Truth Be Told

by Kathleen Barber

  One of the most obvious is Andrew Cave, Warren’s father and Melanie’s cuckolded husband. Countless people have told me that Andrew discovered his wife’s affair on the same day Chuck was killed, giving him a possible motive. He also owned a registered handgun, giving him access to a weapon—although ballistics testing later determined this was not the murder weapon. Furthermore, on the day in question—allegedly after leaving his wife—Andrew Cave drove upstate to his hometown in the Chicago suburbs. A dozen people saw him in a local sports bar that night, and he got into a fistfight that landed him in the emergency room.

  As long as we’re considering spouses, you might say, what about Erin Buhrman? Like Andrew Cave, Erin had an alibi for the night her husband was killed. She was staying with a friend who was recovering from oral surgery, and the friend’s neighbors confirmed Erin’s car was parked in front of the house all night. Unlike Andrew Cave, Erin did not know about the affair between Chuck and Melanie until after Chuck’s death. She testified that she first learned about it from the newspaper. Moreover, she was clearly crushed by the death of her husband, so distraught that she ended up joining a cult. Again, I understand that gut feelings are not evidence, but it seems unlikely that she could’ve been cold-blooded enough to commit the murder.

  While Chuck was generally well liked by both colleagues and students, there were a couple of professional skirmishes that engendered ill will. In the spring of 2002, Chuck caught a student cheating during a final exam and reported her to the administration. She was expelled, and left several angry voicemails on Chuck’s office line. Could the student have been so angry over this that she came back months later and killed him? It seems like an outlandish theory, but my initial examination into this student has turned up a sealed criminal record. I’m still digging, and I’ll keep you updated when I learn more.

  In another academic dustup, the year before Chuck was killed a fellow history professor was up for tenure. Chuck opposed granting it on the basis that this professor had published a paper espousing a controversial position that Chuck felt would reflect poorly on the school. Other members of the Elm Park College History Department, none of whom would consent to being quoted on the record, told me that things became heated. The other professor did not receive tenure and immediately thereafter left the school. I understand he now teaches at a community college in Iowa. Is that the kind of grudge that’s serious enough to kill? I don’t know.

  Here’s what else we’re not sure of: Chuck’s former colleagues also mentioned some rumors that Chuck had been carrying on with students and possibly other professors, but no one had anything to substantiate these claims. No one could even produce a name. If he was indeed carrying on multiple affairs, he was being discreet. Could one of Chuck’s paramours have been behind his murder? After all, they say hell hath no fury like a lover scorned . . .

  chapter 7

  I switched off the podcast, but not before memories of my father’s murder began running on an insistent, horrifying loop through my head. That day had started so well: It was a beautiful Saturday in late fall, the sun shining and the air crisp. Our mother went out to help her friend, and, as she had been going through an unusually dark period even by her standards, I was joyful, believing this outing to be a harbinger of good things to come. Our father was cheerful, and Lanie and I spent most of the day outdoors with him, raking leaves and playing tennis at the park. We ordered in pizza for a special treat, and then Lanie and I turned in early, worn out from the day’s activities.

  “Today was really fun,” I said to Lanie as I snuggled underneath my covers.

  “Yeah,” Lanie said, sounding distracted. “Do you hear that? Is Dad on the phone?”

  “I think it’s just the TV. Why?”

  Lanie was silent for so long that I almost dropped off to sleep, but then she said, “Josie? Can I tell you something?”

  “Of course.”

  She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I read Mom’s journal.”

  “What?” I said sharply, sitting up and sending my sister a glare that she couldn’t see in the dark. “Lanie, that’s private. She’s going to be really mad.”

  “Do you know why it’s private?” Lanie said, her voice sharpening a bit. “She’s been keeping things from us. She wrote that—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” I insisted. Our mother had always been very clear that her journals were strictly off-limits, for no one’s eyes but her own.

  “Fine,” she hissed, clicking on a flashlight.

  “Lanie,” I protested. “Come on. If you want to read, go read downstairs or something. I’m really tired.”

