One of Us (28 page)

twenty-seven

I
CALLED RAFE RIGHT AWAY.
I knew in my heart that it was too late. Scarlet wouldn’t have bothered to send confirmation if the deed hadn’t been done. I knew she sent a fax because she wanted to think of me in my office watching a machine slowly spit out the physical piece of paper with its ominous past-tense message penned in faux blood signifying the end of any chance for me to confront my father. She wanted me to hold it in my hand, to be enslaved by its permanence, unable to perform the aggressive act of crumpling and throwing it away; deleting blips from a screen requires no emotional investment.

Rafe was already at Dad’s house. He wouldn’t give me any details other than to say my father was dead. He wouldn’t tell me what had been done to him except to assure me Scarlet was involved.

I made him promise to keep my mother and Tommy safe. He said they were.

His greatest fear now was no longer protecting his citizenry but keeping Scarlet from escaping. He had no legal reason to detain her. He didn’t even have a reason to talk to her. There was still no concrete evidence against her. All we had were outlandish theories and a handful of coincidences and what Scarlet had was an enormously wealthy set of parents who would do everything in their power to make certain none of her story was ever revealed.

Even the DNA at Marcella Greger’s house couldn’t help us. We had
no proof that it belonged to Scarlet Dawes, only that it belonged to a relative of mine, and those were results that could never come to light since Rafe didn’t have legal cause at the time to have the test performed. He needed a court order to compel Scarlet to give a DNA sample in order to prove she was there and he couldn’t get one.

He called the Dawes estate looking for her. Walker talked to him and informed him that he heard about Rafe harassing Scarlet with questions about a police officer misplacing his gun and that if he ever wanted to talk to her again about anything he would have to go through their lawyer.

I suggested to Rafe that I might have better luck. He told me to stay the hell away from her. He said I’d done a brave thing going down in that coal mine to help Rick Kelly, but I shouldn’t let it go to my head. I wasn’t invincible.

Bravery is playing no role in my pursuit of her. I’m also not doing it because I’m inflamed by a desire to bring her to justice, even though this is something I want. My actions are beyond my control; I need to ask her what Dad’s message meant.

Once Rafe realizes he’s not going to talk me out of it, he asks me if I’d be willing to wear a wire. I tell him I have a small tape recorder in my briefcase. I use it to record interviews. I’ll put it into my coat pocket.

I’ve called her over and over and she doesn’t answer. I’m within ten miles of Lost Creek when she finally does.

“What do you want? You’re really starting to bother me.”

“I want to see you. I’m back in town.”

“I thought you were in Philadelphia. I thought you had so much work to do.”

“I got your fax.”

“I didn’t send you a fax.”

“Okay. I mean, I got a fax from my father.”

“How sweet.”

“I just found out someone killed him.”

She falls silent. I don’t press her.

“I had an opportunity to meet him,” she says. “Briefly. You can’t tell me you had any feelings for that man.”

I have feelings for him. Plenty of feelings, and I know his death isn’t going to make any of them go away; it will only amplify them.

Like most children of abusive parents, I always secretly hoped for our miraculous day of reconciliation. Carson Shupe hoped for his until the moment an IV dripping poison was stabbed into his vein.

I longed for that propitious occasion when my father would tearfully express his love for me, tell me he’d always been proud of me, and ask for my forgiveness.

I’d accept his apology and listen compassionately as he explained that he was just one of those guys who couldn’t express his feelings well and then we’d share a beer and talk about guns and carburetors and football and all the other rites of rural manhood I was never initiated into.

I’d make excuses for him. He was only human, after all, and his own life hadn’t been an easy one. He was allowed some anger and bitterness. I’d rationalize away his behavior refusing to accept the sad, simple reality that some people are mean, selfish, and incapable of love, and these people often reproduce.

I knew this day would never come, but as long as he was alive, I could pretend it might. Scarlet had not only taken my father from me, she’d taken the last of my hope.

“I want to see you,” I say again, appealing to her vanity and need to control.

“I have a plane to catch.”

“Please, give me ten minutes. I’d consider it an expression of sisterly love,” I add when she doesn’t respond.

“Fine. Come to the house.”

I’VE SPENT THE DAYLIGHT
hours driving back and forth from one side of the state to the other and it’s almost dark by the time I drive down the winding lane to the Dawes mansion.

