The Weight of Blood (16 page)

Gabby

Gabby had always loved new things, and it didn't have to be anything big, like driving down to Mountain Home and buying a new pair of sneakers at Shoe Carnival. It could just be something different from the usual, the tiniest change in the everyday. Every single thing in Henbane was always the same, and as her brother Rich used to say,
Ain't nothin' ever good here
. You couldn't see any neighbors from their place, and no neighbors could see them, which reinforced the terrible hopeless feeling that she was all alone, that she could scream her head off and nobody would hear it, nobody would come to see if she was okay. And she wasn't okay, not that anybody asked. They were poor, that was one thing, but being poor wasn't enough to make you miserable. It was who you were poor with. She spent the night with a friend in high school and couldn't believe how good the girl's folks got along in the rickety trailer they lived in. The dad told jokes over dinner—chipped beef on toast, end-of-the-month staple when you were waiting for new food stamps—and the mom asked all of the kids what the best part of their day was. It made Gabby's stomach hurt. When the mom turned to her and asked the best part of
her
day, Gabby lost it. She started bawling, and instead of pretending not to notice, the mom came over and patted her on the arm till the tears let up.

Gabby and her brothers were at the mercy of Dad's belt, and Mom sat there like a deaf mute, not saying or doing anything so long as she wasn't the one getting whipped. Gabby was bitter about that but knew their mom had other burdens to bear—they all heard Dad grunting over her in the next room every night. Her oldest brother wanted something to grunt over, too, and Gabby slept in jeans and a buckled belt in hopes that somebody else in the room would wake up by the time he got where he was going. They chopped their own wood for heat and grew their own food, but they were still cold and hungry. She'd make a game of it where she'd relax all the little bits of her body, starting with her fingers and toes and working in toward the center. She had to make herself limp and draw the hurt and want into a tight core inside, each time adding another layer to that core, so that if somebody came along and cut her open, they'd find inside a shining, perfect pearl, hard as any Willy Wonka jawbreaker.

Whenever something new showed up in the holler, it gave her hope that there was a life other than this one, where other things happened, and she might one day be one of those other people doing those other things. Maybe not something better but at least different and new.

Gabby's mom worked at the sewing factory back then, and the people who'd taken it over needed somebody to watch their cat while they went on Christmas vacation. They were paying twenty bucks for the week, but nobody wanted to do it on principle, because the new owners weren't locals and had no business taking over the sewing factory. Mom ended up with the cat because she hadn't said anything either way. So this fluffy white kitten showed up on their kitchen table Christmas Eve in a brand-new carrier that was cleaner than anything else in the house. The kitten's name was Clancy, and he was their very first overnight guest, ever.

The entire Johnson family sat around the table and watched Clancy strut back and forth. It was obvious right away that this cat was popular and outgoing. If he'd been a person, he would've been the football captain who smiled at the outcasts like they were friends, even though they could never be friends. Gabby had the irrational desire to interview Clancy, to ask him what it was like to sleep in a clean new bed, and to find out whether he had carpeting in his house. His food came in cans and smelled better than some things the Johnsons ate. Gabby wanted desperately to please the cat, to be his favorite.

A couple days into his visit, Clancy had gotten all dusty playing in the ashes from the woodstove, and Gabby wanted to see his fur shining white again. She had never before seen a white cat in the holler, and she didn't want Clancy to start looking like he belonged there, all dull and ragged like the rest of them. Keeping him clean kept him interesting. So she gave Clancy a bath in the kitchen sink using the special cat shampoo the owners had sent along, but as it turned out, Clancy didn't like his bath like she'd thought he would. When Gabby was done, she wrapped him in a dish towel, planning to carry him to her room and let him dry on the bed. But Clancy sprang out of her arms and landed on the woodstove, yowling in pain before quickly bouncing to the floor. He darted behind the potato bin, and for the rest of his visit, Clancy wanted nothing to do with Gabby. He hid any time she came near.