  “No, I want to read in bed. Just close your eyes.”

  I sighed loudly to signal my displeasure and rolled onto my side as Lanie reached under her mattress and grabbed a tattered paperback copy of Interview with the Vampire. She had bought the scandalous book for a quarter at the library book sale, sneaking it underneath approved copies of The Odyssey and Little Women. I knew she kept The Vampire Lestat and Stephen King’s It in her hiding place behind the sink in the playhouse, and I briefly considered using that knowledge as leverage to get her to turn off the light, but I was too tired to argue.

  Sometime later, I awoke with a start, images of bursting fireworks in my head. Disoriented, unsure how long I had been asleep or what had awoken me, I sat up and looked at Lanie’s bed. It was empty. Downstairs, the back door slammed. Fear pricked through my veins, and, scarcely daring to breathe, I listened intently for other noises. The house was eerily silent.

  Suddenly, footsteps pounded up the stairs. I clenched my blankets to my chest, nearly blacking out from terror. Was someone in the house?

  The bedroom door banged open, and a scream tore through my throat before I realized it was just my sister.

  Lanie, face ashen and eyes wild, gestured frantically for me to be quiet as she raced to the window. Pressing her forehead against the glass, she squinted into our dark backyard. A small moan escaped her lips and she muttered something that sounded like “first the girl.”

  “What did you say?” I squeaked out.

  She whirled to face me, dark braids swinging as if electrified. The expression on her face—cornflower eyes dark, pale cheeks hollowed by shadows, jaw bulging with clenched teeth—stopped my heart.

  “Lanie, you’re scaring me,” I said when she didn’t immediately say anything. “What’s going on? Should we get Dad?”

  “Dad’s dead,” she said hoarsely.

  I gaped at her. Dead? Even as my stomach dropped, inappropriate laughter burbled up in my throat. Our father—our strong, vital father, the man who had earlier run us ragged on the tennis court—couldn’t be dead. The very idea was absurd.

  “What?”

  “He’s dead,” she repeated, her voice wavering.

  “No,” I said, climbing out of bed. “No, that’s not true. We’ll just go downstairs and—”

  “Don’t!” she shrieked, lunging at me and catching me by the arm. Her fingernails bit into my skin, causing drops of blood to rise to the surface. I barely felt it—I was too preoccupied with my sister’s naked terror. My sister was the most fearless person I knew, and she was scared out of her mind.

  “You can’t go down there,” she said, squeezing my arm more tightly.

  Numbly, I nodded.

  “Now help me,” she commanded, beginning to drag the plastic milk crates we used for storage over to the door. Books and sports equipment spilled from them as she stacked them in front of the exit. “Come on. Help me. Please. Before . . .”

  I shivered at the ominous before and began grabbing blindly at objects to add to the barricade. “Before what? Is someone else in the house?”

  Lanie shuddered and mumbled something indistinct.

  “Tell me,” I insisted desperately, catching at her arm. “What happened? Is Dad really . . . ? And why are you so sweaty?”

  “Let go of me!” she whispered, shoving me away roughly. I tripped over a loose book a
nd smacked my head on the bedframe, igniting a flurry of stars in my vision. I cried out in pain, and clutched a hand to my head.

  “Shut up,” she hissed wildly. “Shut up!”

  I held my hands over my mouth to hold in any inadvertent squeaks. “Is someone else in the house?”

  Lanie grabbed me by my arm and pulled me into the closet, pulling the door shut behind us. We huddled together on the floor in the pitch-darkness, straining to hear anything out of the ordinary, but any noise was drowned out by our thundering hearts and ragged breath.

  “Someone’s in the house,” I whispered, no longer a question. “Lanie, we have to call the police.”

  “No,” she whispered fiercely. “We can’t.”

  “But—”

  “No,” she insisted, squeezing my hand so hard I thought my bones would break.

  “Why not? What happened?”

  “Dad,” she said haltingly. “I should . . . I shouldn’t . . . I have to tell you.”

  “Tell me what? What happened?”

