The Diary (12 page)

I've been sick about it. They don't have any evidence against him
—
how could they
?—
but even so, it kills me to see him dragged through the mud for something he didn't do, especially when he was only trying to help. He says it doesn't matter what people think, but it does matter. Around here you're guilty until proven innocent. Even if he doesn't go to jail, he'll be tried and hung by the court of public opinion. No one will hire him after this. He'll be lucky if he doesn't get run out of town
.

I'm such a coward! I should never have agreed to keep my mouth shut. I should have gone straight to the police. If it hadn't been for Bob, I'm sure I would have. But I don't want him to be hurt, too. And he would be, terribly, if my part in this were made public. Poor, dear Bob. He's the most innocent one of all. His only mistake was falling in love with the wrong person
.

The Rainbow
, in the heart of downtown Emory, was a favorite local gathering place: a two-story complex that included a restaurant, bowling alley, and bar. It was the kind of place where couples with children could enjoy an evening out without having to hire a sitter, wine came in a carafe and beer in a pitcher, and conversation in the restaurant upstairs was punctuated by the muted clatter from the bowling alley below. It was also where Bob and Elizabeth went for supper every Friday night that he was in town. Bob always ordered the same thing, chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes, while Elizabeth generally went with the special of the day. The evening usually ended with Bob taking the long way home, a drive that at some point would find them parked by the old train yard, abandoned since the highway had made it obsolete back in 1939 and the closest thing Emory had to a lovers' lane. They would sit in his car and neck until it was time to head home.

Tonight when Bob moved to put his arm around her, she edged away from him, letting him know she wasn't in the mood. “What is it, Bets?” He looked more bewildered than hurt. “You're not mad at me, are you?”

“Why should I be mad? What have you done to make me angry?” she snapped. She knew it was unfair to take it out on Bob, but lately she seemed to have little or no control over her emotions.

He eyed her somberly in the glow of the dashboard lights. They were parked along the access road by the railroad tracks, where weeds and wildflowers had sprung up and railcars lay about in various stages of disrepair. A lock of hair had slipped down over his forehead, which was furrowed in consternation. It touched her for some reason—he looked like Superman bent on saving the world.

“All I know is you haven't been yourself lately,” he said. “Take tonight, for instance. You ordered the same thing as me. And you don't even like chicken-fried steak.”

She'd only ordered it because she'd been too preoccupied with thoughts of AJ and the trouble he was in to bother reading the menu. “I thought it was time I tried something different. Actually, it wasn't all that bad.”
If you liked your meat dipped in grease and cooked to the consistency of leather
, she amended silently.

“It wasn't just dinner,” Bob went on in his slow, thoughtful way, like a lawyer presenting his case—which he planned to one day do for a living. “You're always too busy to talk when I phone. You've been distant in other ways, too. Frankly, I'm surprised you made time for me tonight.” A note of hurt crept into his voice, but it was quickly replaced by concern. “Is there something wrong, Bets? You can tell me. Whatever it is, I want to know.”

Elizabeth looked into Bob's open, trusting face, and it was like a knife through her heart. He was more than just concerned; he looked scared—scared that whatever was eating at her had something to do with him. She realized it was useless to go on pretending. She wasn't fooling anyone, and she couldn't bear seeing him this way. It was almost worse than knowing AJ was suffering because of her cowardice.

She had to tell the truth.

Elizabeth swallowed against the lump forming in her throat. “I'm sorry, darling.” She spoke gently, lovingly, as if that could somehow minimize the blow. “You're right. I haven't been myself lately. And there's a reason for it. I didn't want to say anything until I was sure, but you have a right to know. You see,” she paused to draw in an unsteady breath, “there's someone else.”

“Jesus, Bets.” He shook his head uncomprehendingly.

“I would have told you sooner, but I … I needed time to sort things out.”

He gathered his wits and asked in a dull, shell-shocked voice, “Who is he?”

