Where the Truth Lies

by Anna Bailey

  Dolly clasps and unclasps her hands, once, twice, three times. Jude knows she probably wants a cigarette, but it’s more than that: she keeps folding her lips together and looking hurriedly from Noah to the ground to her husband. I thought this was going to be about Abi.

  “As it says in the Book of Revelation, all immoral persons will be put into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone.”

  Samuel looks at each of them in turn, his gaze lingering a moment longer than any of them would like. Jude makes a conscious effort not to flinch, and the sting from the stones digging into his knee begins to make his eyes water. He keeps his head down, hoping his father won’t think he’s crying.

  “I tell you what awaits these immoral persons: it is the fiery lake with no one but the devil himself for company for time everlasting. We are all sinners, oh yes, truly we are all clad in sinner’s coats, but we have found redemption through the love of Jesus Christ. Amen!” He barks those last two syllables, and the family echoes them back to him in a low murmur. “And yet there are those who turn their faces away from the love of the Lord, who continue to stand before Him in arrogance, despite the threat of pain and torment, and it is these immoral persons who are the greatest affront to God because they reject His offer of redemption.”

  He takes a deep breath in through his nose and lets it emerge from his mouth in a cloud of steam, as though instead of Samuel Blake, a demon is crouching with them in the driveway.

  Slowly, he gets to his feet and begins to circle around them. “It brings me no joy to tell you that there is one such person in this family, and that for their wickedness, we are all being punished.” Jude feels the back of his neck prickle as his father passes behind him. “The false tongues of the Sheriff’s Department would have us believe that Abigail ran away, but the truth is that God Himself took her to sit under the watchful care of His angels until we have driven out the sin from this house. Then, and only then, will He send her home to us.”

  Suddenly he jabs a finger at Dolly. “You want your daughter back?”

  Looking at her now, Jude can see that her face is shiny with tears, although he had not heard her crying. He never does. Even the slight action of nodding seems to tire her out.

  “You,” says Samuel, and Jude is alarmed to find his father now pointing at him. “Do you want your sister back?”

  He hesitates, but Samuel’s heavy stare seems to be pushing him harder against the stones, and eventually he nods too.

  His father reaches for his Bible again, reading slowly as he comes to stand behind Noah. “Leviticus 20:13: If a man also lies with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination;… Their blood shall be upon them.” At this he puts his boot against Noah’s back and knocks him to the ground, then stands with one foot on his son’s head, pressing the side of his face into the gravel. Dolly claps her hands to her mouth, whimpers into her palms, but does not move. Jude tries to stand, but loses his balance, and has to grasp at his stick to keep himself upright. Noah scrabbles at the stones around him, choking in the dirt.

  “You’ve brought this on yourself, boy,” says Samuel, voice like a buck knife, as he holds his son down. “The ways I teach you are the ways of the Lord, and yet still you reject Him.” He takes a sharp breath and wets his lips, watching Noah struggling beneath him. “Swear on the Lord our God that you will renounce this immoral lifestyle and seek redemption and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.”

  Jude knows he should do something, but this all feels too familiar, and the twinge in his aching leg tells him: Keep your mouth shut, or he’ll break the other one.

  Dolly shifts like she’s about to stand up. “Sam—”

  “Stay down, woman, or you’ll feel the back of my hand. We are about God’s work here.” Samuel grinds his boot harder against Noah’s cheek. “I said swear it.”

  Noah groans, his mouth half full of grit.

  “Swear it!”

  Slowly, painfully, Noah nods.

  Jude watches a smile split his father’s face. “Corinthians,” he says, and the triumph in his voice lends a golden edge to his words. “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: no abusers of themselves with mankind shall inherit His kingdom.” He pulls out his hip flask and pours the contents over his son. “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. Amen.”

  Then, still smiling, Samuel tosses the flask into the dirt by Noah’s head, and without even glancing at the others he turns and walks back into the house.

  15

  Where are you going? It’s getting dark.”

