Down River (38 page)

My father spoke, and desolation was in his voice. “For God’s sake, Miriam. Don’t make me choose.”

She ignored him, turned to me. “Do the math,” she said. “He ruined you, too.”

Then she brought the gun up, and my father pulled the trigger. The barrel leapt, shot out fire and noise enough to end the world. The bullet struck Miriam high on the right side of her chest. It spun her twice, like a dancer, and flung her across the room. She went down, boneless, and I knew, at a glance, that there would be no getting up.

Not now.

Not ever.

Smoke hung in the room. Grace cried out.

And my father wept for the fourth time in his life.

   Grace was still alive when the paramedics arrived. Alive, but barely. They worked on her as if she could die any second. At some point, she winked out. The eyes rolled white, red fingers opened. I didn’t know that I was banging the back of my head against the wall until Robin put a hand on me. Her eyes were calm and very brown. I looked at Grace. One of her legs twitched, fine shoe clicking on the wood floor as they forced air down her throat and beat unmercifully on her chest. I barely heard the sound of her breath when they got her back, but somebody said, “She’s good,” and they bundled her out of there.

I met my father’s eyes across the floor. He sat against one wall. I was propped against the other. As badly as I hurt, and as near as Grace was to death, my father, I think, suffered the most. I watched him as a paramedic bent over my leg. He’d checked Miriam’s body once, then held onto Grace as if he was strong enough to hold her soul in place. The paramedics had to pull him away to work on her. He was soaked with her blood, in plain, open anguish, and I knew that part of it came from what he’d done, and part of it was born from the truth of what Miriam had said with her last breath. He knew what it meant, and I did, too.

Grace was his daughter. Fine. Fair. Happens all the time. Looking back, it made sense. His love for her had never been an understated thing. But she didn’t come to the farm until two years after my mother’s death. I’d never done the math. It had never occurred to me. But I knew Grace’s birthday, and I saw it now, Miriam’s gift.

Truth in a dark box.

Grace was born two days before my mother killed herself, and that could not be coincidence.

Miriam was right.

He’d ruined me, too.

   My father lifted his arm and opened his mouth as if he might speak, but I couldn’t have that. I put a hand on the paramedic’s shoulder. “Can you get me out of here?” I asked.

I glanced once more at my father, and when he saw my face, he closed his mouth.

I woke in hospital sheets: dim lights, drugged, no memory of the surgery they’d done on my leg. But I remembered the dream of young Sarah Yates. It was the same one that I’d had several nights before. Almost the same. She walked in the moonlit yard, dress loose around her legs. When she turned, she raised her hand as if a penny lay flat upon it. In the past, that’s where the dream ended. Not this time. This time I saw it all.

The hand rose up and she touched her fingers to her lips. She smiled and blew a kiss, but not to me.

The dream was no dream. It was memory. Standing at my window, a boy, I saw it all. The windblown kiss, the secret smile; and then my father, shoeless in the pale, damp grass. How he scooped her up and kissed her for real. The raw, naked passion that I recognized even then.

I’d seen it, and I’d buried it, tucked it away in some small place in that boy’s mind. But I remembered it now, felt it like a tear in my soul. Sarah Yates was not familiar to me because she looked like Grace.

I knew her.

I thought of what the preacher had said to me about the nature of my mother’s death. “There’s no one to blame,” he’d said, and in the shadow of the church I’d always known, those words made some kind of sense. But not now.

I’d been angry for twenty years, unsettled, restless. It was like I had a shard of glass in my mind, a red blade that twisted through the soft parts of me, traveled the dark roads, cutting. I’d always blamed my mother, but now I understood. She’d pulled the trigger, yes, done it in front of me, her only child. But what I’d said to my father was true. She’d wanted
him
to see it, and now I understood why. Eight years of miscarriages. Constant failure until it wore her down to nothing.

Then, somehow, she knew.

And pulled the trigger.

The anger, I finally realized, was not at my mother, whose soul had simply withered beyond her capacity to restore. Being angry at her was unfair, and in that, I’d failed her. She deserved better. Deserved more. I wanted to weep for her, but could not.