  “Downstairs. Dad. I shouldn’t . . .” she trailed off. “It’s my fault.”

  “Lanie?” I whispered, my stomach plummeting.

  “God, Josie,” she whimpered. “We’re all fucked.”

  • • •

  Fitful sleep finally came around five in the morning, only for me to awaken suddenly an hour later, panicked about the people I would see at the visitation. I was well aware of the gossip my family had once inspired; I could only imagine the podcast and my mother’s death had revitalized old rumors and whipped them into a fever pitch. I pulled the covers over my head as a defense against the impending morning, and must have fallen asleep again because the next thing I knew it was noon and Ellen was tugging the covers off me.

  “Get up!” she commanded, clapping her hands together sharply. “The family viewing starts in thirty minutes.”

  Startled, I sat up in bed. “I swear I set my alarm.”

  “Well, you either didn’t or you turned it off. No time for a formal inquisition. Just get up and get in the shower.”

  I swung my feet over the side of the bed obediently and paused as a wave of nausea swept over me. “Ugh,” I said, clutching my head. “I think I’m sick.”

  “Do you see this black hair dye under my nails?” Ellen said, holding up a hand. “I look like some sort of tragic emo kid. I didn’t ruin a perfectly good gel manicure for nothing. Get up.”

  “I’m getting up,” I insisted. “I’m just . . . ugh.”

  “Listen,” Ellen said, sitting down on the bed, her voice softening. “I get it. This sucks. In so many ways. But we’ve got to go to this visitation.”

  My chest tightened and my eyes stung with tears, and with a start, I realized this wasn’t sickness: this was grief.

  “I can’t imagine my mother wanting us to gather in some stodgy funeral home to remember her,” I sniffled. “I’m sure she’d rather we be outside, spreading sunshine or whatever.”

  “I know, honey,” Ellen said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me close. “But funerary rituals aren’t for the dead. They’re for the living. They’re for my mom.”

  With a pang, I remembered the aching sadness in Aunt A’s eyes. I had come all the way to Elm Park; there was no sense in skipping the visitation. “You’re right.”

  “Of course I am,” she said, pushing me away playfully. “Now go get in the shower. You stink.”

  • • •

  I emerged freshly scrubbed and smelling decidedly better to find that Aunt A and Ellen had already gone to the funeral home. They had left behind Peter and his daughters, who had arrived from Chicago that morning. Sophie, a girl in her late teens with carroty hair so vibrant it couldn’t be natural, was ironing an unfamiliar black dress for me.

  “That’s not mine,” I said dully.

  She smiled brightly. “Ellen thought you might want to wear this instead.”

  I nodded, ready to surrender responsibility for my appearance to my cousin. It was of little surprise to me that Isabelle, the older sister, the one who wanted to live with her boyfriend, was ready to apply my makeup.

  “Wait,” I said as she picked up a mascara wand. “Let’s skip the mascara. I’ll just end up crying and it’ll run.”

  “Sorry,” Isabelle said, smiling apologetically. “But Ellen instructed me to insist that you wear mascara. She said, and I quote, people will expect material evidence of grief.”

  “She thought of everything, huh?”

  “She always does,” Peter said, handing me a tumbler of whiskey.

  It was his contribution I appreciated most. I downed the drink in two gulps, the bitter, oaky flavor settling on my tongue and tasting like dread.

  • • •

  On the way to the visitation, Peter fiddled with the radio at a stoplight and for a few seconds a Dire Straits song filled the car. A sudden memory of my mother dancing along to the same song shook me, and I realized I had made a mistake. I had spent the past night obsessing over my father’s death, when I should have been thinking about my mother’s. After all, if the statistics posted on the Reconsidered webpage were to be believed, over five million people were currently focused on my father’s death. Someone had to remember my mother.