  Melissa reaches the foot of the stairs and sees her daughter shuffling into her sneakers, phone in one hand, jacket in the other.

  Emma tosses her hair. “Mom, it’s barely seven.” She’s wearing a shade of lipstick that Melissa’s never seen before.

  “Are you meeting someone? Em, you’re not going to meet that girl, are you—the one who bought you the liquor last time?”

  Emma blinks at her for a moment, her face totally blank. Then: “Oh. No, I’m not friends with her anymore.”

  What to do when your teenager lies to you. Melissa looked it up the night she found Emma retching over the toilet, and now she finds herself running through the website’s top tips all over again. Number one: stay calm. Well, sure, but what about something practical? Number two: let them know you’re there for them. Yesterday she took Emma to the hairdresser, and then they had doughnuts and lemonade at Aurora, and Melissa bought her some glittery nail polish on the way home. She’s taken her out of school and avoided confronting her even though she knows both their hearts are breaking, but Emma just keeps smiling this empty smile at her, saying, “Sounds good, Mom,” and smelling of breath mints and too much deodorant.

  Number three: keep some perspective, it’s not about you.

  “Well, that’s good, Em. But, you know, I really don’t feel comfortable about you going out alone at night right now, not when the police still haven’t… Well, you know.”

  “Look, Mom, I won’t be gone long, and I’ll text you. But it’s cool. I’m just meeting a friend.”

  Melissa looks at the lipstick again. “Oh.”

  Emma glances at her feet, perhaps hoping that her mother won’t catch her little smile. The sight of it makes Melissa’s chest ache for her sweet girl whose untested youth is still so full of hope.

  “What is he like? I’m assuming it’s a he.” Melissa clears her throat.

  Emma is still grinning privately at her shoes. “He’s real nice, Mom.”

  Melissa knows the time is approaching when she will have to tell her daughter the truth: that deep down, most men are mediocre. Most people are, really, but men are allowed to grow up thinking the world is their oyster in a way that women cannot. Then they get to be forty and they wonder why it hasn’t happened for them yet, and if there’s a woman in their way, well, that’s tough for her.

  “Just be careful, won’t you? Sometimes boys can… Well, they always want someone else to blame.”

  “Is that what Dad did?” Emma asks.

  Number four: model honesty in your own behavior.

  “No, Em. Your dad had to leave because…” Melissa sighs. Emma is looking over her shoulder through the window in the door: she doesn’t really want the answer to this question now because she has somewhere else to be. But before she leaves, Emma reaches out and rubs her mother’s shoulder.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” she says. “I know.”

  And Melissa squeezes her daughter’s hand and thinks, No, you don’t know. I hope you never do.

  * * *

  Emma checks her phone again. “He’s late.”

  Rat leans back against the cool rock of one of the Tall Bones and lights a cigarette. Behind them, the moon climbs out of the forest, struggling over the tangle of bare branches that snag at its edges.

  “He�
��ll be here.”

  When she’d called Rat the night before to ask what his big plan was, he’d said, “Nothing big about it, drăgută. I’ve got twenty grams of coke to shift, you’ve got questions you want answering, so…” She could practically hear the shrug in his pause, like that was the sort of sentence people said all the time. “We kill two birds with one stone. You told me yourself that Hunter Maddox is in the business of buying and selling, so we hit him up, let him know there’s merchandise to be had. We get him somewhere private, get the money, and then we ask him what he knows.”

  “That’s terrible. We just ask him?”

  “Real life isn’t like CSI, drăgută. The only things we’re likely to find if we go poking around in the woods are bird bones and pine needles. Sometimes the best approach is the simplest.”

  “But what if he won’t talk?”

  Rat’s impatience had crackled through the static. “Then we remind him that he’s now in possession of an illegal substance, and if he doesn’t play ball, then the Whistling Ridge Sheriff’s Department is going to get an anonymous tip, all right? Just trust me, Emma. I know what I’m doing.”