There was no place in me for gentle emotion.

I pressed the call button for the nurse, a large woman with brown skin and indifferent eyes. “People are going to want to talk to me,” I said. “I don’t want to speak to anyone until nine thirty. Can you make that happen?”

She leaned back, a twist of smile on her face. “Why nine thirty?”

“I need to make some calls.”

She turned for the door. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Nurse,” I said. “If Detective Alexander comes, I’ll speak with her.”

I looked at the clock. Five forty-eight. I called Robin at home. She was awake. “Did you mean what you said about choice?”

“I think I was pretty plain.”

“Words are easy, Robin; life is hard. I need to know if you really mean it? All of it. The good and the bad. The consequences.”

“This is the last time I’m going to say it, Adam, so don’t ask me again. I made my choice. You’re the one holding back. If you want to talk about choice, then we need to talk about you. It can’t be a one-way street. What’s the point?”

I gave myself a second, and then I committed, for better or worse. “I need you to do something for me. It means putting what matters to me over what matters to the cops.”

“Are you testing me?” She sounded angry.

“No.”

“It sounds serious.”

“Like you would not believe.”

“What do you need?” No hesitation.

“I need you to bring me something.”

She was in the room an hour later, the postcard from my glove compartment in her hand. “You okay?” she asked.

“Angry. Messed up. Mostly angry.”

She kissed me, and when she straightened, she left the card on the bed. I looked at the blue water, the white sand. “Where did you get that?” she asked.

“Faith’s motel.”

She sat, slid the chair close. “It’s postmarked after Danny died. Whoever mailed that is complicit in his murder, at least after the fact.”

“I know.”

“Will I get it back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you serious?”

I looked at the clock. “We should know in a few hours.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“Tell me about Grace,” I said.

“You’re not making this easy.”

“I can’t talk about what I’m going to do. I just need to do it. It’s not about you. It’s about me. Can you understand that?”

“Okay, Adam. I understand.”

“You were going to tell me about Grace.”

“It was close. A few more minutes and she’d have died. Probably a good thing you didn’t wait for me.”

“How did it happen?”

“She came back from the funeral and went inside. Half an hour later, somebody knocked on the door. She opened it and Miriam shot her. Never said a word. Just pulled the trigger and watched as Grace dragged herself back inside.”

“Where’d she get the gun?” I asked.

“Registered to Danny Faith. A little peashooter. He probably kept it in his glove compartment.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Charlotte P.D. found his truck in long-term parking at Douglas Airport. I saw the inventory yesterday. He had a box of .25 caliber shells in the glove compartment, but no gun.”

“Miriam killed him,” I said. “She used Dolf’s gun to do it, then put it back in the gun cabinet. She must have found the .25 when she ditched the truck.”

I saw the wheels turn, small lines at the corners of her eyes.

“There are a lot of gaps in that theory, Adam. It’s a big jump. How do you figure?”

I relayed the things that Miriam had said about her and Danny. I paused, then told her the rest of it: Grace, my mother. I kept my face neutral, even when I spoke of my father’s long deception.

Robin kept her own mask up and nodded only as I finished. “That lines up with your father’s statement.”

“He told you? All of it?”

“He told Grantham. It wasn’t easy for him, but he wanted Grantham to understand why Miriam snapped. Even though she was dead, he wanted the blame for it.” She leaned forward. “It’s killing him, Adam. He’s eaten up over this, like it’s all his fault.”

“It is his fault.”

“I don’t know. Miriam’s father ran out on her when she was very young. That’s a tough thing for a little girl. When your father stepped in, she put him on a pretty high pedestal. A long way to fall.”

I wasn’t ready to go there. “Killing Danny is only part of it,” I said. “She’s the one that attacked Grace. She beat her bloody because Danny loved her.” I looked away. “And because she’s my father’s daughter.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I suspect it. I plan to prove it.”

I felt her eyes on my face, could not imagine what she must be thinking. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“It’s true, what Miriam said.” I paused. “My father always did love Grace best.”

