Sweet Jiminy (21 page)

She heard more crashes, and Jiminy screaming. With an epic effort, Lyn dragged herself through the kitchen doorway. She could see Jiminy, backed against the far counter, holding something out in front of her. But there was Roy, unstoppable, loping toward his prey. Lyn's heart began beating too fast, and there was a rushing in her ears that wasn't the sound of Roy's yelling but rather some other thing, filling her head. It was overpowering. Lyn gave herself over to it and let it move her.

Just as Roy was lunging for Jiminy, the shot rang out.

Roy lurched forward and down. Everything was silent for a long moment, and then a woman shrieked.

“Is he still alive?”

“No,” Lyn heard herself reply.

And she knew it was true. Roy was dead. The rushing in Lyn's ears abruptly stopped, and she could suddenly hear the slightest noise, including the drum of a fly's wings against the kitchen window. She felt completely tapped into everything. She felt alive.

She was on her knees, with the gun still in her hands. It had only taken one shot.

“What do we do now?”

Lyn recognized this voice as Jiminy's. Roy was dead, Lyn repeated to herself. He was gone.

“I go to jail,” she said matter-of-factly.

“No!” Jiminy cried.

Lyn could now see that Jiminy had been clutching the butcher knife.

“It was self-defense,” Jiminy said.

“God, he's dead,” Jean wailed from the doorway. “Everyone's dead. I'm so sorry, Lyn. I'm so sorry they're dead. I'm so sorry about Edward and Jiminy. I didn't know. I swear I didn't know. Floyd never said.”

Jean collapsed into sobs.

“Hush now, it's over. It's all over,” Lyn said soothingly, wondering at her impulse to comfort.

“But you can't go to jail for this, that's not how this ends,” Jiminy protested.

Lyn stayed quiet. For several long moments, Jean's shuddering sobs were the only sound in the room. And then they stopped abruptly. Jean had mastered herself, and when she raised her head, it was evident that she'd been baptized into something new.

“Hand me the gun,” she commanded.

Lyn stared at her.

“It's my gun,” Jean said. “Hand it to me.”

Jiminy held her breath, mesmerized.

“Are you sure?” Lyn asked Jean.

Jean nodded. She'd never been so sure of anything in her life.

Chapter 19

T
he editor
of the
Fayeville Ledger
couldn't explain just what exactly had happened to his town. He'd planned on a typically lazy summer. Then suddenly, everything went crazy and the entire world descended upon them. Reporters from national newspapers were camped all over, and he didn't like the way the place felt overrun. It was too much, really; he was beginning to contemplate moving someplace quieter.

In the last week alone, he'd published stories about three murders and a political suicide. Two of the murders were from over forty years ago, but the third had happened just the other day. And the political suicide came in the form of Bobby Brayer's public acknowledgment of his father's involvement in the first two murders. Bobby had withdrawn from the gubernatorial race shortly afterward, and his opponent had made a highly publicized visit to Fayeville to call for “a new era of post-racial healing.” This in turn had caused a minor uproar about the use of the term “post-racial.” All of these unexpected developments were linked in ways that people were still struggling to understand.

The
Ledger
was right in the middle of it. Walton Trawler had bought a whole section of the paper to publish a condensed excerpt of his latest work, which laid out exactly how the Waters murders had occurred, complete with a signed confession by Travis Brayer that named Floyd Butrell and Roy Tomlins as his accomplices.

Travis Brayer's family had initially disputed the alleged confession, claiming coercion of a seriously ill, delusional man, and the charges might have been dropped were it not for DNA evidence linking Travis to Edward Waters's burned-out car. There were rumors that someone at Fayeville Hospital had illegally provided the prosecution with hair samples from Travis Brayer to test for the match, though Carlos Castaverde refused to confirm or deny this.

The photos of Travis dressed in orange prison scrubs, wheelchair-bound and hooked up to a ventilator, had been splashed across the front pages of newspapers all over the country. Both he and Fayeville were finally famous.

In the inside section of the
Ledger,
Roy Tomlins's obituary was prominently featured. Jean Butrell had shot him, in self-defense she claimed. Everyone knew that Jean Butrell was a little crazy, but no one doubted that Roy Tomlins had had it coming. Many people were willing to testify that he'd been in a drunken rage the day he died. So though there was an investigation into the incident, most everyone assumed it was a formality and that Jean would soon be cleared.

On the page following the obituaries, Willa Hunt had taken out a full-page ad in memory of Edward and Jiminy Waters. It contained a photograph of the father and daughter when they were alive: a young Jiminy perched on Edward's shoulders, both of them smiling broadly. The photo was credited to Henry Hunt.

