Where the Truth Lies

by Anna Bailey

  She sways as she tries to pass him, and he puts out a hand to steady her, but the metallic thud of something striking the side of the RV makes him pull back.

  Outside, the voices are louder now. Rat peers around the edge of the window, then ducks down sharply, motioning for Emma to do the same, just as a rock sends splinters of glass spilling across the floor.

  Outside, someone yells, “You son of a bitch. You goddamn son of a bitch!”

  “Selling drugs to our children, murdering that girl!”

  “Come out, you gypsy bastard!”

  Something shatters against the other side of the door, and Emma feels a scream threatening in her throat, but Rat clamps his hand over her mouth and pulls her under the table.

  “I’ve got you, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

  He wraps his arms around her until she stops shaking, and they lie scrunched up together in the gathering dark while the people of Whistling Ridge cast all their stones.

  28

  Noah’s father is waiting for him in the driveway as his truck pulls up to the house. He shuts off the engine, and for a while they just stare at one another, Noah imagining he can see the sparks coming off Samuel, like he’s a frayed piece of electrical wire. He knows the longer he leaves it, the more inevitable it becomes. It’ll be like cracking a stiff knuckle, he tells himself: uncomfortable, but best to get it over with.

  In the end, it isn’t much like that at all. Samuel smacks him with the back of his hand, and Noah feels the imprint of his father’s wedding ring right on his jawbone. He staggers a little and sucks his fist to keep from making any sound.

  Samuel shakes his head. “I hope you know you’ve humiliated this family.”

  After that, Noah moves about the house awkwardly, listening to his mother rustling grocery bags downstairs, the monotonous thud of his father chopping wood outside, the faint melody from Jude’s headphones, and the steady silence of Abigail’s empty room. They take up all the space, and he is unsure of where to put himself.

  In his own bedroom, Noah gets the familiar sense that God is looking over his shoulder.

  I hope you know you’ve humiliated this family.

  Noah wants to wring His neck: You asshole, don’t you think I’ve tried?

  When he was fifteen, Noah made up a wife for himself. In the Bible, Noah’s wife was nameless, but he had been told at Sunday school that she was called Naamah, so that was what he called this imaginary woman. In his head she looked a bit like the mother from The Waltons, because his parents watched a lot of that at the time, and Naamah was very kind, always calling him “honey” like they did on TV. Sometimes, if he’d had a rough day at school, he would talk to his wife. “Honey, you’ll never believe the day I had,” he’d say, and he would imagine her replying, “Honey, you’re doing just fine.” He kept Naamah alive for three months, watering her like a flower with all the things he learned about marriage from watching his parents. Naturally, one day, she left him.

  After that, he just prayed. In a brutal cycle, he would go to what he believed were secret corners of the internet to look at pictures of men, and then afterward he’d pray, like he was tied to a mast in a storm, trapped in each prayer, hammering his fists on the walls of it. He prayed until he was bloody. At sixteen, he broke down weeping in church when Pastor Lewis—Pastor Lewis, of all people—touched him gently on the bare skin of his forearm, and the pastor took it as a sign of something holy. Noah was so afraid as he stood there, catching his tears in his hands, that everyone could see he was a fraud.

  “What should I have done?” he says now, staring down God. “Just lied? Did You want me to lie and let them arrest an innocent man for something he didn’t do? That’s a sin too. That’s a worse sin than love.”

  * * *

  Standing at the top of the stairs, his mother tells him he must eat dinner in his room tonight. “Your father doesn’t want you at the table.”

  “Mom.”

  “I’m sorry, Noah.”

  No you’re not, he almost says.

  “Just be grateful he hasn’t—” She comes into his room and reaches out like she’s going to touch his jaw, still pink and tender, and he leans toward her hand, some younger part of him hoping that perhaps, this time, she will hold on to him. But at the last moment she pulls away. “Just be grateful.”

  When she has gone, Jude appears in the doorway.

  “Hey, Noah.”

  “What? Have you come to piss all over me too?”

  His brother clutches a Polaroid photograph in his hand. “I need to show you something.”