“You’re missing the one piece of good in all this.”

“Which is?”

“You have a sister.”

Something fragile spread in the void of my chest. I looked out the window, watched hard blue fill up the morning sky. “Miriam killed Gray Wilson,” I finally said.

“What?” Robin was stunned.

“She was infatuated with him.”

I told her about finding Miriam at Gray Wilson’s grave. How she went there every month with fresh-cut flowers, how she claimed that they were going to be married. The same thing she’d said about Danny. It could not be coincidence.

“He was handsome and popular, everything she was not. She probably spent months working up the courage to tell him how she felt, fantasizing about his response. Playing it out in her mind. Then the party happened.” I shrugged. “I think she tried to seduce him and failed. He said something belittling. Laughed, maybe. I think she bashed his head in with a rock when he tried to walk away.”

“Why do you think that?”

“It’s what happened to Danny, more or less.”

“I’d like something more.”

“Ask me again in three hours.”

“Are you serious?”

“Right now, it’s just theory.”

She looked at the postcard. It was material evidence in what could easily be a capital case. She could be fired, prosecuted. She picked it up. “If this has prints, it could set Dolf free. Have you considered that?”

“He’ll walk, regardless.”

“Are you willing to gamble on that?”

“I know reasonable doubt when I see it. You do, too. Miriam shot two people in a fit of jealousy over Danny. She used the gun taken from his abandoned truck, gave him thirty thousand dollars, thought he was going to marry her.” I shook my head. “The case will never go to trial.”

“Will you at least tell me what you’re planning?”

“You made a choice. I made a choice. It’s time for my father to do the same thing.”

“Is this about forgiveness?”

“Forgiveness?” I said. “I don’t even know what that word means.”

Robin stood and I reached for her hand. “I can’t stay here,” I said. “Not after this. Not knowing what I do. When the dust settles, I’m going back to New York. I want you to come with me this time.”

She bent and kissed me. She left two fingers on my jaw as she straightened. “Whatever you’re doing,” she said. “Don’t screw it up.”

Her eyes were wide and dark, but that was no kind of answer, and we both knew it.

   I called George Tallman at home. The phone rang nine times and he dropped the receiver when he tried to answer. “George?” I asked.

“Adam?” His voice was thick. “Hang on.” He put the phone down. I heard it strike wood. Most of a minute passed before he picked it up again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not dealing with this very well.”

“You want to talk about it?”

He knew most of what had happened, and sounded like a man in full-blown shock. He kept using the present tense when he spoke of Miriam, then he’d apologize, embarrassed. It took a few minutes for me to realize that he was drunk. Drunk and confused. He did not want to say anything that would hurt Miriam’s memory. Saying that made him cry.

Her memory.

“Do you know how long I’d been in love with her?” he finally asked.

“No.”

He told me, in fits and starts. Years. All the way back to high school, but she’d never wanted anything to do with him. “That’s what made it so special,” he explained. “I waited. I knew it was right. I stayed true. Eventually, she knew it, too. Like it was meant to be.”

I waited for a dozen heartbeats. “May I ask a question?”

“Okay.” He sniffed loudly.

“When Miriam and Janice flew back from Colorado, they spent the night in Charlotte and stayed there the next day.”

“To shop.”

“But Miriam wasn’t feeling well.” It was a guess. I wanted corroboration.

“She was… how did you know that?”

“You took Janice shopping and left Miriam at the hotel.”

Suspicion crept into his voice. “Why are you asking about this?”

“Just one more question, George.”

“What?” Still doubtful.

“What hotel did they use?”

“Tell me why you want to know?” He was sobering up, suspicion growing, so I did what I had to do. I lied.

“It’s a harmless question, George.”

A minute later, I hung up, and for two more, I did nothing, just closed my eyes and let everything wash over me. The pain climbed to the next level as the drugs wore thin. I thought about the morphine pump, but kept my hand on the bed. When I felt able, I called the hotel in Charlotte. “Concierge desk, please.”