Gabby never came across another cat like Clancy, but she took solace in the various crippled, tick-infested critters that made their way onto the property. A lame fawn. A coonhound with one eye. An entire litter of kittens dumped in the ditch by the mailbox. They weren't pretty or clean like Clancy, but neither was she. They didn't care how desperate she was for their affection because they were desperate, too.

When Lila appeared at Dane's that first day, Gabby felt that same surge of joy she had felt when Clancy showed up in her kitchen. She'd moved into her own little camper, which at first had been new and exciting and was a definite improvement over living at home. She didn't have to deal with anyone except herself, and she didn't mind being cold or hungry in her own private space. But she had that ache again for something new in her life, and new boyfriends were not enough to soothe it.

Lila couldn't have stood out more if she'd been stuck to a lighted billboard. To Gabby's eye, she was exotic and sophisticated, a fancy magazine cover model who mistakenly ended up waiting tables in a dive, wearing dumpy clothes. Gabby was so glad to have her there, she'd have carried Lila's load at work so long as the girl sat there looking mysterious. But Lila wasn't like that. She was a hard worker, worried about doing a good job. And no matter how worldly—or otherworldly—she appeared, it quickly became clear that she was out of her comfort zone in Henbane.

Gabby felt protective of her, like a mother hen. When Carl Dane walked in, she saw the look in his eyes, like he'd pulled a mermaid up in his net and wasn't sure he'd be allowed to keep it. He was probably the one guy in all of Henbane who Gabby could stand to have looking at Lila that way. She didn't know then if Lila would feel the same way about him but wasn't surprised when she did. Gabby wished somebody would show up to sweep
her
away, so she jumped into the arms of every guy who crossed her path in case he was the one. She didn't get the fairy-tale prince Lila got, but she could never be jealous, with the way things turned out.

When Lila told Gabby she was pregnant, Gabby was happy for her. She knew Lila hadn't meant to trap Carl—he would've walked into that trap and begged to stay—but she'd secured herself a good man with a house and a job, without even trying. Gabby couldn't get why Lila wasn't happy about it. She just seemed confused. The day after they figured out she was pregnant, Lila told Gabby about the bad feeling she was having. The dark thing in her belly. She wanted to get it out of her. Gabby figured it was some kind of superstition. So she took her friend out to Sarah Cole's, because if anyone could clear up a superstition, it was Sarah. She was sensitive to things, and Gabby had never known her to be wrong.

Sarah wanted to talk to Lila alone, and when Lila walked back out onto the porch not fifteen minutes later, she had her hand low on her belly, and Gabby knew she'd decided to keep the baby.

Lila

Sarah Cole folded up the hem of my shirt to expose my stomach, then sprinkled dried leaves into her palm and crushed them with her fingers. She added a few drops of amber liquid, like olive oil, and rubbed the concoction over my still-flat belly. Her eyes closed, and a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. We were sitting at her kitchen table, and I wondered momentarily if she was preparing to roast me in the oven like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.”

She wiped her hands on her apron and lit a candle. Mumbling words I couldn't untangle, she dripped wax on a piece of bark and studied it. “I see a scale. She'll bring balance.” Sarah examined the bark a while longer. “She's good,” she said finally. “You should keep her.”

“How can you know that?” I asked. “What does all this mean?” I gestured at the mess she'd made. Leaves and wax meant nothing to me.

“I can't tell you how the truth comes,” she said. “It's a gift, and I don't question it.”

I wasn't sure I believed her any more than I'd believe a palm reader at a carnival, but I wanted her to be right. “You said ‘she.' You think it's a girl?”

“I have a feeling. We can try something if you'd like.” She glanced at my hands. “You don't wear a ring?”

I shook my head. She twisted a ring off her own finger and fetched a length of string from a kitchen drawer. Then she looped the string through the ring to make a pendulum that she dangled over my stomach. The ring swung back and forth. Sarah smiled. “I was right, see? Back and forth is a girl. All mine spun in a circle.”

The front door rattled, and what sounded like a herd of animals clomped toward the kitchen.

“Ma, look.” A cluster of boys burst into the room. “Daniel got a fish.”