  “Well, save it.” Noah shoulders him out of the room, not stopping even as he hears Jude stumble against his cane.

  He slams the door, and while his brother raps on the wood, saying, “Come on, please, you need to see this,” Noah puts his pillow over his head and thinks, Naamah, honey, you won’t believe the day I’ve had.

  THEN

  It is the first evening of June, that odd cusp between seasons when the landscape feels briefly energized before the long lethargy of summer. The sun hangs on the horizon for over an hour, as if regretting that it has to set at all, but when it does, the music starts and the fairy lights come on, bright cobwebs strung between the trailers.

  Shana’s father is down in town for some church thing, so tonight they all crowd into the Tysons’ double-wide. Shana mixes cocktails with cheap juice and even cheaper vodka, courtesy of Rat, who plays an acoustic cover of “Sympathy for the Devil” on his grandmother’s guitar, while the Weaver brothers pull Beth Farmer’s hair, and Bryce Long snorts a long line of methadone off the coffee table.

  “All right, man, easy,” Hunter says, nudging Bryce’s shoulder. “Slow down or we’ll run out before the night even gets going.” He glances at Abigail, perched on the edge of the couch, hugging her knees against her chest. “You okay?”

  She presses her lips together and nods.

  An hour or so later, he finds her and Bryce in the Tysons’ tiny bathroom, doing a line off the rim of the sink.

  “Hey, man, come on. You’re getting through my whole stash.”

  “It’s cool, Hunter.” Bryce waves him away. “I’ll pay you back. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Yeah, but…” He looks at Abigail, and her face is pink and puffy, like she’s been crying.

  Rat appears at his shoulder, narrowing his eyes at Bryce. “You shouldn’t be giving that to her, pizda. Can’t you see she’s drunk?”

  Bryce sneers at him. “Chill, comrade, she’s fine. You’re fine, aren’t you?”

  Abigail smiles, but it’s too wide and weird, and when she tries to stand up, she wobbles and falls over. Rat is there in an instant, gathering her up, but she struggles and pushes back against his chest.

  “Get your hands off me,” she slurs. “I don’t even want to think about where they’ve been.”

  Rat unhands her roughly and she staggers against the sink. “You know,” he says, his voice suddenly hard, “your brother’s right. You can be a real bitch.”

  Abigail opens her mouth, but all she can seem to do is stare at him. Then she elbows Bryce and Hunter out of the way and storms back across the living room toward the door.

  Bryce rubs his hand over his face. “Jeez, you guys are killing the vibe.” He pushes past them, but when Hunter goes to follow him, he feels a hand on his arm.

  “Hey, Maddox.” Rat’s face has gone slack. He sounds tired and distant now, all the fight gone out of him. “You want to fuck or something?”

  “No! Are you crazy, man? What are you on? Keep your voice down.”

  Rat sighs and lets his head fall back against the wall, and Hunter can see the ring of white powder crusted around his nostril.

  “She shouldn’t have said that, you know. About me. And the way she looked at me… She shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Yeah, I know, man, I know. I’ll go talk to her.” Hunter claps him awkwardly on the shoulder. It seems like the heterosexual thing to do. �
��Drink some water, yeah?”

  Rat shrugs and squints at the stains on the plastic floor. “Hey, Hunter?”

  “Yeah?”

  “People round here are going to get what’s coming to them. You’ll see.”

  * * *

  The air is brisk as Hunter steps out of the trailer into the night. Shana’s little fairy lights give the park a hazy glow. He takes a moment just to breathe, soaking up the scent of pine trees and cheap liquor, while the breeze cools the sweat on his face. The faint sound of music makes the horizon seem broader. Out there, there is something else, beyond all this: there are people enjoying the company of one another.

  All of a sudden, the sound of his father’s voice brings him back to the present. “You want to watch yourself,” Jerry is saying. “Some of these trailer-park kids can be a little rough.” He is using a gentler tone than Hunter is used to, so he knows at once that his father isn’t speaking to him.