In town and along the salted roads, the snow is already mixed with mud and melting into slush, but here it’s remained as pristine as when it first fell. The treetops and hillsides are unmarred. Their pure white iciness glitters softly beneath a bright moon of the same color.

The house looks like a snow queen’s castle out of a children’s wintry fairy tale. Every window is lit from within, throwing rays of crystal onto the vast front lawn and bathing the brick in a frosty pink.

Scarlet is alone, standing in the circular drive beside the trunk of a dark sedan.

She’s covered from neck to knee in her black mink and from knee to toes in a pair of chocolate brown alligator-skin boots. The glossy fur of her coat shimmers with undertones of peacock blue each time she moves, and her hair gives off glints of red-gold that almost seem like sparks. Everything about her screams wealth and privilege. I wonder what the same woman, the same genes, would have looked like if she had been left with us, if she had grown up living in Lost Creek instead of owning it.

Her mind would have remained the same; this is all that matters.

I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say to her, but I’ve decided to use the blunt approach. I think she responds better to what she believes is my do-gooder earnestness.

She’s smoking. She takes the cigarette from between her lips and blows.

“The police aren’t going to let you on a plane,” I tell her.

“The police can’t stop me from doing anything.”

“You got sloppy. There’s no way out of this.”

“Me? Sloppy? What are you talking about?”

“You left DNA at Marcella Greger’s house. That’s how we found out you were my sister.”

She smiles.

“So Candy Cop does know.”

“And the fax. The boys working at the UPS store will identify you.”

“Those boys at the UPS store? That’s the best you can do? I sent a fax. It doesn’t prove anything. I visited the cousin of my dear departed nanny. That also doesn’t prove anything.”

“It’s over. It’s all going to come out now.”

“You underestimate my resources. Gwen and Walker will do everything in their power to keep this as quiet as possible.”

“Money can only go so far.”

“It’s not just money, Danny, or even a lot of money, but one of the biggest fortunes that’s ever been dug, pumped, and blasted out of the planet earth. Don’t be naïve.”

“The same fortune that got the Nellies executed,” I remind her.

She doesn’t seem interested in this fact.

I decide to try another tack.

“You said you met our father. How did that go?”

“He didn’t have an ounce of remorse over what he did to your mom or you. Or even me. He said something about how he gave me a better life by giving me to Walker. He said he did me a favor. Can you believe that?”

I gesture at the house and the beautiful surroundings.

“I’d say he did do you a favor.”

She finishes her cigarette and tosses it into the snow.

“I’m going now.”

“Wait,” I almost shout the word.

She’s amused by my desperation but also obviously irritated.

“I’m worried about you. You’ve suffered a huge emotional trauma, and I don’t think you’re dealing with it.”

“I really don’t care.”

“How can you say that? You’ve just found out that your entire life has been a lie.

“You’re not one of them,” I say, pointing at the sparkling mansion.

I place my hands on my chest.

“You’re one of us.”

She studies me with her blank eyes that also somehow manage to be full of knowledge, but of things I don’t want to know.

I sense I’ve gone too far.

She can’t be part of anything. I’ve encountered the isolation of her kind before. She’s a lone entity whose only requirement of others is that no one gets too close.

“You’re going to try and psychoanalyze me? Try and find out what I’m feeling?” she says. “I finally get it. I’d be the biggest catch of all for you, wouldn’t I? The best freak head you could mount on your wall of forensic psychology fame?”

I take a step back from her. I don’t know why. She can’t hurt me. She’s a woman; I’m a man. I’m fairly certain I could take her in a fight and I know for sure I can outrun her.

Nothing in her voice, gaze, or posture gives signs that she’s upset with me, but I know this doesn’t mean anything. She doesn’t feel rage the way other humans do. She encounters an obstacle and makes a calculated decision whether she can walk around it, over it, or if it needs to be permanently removed from her path. I fear I’ve just become a big boulder on the road to her contentment.

She brings her hand out of a fold in her coat holding Billy Small’s gun. I don’t have any time to react before she pulls the trigger.

I don’t feel any pain at first, just a pressure in my chest that knocks me off my feet. I slam into the snow with the quiet thud of a child falling into a drift about to make the imprint of an angel. I didn’t hear a gunshot but my ears won’t stop ringing.