  More than that, though, someone had to remember her the way she deserved. Poppy Parnell’s fans knew my mother only as a passive victim; they thought of her as a jilted woman, a heartbroken widow, a woman destroyed by her own demons. They didn’t know that my mother was smart, or that, even after she dropped out of college to have Lanie and me, she never stopped studying. It had been our mother’s idea to homeschool us, an idea that our father initially fought, arguing Mom would be in over her head. But she had taken the responsibility seriously, sending away for textbooks and workbooks and developing lesson plans. Even toward the end, when her black moods were arriving more frequently and lasting longer, she remained adamant about teaching us. She was dedicated to sharing her knowledge with her daughters.

  Similarly, the fans didn’t know that my mother had a beautiful singing voice, or that she liked to paint, or that she once nursed a bird with a broken wing back to health. They didn’t know that my mother had invented new endings to fairy tales to protect Lanie and me when we were children: in her versions, the Big Bad Wolf shoved Grandma in a closet rather than devouring her, and the trolls that lived under the bridges were only misunderstood.

  I knew that my mother had some struggles, and that she always had. Sometimes she treated all of us strangely, refusing to speak to our father and behaving as though Lanie and I were much younger than we actually were. And there were times when she wouldn’t come out of her room for days, and sometimes she refused to wear anything other than a thin floral nightgown. But those things didn’t define my mother. She was kind and sweet and we’d loved her.

  Just as certainly as I loved her, though, I hated her. She had left us deliberately twice: once for California, and once when she departed this plane of existence. I would have to bid farewell to a body that my mother no longer inhabited.

  I’d have to utter the goodbye that she had left unsaid.

  • • •

  Peter offered me his arm as we exited the car twenty minutes later, and I took it even though I didn’t really think I needed the support. The funeral home did not look threatening. It was just a one-story brick building with a small concrete porch and ornamental portico. If not for the location—squeezed between #1 Nails and Merle’s Pizza House—and the tidy sign advertising WILHELM FUNERAL HOME in a plain font, it could have been someone’s residence. The foyer, which smelled strongly of floral air freshener, was more ostentatious than the exterior of the funeral home, with gold-and-cream-striped wallpaper and thick navy carpeting with a red-and-cream floral pattern. Across the room, a huge floral arrangement stood before an enormous, gilt-trimmed mirror. I caught a glimpse of my reflection and was surprised to find I looked remarkably calm. I was less surprised to see that Ellen was right about th
e hair. Of course.

  On our left was an open doorway, a brass plaque bearing my mother’s name beside the doorframe. ERIN A. (BLAKE) BUHRMAN was printed in small, dignified letters—something so unlike what my ethereal mother would have chosen for herself that I nearly laughed out loud. I swallowed the inappropriate laughter and my body shook with the effort. Peter, thinking I was holding back tears, put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  I was still on the verge of laughter as I stepped through the doorway, but then something shiny caught my eye and I realized it was the edge of the coffin—my mother’s coffin, which contained my mother’s body—gleaming from the front of the room. The laughter died in my throat, hardening into a painful lump. I couldn’t go any farther. Other mourners (or, as the case likely was, rubberneckers—tragedy draws horrible people like flies to honey) were beginning to arrive, and I was distinctly aware that I needed to complete the most gruesome part, the part where I confronted my mother’s lifeless form. But I couldn’t move.

  “It’s okay,” Ellen whispered, materializing at my side. “You can do this.”

  “I can’t,” I said, panic rising in my throat like warm lightning.

  “You can,” she assured me, her voice smooth and confident as ever. “Come on. I’m right here.”

  Clutching Ellen’s hand like it was the only scrap of driftwood in a dark and punishing ocean, I took a few halting steps forward. My eyes darted desperately in every direction but toward the casket: to Aunt A, deep in conversation with Reverend Glover, who had grown thin and papery since I had seen him last; to Isabelle and Sophie, whose eyes were glued to their respective iPhones; to a small cluster of round women in dark dresses gathered by the far wall. And then I was standing in front of the polished casket with my heart in my throat. I forced myself to look down, my head turning before my eyes followed.

  Her face was at once the face I remembered from my childhood and yet something else entirely. The features were visually similar, but could have been molded from plastic. Her once-magnificent hair was cropped short and peppered with white strands. Spots formed in my peripheral vision.