It felt like a kick in the gut. “Are you calling my life perfect?” Kate said, trying not to let her anger into her tone.
“No, no,” Nelly backtracked. “Not perfect. But certainly privileged.”
“Privileged? My mother committed suicide. My little sister was abducted and murdered in a disgusting way—”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it.” Nelly waved her skinny arms, as if trying to push the force of Kate’s righteous indignation away. “Listen… I’m begging you… my uncle didn’t do it. I swear to God, he didn’t do it.”
“Stop saying that.”
“He didn’t leave the house that night. He was with me the whole time.”
“So you lied on the witness stand?”
“I was a basket case back then. I didn’t know any better.”
“But you told the judge that your uncle left the house for six hours. Why would you lie about such a thing?”
“Because I was ashamed.”
“Of what?”
Nelly wrung her hands. “Something.”
“What?”
“Do I have to spell it out for you?” Her voice was anguished.
“Apparently so.”
Nelly plucked a pack of Marlboros off the mantelpiece, fumbled with a box of matches, lit a cigarette, and exhaled a thread of smoke. “My uncle was abusing me.”
Kate froze, though she didn’t know why it surprised her.
“For years.” Nelly winced. “Please.”
For the first time, Nelly was making sense. Because if it was true, then the victim would carry the guilt and shame around with her forever. “So there was no six-hour gap? Is that what you’re saying?” Kate said.
Nelly sighed heavily. “We were alone at my folks’ house. They were out of town. They did that sometimes, asked Uncle Henry to watch over me. Ha. He watched over me, all right. He’d been babysitting me for years. He loved that. My father was such a worrywart. He thought, we can’t leave Penny alone in the house, she’ll have boys over, she’ll get in trouble… Me? The biggest wallflower in Roosevelt High? But they trusted Uncle Henry…
“He’d do stuff to me, and we’d eat a meal and watch TV, and then he’d talk about himself. Like I cared. And then he’d do stuff to me again, and we’d watch TV again. It was endless. In his twisted mind, we were star-crossed lovers. I was like a secret girlfriend. But I was scared stiff.” Nelly’s eyes swam with tears. “The police pressured me into lying. They kept me at the station house for hours, asking the same questions over and over again. What was he doing the whole time he was in the house with you? What do you mean you watched TV? Is that all? He didn’t go out for a beer? Did he leave the house at any point? Why are you lying to us? We don’t believe you. You’ll be arrested for perjury. He must’ve left the house at some point.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “They didn’t want the truth. They kept me locked inside this tiny room with nothing to drink, no pee break, no lawyer. I felt like a criminal. I was scared to death. It wore me down. I just wanted to go home. What do you mean, he was with you the whole time? He must’ve gone out at some point. He went out, right? They were so convinced of his guilt, I figured… maybe if I told them what they wanted to hear, they’d lock him up and throw away the key, and I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. You know? I thought about that real hard.”
“Okay,” Kate said softly. “But if he didn’t do it, then who killed my sister? Who buried her in his backyard?”
“I don’t know. He had plenty of enemies. He owed money all over town.” Nelly shook her head. “But I’m telling you… he never let me out of his sight. Always pawing at me. He wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“But the evidence against him was overwhelming,” Kate argued. “His prints were on the shovel. His hair was tangled up in the rope.” She paused a moment, thinking how best to explain. “Listen, I understand. Our memories can be tricky. How do you know you aren’t confusing events, dates, places? There’s something called false memory syndrome. Maybe deep down, you don’t want to be held responsible for your uncle’s execution?”
Nelly’s mouth was pressed shut. She glared at Kate. At some point in therapy, all of Kate’s patients glared at her like that. “Look, Dr. Wolfe. I’m not lying. My uncle was a brutal man. I hate him for what he did to me. But he didn’t kill your sister. And I don’t know who did. But whoever it is… he’s still out there.”
17
FIVE HOURS LATER, KATE was sitting cross-legged on their bedroom floor, about to lose her lunch. She tried calling James again, but it was going straight to voicemail.
There was an empty wine bottle and a plate of cigarette butts on the rug in front of her. There was a scrapbook full of pictures she’d been pawing through, faded color snapshots of her family on birthdays and holidays. Tension had built up behind Kate’s eyes. It hurt to swallow. The grief was right there. So close. Her emotions were at a tipping point. But she refused to cry. She needed to handle this professionally. She had to hold it together.
The front door bumped open and shut. “Babe?” James called from the foyer.
“Oh my God. James? Where’ve you been? Why was your phone off? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!”
He came to the doorway holding a paper bag from Safeway. “Sorry, sweetie. I forgot my charger. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Nelly Ward told me that Henry Blackwood didn’t kill my sister… that whoever did it is still out there. She claims the police pressured her into lying, that she lied on the witness stand, and that he didn’t leave her for six hours. She says he never left her alone for a second.”
“Whoa, slow down.” James came into the room, dropped the grocery bag on the bed, and sat down on the floor next to her. “Okay, first…” He cupped her face in his hands and lovingly kissed her.
