Sadie's Mountain (36 page)

How I did what? How did I keep the secret? How did I stomach it? How did I endure being near Donnie again?
I did it for you—to protect you
. I did it for me, so I could be free, but I wouldn’t have done any of this had I not run into Dillon on the mountain. I think all these things as I look at his back. For a moment I feel abandoned, but then I tuck it away so I can just deal with the day, deal with leaving here tomorrow.

“I want you to keep the gun with you at all times,” he says, business-like.

“Okay,” I say, remembering that I’d put the gun upstairs inside Momma’s old purse.

“Did you eat?” he asks. I shake my head no. “You need to eat,” he says, frustrated.

I just shrug my shoulders and walk away. I’ll be gone soon, out of his hair.

Up in his room, inside the box Jenny sent me, I remember a larger vintage Coach bag that has a long strap. I yank the bag out and arm myself, sling the bag over my shoulder.  When I come back down to the kitchen he’s poured me a bowl of cereal.
Still so kind,
I think as I we crunch flat brown flakes of something. He looks off in any other direction—deep in thought.

“Please, just don’t do anything. It’s my momma’s funeral.”

“I don’t want him to even look at you,” he says, standing up and taking his bowl to the sink. When he turns to face me, he’s scowling.

“Maybe you should just stay home,” I say. Not in anger, just in truth. I don’t think he’s going to last two seconds in the same room with his rapist brother.

“How can you say that to me?” he says, walking toward me. He looks so disappointed in me. He stops a safe distance away, tilts his head to the side and looks at me with a furrowed brow. “Sadie?” he says, his voice like a raging river.

I step backward. I don’t want him to come too close. If he touches me I won’t be able to take it. “We need to go,” I say, taking another step back.

“Sadie?” he says, again. For a moment, it’s as if I’m looking at the Dillon I know. The one who taught me to swim and ride my bike. The one who held me while I cried. The one who made love to me inside our cave. It tugs on the emptiness that envelops me. But I wrap it back around me like a safety net.

“You won’t have to worry about this for too much longer,” I say, under my breath, and walk all the way to the car alone.
Alone.

Chapter Twenty-Eight—Does This Feel The Same?

I’m standing by the car, my back facing the house when I hear his slow footsteps coming toward me. I purse my lips together and close my eyes. I hear him walk around to the driver’s side and the locks pop up.  I climb into the car and try to steady the beating of my heart.

He puts something in the trunk—his dulcimer I think—shakes the car as he closes the trunk, and folds himself in next to me. I can feel him looking at me, but I don’t look back. Looking at him will just make it harder for me to leave tomorrow. In between us, I feel a thick barrier. I’ve placed it there to save my heart the trouble of trying to reconnect with his. That’s over now. I force my mind to move on to other things. I haven’t even talked to Jenny yet. I need to call before 2:00.

“Did you bring your phone?” I ask.

“I did. Do you need it?”

“I need to text my assistant or...”

“Or?”

“The recording goes live on my blog,” I say, matter-of-factly. He nods his head up and down. Pieces are coming together. All of my plotting, all of his suspicions are finding their way into a pattern he must have imagined a different way. Now he knows almost everything. Now that everything is ruined.

I’m sick of thinking about Donnie. Worrying about him. “Don’t they have enough to arrest him on the break-in?”

“The hair. Yes. They could arrest him for the break-in. I asked that. I asked when I found out,” he says, his breath hitches in his throat.

“Why don’t they then?” I ask, my voice flat.

“He’d get bail. He’d be out right away. Out and pissed off. If they find his DNA on the panties you saved from the fire, they’ll be able to keep him. He won’t get bail, they said. Since he threatened you. Since he broke in, no judge would give him bail on the other, more serious, charges.”

“I’m slipping up. I should have thought of that,” I say. It’s true. I’m not thinking straight. I’m in a fog where logic bends like water over the falls. “He told me if I published the recording, he’d come after me. He’d have nothing left to lose.”

“When did you threaten him with that?”

“At lunch after he broke in.”

“I should have recognized all the signs,” he says, through gritted teeth, as he squeezes the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white.

“Truth is, we always think it’s the strangers we have to worry about,” my voice is tired, emotionless. “In school, the videos about ‘Stranger Danger.” My voice picks up in anger, “Where’s the videos that tell kids what to do when it’s someone they know who’s abused them, or still is?”