I must be in shock because all I can think is I didn’t get to ask her about Dad’s note. I didn’t get to tell my mom I’m sorry I didn’t believe in her. I didn’t get to tell Tommy he’s the best man I’ve ever known.

“What are you doing?” I’m able to ask her.

I drop my gaze from her face to her feet. I see the stitching, the exquisite quality of the leather.

“You’re the biggest disappointment of all,” Scarlet says.

“Don’t hurt Mom,” I say before my throat fills with blood.

“Shut up. You should be thinking about me right now. Not her.”

She’s practically standing on top of me. I feel her foot pressing into my stomach the way Dad used to do.

I try to look up at her. I begin to shake uncontrollably.

She makes a disgusted sound.

“Blood on my Blahniks. I should’ve never come back to this shitty little town.”

Another shot rings out. This one I hear. I wait for death. It comes in the form of a dark suffocating weight on my chest.

I see the thick glossy pelt. It’s a bear, I think. Tommy killed a bear and it fell on me.

In my delirium, I smile at the idea.

I know I’m dead because an angel appears above me. A snow angel dressed in white fur with a halo of opalescent hair blowing behind a kind, alabaster face as old as the heavens themselves. She says nothing, but a single tear like a diamond clings to her pale cheek.

twenty-eight

T
HE GRANDSON OF PROSPERITY
McNab stands on a dais in the middle of Lost Creek especially erected for the occasion. He’s surrounded by hundreds of townspeople and onlookers. His doomed ancestor looked out on a similar scene, except today it’s green and sunny and the atmosphere is lighthearted. Conversation and laughter waft through the soft spring air, and everyone is dressed in bright, festive colors. The only black present is paired with Steelers gold.

Nora Daley is introducing him after talking at length about the history of the Nellie O’Neills, the good works of the NONS, and the surprising end to their struggle to raise enough money to put up a memorial statue.

There’s been no attempt to hide the identity of the generous donor who paid for the statue. The fact that the money came from a descendant of the man who was responsible for executing the Nellies who then turned out to be a descendant of one of the Nellies instead has been taken almost in stride here after the initial shock passed.

The entire story was too incredible to keep quiet. Scarlet was wrong about the Dawes’ fortune being able to do so. It spread rapidly and soon became the biggest scandal the county has ever seen aside from the rise and fall of the Nellies. The legitimate media has had to treat the allegations delicately since there’s no verifiable proof and since Walker Dawes has remained completely silent, but there are plenty of pseudo-news
outlets nowadays that thrive on unconfirmed gossip, speculation, and innuendo and have no compunction about putting it out in the world for others to judge.

Nothing can be done to bring Walker Dawes to justice. In a court of law it would be his word against hearsay and a piece of paper written by a dead woman that incriminates his wife, not him, and part of which is a lie.

There’s no forensic evidence. The infant Scarlet has been dead too long to be able to retrieve DNA from her body, and we weren’t able to get any from Molly because Walker had her cremated before Rafe could get a court order to stop him.

His crime is too old and he’s too rich for anything to be done. A child was taken from her mother and a mother was taken from her other child. Another child was lost and never mourned. Another mother permanently damaged without understanding why.

He won’t be punished by our judicial system but he is being tried in the court of public opinion and not faring well.

To everyone’s surprise, he didn’t run away. He has other homes but he’s stayed here in the estate the Original Walker built. The rumors are he never leaves the house even to take a walk around his property, and he’s plagued with paranoia, which has led to him firing most of his house staff. He’s also handed over the reins of Lost Creek Coal & Oil to his son, Wesley. No one thought that would happen until he was lying on his deathbed. Maybe in a sense he’s already there.

I’ve managed to stay out of the limelight as much as possible. For once I don’t want to be an expert witness or any kind of witness at all. My recovery has been slow and has given me a good excuse to avoid interviews.

Tommy has become an undisputed media darling. He’s even assisting a young filmmaker in the making of the definitive Nellie O’Neills documentary in which Tommy is set to star as the narrator.

I see the director on the fringes of the colorful crowd with one of his cameramen. Another roams through the spectators. Billy Smalls, carrying a newly issued Glock, and Troy Razzano in dress uniform patrol the perimeter. News vans line the streets.

