The Dead of Summer (23 page)

“There’s so much you don’t know, Kennedy. So much I never wanted you to know. Mark…your daddy, he left me no choice this time. He could have just left it alone—left us alone. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He needed to get one last dig at my soul and try to crush me.”

“God, you sound like Lindy,” I snapped, suddenly crashing down to reality. I don’t even know where that thought came from, but it was incredibly true. My mama was being melodramatic, and I hated it.

“Well, that’s not a compliment,” Mama said, a small, but sad smile appearing again. She looked like she had just found out her house burnt down, but they managed to rescue the cat.

“It wasn’t meant to be a compliment,” I retorted. “If you hated him so much, why didn’t you just divorce him instead running away and living a lie? Forcing
me
to live a lie?”

“Oh, Kennedy, if it had been that easy—”

“It
is
that easy,” I barked. “People do it all the time. Why did you have to ruin my life instead?”

Mama looked like I had just told her that the cat died after all (carbon monoxide poisoning). “Kennedy, I never did it to
ruin
your life. I did it to
save
your life.”

“Fat chance,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest. Now that my mouth was working, I had about four years’ worth of bitchy teenager-ness to catch up on. If Mama thought the interrogation she would face with the police was something, she had no idea how hateful I could be.

“Bringing me here, taking me away from my home, my family, Mama Grace…you
ruined
my life.” I stomped my foot, shaking my shelves—I was tempted to throw something like those hysterical girls on the crappy TV shows, but I didn’t want to break anything in my room. I didn’t have much stuff to begin with.

Mama rose then, and reached out for me. I had nowhere to go—I was already completely backed into a corner. She brushed a strand of hair out of my face. I shook my head trying to get out of her grasp, but she just stroked my cheek softly. “No, I didn’t, baby girl. I saved your life. Otherwise you may have ended up dead—just like your sister.”

Mama’s words hung in the air, suffocating me like the sulfur from burnt off fireworks. “What? What are you talking about, Mama?”

“Come sit next to me,” Mama said, patting the bed.

“I’d rather—”

“Sit!” Mama barked, her eyes flashing with anger. I chewed my lip as I glanced around the room, looking for something I could use as a weapon if she attacked me. I noticed my desk lap was an arms-length away if I needed it in an emergency, so I sat. I was a little bigger than Mama and definitely stronger. I was pretty confident that I could take her down with a weapon.

Do you hear yourself, Kennedy? Mama isn’t gonna hurt you! She didn’t kill your daddy! There’s a reasonable explanation for all this!
I was attempting to reason with myself.

Yeah, there’s an explanation, all right—she nuts. Perfect explanation. She’s always been off, but now she’s certifiable.

Mama flipped open the album to the first page—the picture of the baby on the scale.

My blood pulsed through my ears as Mama lovingly stroked the photo. “Riley was tiny little thing,” Mama said, her voice sounding as if she were recalling a story she had once been told. There was something surreal about her words, like I was dreaming, and I would wake up and none of this happened.

“You were a much bigger baby, over nine pounds. I thought you were gonna break me in half when you were born, your big head pushing out.” She laughed, but it wasn’t Mama’s normal laugh. It was more like a donkey braying, or as if she was laughing at a joke that she really didn’t find amusing after all. A joke that she found downright depressing. She continued to flip the pages—a picture here and there of the baby coming home and a few of me or Mama holding her. And then, the pictures just ended, empty sheets staring back at us.

I turned to Mama, who had tears glistening in her eyes, her lip quivering. “What happened to her?”

Mama swallowed so hard I thought she was choking on something. And then, a tiny whisper—barely audible—so quiet that I wish I hadn’t actually heard the words. “Your daddy killed her, Sweetpea.”

I jumped to my feet, my legs shaking like saplings in the wind. My hands waved in the air, aimlessly searching for something to grab on to. But there was nothing. I collapsed back on the bed.

“You’re lying,” I whispered, my voice hoarse, as if I was swallowing dirt and rocks and pebbles.

Mama shook her head sadly. “Oh, baby girl, I wish I was. You have no idea how much I wish it weren’t true.”