She hesitated, wanting to spare both men any further pain before replying in a small voice, “It's AJ.”

“You're kidding, right?” The smile struggling to take hold on his face slid away when he saw that she was serious.

“I wish I were.” She hung her head. “I didn't mean for it to happen. It just did.”

The slackness went out of his jaw as shock gave way to anger. He let out a curse, adding through gritted teeth, “That bum! I should've known. I'm surprised he didn't set fire to my car while he was at it.”

“He's not like that.” She immediately jumped to AJ's defense.

Bob gave a derisive snort. “I think his record speaks for itself.”

“You don't know the whole story.”

“For Chrissakes, he burned the Findlays' barn down! What more proof do you need that he's a menace to society?”

“He didn't do it.”

“Who did, then?”

“I don't know, but it wasn't AJ.”

“What makes you so sure?” His eyes narrowed.

She forced herself to look him directly in the eye as she answered, “I was with him that night.”

There was no need to spell it out. Bob understood what she was telling him: that this was no innocent flirtation. She watched the color drain from his face and a kind of dull realization settle in before he slowly turned his head to stare sightlessly at the shadowy jumble of rust-eaten railroad cars. They might have been the remnants of a lost civilization given how desolate this spot seemed right now.

“I'm sorry,” she repeated. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“How?” he choked. “How did this happen?”

“I wish I could tell you. I'm not really sure myself.” She yearned to put her arms around Bob and console him, and at the same time she knew that to do so would only make this worse.

He whipped his head around, demanding, “Are you in love with him?”

She said nothing, letting her silence speak for itself. Bob let out a tortured moan and dropped his face into his hands. When at last he lifted his head to look at her, his eyes were bloodshot and angry red stripes stood out on his cheeks where he'd dragged at them with his fingertips.

Her heart ached for him, but she knew she couldn't stop until she'd told him everything. She had come to a decision tonight, one she'd put off too long. “I wanted you to know before I go to the police. I'm sure it'll be in the newspaper. People will talk. They won't know everything, of course, but they'll put two and two together.” She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “I wish there were another way, but I'm afraid there isn't.”

His face hardened. “Did AJ put you up to this?”

“No, just the opposite. He's the reason I didn't go to the police sooner. He begged me not to. He knew what it would do to me—to us.”

He eyed her in disbelief. “You love him that much? Enough to throw away everything just to save his neck?”

She had no answer. Until now there had been no need to put into words what she felt for AJ. It simply was: a force she could neither explain nor deny. “All I know is this is something I have to do.”

She looked out at the moths pirouetting in the muted glow of the Buick's parking lights. Frankie Laine was crooning softly on the radio—a love song. With a low growl, Bob switched off the ignition, silencing the music and plunging them into darkness. She turned to find him staring out at the darkened landscape, his hands clenched about the steering wheel as if negotiating a sharp turn.

“So this is it? It's over?” His anguished voice floated toward her. Bob didn't crack. He didn't weep. He just sat there with a stoicism that cut her more deeply than if he'd begged her to reconsider.

“I don't see any other way.” She felt her eyes well with tears and bit her lower lip hard to keep from breaking down. Knowing Bob, he would have felt compelled to comfort her, and that would have been too cruel.

On the way home, neither of them uttered a word. When at last he pulled up in front of her house, she didn't get out right away; she placed a hand on his arm, wanting to communicate to him somehow that this was hurting her, too, and that she still cared for him deeply. But his arm was as unyielding as stone. He didn't react, even to flinch from her touch. He wouldn't so much as look at her.

She opened the car door and got out, saying in a small, choked voice, “Good-bye, Bob.” She'd only meant to say good-night, and, hearing the finality of her words, she felt something give way inside her—the last bit of glue holding her together. When she reached the front door of her house, she had to pause to collect herself before going inside to break the news to her mother.

Mildred was
anything but stoic. If she'd been thrown for a loop when told of the breakup, Elizabeth's subsequent announcement that she intended to go to the police on AJ's behalf was the match that ignited the flame.

