Promise Not to Tell: A Novel (16 page)

T
HE EYES IN THE CORNER
of my mother’s painting were starting to develop a body—just the shadow of a form, really. Nothing identifiable.

“I almost feel like those eyes are watching me,” I told her.

“She sees you,” my mother confirmed, dabbing at the painting with her brush.

“Who?”

I was getting tired of this game.

“She’s watching. You have something that’s hers. She wants it back.”

A strange new fear awoke inside me, speaking of impossible things.

“I don’t know what you mean, Ma.”

My mother continued to stand with her back to me, facing the painting. She hunched her shoulders forward, then pulled them back, standing tall—erect as a soldier standing at attention.

“GIVE IT BACK, DEPUTY!” she shouted.

The voice, like the giggling the day before, did not sound like my mother’s. It was a child’s voice. A girl’s firm demand. The voice that came from my mother’s mouth was Del’s.

But that, of course, was quite impossible. Was I losing my sanity? Had the stress of the past week worn me down that much?

“What?” I stepped away from her, terrified, in spite of all my rationalizations, that she would turn to face me and it would be Del’s pale eyes staring out from my mother’s wrinkled face.

“I said you better give it back, Katydid.” Her voice was her own again. Her shoulders slumped forward, relaxed.

“That’s not what you just called me.” My voice shook.

She went on painting. Her body was positioned directly in front of the canvas so I couldn’t see just what she was working on.

“What did you just call me, Ma?”

“Don’t know. Stroke took my memory. Fire stroke.”

“What is it I’m supposed to give back?” I did my best to conceal the panicked frustration in my voice. I must have misheard her, that’s all.

My mother giggled, set down her brush, and stepped away from the canvas. An oil lamp hung above the easel, and a candle burned on the table next to her wooden palette. The flickering light illuminated the painting, dancing over it, making it seem more alive. My eye caught something light and shiny in the left corner. I stepped up to the easel to get a closer look.

My throat opened and I could feel a guttural cry rising up. I clapped my hand over my mouth. I blinked hard, sure I was hallucinating. It
couldn’t
be. But it was.

There, on the torso of the shadow figure with the pale roaming eyes, my mother had painted a five-pointed silver star, the word
SHERIFF
spelled out in tiny, dark letters.

M
Y HANDS SHOOK AS
I dialed the phone.

“Hello?”

“Nicky, it’s Kate. Something crazy’s going on. Can you come over?”

He was silent for a moment.

“Is that an apology, then?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m sorry I was such a shit. I’m going nuts here. I need to talk to you.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Bring some Wild Turkey.”

“Gobble, gobble,” he said, and hung up.

I checked on my mother—sound asleep. I fastened the lock and closed her in securely for the night. I went into the kitchen and lit some candles, threw another log in the stove. Back in my mother’s studio, I changed clothes and started to brush my hair. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the bureau and stopped short. My image was not alone. In the upper right-hand corner, I could just make out the figure in my mother’s painting—its eyes watching me watch myself. At that instant, there was an insistent
rap-rap-rap
at the front door. I damn near jumped out of my skin. Just Nicky, of course. I swallowed hard, grabbed the lamp, and went to let him in.

W
E SETTLED AT THE KITCHEN TABLE
. I put out some cheese and crackers and Nicky poured us two good-sized glasses of bourbon.

Nicky had shaved, combed his hair, and put on a clean, recently ironed white shirt that made him look downright civilized. To prove he was still a country boy, he had on a denim jacket, nearly worn through at the elbows and fraying at the collar.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, not wanting to waste time with small talk.

“Tell you what?” He eyed me cautiously.

“About you and Zack. I talked to him yesterday and he told me everything.”

“Just what did he say?” Nicky asked.

“Enough. God, I feel like you had this whole other life back then that I didn’t have a clue about. I mean, I had no idea. I thought he was your drug dealer.”

“He was,” Nicky said, looking down into his glass.

“But he was more than that, wasn’t he?”

“In a way,” Nicky admitted, still staring into the amber liquid.