They noticed me then, and the three older boys stopped and stared. The smallest one—Daniel, I assumed—toddled over with a bucket, showing off his catch. He handed the bucket to Sarah and turned to place his hands on my exposed belly, no doubt imitating what he'd seen his mother do to other women. He smiled up at me, and Sarah gently pulled him away. “Get cleaned up for supper, boys,” she said, giving Daniel a quick squeeze. “Take this one with you.”

It wasn't how I planned to tell Carl. Not that I had a better plan. He was standing in the bathroom doorway when I got up from the floor, and the look on his face was panicked, like he'd thought I was almost better and now something had gone wrong and he blamed himself. In that moment I wanted to comfort him. “I'm not sick,” I said, my hand over my mouth. “I'm pregnant, that's all.”

He looked shocked, and we stared at each other in uncomfortable silence. Finally, he pulled me to him, his face in my hair, and held me awhile, and then he left the house. “Don't go anywhere,” he said as I watched him from the top of the stairs. “Stay right there.”

I lay on the bed and waited. I didn't know what he would do, but Gabby was right, he didn't sound mad. It was almost dusk when he returned, and fireflies hovered at the edge of the yard.

“I'm sorry it took me so long,” he said, leading me to the porch swing. “I had to get something first.” I sat down and he knelt in front of me, taking my hand. “I wanted to do this a while ago, so I don't want you to think it's just because of the baby. That first night, when I met you at Dane's, it was like I'd been walking in there every night of my life waiting for you to show up, and you finally did. You're the one I've been looking for. Everything about you is different from the other girls here. You don't pretend to be anything you're not. You don't care what anybody thinks of you. And I only care what you think of me. Because I love you. I want to be with you.” He smiled up at me. “I was coming to talk to you about it that day at the garage, but …”

He cleared his throat. I knew what he was about to do, and I felt like I was slowly suffocating. Air seeped out of my body, and I couldn't coax it back in. Carl let go of my hand and dug in his pocket for the ring, a plain gold band.

“I promise to make a home for you and the baby if you'll just stay with me,” he murmured. “Will you marry me?”

Those last four words. They fell like stones dropped in a well, disappearing into the dark. It would be a crazy thing to do, to marry Carl. I was eighteen years old, and I wasn't even sure what I wanted to do with my life. Now I had this other little life putting pressure on all my decisions. There was no doubt by now that I loved Carl. But I didn't know if love outweighed everything else, if it was enough to tip the scale. Because choosing him meant staying in Henbane with Crete.

I paused. I don't know how long. Long enough for him to worry. His fingers curled around the ring.

“Yes,” I breathed. I said it like I was trying it out. I wanted to see how it felt, and I knew right away that I meant it. I'd chosen to make a family, a home, with Carl and the baby, and after so many years without roots, I'd found what I'd always been looking for. A place where I was wanted and loved. Relief made me giddy and I stood, pulling him to his feet. “Yes.”

“You'll marry me.”

“
Yes
.”

An enormous grin broke out on his face, and he whooped like a cowboy. He lifted me down the steps into the yard and danced me around in circles, stopping just long enough to slide the ring on my finger.

I took in the thick night air, the sweet smell of honeysuckle, the chirping of frogs, to impress the moment in the folds of my memory, preserve it like a flower between pages of a book. To remember: This is how it feels to be happy.

Lucy

My next day off, I went down to the courthouse to see Ray Walker. Almost a year ago I'd gone to see him to tell him that Cheri couldn't have run away, that something must have happened to her. I didn't know it for a fact, but it was hard for me to accept that she'd leave without telling me. I thought Ray would spring into action, pull together search teams and investigators and bring her back home. Instead, he'd said that we never knew people as well as we thought we did. That they could surprise us.
It's quite possible that you're right
, he said.
But you can't claim to know
.

Ray looked the same as he had at that last visit: starched shirt, bow tie, slicked-back hair. He plucked a can of Coke from his mini-fridge, cracked it open, and split it between two glasses.

“I need some advice,” I said. “And I need you to not tell my dad.”

Ray groaned and tilted his glass, waiting for the fizz to die down. “That's never a good way to start things, my dear.”