  Creeping to the edge of the Tysons’ double-wide, he presses himself close to the clapboards, feeling the damp earth under his socks, and peers around the corner. They are standing barely two feet apart, his father with his hand on Abigail’s shoulder, she holding a clear plastic cup of water, as she smiles—a real smile this time—and says, “Thank you, Mr. Maddox.”

  “Don’t mention it, sweetheart,” he says. “I’d hate to see anything happen to a nice girl like you.”

  29

  NOW

  The sun makes a cameo appearance through low, milky clouds as Emma turns off onto Elkstone Bend, toward the Maddox house.

  Last night was bad. She thought her mother was drunk when she got home, but it turns out there’s some kind of state people can get into when they’re really pissed off that is just as wretched. Melissa had never really yelled at her before, not like that.

  “You can’t keep disappearing, Emma. I was this close to phoning the police!”

  “I just went to see a friend.”

  “Oh, which friend, Emma? Which friend? Because it sure as hell wasn’t Abi. And, Christ, are you really drunk again? After everything we talked about? You’re ruining your body, Emma. Ruining it. When you’re older and you’ve got liver damage and shaky hands and rotten teeth, you’ll hate what you’ve done to yourself!”

  What difference will that make? Emma had thought. I already hate myself.

  “Are you trying to punish me because your dad’s not here? You have no idea how hard it is being your mother sometimes.”

  They had said things they didn’t mean then. They had said some things they did mean too. When it was done, Emma listened for a long time for the familiar sounds of her mother moving about in her own room, but in the morning, when she was sneaking out, she passed her curled up on the couch with her makeup still on.

  Hunter is sitting outside on the front steps, cleaning mud off his sneakers before school, when Emma pulls up. She is still carrying the anger from arguing with her mother, but it has honed the manic unhappiness of yesterday’s drinking, and now she feels fierce and constructive.

  “Were you giving Abigail drugs?”

  Hunter flicks a chunk of dried dirt from the tread of his shoes. “What makes you say that?”

  “You took her to all those parties. Up here. You gave her drugs.”

  “You’re way off.”

  “Shana Tyson told me.”

  “Oh, well, then, what are you waiting for?” He holds out his wrists. “Better cuff me.”

  “Is this a joke to you?”

  “You’re the one being dumb about it. I’d never do anything to hurt Abi.” He works another hunk of mud free with his fingernail. “We were friends.”

  “Friends? With you?”

  “Sure, why not? You weren’t the only one allowed to know her.”

  You didn’t know her, Emma thinks. Neither she nor Abigail had many friends: Abi would never have been so selfish as to keep someone from Emma like that or, worse, to replace her.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe whatever you like, I don’t care. But I didn’t give her any drugs. She just… took them sometimes. From other people.”

  “She wouldn’t do that.”

  Hunter is looking at her the same way Shana Tyson did. Oh, honey. A stiff breeze sets the aspen leaves clamoring, but Emma feels too hot in her winter jacket.

  “No, you—you did something to her. And then you found out she told my mom, so you lured her into the woods and—”

  “Jesus, is that what you think of me?”

  “I don’t… no, I…” She’s been thinking it all this time, so she doesn’t understand why it’s hard to say it now. “But why take her into the woods that night at the Tall Bones? I know it was you.”

  “I didn’t take her anywhere. She just came with me.” He looks down at his sneakers. “She wanted me to give her some coke. She didn’t want you to see.”

  “No, Abi wasn’t like that, I’ve known her my whole life.”

  “She wasn’t a very happy person, Emma. I’m sorry. But she talked about you all the time. She loved you, man, she just didn’t want you to see that side to her.”

  Emma digs the heels of her hands into her eyes and tries to concentrate on the pressure instead of the questions multiplying in her head: Abigail, Abi, who the hell are you? What was going so wrong that you couldn’t tell me? What were you trying to hide?

  “Hey,” says Hunter, “you okay? Maybe you should sit down.”

  She does, because she doesn’t know what else to do. The stone is cool underneath her, sobering.

