by Laura McHugh
Raymond had filled in the rest. Shane had grown suspicious that they knew something about the Calhouns’ murders, and Dex let it slip that Shane’s gun had killed them. Shane couldn’t live with that; it was eating away at him. He wanted Crystle to turn herself in. Junior considered him a liability and tried to keep him in line, suggesting that since his gun had been used in the murder, it would be easy to pin the crime on him. He’d made credible threats against our family, promising that if Shane tried to go to the police, we’d all be dead before he left the station.
So he had hidden the gun, left his note and key. In case something happened to him. He’d been trying to find a way out of the mess he was in without anyone else getting hurt, but the Pettits got impatient and decided the only way to be sure he’d keep quiet was to kill him.
In the end, just as Becca had said, Shane had tried to do the right thing. We’d never given him enough credit, and that guilt would stay with us, that he hadn’t felt he could open up to us, turn to us for help. He’d wanted to protect his family, as he had always done. Kendrick arranged to have his body exhumed for testing, though the results wouldn’t change what we already knew. That we’d lost him too soon, that nothing would bring him back.
* * *
—
Lily was home for the weekend, and we headed out into the woods behind the house with Gravy to cut a Christmas tree. It had warmed up a bit, reminding me of the freak eighty-degree day twenty Decembers ago when Shane and Becca and I had gone out in shorts and T-shirts to fetch a cedar. We’d come back itchy and sweating to find Dad home early from work, something that normally put us all on edge, but he was in an uncharacteristically good mood. Earl Sullivan had given everyone a Christmas ham and a bonus to celebrate the end of a hard year. Dad had brought home cold Cokes from the gas station and a beer for himself, and the five of us sat in the grass, Shane cracking jokes about the tree, which was too fat to fit in the door, all of us laughing. I didn’t remember the gifts we got that year, which were surely not impressive, but I remembered the smell of the cedar, the heat of the sun on my winter skin, the way it felt to have my family all together. It had been hard for me to let go and enjoy the fleeting moments of Dad’s kindness, unable to put aside all the terrible things he’d done, but Shane had managed it effortlessly. Out of all of us, he’d always had the most generous heart.
Lily and Gravy and I tromped together through the melting muck in the back field, Gravy wearing one of Lil’s old turtleneck sweaters with the sleeves cut off. As usual, he had perked up with Lily there. He was acting almost frisky, bouncing in the mud on his stubby front legs, making us laugh. He would need a good bath.
Theo had stopped by after work earlier in the week to check on Gravy. I told him I had dinner in the oven and asked if he wanted to stay, and when he said yes, I had to explain that dinner was caramel apple pie, because I didn’t like to cook anything but dessert. Dinner led to after-dinner drinks (the last of the margarita pouches from Walmart) and then we ended up on the couch watching Dateline. A near-perfect first date, in my opinion, and it had happened so naturally that it was hard to remember what I’d been so afraid of. We had made plans to get together with Lily and his girls over the holiday break. We’d take them to the square in Shade Tree to see the annual concert and light display and walk the dogs if Gravy was feeling up to it. Theo had run new blood work at Gravy’s last office visit and gently informed me that the results were worse than expected. Gravy’s kidneys wouldn’t hold out much longer. He explained the signs to watch for and told me to call him at any hour if we needed him. Despite his deteriorating condition, Gravy seemed to have regained some of his hearing, a sign, Theo said, that he was coming out of mourning. He had started to look up whenever we said his name, or Shane’s. Becca, of course, framed it as a miracle.
With a new year approaching and the old one coming to an end, Mom had become obsessed with getting rid of things. She’d reached the tipping point, she said, where you stop accumulating and start to let go. She didn’t want to leave behind a house full of possessions like her own parents had done, for someone else to sort through. She was paring down Shane’s things, too, tossing papers, clothes, anything that didn’t remind her of who he was, the Shane we knew. She kept his drawings, his work jacket with PERFECT ATTENDANCE 2016 embroidered beneath the power company logo. I couldn’t bring myself to throw out the old letters from the friends he’d lost touch with, the craft Charlie had made. I would keep these reminders of my brother’s life, the things he loved, evidence of his impact in this world, because I couldn’t bear to let him disappear. One day, maybe Lily would sort through my belongings and find these treasures and remember him, too.