“It can’t be true. Look at him. He looks happy. How could he have…
killed
her? It’s not possible. I don’t believe you.”

Mama closed her eyes and massaged her lids with her fingertips, like she was trying to ward off an inevitable migraine. She blew out softly through her nose and then dropped her hands into her lap.

“I was out. It was Valentine’s Day and I was out grabbing milk and bread and eggs and staples like that. He had been drinking and I couldn’t send him to get the stuff. Your sister was only eight weeks old and I didn’t want to drag her out because it was cold, really cold for Texas, probably twenty-five degrees that night. I know I shouldn’t have left you girls with him. Riley was a bit colicky and cried a lot—not much could be done to soothe her. I needed a break and I was only planning to duck out and be back shortly. You were sound asleep and the baby had also finally drifted off…I never thought—” Her voice cracked and she looked away from me, eyes fixed on the floor.

“I’ll never know the true story…I only know what I suspect. Your daddy could be a violent man. He would beat on me if he was drunk or if I irked him. I usually deserved it—”

“Mama!” I yelled, not believing she could say something that stupid.

Mama shushed me by holding up her hand. “And he spanked you when disciplining you. I didn’t like that at all, but he told me that’s how his daddy had disciplined him and that it had been good enough for him, so it was certainly going to be good enough for his daughter.

“I bit my tongue because he wasn’t around that much. He was a trucker and he drove a lot, coming home only a few days at a time, here and there,” Mama explained.

“He was home for Riley’s birth and after that, popped in every few weeks to rest. He was home on one of those rest stops and due to go on an extended trip to California the next day. I only wish he had gone back a few days earlier. This never would have happened.” Mama hung her head as if what she was about to reveal to me was her fault, and her fault alone, and as if hindsight could have prevented it.

“I came back from the store and turned onto our street. From a block away I could see the flashing lights, the ambulance and police cars on our front lawn, and my heart was lodged in my throat. Even though we shared a two family house with an elderly couple, I knew as I pulled up in front of the house, stumbling out of the car, that it wasn’t them that the ambulance was here for. Something had happened to one of you girls—call it mother’s intuition.

“The front door was wide open, practically thrown off its hinges and there were dozens of people, police and paramedics, milling around the base of the steps that led up to your bedroom that you shared with Riley. They were all huddled together, speaking loudly…shouting even. I don’t even know how I put one foot in front of the other or how I even got in the door, but somehow I did, my heart just ready to…explode or something.

“When I walked in, that’s when I saw her. My beautiful baby girl—”

Mama’s voice choked up, sobs reaching the top of her throat. I swallowed hard as I reached for her hand and squeezed.
How could I not remember any of this?

“It’s okay, Mama. You don’t have to talk about this…”

Mama shook her head adamantly. “Yes. Yes I
do
have to talk about it! I have to tell you what happened so you can understand…”

“I don’t need to understand, Mama. This is too painful—”

In a very un-Mama fashion, she detached her hand from mine and glared at me.

I recoiled.
Why
was she angry with me? Because I didn’t want to
hear
this story that had been stewing in the recesses of her brain for so many years? Or was she angry with me because I didn’t remember this moment that she obviously would never forget?
Whatever the reason, she was running her hands through her hair angrily as she continued her litany of misery.

“She was just lying there at the bottom of the steps, lifeless, like a doll. I started to call out for Mark…your daddy, very loudly. I reckon I sounded panicked because those EMTs whipped their heads around fast. And before I knew it, one was ushering me away and shushing me and smoothing down my hair. And I didn’t even know what had happened, no one had told me she was dead, but I knew—”

Mama stopped and started a keening that sounded like it had come from the depths of her soul. She rocked and sobbed, all sorts of fluids leaking out of her eyes and nose and mouth. She fixed her gaze on the window, like she was trying to slip out of it and disappear.

Not sure if I was going to get the cold shoulder again, I reached for her hand and slid next to her on the bed, breaking her gaze from the window. She offered me a conciliatory smile, a sort of apology for her anger. I didn’t know if I was supposed to speak, to attempt to console her from this nightmare that had occurred almost ten years ago. Finally, Mama started speaking again.