  A stiff breeze makes the forest rattle. When Emma was a child, it always seemed so full of promise, like you could taste adventure on the air. She and Abigail used to run away to the woods when they were younger, mix potions out of pine dust and crystallized sap, holler at the mountains, like the primeval bellowing of elk, to scare away the ghosts, and then traipse home, their bare feet stained red from the dirt. But Emma is older now, and when she looks into the trees, she thinks of coyote teeth, and cold limbs laid out against the dark earth, and she wonders, Is this what it means to grow up? To realize that magic and ghosts aren’t real, and that the true danger in all those stories was always the real things, the wolves and the woods?

  No. The danger was always the people.

  “Hey,” says Rat, staring at his cigarette, “what do you know about Noah Blake?”

  “Noah?” Emma shrugs. He’s Abi’s big brother, so she’s known him forever, but he was always too grown up to hang out with them. Best of Creedence Clearwater Revival CDs, black coffee, muddy boots, that’s what she remembers of Noah. Would much rather read about fictional people than spend time with real ones. “He’s kind of weird.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Maybe I want to make some friends, drăgută. You can’t keep me all to yourself.”

  Emma grins. “Well, who says I want you?”

  The wind picks up again and a shiver takes hold of her. Rat shrugs off his jacket and hangs it over her shoulders. It is lined with the heat of him and she burrows into it, trying not to think about what he just said. He watches her with a smile.

  Emma pulls out her phone again. “He’s twenty minutes late. What if he’s figured something’s up?”

  The rumble of an engine makes them turn in time to see headlights licking the trees as a car pulls in at the edge of the field. Then the bulky figure of Hunter Maddox clambers out of the driver’s side and strides across the grass toward them.

  Rat says, “Speak of the devil.”

  “What’s she doing here?”

  Emma tucks as much of herself as she can into Rat’s jacket, as Hunter runs his eyes over her.

  “You didn’t say anything about other people.”

  “Did you bring the money?” Rat asks.

  Hunter lingers on Emma a moment longer, and in the glare of his flashlight he seems painted with a darker, harsher brush. “Yeah,” he says at last. “All cash, like you said.”

  Rat nods. “Drăgută.”

  Emma clears her throat, not wanting to look at either of them particularly, as she reaches into her sweater to retrieve the old Safeway bag full of coke. Earlier, Rat had suggested she stuff it into her bra, and at the time, the thought of him seeing her breasts made her toes curl enough to want to do it. Only he didn’t see anything of her, just turned around and looked at some poem stuck to the wall. Now, handing Hunter Maddox a bag of cocaine that’s been squashed between her tits all evening, she feels like the butt of some joke that all the boys in the world are in on.

  Hunter raises his eyebrows. “So that’s why you brought her, huh?”

  Rat doesn’t say anything, and Emma wishes the ground would split open and swallow her. The shot of vodka the two of them took before leaving the RV has mostly worn off, and now, even with Rat’s jacket, she feels cold and groggy.

  “Let’s just get it over with,” she says. “Do you want the stuff or not?”

  “All right, don’t get your panties in a twist.” Hunter unwraps the Safeway bag, but then he just stands there blinking in the flashlight. “Hey, come on, what the hell is this?”

  Rat puffs smoke into the cold evening. “It’s twenty grams of powder, my friend. Like we said.”

  “Yeah, but this is… Where did you get this?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “But how did you—?”

  “It’s cocaine, Maddox.” Rat sounds bored now. “I’m not going to tell you how I got it. You want it, then great. We’ll take the money and be on our way. If not, you can quit wasting my time.”

  Emma thinks Hunter looks sad as he dips one finger into the Ziploc and then sticks it into his mouth, rubbing at his gums.

  “No, I’ll take it. Here.” He pulls an envelope out of his letterman jacket and hands it to Rat.

  “Five hundred. Attaboy.”

  Hunter wraps the coke back up and tucks it carefully inside his jacket.

  “Hey, Maddox, don’t disappear on us just yet. My friend here wants a word.”