  Abigail had seen the stretch marks on Emma’s thighs, had watched the kids at school lay bare all her insecurities with comments about her size or shape or race, had listened to her sobbing down the phone about her loneliness. Abigail had wanted to know everything about Emma, had pulled it out of her, like loose threads, and there was a time when she gave pieces of herself back in exchange. Emma let Abigail know her. Isn’t that what love is? But had she really understood Abi so little in return? It hits her now: Abigail’s distance over the summer, always scratching at her skin, the way she had looked so worn out all the time, how Hunter had seemed almost friendly with her that night at junior prom. God, how had she not seen it?

  Beside her, Hunter retrieves a cigarette from his pocket. “You mind?”

  Emma shakes her head.

  “My parents would kill me if they knew. State playoffs this, college that, blah blah blah.”

  Sometimes Emma wishes she knew how to smoke. Maybe she’d do that instead of drinking.

  “Hey, can I ask, what were you doing talking to Shana anyway? Didn’t know you two were friends.”

  “We’re not.” Emma stares at the lichen growing on the stonework. I only have one friend, she thinks, and now I don’t even know who she is anymore. “I was asking her about you.”

  Hunter laughs slightly. “And what did good old Shana have to say?”

  “She didn’t believe me when I said I thought you’d done something to Abi. She said you were nice, that’s all. Not like your dad. She doesn’t like him very much.”

  “Yeah, well, she can join the club. Bastard thinks he can get away with anything just because he owns half the town and he’s friends with the pastor.” He sucks on his cigarette, eyes narrowed as he looks off into the trees. “It’s been, like, three weeks. Did you know that? Three whole weeks since Abi…”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Oh, hey, do you want to see something?” He retrieves an envelope from inside his jacket. “I lent my camera to Beth Farmer that night and she’s finally given me the pictures she took. Here’s you and Abi, look.”

  Their faces have the ethereal quality that the flash on film cameras often lends, and Abigail’s pupils are red, making her look like some kind of demon, but it’s them all right. Emma remembers Beth taking the photo—Smile, girls, she’d said, and Abigail had put her arm around Emma’s shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. It had felt very special at the time, but looking at the
picture now, it seems like the sort of thing you might do to a child. Patronizing. Emma kind of hates Abi a little bit for it. Kind of hates Hunter, too, for showing her the photo and ruining the memory.

  “You can keep it, if you want,” he says.

  “No, thanks.”

  * * *

  They sit there on the cold step a while longer—neither apparently ready to say anything more to the other yet—until Hunter’s cigarette burns right down to his fingers, and he curses and throws it away. Beside him, Emma is very quiet, just staring at the photograph of her and Abigail. Then, all of a sudden, she holds up the picture and says, “Was Abi wearing that cardigan when you two went into the woods?”

  Hunter squints at the Polaroid. “I don’t know, it doesn’t jump out at me.” And I would know, he thinks. He remembers the rest of the night with awful clarity.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I mean, maybe. She could have been wearing it. Why does it matter? It’s just a sweater.”

  “Sheriff Gains said they found a cardigan a few days ago, in the river by the Tall Bones. He said it was all bloody.”

  Hunter wishes now that he had another cigarette, but that was his last.

  “Did you see anyone else that night in the woods?” Emma asks.

  “You’re really pushy, aren’t you?”

  “I care about Abi. I thought you said you did too.”

  “Yeah, all right.” Hunter pushes his hair out of his face again. “I mean, there were a lot of people at the party, you know?”

  “Yeah, but when you and Abi went off to…” She makes a face. “…get high, or whatever, did you see anyone then, in the forest? Anyone who shouldn’t have been there?”

  Hunter squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Anyone who shouldn’t have been there. I’m the one who wasn’t where I was supposed to be, he thinks.

  But the cardigan, that shouldn’t have been there either. She was wearing it, wasn’t she, when it happened? He remembers that look on her face—almost a smile—as the dark stain spread out into the cheap, pale wool. Christ, Abi. But if she was wearing it then, how did it end up downriver? It could have come off of its own accord, snagged on something perhaps, but all the same, he can’t help thinking: Dead girls don’t take off their clothes.