From my seat on the dais along with Rafe, Wesley Dawes, and the other eight founding members of the NONS besides Nora and Tommy, I have a good view of everyone in attendance and it does seem to be everyone. I start picking out the people who played a role, no matter how small, in the strange and wonderful week of my homecoming three months ago that almost ended in my death.

According to the EMTs who accompanied me in a Life Flight helicopter, I was briefly dead. A four-day coma would follow. When I finally opened my eyes, I was greeted by the sight of Tommy asleep in a chair and Brenna and Moira Kelly watching Jerry Springer on a TV mounted in the corner of my hospital room.

Moira’s face loomed over me for a moment. I thought I detected the beginnings of a smile but it was quickly replaced with a frown.

“Some people will do anything to get attention,” she said.

Moira is here along with Brenna and easily sixty members of their clan including Rick, his wife, and their children. Alphonse sits on the dais next to Birdie, smiling and waving and occasionally shushing all the cries of “Hi, Grandpa!”

The widow Husk and her family occupy a prominent place up front. Marcella Greger’s niece and the rest of the Greger and Tully families stand next to them.

All four of Rafe’s ex-wives are here, his five daughters and their spouses, and his nine grandchildren ranging from eighteen-year-old Heather to newborn Henry, who’s already been christened Wee Hen in a family dominated by women, a nickname I fear he’s never going to shake.

I see Tommy’s doctor, who made the call that brought me home in the first place; the girl from McDonald’s who wouldn’t let me use their Wi-Fi unless I ordered meat; Matt and Shane from the UPS store, who were finally able to put a name to their fembot; Dave Rosko and an entire crew of firemen complete with truck; Herm Chappy, the undisputed king of gravy; my mining buddies Todd, Jamie, J. C., and Shawn; Parker Hopkins, looking unusually alert and dapper befitting the fact that he is no longer a volunteer but is now a paid groundskeeper; and even the manager from Carelli’s Furniture has put
aside her earlier trepidation and decided to embrace the bloodthirsty Nellies.

The only noticeable absence is my mother. She didn’t want to come and Tommy and I didn’t encourage her. She doesn’t like crowds.

There’s really no reason for her to be here. It seems like the entire town has stopped by these last few months to offer their sympathies and apologies one and two and three at a time. She barely makes it through the conversations but is always happy to have company.

I can’t tell what she’s feeling inside. It’s impossible to know how all of this will ultimately affect her, but in her own way, I think she’s better equipped to deal with the inconceivable than the rest of us.

I’ve consulted with other psychologists and psychiatrists while trying to decide what my course of action should be, but I think the best advice has come from Rafe, who told me to “leave her alone.”

He’s sitting beside me now in an actual suit where the pants and jacket match, a solid-colored dress shirt, and a Bottega Veneta tie I gave to him as a gift for solving the crime of the century and vindicating my mother.

He keeps tugging at the knot, trying to loosen it, as if he’s afraid silk is a live thing that might try to strangle him.

Thundering applause welcomes Tommy to the microphone.

He tries to appear unmoved but I see tears glimmering in his eyes.

“If we can get this many of you to come out for a statue, you better believe I’m counting on all of you being at my funeral.”

Laughter erupts from the crowd.

“As you all know, I’m a shy, retiring man who tends to keep his opinions to himself.”

More laughter, clapping, hooting, and hollering.

“My grandson, Danny, is the public speaker in the family.”

I receive my own round of applause.

“I was going to let him say a few words, but I knew we wouldn’t be able to understand half of them.”

More laughter. For once I don’t take offense. I glance at Brenna, who smiles back at me. I take it for what it is: good-natured ribbing.

“I’m not going to bore you with a speech. Everyone knows my feel
ings on the Nellies and my grandfather, Prosperity McNab, and if they don’t by now, I’ve done so many interviews lately, it’s easy enough to find out. I’m even on . . . what’s it called, Danny?”

“YouTube.”

“That’s right. I’m on the YouTube.”

The crowd bursts into laughter again and cheers riotously.

“During one of those interviews I was asked, What do you consider yourself to be first: Irish or American? I said I consider myself to be a retired coal miner.”

More applause.

“When you get to be a relic like myself, people are always asking you for words of wisdom,” he continues once everyone calms down. “It gets annoying.”