“I don’t even remember the next couple of days. I just knew that Riley was dead and we had to bury her and I felt like I was in some sort of haze and my arms and legs didn’t work right. It felt like I was swimming in pudding. I recall your daddy crying and telling me how he had tripped and fell down the stairs and his arm was in a sling, but I don’t actually remember the timeline of anything.

“After all was said and done, the police had ruled it an accident, an unavoidable tragedy. Your daddy was broken up about the whole thing and when his arm was out of the sling, he immediately installed hand rails on the stairs.

“Life went on for a couple of months. It wasn’t the same, of course. Your daddy hadn’t gone back to work yet since Riley’s death. He was drinking a lot then, even more than he had in the past. My heart was broken and it took every ounce of strength to get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes I just wanted to pull the covers over my head and sleep all day. But I couldn’t…I still had you.” She smiled at me through her tears and stroked my cheek. “You were my saving grace, Kennedy. I wouldn’t have survived without you.

“Of course, I was afraid to leave you for even a moment, terrified that something would happen to you. Everyone told me it was an irrational fear, what had happened to Riley was a tragic accident, but it wasn’t going to happen to you. Yet, something nagged at the back of my brain and I wouldn’t even leave you alone with your daddy.

“Then about a year later, I had to get a job—I had no choice. We went through our savings because we didn’t have life insurance for Riley and her funeral was expensive. Your daddy had taken a long time off of work, sitting around, drinking. He was allowed to grieve, but I wasn’t. I didn’t have time to grieve. Instead, I was working and taking care of you.” Mama straightened up as she continued.

“Right after I went back to work, you started getting very clinging, crying whenever I left. You said you didn’t want to be alone with daddy anymore. At first, I blew it off. You were having a hard time coping with Riley’s death and your daddy being home all the time, so I chalked it up to that.”

I had? Strange since I don’t remember it at all. Maybe I blocked it out of my mind because it was so painful.

“Then, one morning I got you up for school and you were tired and sluggish. You were seven at the time. I had to help you into the bathroom to get ready. When you got off the toilet, I saw there was bright red blood in the bowl. I was shocked. I lifted up your nightgown and saw them. Perfectly round bruises on your back. I screamed, shaking you, asking you what happened. And that’s when you finally told me what he had done—what he had been doing all along, the reason you didn’t want to be alone with him. He had kicked you in the back and now you were peeing out blood.”

I gasped. “He kicked me?” And then, it came rushing back.

In the corners of my mind, I felt like someone was clearing out some cobwebs or something. It was almost like I felt the sharp toe hitting my back, knocking the wind out of me. I struggled to breathe, my lungs feeling like they were collapsing on themselves.

Mama pulled her arm around me as this memory came rushing back in gulps, tears falling from my eyes; me curled on the floor, me crying out for Mama, me begging for him to stop. Like I was watching it happen.

“I could barely breathe myself, thinking that he hurt you like that. Hitting me was one thing, but you were a defenseless kid. I wanted to rush into your room, pack our bags and leave. I needed to hold you, squeeze you, and promise you I would never let it happen again. But I couldn’t make myself move. It was as if I were glued to the floor of the bathroom. The worst part was, you never even told me about it until I asked. The minute I saw those bruises on you, I knew that Riley’s death had been no accident.” She swallowed hard again and I could tell she was attempting to choke the tears back.

“Did you call the cops?” I asked Mama.

Mama shook her head. “No, baby. Your granddaddy was a pretty important figure in the town. He was mayor at one point when your daddy was a kid. All of the cops were in his back pocket. Plus, your daddy played football with all the cops in town when he was younger. They would have his back in a heartbeat. I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere by going to the police. And besides, if I knew your granddaddy, he would find some way to twist this around and blame me. I was scared that he would say I was the one abusing you—”

“But I wouldn’t have let—” I attempted to interrupt.

“You were a kid, Kennedy. Nobody believes kids. Trust me on this one, Kennedy. You don’t know your granddaddy. He was wildly protective of your daddy.”