While I knew Charlie wouldn’t forget my brother, it made me sad to think of Shane not having children to pass down his stories, to carry his resemblance. I hadn’t thought of Lily as some hedge against oblivion, a way to live on past death, but I was grateful to the point of guilt that I had her.
Hannah was taking things day by day, going to meetings, working part-time at a nail salon, rebuilding her fractured relationship with her parents. They’d been deeply hurt and disappointed by her when she was using, and Hannah had been bitter at their lack of support, but Macey’s death had reminded the three of them how much they loved and needed one another. Theo had helped me find Hannah a rescue cat, an enormous ragged-eared tom with a knack for mousing who liked to sleep on her chest, a purring weight across her heart.
Hannah’s grief counselor had suggested she take up crafting again, and Hannah had dragged me along, in the name of therapy, to a place in a strip mall where you painted while drinking wine. Hannah had painted the serenity prayer for me, the words embellished with flowers and butterflies: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
I had attempted to paint a snowman, which seemed within my limited abilities—I had none of Shane’s artistic talent—but its face came out all wrong and Hannah had nearly choked herself laughing at it, claiming it looked like something out of a horror film. It was good for me, she said, to loosen up and try new things, even if I failed sometimes.
Amid the recent turmoil, Hannah and I had crossed the threshold into genuine friendship. We understood each other, had fun together. I’d forgotten how good it felt to open up and let someone in, how necessary human connection was to our survival. Hannah had shown me that it was okay to enjoy myself even if life hadn’t turned out the way I’d thought it would—that we had to go on living in the face of grief and loss and disappointment, accepting moments of peace and happiness when they came. It was hard for her, sometimes, when Lily was around. Seeing us together, mother and daughter, watching my child grow up, something Macey would never do.
We were all making adjustments as we came to terms with death, painfully aware that time was winding down for us all, some more quickly than others. I’d decided for the time being to remain in Shade Tree, close to Mom and Leola if they needed me, though while Lily was staying with Greg during the week, I’d start taking night classes toward my law degree. I wanted to make the most of whatever life I had left, and in the present moment, there wasn’t much I would change. I would still be walking through the woods with Lily, watching my brother’s dog roll in the mud, smiling at a sweet text from Theo. Shane’s absence was a hole that couldn’t be filled, but his death had brought Theo and Charlie and Leola into my life, and I was grateful for that. I thought of my brother, how we had drifted apart, all the time we’d lost, but there was nothing to be done about the past. I would do my best to embrace each day as an unfolding mystery with a thousand possible endings, reminding myself each night before I closed my eyes, Gravy snoring at the foot of the stairs, that while the days at times feel endless, nothing is guaranteed—that this dog might yet outlive me.
Henley wasn’t terribly surprised that Ellie Embry had opened her half-rotte
n mouth and regurgitated every single thing she knew about the Pettits. She was more surprised to learn that the cops had found Dalmire’s bone, and that it wasn’t even human. Maybe it was only a story, made up by Uncle Denny, like the one about starlings turning into witches at night, something to scare the kids, keep them in line. Perhaps Dalmire had escaped Blackwater much as she had, born again through a bitter baptism with a new name, living undetected on the margins. Or maybe Dalmire really had ended up in a hog trough but had left no bones behind. She didn’t dwell on it.