More laughter.

“The reason why is because you can’t grasp at thirty or fifty or even seventy what becomes blindingly obvious to you in your nineties. I can try and explain things to you. I can advise you. You can listen politely and nod your head, but you can’t truly understand.

“But I will tell you this much: no matter what age you are, the amount of satisfaction you’re going to take from life all depends on your perspective.

“It can be a terrible day when you reach your ninety-sixth year and realize this is all there is, or it can be a wonderful day when you realize that yes”—he pauses and gestures at the people gathered around him, the town, and the hills beyond—“this is all there is.”

Nora gives Tommy a pat on the back and waits behind the microphone for the applause to die down before introducing Wesley Dawes.

I was able to meet with him alone before the ceremony. He was nothing like his father. Relaxed, unpretentious, empathetic: the kind of man who would probably prefer having a beer at the Red Rabbit over having cocktails at the Dawes’ mansion.

We talked briefly about our shared sister. He said he couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t afraid of her, yet he was never absolutely sure why he felt this way. She never abused him. She didn’t even tor
ment or tease him the way children were expected to behave in a normal sibling relationship.

Without comment, he then showed me a photograph of his wife and two daughters, aged five and three. I’m glad Scarlet didn’t live long enough to dispose of them.

We don’t talk at all about his mother. I’ve met with her several times since she shot and killed her daughter and saved my life.

Only one person knew Gwen Dawes owned a gun and it wasn’t her husband. Not long after the gruesome death of her children’s nanny she decided she wanted some protection. She knew it didn’t make sense. It was a suicide after all. The young policeman she consulted agreed with her but said he didn’t blame her for wanting to feel safe after something like that happened in her own home. So Officer Rafferty Malloy found her a gun and filled out the paperwork for her permit.

“This was an unfortunate moment in our shared history,” Wesley proclaims. “I say ‘our history’ because the Dawes family and the residents of Lost Creek are irrevocably intertwined. My ancestors could not have existed without yours and your ancestors could not have existed without them.

“I’d like to think we’ve finally come to a moment in time where we no longer have to draw lines, where we no longer have to think of each other as the employer and the employed, the user and the used, but as people who share a love for this place, who have made a commitment to stay here through thick or thin, and who will work together to find a way to have more thick than thin.”

This suggestion is met with shouting and clapping. I hear Rafe unwrap a Jolly Rancher and the clacking begins.

“It’s my pleasure on behalf of the Dawes family to officially donate the land on which the gallows and jail stand to the town of Lost Creek in all perpetuity complete with a yearly income to maintain the property.

“And now, Mr. McNab, I’m supposed to give you this bottle of champagne to use to christen the memorial statue.”

Tommy takes the bottle and walks down the dais stairs to where the cloaked statue and the artist who created it stand in the middle of the town square.

Everyone is dying to know what the NONS finally decided on. They managed to maintain an uncharacteristic level of secrecy about the project, but Tommy was only too anxious to share the submitted designs with me.

It’s true the purpose of the statue was to immortalize a great tragedy, possibly a horrific miscarriage of justice, but even so, the proposals all seemed too dark and grim for me.

One was a Nellie waiting to be executed, wearing his hood, his wrists and ankles shackled, the noose already around his neck. Another showed several miners toiling at their jobs, expressions of agony on their faces with flames licking at their feet. Yet another was done in the style of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., only instead of names set against a coal black background, the Nellies’ faces were carved into the wall like the faces in the recurring nightmare from my youth.

The veil is dropped to an appreciative round of gasps then cheers.

A solitary miner walks to the pits with his young son on his shoulders. The boy smiles down at his dad who appears to be whistling.

I’m sure it’s not supposed to be anyone in particular, but to me it’s Prosperity and his son, Jack, at the same age I was when I first began to understand how I was related to them. It was also the same age when I began to question if my own father’s treatment of me wasn’t okay.

I haven’t been back to my father’s house since he was murdered there. I stayed true to my earlier decision to have it torn down. Beforehand, I had no interest in wandering through the rooms where I grew up, and where he sat for decades with his terrible knowledge, and going through his personal effects searching for answers or shreds of sentimentality. Some of the Kelly sisters volunteered to dispose of his belongings and furniture for me, and in return they kept whatever they wanted or any profits from selling it.