t quite right. Y’all thought y’all could move your mama outta ICU to where we couldn’t ask her nothing, but as soon as she leaves there, I’m gonna have a good ol’ chat with her if—”
Another sheriff’s car matching the others rolls into the backyard and comes to a halt a few feet from the porch. An older man with wispy blond and gray curls pushes out the driver’s door, reaching inside to retrieve his matching cowboy hat. Truett’s jaw juts out as he surveys the house and the property around it, including both his sons on the porch and his other four deputies, one in stained boxers. Truett shakes his head.
“Boys? Get out here! Dadburn-it, I told you to wait for the report. Ya bunch of idiots jumped the gun, so all-fired sure of yourselves. Y’all’re making me look bad. I told you not to put too much faith into an old woman who’s lost her mind. She was moved to hospice care late last night, so she’s not gonna be answering your questions, anyway.” Truett glances in my direction and grimaces. “Sorry, Laurie. I am. I just came from the nursing home, right behind Virgil here.”
Everett, looking defeated, tosses the notebook through the door and reappears on the back porch. “If she’s in the nursing home, why aren’t we talking to her there?”
“Drop it, son.”
“But Fallon said the daughter here is a witch—”
“Uh, Fallon! That girl’s already been in trouble twice in the last year for trespassing on Miss Emma’s land alone, and you wanna to keep putting your faith in messy family shit of hers? I keep telling you, son, she’s always stirring the pot. She’s gonna drag you down and ruin our good name, and the people of this town will not forget that when I wanna retire and you wanna take my job. Maybe your little brother has the better temperament for this job. Irregardless, son, you’re done here.”
“But Daddy, you know I got a gut instinct that just won’t quit!”
“Well, I know you got something that just won’t quit.”
“So Laurie’s uncle wasn’t murdered?” Virgil leads me down the porch steps to Truett. He braces on his cane but slips the other arm loosely around my shoulders.
“Murder? Naw. Looks like the stupid fuck missed a turn and drove his car straight into the lake back when the swamp was a lot bigger and a lot wetter. Who the hell camps that close to gators and moccasins? If he wanted to camp, he could’ve pitched a tent in the pasture behind the house and gone fishing in one of the ponds on higher ground. Nah, looks like he got outta the car after it went under, but the gators got him. Tore him apart. Anyhoo, no sign of foul play. Just gator play.” Truett smirks at his own joke.
“You’re sure?” Maybe I shouldn’t push my luck, but I need clarification I don’t know how to ask for. “You didn’t find anything out of the ordinary?”
“Other than being stupid enough to drive straight into a lake full of gators?” He shrugs. “I guess there was one thing a little weird. Didn’t my deputies tell you? We recovered a slew of shotgun shells and spent bullets around the swamp. Nary a pellet in your uncle, though.”
I can’t stop the laugh that gurgles from my throat and earns me a dirty look from the same man who just joked about alligators tearing a man apart. “That’s not weird at all, Sheriff Truett. Most of the trees outside the swamp were planted years after my uncle went missing. When my little brother was a teenager, that land outside of the swamp was pasture and oak woods, not nearby timber crops like now. My brother used to go hunting in the woods. Bird hunting, rabbit hunting, deer hunting. He may have shot at a snake or to scare off an alligator if he was in a life-or-death situation. Shells or whatever evidence of gunfire you found, Shelby probably left them there, especially if they ended up on wetter land.”
“You mean your brother who’s a sniper in the military and used to practice when he was a kid? That brother?” Virgil’s toying with the sheriff to make a point. “That brother left evidence that he was training when he was young?”
Truett ignores Virgil and turns his back to us to face the house. “Ya hear that, boys? Y’all can stop rummaging around Miss Emma’s arthritis rubs and hair nets. Nothing here to see. Go home. All of ya.” He turns back to me and touches his hat in a quick and wholly insufficient apology. “Sorry ‘bout any mess my boys made.”
“Wait,” I call after him. “What about my mom? She’s not able to answer your questions.”
He stops, one hand on the door of his car. A horsefly lands on his cheek and he swats at the insect before it can bite. “No need. I think we can close this case. Have a good day. Ma’am, Virgil.” He touches the brim of his hat one last time before tossing it onto the passenger seat and slamming the door.
One by one, but not nearly fast enough, the deputies’ matching cars follow the sheriff across my mama’s lawn to the dirt road and disappear in the growing dust as they head back toward town, leaving deep ruts behind in her rain-soaked grass.
“Laurie?” Virgil adjusts the blanket around me. “I think maybe it’s time you tell me what really happened that night in the swamp.”
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