Buried Truth

by Caleb Whitaker

  Chapter 27: Aftermath

                 

  The rest of the night at least one police officer keeps Joanna and I under constant supervision. They tell us that we aren’t suspects, but they want to make sure we are safe. However, their constant presence hasn’t made me feel in any way safe, because I once rode with a police officer that was supposed to be making sure I was safe, and he ended up being the murderer.

  We catch a few hours of sleep in someone’s office at the police station. Joanna takes one couch and I take another, but we feel so much closer. I feel like I have spent the entire week with her, when I have really only just learned about her involvement hours ago. Can one traumatic experience really be the flame we were missing all along? If so, what a huge price to pay.

   

  Ryleigh follows me to my bedroom, as I plummet down onto my bed. My head throbs with a fierce pain that makes me clench the headboard with both hands. In need of something sweet to focus on, I search for Ryleigh. But her face is glowering down at me as if I’m nothing but a nuisance to her.

  She screams something into her cell phone before kissing me on the cheek. My eyes roll back in my head as I try to focus on my room. When I’m finally able to focus, I see a woman dashing into my room. Only the woman is not Ryleigh, but Joanna.

  “Are you ok?” She asks.

  I nod my head from side to side. “Why are you in my bedroom?”

  She ignores my question and asks, “What happened? Are your parents ok? I would check on them, but I think someone followed me here in a police cruiser. I don’t know what to do? Ryan, I’m freaking out.”

  “I think I’ve had too much to drink.”

  She sits at the foot of my bed. “Ryan! I was on my way to your parents’ house when I saw you and Ryleigh running out of the house with someone dressed in black chasing you.”

  My mind goes blank in a haze of darkness as I shout. “I’m with Ryleigh. Will you please stop trying to create drama?”

  She asks, “Where is she? Is she ok?”

  “What? A night with me, and she is broken? She is fine.”

  Joanna gets off the bed and paces the room. “She looked pretty frightened to me.”

  My vision blurs, and my room shakes around me as my body quakes in gruesome torment. Joanna’s soft voice calls out near my ear, “I’m here for you. I’ll figure it out. I promise, you are not in this alone.”

   

  When morning comes, the police rigorously question us before they update us on the investigation. I try to be as honest as possible, but many of the events that took place the last few days were locked deep in my subconscious, and that’s a shaky foundation at best. And really, everything since I got to the Gate’s Mansion can only be remembered from my strangely memorable dream experience.

  The interesting development is when Officer Walker informs me on Jim and Ryleigh. We are sitting in the office on one side of a desk across from Walker and a detective that I do not recognize. Walker turns to me and says. “You busted Boyd, I mean Jim, up pretty good. He nearly died, but he is in stable condition at Everton General.”

  Joanna jerks back in her seat, biting her nails. When I had relayed to her the knocking blows that I gave Jim, we had assumed I killed him. He didn’t run after me, so I must have at least knocked him unconscious. Man! Why didn’t I kill him? After everything he took from me.

  Officer Walker must see our distress because he stands up from behind his desk. His eyes burrow, “Now, you don’t have to worry. If he doesn’t get the death penalty, he will be locked away in a tiny cell for the rest of his life. We’ll make sure of that.”

  “What about Ryleigh?” I ask.

  His eyes dart to the detective who nods his head, prompting Walker to respond, “We never found her. We searched the place thoroughly, but she was gone. There must be a back way onto the plantation, but that land is so vast and so overgrown that we probably will never find it.”

  Joanna asks, “Do you think she is a threat to us.”

  The detective shakes his head, “No mam. Based on our initial talks with Mr. Boyd, we don’t believe her to be a threat. From the start, her brother used her to advance his own end game and now she will want to start over. We already have several possible leads of where she might be headed.”

  We shake hands with the detective and Officer Walker. Then we are led out of the police station to my car. Joanna’s flowing blond locks of hair hang just above her shoulder as she gets in the vehicle. The sunlight streams into the car illuminating her beautiful face. It might be my extreme exhaustion, but there is something different about her. Something I have failed to see for so long.

  The rest of the day is a blur. I have no time to rest and only a few minutes to contemplate my twisted love life. Alice had made the funeral arrangements for my parents during my absence and today is the day. Alice is also kind enough to set a suit out for me before the funeral, reminding me of the days as a kid when she would set out my school clothes.

  At the funeral, we use a closed coffin to hide the remnants of the attack. I haven’t seen the bodies since I found them in the house, but Alice said they did a fine job preparing the bodies, almost all the injuries were covered, but it still wouldn’t be right for everyone to remember them in that shape. Instead, she was able to find several family photos to set on the coffins, which is a much better final memory than the way I found them in the bedroom.

  Tears sting my eyes as I stare into the eyes of my mom and dad in the pictures. This time my tears aren’t physical demonstrations of my self-pity, but actual heart felt love bubbling its way to the surface. Love for life and love through death.

  Joanna is by my side the entire time to wipe away the tears. I do not know why she is doing any of this because I have been downright insufferable towards her in the past. I never really cared for her the way one should. We were friends, but it was a one sided friendship for most of my life. But that is all going to change, once I figure out how to remove the grip of Ryleigh’s sinister relationship from my broken heart.

  The funeral is beyond insufferable after my parents are laid to rest. I’m suffocated on all sides with dull conversations from people who couldn’t have cared less for me a week ago. Our sleepy little town has woken up, and the gossipers want to know my story, but I can’t bear to explain it, and I won’t have my family name trampled on in the name of Everton lore.

  My muscles tighten as one old batty woman pins me up against a car outside the cemetery. My jaw tightens as my patience dwindles until Matt charmingly swoops in to take me away under the guise of important family matters. He has lines under his eyes from little sleep.

  As we walk towards my car, he suddenly stops in the middle of the sidewalk outside the cemetery fence. “Ya know, I didn’t really mean all that stuff I said.”

  “Let’s put the past behind us, I know you’re there for me. It's not as if you were the only one at fault. I messed up far worse than you.”

  He fixes his tie, then leans towards me and whispers, “Under one simple condition, ya get a handle on the scotch.”

  “Trust me, things are going to change.”

  We shake hands and go our separate ways this time on good terms. When I finally get home, I collapse on the kitchen floor, my body broken with cuts, scrapes, and wear. My mind will be forever scarred by the memories that have returned and forever shattered by those forgotten. Joanna kindly ushers me to bed. We stare into each other’s eyes as I fall asleep pondering the possibilities of our newly sparked relationship.