It wasn't the only ad space bought for them. The paper was filled with tributes—overwhelmed by them, really. All in all, the latest issue of the
Fayeville Ledger
was three times its normal thickness, and the editor was completely exhausted.

 

Jiminy was sitting on the stool in Willa's kitchen, glancing through this issue as she sorted the silverware Willa had decided to donate to Goodwill, when Bo turned into the driveway. She didn't see him at first. Neither did Carlos, who was sipping coffee by the sink as he contemplated Jiminy's profile, wondering whether she could sustain his interest.

No one had gone into Willa's kitchen for days after the police had removed Roy's body, until Willa had asked Jiminy to reclaim the space for the living. Jiminy, in turn, had recruited Carlos to join her in the reclamation project. She preferred being with Carlos to being alone. He was flawed, but fascinating, and Jiminy suspected that for the first time, she enjoyed the upper hand. This intrigued her.

“Did you like Texarkana when you visited?” Carlos asked her, apropos of nothing.

“I didn't do much touring,” Jiminy replied without looking up. “I stopped at your office and at Sonic for some onion rings, and that was pretty much it.”

“I think you should come back with me,” Carlos announced. “Or wherever I go next, maybe you should come along. We make a good team.”

It was true that they did. Jiminy knew he was referring to more than their ability to solve cold case crimes, and it was a tempting offer. But even if Bo hadn't been directly in Jiminy's line of sight when she looked up from the paper, she still would have known she had to turn Carlos down. Because before she'd even looked up, just as soon as Carlos had finished his sentence, something inside her had shouted no. She'd heard it clearly—felt it, really, like a gong vibration in her chest. It was deep, resonant, and absolutely definitive. All that Carlos was offering was extremely interesting, but it wasn't for her.

On top of which, there was Bo through the freshly cleaned window, walking toward the front door, carrying Cholera with him.

“I can't,” Jiminy said.

She should have at least looked at Carlos when she said it, but her eyes were locked on Bo. Carlos followed her gaze, then put his coffee cup down.

The sound of it against the countertop snapped Jiminy back into herself. She blinked and turned to Carlos.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I am. But the thing is,” she continued, pointing as she moved to open the door, “that's my cat.”

 

My father used to tell me that there's only so much space inside a person, so you have to be careful what you let fill you up. Anger and bitterness and despair will crowd in if you let them, he said, but so will mercy and forgiveness and joy—if you make the room and invite them in. Sometimes you have to work extra hard to make the room.

His
Manual for Life
advice, he called it.

It's funny that I'm thinking about it now.

It's funny that you can't really understand the best way to do a thing until after it's done. But good advice is good advice, and good advice is never too late, even when it seems like it is.

I consider Edward my father, by the way. I liked Henry very much, but I loved Edward. I had two fathers, I guess.

We were a family, as damaged and strange as any of them.

I know my mother misses us. I visit her often. I was with her when she shot Roy, and I'm watching her now.

Lyn is standing on the riverbank, staring into the water. I know she's thinking of me because I can feel her as clearly as I used to feel my own thoughts spearing through my brain. She's wondering if I've stayed the same age, if I'm happy, if she'll see me again. I have, I am, and she will. I beam these answers to her as best I can, in little flashes of silver, and I hope that the way she just pressed her hand into her chest means that she understands.

She's suffered so much.

She's unbuttoning her blouse now, and slipping her arms out of it. She's carefully stepping out of her long skirt. Everything she does is very slow and deliberate, in time with her rhythmic breathing. It's ritualistic, exactly as she intends it.

The only noise is the sound of the crickets starting up. She can hear them all around her. I know she thinks it's a way that I talk to her. Maybe it is.

She's out of her slip and her bra, and she's taken the pins from her hair. She's even unwrapped the bandage from her head. Everything is discarded on the bank.

With slow, careful steps, she makes her way down to the water and wades in. I know how cold the river is, but she doesn't hesitate. She keeps walking, letting the water seep up over her knees and her hips and the lower back that gives her so much pain. It's above her waist now, and her elbows, and now her breasts. When it comes up to her chin, she stops and sinks down underwater, where she stays for as long as she can. For as long as a human can. She weighs herself down with all her unfulfilled years, gripping roots to hold herself tight to the bottom. I can feel the last traces of oxygen leaving her lungs, abandoning her body, releasing outward.

But when she surges back up into the late summer air, she's not gasping.

She's free.

About the Author

Kristin Gore
is the author of two previous novels, the
New York Times
bestseller
Sammy's Hill
and
Sammy's House
. She has also written for several television shows, including
Futurama
and
Saturday Night Live
, for which she received an Emmy nomination and a Writer's Guild Award. She has several screenplay projects in development. Kristin lives in New York City.

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