The mountain town had a vacation feel, even though she was often at work. It wasn’t hard to blend in with all the others who flocked there for the skiing or the seasonal jobs. She’d stayed in a youth hostel at first, where she bought a fake ID, claiming she wanted it to get into bars and using it instead to get a job. She’d dyed her hair brown in a gas station bathroom and gotten a girl at the hostel to cut it so it angled down just beneath her jaw, not that anyone was looking for her, and not that anyone here knew what a Pettit looked like, anyway. No one outside of Blackwater would see her hazel eyes and freckles and sturdy hips and equate them with trouble.
On a rare day off, like today, she’d snowshoe on the mountain. It had taken a while to acclimate to the altitude. She’d been warned about the thin air, and at first it was hard to breathe, but now she’d push herself to the limits of her endurance, feeling dizzy and weightless and free.
This new life was a gift Jason had unintentionally given her. The name on her license was Emily, a reminder of the strength and courage of Emily Sullivan, of how lucky Henley was to leave Blackwater. She didn’t have to be a Pettit anymore. Her family thought she was dead. She wouldn’t have to testify against them or be held accountable for what she knew, and Junior wouldn’t be sending anyone after her.
She missed her mother, and Raymond, and kept up with them as best she could through the news and online gossip. She knew that Earl was dead, that she didn’t have to worry about Jason anymore, that he would live out what was left of his life in a hospital or nursing home, unable to hurt anyone. If he somehow made a miraculous recovery he would be penniless from medical bills and have to settle for a public defender if charged with her murder. She wondered if she should have found a way to let Raymond know she’d survived, if that would have kept him from doing what he’d done, though knowing her uncle, it likely wouldn’t have made a difference. He had a softer heart than his brothers but had no trouble punishing those he felt deserved it. He’d told her to disappear, to not look back, and maybe some part of him imagined that she’d made it out, that she had listened, that she was alive despite her silence.
Henley had worried how her mother would grieve her loss, if it might cause a relapse, though from what she could tell secondhand, Missy was holding up better than expected. She’d watched her own memorial, which someone had filmed and posted online. The Pettits and Beauforts and Rudds and other assorted relatives crowded into the farmhouse, Missy doing her best to be in charge. There were Dr Peppers and boxes of cream horns from Why Not Donuts spread out on the kitchen table.
Missy wore a bright new dress, and while she looked frail as a damaged butterfly, a faint hope lit her eyes. Henley knew from her mother’s oversharing Facebook page that Missy was enrolled in outpatient rehab and had Earl Sullivan’s personal attorney working to get her charges dismissed. Earl had willed most of his estate to the Sullivan charitable trust, signing papers to cut Jason out entirely just before his death and leaving a generous gift to his longtime housekeeper, fulfilling his promise to take care of Missy all the way to the grave. To the relief of the entire town, Earl had arrangements in place for Sullivan Grain to continue operations without him, running much as it had before, a portion of profits funneling into the trust that fed back into Blackwater. There would still be a Little League, a summer jobs program for disadvantaged teens, an Emily Sullivan Memorial Essay Contest, a city fireworks display on the Fourth of July. The Sullivan legacy would live on.
Missy led everyone out into the backyard, standing under the clothesline where Memaw used to hang the wash, next to the tractor shed, where Missy’s dreams of being a Sullivan lay buried.
“Thank you for coming today,” she said. The words squeaked out, barely audible, and she cleared her throat and started again.
“Thank you for coming today to honor Henley. Having her was the one smart thing I ever did, as you well know. We didn’t have much at times, but Henley was always rich in family.” The elders nodded, one of the Beauforts calling out, “Amen.”
“Henley loved this farm,” she continued. “She had roots here going back generations, and a piece of her will always be here with us. But I can’t bury my girl and I think the good Lord made it that way. She wouldn’t have wanted that. She didn’t want to be pinned down to a piece of soil, marked with a stone.”
“Praise Jesus.” Heads nodded, hands raised heavenward.
“Fly where you want, baby,” Missy said, her voice breaking as she flung her arms wide. “Your spirit’s free. We’ll see you on the other side.”