I smiled, because he hadn't said no. “It's legal advice, sort of,” I said. “How much evidence do you need for the police to look into something? Will they do anything based on hearsay? Is that what you call it?”

“Oh, Lucy.” He set down his drink, and his pale eyes filled with worry. “What's this about? Is it Cheri again?”

“Yes. I've actually heard some things, seen some things. I don't have any real evidence yet, but I think I can get some. I just wondered what would happen if I told the police now, told them what I know without being able to back it up.”

Ray ran his finger around the rim of his glass. “What you've got to consider is who you're telling it to. The sheriff and his boys are related to hundreds of people here in the county, and if you're making accusations against their kin, they might not take it so well. Even if they're not related, who's to say they're not in bed with your suspect, so to speak. Taking bribes. Buying drugs. I'm not saying our law is corrupt, but you never know how it might be compromised. You've got to be sure you can trust whomever you're telling, that it won't come back on you.”

“How can I be sure?” I asked.

He smirked. “You can't be, in Henbane. Therefore, I wouldn't try anything on word alone. When you have something solid—and in saying this, I do not by any means imply that you should go out investigating, because you shouldn't—but if you do have some real evidence, you can go over their heads and contact the state police. In fact, I'd be happy to do it for you.”

I considered asking him if the necklace alone was enough, without the trailer or proof of who rented it, but I kept it to myself.

“It's noble of you, Lucy, trying to help your friend. I'd love nothing more than to see this case solved, to bring her killer to justice. But Cheri's gone. And in another year you'll be out of this town, making a life for yourself. Whatever mess Cheri was in, you don't want to get stuck in it. Nothing you do will put her back together.”

So I was supposed to forget about Cheri now that she'd been laid to rest. Was I supposed to bury my mother, too, since I couldn't bring her back?

“Do you ever think about Lila?” I asked.

His expression stiffened. “I do,” he said. “Every time I see your face.”

“Did you believe she killed herself? Did you try to figure out what happened to her?”

He rubbed his forehead. “Losing her was hard on everyone who knew her. Myself included. I never wanted to believe she killed herself. But like I said before, people surprise you. I did have my own ideas about what happened. And I did talk to the sheriff about them. Nothing came of it.”

“Because you were wrong or because they didn't listen?”

“I had no proof,” he said. “Just things she'd implied. But the dead don't bear witness.”
Dead
. He sounded so sure. And still pained by it.

“What did she tell you?”

“Why does it matter now?”

“Why
wouldn't
it matter?”

“You're still a child, Lucy,” he said. “You're not old enough to understand that there are things you'd rather not know. Knowing won't make it easier. You think you can set wrong things right, but it's rarely so simple.”

“I just want to know what happened to her,” I said, slumping on Ray's desk. He watched me with a mixture of longing and sadness, and I knew, looking at me, he was seeing her. Goose bumps pebbled my skin.

He sighed, fixing his gaze on the datebook spread out before him, each line adorned with his graceful, curled script. “I don't suppose anyone knows the whole truth, dear. We're all missing pieces of the puzzle. All I can tell you is to open your eyes. Look at whom you know and think about how well you know them. Open your mind to the possibilities; rethink things you've taken for granted. Like we tell the kids in Sunday school: Just because you don't see the devil doesn't mean he isn't there. He doesn't carry a pitchfork. He hides in plain sight.”

Ray's words disturbed me. Question everyone, everything. I went home and opened my journal to “People Who Knew My Mother” and put asterisks next to all the names.

I wanted to call Daniel, but I didn't have a number where I could reach him. He'd been gone for a few weeks, and I missed him. More than I'd thought I would. I'd lie in bed replaying the night he kissed me, imagining that things had gone further, trying to conjure the shared heat of our bare skin pressed together, the tangling of his fingers in my hair. I didn't know why he wasn't interested in being more than friends. The one time I'd caught his eyes roaming over my body, he'd quickly looked away. Was he holding back because he felt protective of me? Did he think I was too young?