“Look, Nicky, there’s been a lot of weird shit happening here and I’d sure appreciate it if you’d just be honest with me for once. I mean, how can you expect me to take anything you’ve said about the ghost stuff seriously when you’ve been lying to me all along?” My voice started to crack. “I just need one person to be straight with me here. Everyone in this town has secrets piled on like those Russian nesting dolls. So please, I’m begging you, no more lies.”

“I never lied.” He continued to stare down into his glass, then lifted it to his lips and drained it quickly.

“I’d say the omission of the little detail about you and Zack counts as being lied to. Now come on, Nicky. Tell me about it. You owe me that much.”

Nicky chewed on his lip a minute. He raised his eyes to meet mine, then looked away guiltily. He reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink, downed it, then lit a cigarette.

“I’m not queer, you know.”

“Nicky, it doesn’t matter.” I placed my hand on his.

“No more so than anyone else. I’ve had some lady friends over the years. Never went and got married like you did, but I came close once. This thing with Zack, it was crazy. I mean, when I think about it now, it feels like some far-off dream. Like it was a movie I was watching. Does that make sense?”

I nodded. So many parts of my life felt the same way. All the affairs Jamie had had, the years I played the helpless martyr.

“The guy was nuts about me,” Nicky told me as he exhaled a cloud of smoke. “And I got swept away in it. I believed whatever he told me. He said sexuality was fluid and being with him didn’t make me, you know, gay. He read me Walt Whitman. Pretty deep shit for a kid whose biggest excitement had been shooting crows and squirrels. Looking back, I think it was the danger, the
wrongness
of it, that made it so powerful. It happened only a few times, and each time, I told myself it wasn’t gonna happen again, but then he’d show up and put his hands on me, and I couldn’t refuse. It was the fear of getting caught that added so much fuel to it, ya know? Does that make sense?” He looked up at me, his eyes boozy and moist. I nodded.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I asked.

“I tried. I planned to dozens of times. But I didn’t want to risk scaring you off. I was a little in love with you back then.” Nicky’s cheeks colored and he gave me a self-conscious smile. “I didn’t understand it myself, much less know how to explain it to some girl I was sick over.”

Now my face reddened. I squeezed Nicky’s hand, then let go.

“Then Del caught you,” I said, pouring myself another drink.

“Yeah, Del caught us all right.” He let out a regretful, smoke filled sigh. “Little shit snuck right up the ladder and watched. Didn’t even know she was there till we were, you know…through.”

“What did she do then?”

“Hell, you remember how she was. She threatened to tell. She used it whenever she needed to get her way with me. Worked damn near every time, too.”

“But did she ever tell?”

“Uh-uh. Not that I know of. I thought maybe she’d told you, but I guess not.”

“Nicky, is there anything else you’re not telling me? Anything about Del?”

“Like what?” Nicky’s voice had an angry, defensive edge. “Like did I kill her? Jesus, Kate!”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Now it’s your turn,” Nicky said. “How ’bout you tell me something I don’t know.”

I had a bite of cracker and a sip of bourbon. I decided it was time to fess up—to tell Nicky how I betrayed his sister. Nicky had told me his secret at last; now it was time for me to tell mine. I began with the tattoo.

“Jesus, an
M
?” Nicky asked, sitting up straight. “Are you sure it was an
M
? Do you know what this means? It’s a fucking clue. It’s probably the initial of the killer. The police suspected it was someone she knew, someone she felt comfortable with.”

I nodded, agreeing. Then I continued. I told Nicky about my plan with Ellie, about the double-agent scheme, about how it went so wrong. I tried not to make excuses for myself. I described Del’s last afternoon at school. Nicky’s eyes brimmed with tears, then seemed to darken with rage. I let myself go on, fearful that maybe I had gone too far, that I was at risk of alienating him, being seen as the enemy, but it was too late. And as much as I was ashamed of what I had done, it was a relief to finally be telling my story.