  A sudden buzzing makes them all start. Rat grimaces and pulls his phone out of his back pocket. “Talk among yourselves, would you?” He tucks it between chin and shoulder as he turns away. “Hey, hey, slow down, I can’t… They did what? Are you okay?… Yeah, I know. Can you drive?… Uh-huh. Good… No, not there, it’s too cold. Just meet me at my place. I’m already on my way.”

  “Hey,” Emma hisses, “what do you mean you’re already on your way? You can’t leave me.”

  There’s a nervous energy about him that she’s never seen before, a sort of kinetic hum. “Listen, a friend of mine’s in trouble, I have to go.”

  “What friend?”

  “Just a friend.”

  “You can’t leave me with him.” She gestures over her shoulder to Hunter, now apparently focused on digging the toe of his sneaker into the dirt. “What about getting him to talk?”

  “Ah.” Rat can’t seem to stand still, his body swaying toward the pines where, earlier, they parked his motorcycle. Scrunching up his eyes for a moment, he says, “God, this is… phenomenal timing.”

  “You’re not leaving me. Why can’t you drive me back?”

  “Listen, you’ll be fine. You’ll be okay.” Glancing toward the motorcycle again, he sounds more as if he’s trying to convince himself. “Maddox is too much of a chicken shit to murder anyone by himself anyway.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Look, he knows I’m leaving you with him. If he did anything it would be too obvious. It’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll call you, okay?” Rat flicks away his cigarette butt and the darkness quickly swallows any trace of the tiny light. “You can keep the jacket.”

  “But—”

  “Look, I’m sorry, Emma, I have to go.”

  She feels gooseflesh prickling her arms and shoulders as she watches his fierce stride back across the field toward his motorcycle. Just for a moment, it’s not him but Abigail Blake disappearing into those trees.

  “How am I supposed to get home?”

  Somewhere in the darkness she can hear the river rushing, punctuated by the rhythmic chirp of frogs. Then abruptly, from the depths of the woods, far off in the other direction, comes the cry of a single coyote. Emma shudders.

  Hunter Maddox catches her in the beam of his flashlight and nods to his car. “Hey, señorita, you need a ride?” />
  * * *

  Even with his hand on Beth Farmer’s heavy breasts in the back seat of her stuffy car, Dalton Lewis, the pastor’s son, can’t help but notice the three figures grouped in the shadows of the Tall Bones. From this distance it’s difficult to tell who they are. They have only one flashlight among them, and whoever’s holding it never focuses the beam on anyone’s face.

  One of them hands something to the other. The person with the flashlight uses it to examine what he’s been given—reaches into the bag, then puts his finger into his mouth, and Dalton thinks, Oh. Then, at last, something else is handed over in return.

  Beth Farmer moans into his ear, and he thinks perhaps it sounds a little forced, but he’s too busy watching the strange transaction play out to really care.

  One of the figures takes a phone call—he can see the light of the screen—then walks away from the group. It’s only when Dalton hears the rumble of the motorcycle that he realizes who it was.

  16

  THEN

  In a motel in Longmont, Colorado, eighteen years before her daughter walks into the forest and never walks out again, Dolly watches the sun coming up over the mountains on the horizon. The silhouette of the Rockies looks like some great wave rising above the landscape, and she cannot help feeling that at any moment it will come crashing down and devour her. She has already made up her mind that it is what she deserves.

  Her breakfast tastes vaguely yellow, and the shower has such lousy water pressure it feels as though she’s being gently peed on. Afterward, Dolly climbs into her car and begins the long drive back into the mountains, back to Whistling Ridge.

  All alone on the gravel driveway of Hickory Lane, she stands for a moment, suitcase in hand, preparing herself. It is still early enough that there is mist rising from the grass, like ghosts stalking in the front yard, and last night’s rain has brought all the scents to the surface. She can taste the iron in the soil, the prospect of snow in the air, can smell the old shreds of meat on the buck skeleton Samuel has been drying in the shed. Is this God? she thinks, because at this time she still has her own sense of belief. Is this how God speaks to us? The thought that He is with her allows her to open the front door and go inside.