Work was lonely despite the flow of tourists on the river. Occasionally, one of the float-tripping college guys would invite me to join him and his friends after work, sit by the campfire, drink a few beers. They were all the same, their shirts and hats advertising their allegiance to fraternities and sports teams, their intentions clearly visible in their flirtatious smiles and flexing biceps. I can't say I wasn't sometimes tempted to take them up on their offers. It was enticing in a way, an anonymous encounter with someone who knew nothing about me, who would require little conversation and be gone the next day. But I knew that any of them would be poor substitutes for Daniel, even if I closed my eyes and imagined him there instead.

Bess and I had started spending more time together again, like we used to. After her last encounter with Sorrel, she'd taken a more personal interest in Cheri. We sat on the porch swing one night in late July, drinking lemonade and trying to figure out a way to get Sorrel to talk.

“I haven't seen him around town,” Bess said, “but I think he's still here. If he took one of those other jobs and already moved, we'd have heard about it. So I could just call his house. I wouldn't even have to see him.”

“What would you say to him?”

“I dunno. Too bad I couldn't act like I was pregnant. Go for the blackmail.”

“That kind of thing wouldn't work. He'd want proof. He's not stupid. He wouldn't do what you say just because you call up and threaten him.”

Bess's nostrils flared. “I'm trying to help,” she said. “I don't have any other ideas.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I've been thinking about it for so long, and it's all a bunch of dead ends. Nothing we do will make him tell us anything.” Bess started moving the swing sideways, like we did when we were kids. Birdie always warned us we'd go flying off the porch, but that just made us swing harder to see if she was right.

“Hey,” she said. “What if we record my conversation with him, like people do on TV? Maybe even if he doesn't want to admit to anything, he might say something we can use. I can try to trip him up. He's not
that
smart.”

I smiled at her, shifting my weight so I squished her as the swing went in her direction. She did the same when it swung back my way, and we giggled like little kids. “I like it,” I said. I couldn't remember from all the crime shows I'd watched whether it was illegal to record a phone conversation or if you couldn't use it in court. But I wasn't worried about technicalities. We needed
something
. Enough to jump-start the investigation into Cheri's murder.

Two days later, Bess worked up the nerve to call Sorrel. I sat next to her and listened in while she recorded the conversation on the answering machine. He was quiet as she unspooled a story about her mom finding her journal and reading about everything she and Sorrel had done together, including his mention of Cheri. Her mom, she said, wanted to take it to the police. There was a long silence at the other end of the line. Bess and I stared at each other, her hand latched on to my arm, and we waited.

Sorrel let out a long sigh, like he was deflating. “You're obviously a troubled child,” he said carefully. “We both know how easily you could fake something like that, but I'm not sure you realize what a bad idea it is. You wouldn't want to end up in juvie, would you? Or jail? That's what happens when you falsely accuse people, falsify evidence.” Bess's face flushed with anger. “I'll give you time to think this over,” he said. “If you want to meet with me, discuss this in person, call me back next week.”

He hung up without revealing a single incriminating detail. And he'd twisted things around on Bess to make her feel like she was the one who should be worried. “He's bluffing,” I said. “He wants to intimidate you into backing down.”

Bess sank into the couch, shaking her head.

“We'll get him,” I said, squeezing her hand. I knew I didn't sound convincing.

“We're running out of time. School's starting soon.”

I pulled the remote out of the crack in the couch and turned on the TV. “I'm going to Crete's,” I said.

Bess grabbed the remote from me and pressed mute. “What're you gonna do over there?”

“Snoop. He didn't have anything about the trailer in his office, which means he must have that information at home. He writes everything down. It has to be somewhere.”

“Why don't you wait and see if I get something out of Sorrel first?”

“You just said yourself that we're running out of time. Summer's almost over. We can't let Sorrel go back to the junior high. And I can't stop thinking of the guy Jamie told me about. Emory. If he really is selling girls, more of them could end up like Cheri. It could be happening every minute we're not doing anything.”

“I'll go with you,” she said.

“No way. Then who'd come looking for me if something happens?”

Bess looked at me. “You're serious, aren't you.”

I shrugged. I'd meant it as a joke, but part of me knew it was true. I wasn't sure what we were getting ourselves into.