“I’m sorry, Sadie. I’m sorry I didn’t believe my instincts. I didn’t believe you in the car when you were trying to tell me about Renae,” he says. He’s still holding the steering wheel too tight as he turns into the drive up the knoll dotted with death stones here at Restlawn Memory Gardens.

I want to feel something as he apologizes to me, but that barrier between us keeps me safe and numb. I lean into the car door instead.

“There’s nothing you could have done differently,” I say as the car stops and I shuffle out and stare at all the graves until I’m cross-eyed and they all start overlapping.
My daddy is out there somewhere.

I jump when he pops the trunk and takes out his dulcimer case. As his jacket lifts up to put the trunk down, I see a flash of leather and a sparkle of silver.
He’s carrying a concealed gun
.

“You’re not going to use that, are you?”

“I’m going to sing a song for your momma’s funeral,” he says. “Remember, I told you I was working on a project for her?”

“No, I mean the gun,” I say, as I can feel Daddy’s bicentennial piece slap against my thigh as we walk.

“Only if I need to,” he says, walking stiffly along the path toward the entrance of the chapel. “I don’t want to get caught off guard.”

Me neither.

Inside the chapel with the taupe carpet, the wall of flowers and placards, the chairs lined up, where the air is warm and stuffy, is a picture of Momma as I remember her. It brings up another beloved memory.

 It was the day before my birthday. She was making me a birthday cake—my seventh birthday, if I remember right. I wanted the kind of cake that looks like a Barbie doll, where the dress is the cake. I can still see her standing next to the table with bowls full of icing in different shades like pink, green, and blue. “Bowls,” a one syllable word that Momma made into a two-syllable word.

“Hand me that there bow-el,”
I can hear her say, in her chirpy sing-songy way. It makes me smile. When I look up, Aunt Lotty is standing in front of me. Her hair is stylishly grey, cut in an a-line and sleek. She’s wearing a black suit-dress over her shapely frame and she’s propped up on high heels. She smells like White Diamonds—her favorite perfume. She grabs me and hugs me tight. Tight enough to make me feel something like emotion.

“Honey, you look tired. You okay?” she asks. “No, that wasn’t right of me to say,” she says, as she pets my head in that way she used to when I would get numb in front of her. “You can look however you want. It’s your momma’s funeral,” she says, as she wipes her nose with a fluffy white tissue.

That’s when I see the casket near the far wall. It’s open with momma’s head propped slightly on a pillow. The rituals of death long passed down to us have almost all been replaced by modern society. We didn’t stop the clocks, or cover the mirrors like our ancestors did—full of suspicions about more death on the way.

 A pregnant woman isn’t supposed to see the corpse. It’s supposed to mark her baby. I never understood that one. Mark it with what? A birthmark? Anything my momma could mark this baby with, the one I’m sure is growing molecule by molecule as I stand here, would be good. My momma was nothing but good.

“Do you want to see her?” Aunt Lotty asks.

I nod my head yes, square my shoulders, stick my chin out, and force my feet to take me forward. This is supposed to be good for the person grieving, a way to say goodbye to the vessel that housed the spirit of the loved-one. It’s supposed to be closure.

All of this, the chandelier lighting, the soft colors, the make-up on her skin, the way they’ve made her eyes stay shut, and closed her jaw so unnaturally, are all ways to help us say goodbye; to mask death with an unnatural beauty. To make her look like her broken bird wings grew feathers and took her away.

I don’t need this.
I’ve already said goodbye. I’ve taken the essence of her spirit into my lungs as it dissipated like the scent of some flower that didn’t exist.

This is what Missy needs,
I think. She needs to have all the memories of Momma looking sick replaced by this angel lying in a white fluffy casket.

“Where’s Missy?” I ask.

“She’s makin’ the final arrangements,” Aunt Lotty says, in her slight accent.

“Did she see Momma?” I ask.

“She did, honey. She had them fix her nails a bit, too. Had them polish them up with that pink there. It’s a pretty pink.”

“Momma did like that polish,” I say.
Yes. This is for Missy,
I think.

“Who’s that handsome young man you came with?” Aunt Lotty asks. I turn around and find Dillon standing guard at the entrance to the chapel. I really need to talk to him about how he’s acting. Donnie’s going to read his body language in a heartbeat.

“That’s Dillon,” I say. “Remember, I told you about him. He was my best friend growing up.”