I described how in my last moments with Del, I was chasing her, a rock in my hand. Then I jumped forward in time, telling him everything that had happened since I had come back to New Canaan: the cat’s disappearing and then turning up dead next to my missing knife, the footprints in the snow, the matchstick message, my mother’s painting, Del’s sheriff ’s star mysteriously showing up in my purse. I told him all about Opal: that she said she’d seen the Potato Girl, that she was sure it was she herself who was the killer’s intended target, that I’d caught her twice searching the woods for something. I described the scene earlier that evening, when my mother spoke to me in Del’s voice, demanding her star back. I told him I thought I was going crazy, that I didn’t believe in ghosts and the supernatural but was running out of rational explanations. Either I was completely losing my mind, or my tangible, scientific, orderly way of looking at the world was just shit. Lousy choices.

When I was finished, I poured two fingers of Wild Turkey into my empty glass and sucked it down fast. My hand shook. Nicky didn’t look me in the eye. I wanted to take his face in my hands, turn him gently toward me so I could read some response in his eyes.

Nicky poured himself another drink and studied the flame of the lantern.

When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse, like he was on the verge of either crying or screaming. I felt a little afraid.

“Do you know where Del got that star, Kate? Did she ever tell you?”

“No. She never told me.”

“That mute kid, Mike Shane, gave it to her. That’s what I finally figured anyway. She said the boy who gave it to her loved her. She told me that it was supposed to remind her that she was his guiding star or some shit like that. Puppy love, ya know? He gave her notes, too. Poor bastard couldn’t talk, but he sure could write. Poured his mute little heart out. God, how Del loved that damn star. Thought she was really the sheriff, like it gave her some kind of power or something.”

Her talisman.

He fiddled with his lighter, turning it around and around in his fingers. He had mechanic’s hands: blunt fingers, dirt under the nails, grease deep in the lines of his skin. Like it or not, I found myself longing to be touched by those fingers. To be taken back in time.

“I remember.” I nodded, taking my eyes off his hands. “I remember Mike Shane, too. Do you know what ever happened to him?”

“I hear he’s up in Burlington. A buddy of mine at the garage knows his family. Real trailer trash, the whole lot. Sammy, the guy I work with, says Mike’s dad used to burn the kids with cigarettes and shit. Sad story.”

“Yeah, I’ll say. He got about as much crap at school as Del did. It’s no wonder they were drawn to each other.”

Nicky nodded. “Kate, I’d like to see your mother’s painting.”

I grabbed a candle and led him back to the studio. He walked right up to the canvas, still clutching the bottle of Wild Turkey, and squinted at the shadowy form in the flames. I stood behind him, holding up the candle.

“Spooky,” he whispered, taking a step back and bumping into me. We stood like that a moment, his back pressed into my front, me breathing on his neck. I knew I should step away, retreat while I could, but it was too late. I leaned forward, pressing into him, bringing my left hand up to his shoulder, tracing the outline of his arm, reaching around to his chest, where I felt his heart racing through the soft cotton folds. But as I slid my hand inside his jacket, that wasn’t the only thing I felt.

Suspenders?
I thought at first when I felt the webbed nylon strap, but when I followed it to the bulge on his left side, I knew just what it was.

“What is this?”

“Protection,” he said, reaching in and removing the small automatic pistol, then laying it down on the cot.

Like it or not, seeing the gun gave me a little shiver of excitement. What can I say? I guess I have a secret thing for gun-toting bad boys. Give me an outlaw over a cardiologist any day.

“From little old me?” I whispered into the back of his neck, my hands feeling the straps of the nylon holster.

“You can never be too careful,” he said.

My fingers found the top button of his shirt and undid it, then the second. I let my hand slide beneath his shirt, brushing gently against his right nipple.

“That’s so true,” I said. “Maybe you shouldn’t have been so quick to give up your weapon.”

At last, he turned.

Our second kiss, some thirty years after the first, was no less violent, and fueled by a raw desperation unknown to us as children.

K
ATE, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE STAR
? What’d you do with it?”

Nicky was facing me, leaning on his elbow, holding the bottle of Wild Turkey between us. The candle flickered on the table beside the cot, the light playing in his hair and over his skin. He looked lovely.