Henley’s chest ached as she watched the screen. Her mother had loved her intensely, despite everything, and she’d always carry that love inside her, a vital organ, a second heart.
A hymn started up, but Missy didn’t join in. Henley understood if she wasn’t quite ready for singing. There was so much to grieve and regret and repent, and in the moment, her mother appeared barely able to hold herself steady, keep her knees from bending toward the ground.
The shorn fields were desolate and empty, the lonely farmhouse exposed to the cruel winter wind, but Henley knew that in the spring the corn would grow, as it always did, that somehow Missy would find the strength to carry on. She was a Pettit, after all.
The hardest to leave behind was Charlie. It felt unbearable to stay silent when there was so much she wanted to say. She wanted to apologize for not telling him what had happened to Shane; to explain how everything had gone so terribly wrong; to let him know that she had held back her feelings for him only because she feared he would anchor her to the place she wanted to escape. She fantasized about showing up on his doorstep, taking a chance rather than leaving it up to fate. Maybe he’d be glad to see her, and maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe she’d send him a postcard from a town she was passing through, to let him know that she was out there somewhere, thinking of him. A picture of the mountains, no name, no address, just the words I miss you, or maybe I’m sorry.
There was much to be sorry for. She understood what Earl had meant about filling a leaky bucket, trying to make up for the wrong he’d done and knowing he’d always come up short. It was impossible to atone for her family’s sins, for the Calhouns or for Shane. She could only hope that she’d given the Kellers some closure when she left the pills for Sadie, the prescription bottle that Crystle had hastily stuffed into the pocket of her jeans the night Shane died.
She hoped that Shane had found peace, too. She wished there was more she could have done, that she could have stopped it somehow, and that would always haunt her. She thought of Shane looking at her through the other side of the viewfinder as she took his photo on his wedding day, the tiny stains on his clean white shirt, the river glittering behind him, his easy smile, his jay-blue eyes. His jokes would pop into her head at odd times.
Hey, Henley, what comes suddenly and never leaves?
A bad date, she’d said. Shane had cleared his throat and covered his mouth, trying not to laugh.
Death, he said. The answer is death.
She’d argued with him. Memaw had lingered for months as the cancer ate away at her; it wasn’t sudden at all. They could feel it coming, like footsteps down a long hallway, striding ever closer. She wondered now if Shane had felt it coming for him, too.
That’s dying, he’d said. It’s a process. We’re all dying, all the time. Death flips a switch, just like that. He’d snapped his fingers. It all
goes dark.
She paused at an overlook to peer through the trees. The sky was deep sapphire blue, a saturated shade rarely seen in low-lying Kansas, the mountains that much closer to the edge of the sky. It was bright here, brighter than it ever got back home, the sun on the snow almost blinding. When summer came, she’d head farther north, as far as she could go, where ice veiled the peaks year round and the sun shined all day, never setting, so bright that every cell in her body would feel vividly, achingly alive. So bright that the darkness couldn’t catch her, even when she closed her eyes.
For my family, with love
I couldn’t get by without the support of my family. Hugs and gratitude to the McHughs, Runges, Berners, Gilpins, and Gipsons, and especially my mom, my brothers and sisters, Barb and Bill, and Piper, Harper, and Brent.
Thank you to Jill, Jen, Ann, Nina, and Allison for all things Beastie. Jill has many superpowers, including a knack for showing up at Starbucks when she is needed most, and I couldn’t be more grateful to have her as my sister in crime.
Heartfelt thanks to the friends who support me in so many ways, including Elizabeth Anderson, Hilary Sorio, Angie Sloop, Nicole Coates, Sally Mackey, Liz Lea, Adonica Coleman, and Martha McKim. Thank you to Amy Engel for the thoughtful writing discussions. Many thanks to Jason Vinyard and Dave Abbott for offering their expertise, and a special shout-out to the awesome Kamella Neeley, who drove all the way from Arkansas to my reading in Oxford, where we struck up a friendship over books.