“He’s watching you like’a hawk,” she says.

“Is he?” I say. How odd. I’ve felt invisible since yesterday when he found out.

When my eyes find his from across the lines of chairs, I see him again as if for the first time. Maybe it’s not anger. Maybe it’s fear in his eyes. Betrayal.
Betrayed by me?
That’s what I see.

My stomach starts to hurt and that hole in my chest begins to envelop me like a vise. My brain is banging into my skull. I put my hand on momma’s casket to help me stay up. My legs are bowing.
Am I losing it?
I blink, feel the strong arms lifting me.

“Darlin’,” he whispers. “Baby, sit on down right here,” he says, helping me into a stiff flower covered couch in the front row.

“She’s having a panic attack,” Aunt Lotty says, as she sits down, pulls my vintage Coach bag from my shoulder, and starts to fan me with a flyer printed with Momma’s picture.

“Am I?” I question, as Dillon pulls me into his chest. He doesn’t let me pull away. He smells so good, like his momma’s homemade soap. I feel him tense up as the room spins around and lands on Donnie and Renae, dressed in black, and standing in the doorway of the chapel. The shock of it knocks me cold. Adrenaline powers through my system.

I cannot fall apart. Not now.

I turn my back on Donnie and look at Dillon. His eyes are full of a petrifying rage as he stares down the man who raped me— his own brother— for the first time knowing who he really is. His whole body is rock hard, filled with wrath and a need for vengeance. He’s shaking in rumbling spurts, and holding me tight around my waist.

I need to help him. “Dillon,” I say, in a soft whisper and put my hand up to his scruffy chin. “Look at me, please.” His jaw is tensed, making it look angular, unfamiliar. He’s broken into a sweat on his forehead. “Dillon.” His eyes dart down to mine. “Please, turn away from him,” I say. “The way you’re looking at him. He’s going to know.”

“I thought I could do this. But I...” He’s shaking his head, closes his eyes.

“Just remember what they said. Let them take care of him. Take me to see my Daddy’s grave. Please?” I ask.

We’ve got to get out of this room that feels like it’s closing in on us. When I look away, Donnie and Renae are standing next to Momma’s casket. I grab Dillon’s hand, and start walking toward the door just as Dot comes in dressed in a long black dress. She’s got both boys with her. The little one’s on her hip. I turn around and look for Aunt Lotty. I mouth the words, “We’ll be right back,” and she nods.

“How are ya, little girl?” Dot asks, taking me in her one free arm.

“I really need to get out of here. Dillon’s taking me to see my daddy’s grave.”

“Oh, honey. Don’t you let me keep ya then,” she says, and kisses me on the cheek. She kisses Dillon, whose brow is creased and sweaty and we make our way toward the entrance. I push the door open and take a deep breath of the clean mountain air.

“I need to use your phone,” I say. “You don’t have to take me. I was just trying to get you out of there.”

“Have you ever been to his grave?” Dillon asks, as we walk out onto the wet grass. I have to walk on my tiptoes or my spiked heels dig into the dirt.

“No.”

“It’s under that white tent out there,” he says, pointing to the spot where Momma will rest next to Daddy for all eternity. “Come on,” he says, putting his hand out to me as we walk.

“Dillon, you don’t have to do this. Not anymore.”

His hand is still extended toward me, threatening to burst through the numb wall I’ve built for protection.

“What time is it?” I ask, stopping.

He pulls his phone out of the pocket in his jacket. “It’s 11:45. What time do you have to call her?”

“I’m supposed to call by 2:00. Since I don’t know what he’s going to do today, I’m going to wait until closer to 2:00. Can you help me keep track of the time? “ He nods his head in agreement. “So, Dillon. I’ve decided to go home tomorrow.” He steps back, his face long and drawn in shock. That’s not what I was expecting.

“To get your stuff?”

“I mean, now that you know who, I don’t expect things to stay the same. How could they? “ I say, my palms facing up. “You don’t owe me anything. It can be a clean break.”

“Dammit, Sadie,” he says, glaring at me. “Don’t do this to me,” he says, walking away and swinging his fist in the air like he’s punching an imaginary enemy between us. “Not again!” he says, turning around. He looks so vulnerable. So hurt. He looks like
my
Dillon. His words push their way through my wall. They sting and soothe at the same time.
Does he mean he still loves me?
How is this even possible?