“It's out of the question,” Mildred snapped. “I absolutely forbid it.”

She was seated at the dressing table in her room, her hair in curlers. She wore her favorite cucumber-green dressing gown. Her face, stripped of its makeup, plainly showed the fear beneath her fury, which made her seem vulnerable somehow. That vulnerability tugged at Elizabeth more than any threats or entreaties. In that moment, she hated her mother for making herself the victim. For causing her to question even for an instant what she knew was the right thing to do.

“You can't forbid it!” Elizabeth, perched on the end of the bed, sat up straight and squared her shoulders. She could see her reflection in the mirror over the dressing table, juxtaposed with her mother's, and hardly recognized the dark-haired young woman who stared back at her with such fierce determination. “If I'm old enough to vote, I'm old enough to do as I please.”

“Nonsense! You'll do exactly as I tell you.”

There was a note of hysteria in her mother's sharp command: Her control over her daughter was slipping, and she knew it. Wanting to reassure her that it wasn't the end of the world, Elizabeth attempted to appeal to her better nature. More gently, she said, “I can't just walk away from this. Didn't you teach me to always do the right thing, even when it hurts?”

“I didn't teach you to commit social suicide!” Mildred shrieked.

“This isn't just about me.” For once Elizabeth held her ground.

“So you'd ruin your reputation for some … some miscreant who isn't fit to breathe the same air as you?” The expression on her mother's face was one of supreme outrage mixed with incredulity.

Ignoring the insult to AJ, Elizabeth replied as calmly as she could, “It isn't just my reputation that's at stake here.” She could feel a tightness in her temples signaling the onset of a headache.

“Who cares what anyone thinks of that boy? He's made his bed; now let him lie in it. It's
you
who has everything to lose.”

Elizabeth dug her heels in. “I don't care what anyone thinks of me, either.”

“Don't be naive, Elizabeth. A woman's reputation is everything!” Mildred spun around on her stool to scoop a glob of cold cream from the open jar on the dressing table, addressing her daughter's reflection in the mirror as she began rubbing it over her face with quick, savage strokes. “Do you think Mr. Arno would have hired you if he'd thought you had loose morals? Do you think Bob's parents would have wanted their son to marry such a person?”

Elizabeth shot to her feet, her cheeks stinging as though slapped. “It's not up to them. It's not up to Bob, either.
I
get to decide whom I'm going to marry,” she informed her mother. “And for the record, I'm not ashamed of anything I've done. I'm only sorry that Bob got hurt because of it.”

“What about me?” her mother shrilled.

“How have I hurt you, Mother?”

Mildred spun back to face her, her eyes like slits in the mask of cold cream. “You have to ask me that? My God, isn't it obvious? How am I supposed to hold my head up in this town with everyone whispering behind my back, ‘There goes poor Mildred Harvey. Did you hear about her daughter and that Keener boy?'”

Elizabeth eyed her coolly. “I thought it was
my
reputation you were worried about.”

“Yes, of course. But I have mine to think of, too.” Mildred slapped the lid back onto the cold-cream jar, wrenching it tight as if it were a neck she'd like to wring. “That boy is trash. He comes from trash, and he'll always be trash. Why sink to his level? Didn't I raise you better than that?”

Elizabeth bit back the angry words that rose to her lips. The events of the evening had left her so spent that she didn't have the strength for this particular battle. Instead she made one last attempt to appeal to her mother. “Don't you see? It's
because
of how I was raised. Remember how Daddy always used to say to never judge a book by its cover? I just wish you could know AJ the way I do. He's a good person. It's not his fault he got stuck with those awful people.”

“I suppose you think I'm awful, too!” Mildred's voice rose to a hysterical pitch.

“Mother, please. Of course I don't think that.” Elizabeth rubbed at her temples, where the headache was in full bloom.

But Mildred wasn't letting her off the hook. “Don't lie to me! I can see it on your face.”