She pulled away. “What if it’s true? What if he didn’t do it? What if they’re about to execute an innocent man?”
He gave her a skeptical look. “Do you honestly believe that?”
Kate shook her head. “I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m pretty convinced Nelly was telling the truth. She said her uncle was abusing her for years. That much rings true. But if he never left her side that day, then that means…”
“Hold on. This is classic guilt-driven behavior. She’s probably having second thoughts about the execution. He was abusing her? Okay. But the jury saw all the evidence, Kate. It was a solid case. With or without her testimony.”
“But she was so convincing…”
“She might believe it. Doesn’t make it true.”
“Right.” She nodded reluctantly. “False memory syndrome. I did think of that.”
“And besides, why hasn’t she gone to the defense team with this information? That’s the proper way to handle it. Why tell you and nobody else?”
“She’s embarrassed…”
“Kate.”
“You’re right,” she said with a heavy sigh. She squinted at him. “I couldn’t reach you. Where were you? They said you left the hospital hours ago.”
“I traded shifts with Peter and took some time off.”
“You left work early?”
“I needed to clear my head. I had a few drinks. Hung out at Best Buy. You know. Guy stuff.” He picked up the empty wine bottle. “Wow, too bad. We could’ve gotten wasted together.”
“What’s in the Safeway bag?”
He helped her to her feet, and they sat on the edge of the bed together. He overturned the bag, and a family-sized bag of Stay Puft marshmallows spilled out.
“Marshmallows?” Kate said. “Seriously?”
“I was drunk-shopping.”
“I nearly lost my shit when I couldn’t reach you.”
“Sorry, babe. It won’t happen again. I promise.” He ripped the bag open. “Want one? They’re like medicine.”
“No, thanks.”
“Come on. Can’t I tempt you?” He popped one into his mouth. “Yum.”
> “So you went to a bar? You had a few drinks?”
“Listen, I’ve been thinking a lot about us lately. About our future. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, Kate… this whole ordeal with Nikki and the execution… so I have a suggestion.”
“What?”
“Don’t get mad at me, okay?”
“Just tell me.”
“Maybe you aren’t the right person to be treating Maddie Ward?”
“James…”
“Let’s try to be objective about this. Look at how complicated it’s getting.”
“You’re right. It is complicated. I’ve been sitting here thinking the very same thing. But then, I came to the conclusion that I shouldn’t be making decisions based on Nelly’s behavior. Maddie’s just beginning to trust me. We’ve bonded. I know I can help her.”
“If you think you’re going to have one of those ‘eureka’ moments, I guarantee you, it’ll break your heart. You know as well as I do we’re just a part of the process when it comes to our patients. Most of them will be in and out of mental health facilities for the rest of their lives. We can’t fix them all by ourselves. None of us is a miracle worker.”
“She’s only got five days left. Eight tops. We can’t afford to change horses midstream.”
“Kate…”
“I’m not going to let anything cloud my professional judgment, okay?” She could tell he’d given up arguing, because his shoulders slumped forward—that was his tell. She glanced at the marshmallows on the bed. “Is that your dinner?”
He kicked off his shoes. “Lie down next to me.”
“James…”
“Lie down.” He patted the mattress.
She heaved a sigh and settled in next to him. He wrapped his arms around her, and they breathed softly against one another.
“Let’s not fight anymore,” she said.
“Sorry, were we fighting?”
“Sort of.”
“Ah. Then I have the solution.” He reached for the bag of marshmallows. “We can’t argue when our mouths are full of marshmallows. Come on. Join me in delicious goodness.”
She giggled.
“You have the most incredible laugh.”
She reached into the bag, and they ate marshmallows and watched the day’s light dissolve into darkness.
The hurt was always there, like a round pebble she couldn’t un-swallow. When Kate was a little girl, the world felt safe and welcoming, because it was limited to her house and her dolls and her parents and her pesky kid sister. It was popcorn and play dates and her dad singing “Whip It” by Devo in a goofy voice. But Kate had been forced to accept that life wasn’t warm and fuzzy. At the tender age of sixteen, everything had turned darkly sinister. She stopped trusting people. She stopped believing in her father’s infallibility. She no longer moved fluidly into her bright future without expecting to get hurt. Sometimes, it hurt badly.
On the day of her mother’s funeral, twenty-two years ago, it rained heavily. Kate was a skinny ten-year-old, and the church doors wouldn’t open. She shoved hard on the right-hand door, but it wouldn’t budge. Was the church locked? She and Savannah pushed hard on the left-hand door, but it wouldn’t open either. The girls panicked and shook both doors. “Let us in! Let us in!” Then their father demonstrated how to open it. Pull, don’t push. Maybe that was a metaphor for life?
Inside the packed church, they sat next to each other in the front pew. Their father was so stripped of life, he could’ve been a corpse. Kate remembered thinking that her mother was more alive in death than their father was just then. And afterwards at the cemetery, when they lowered Julia’s casket into the ground, Savannah had collapsed into Kate’s arms. But years later, at Savannah’s funeral, Kate had nobody’s arms to fall into.
Now she had James.
She snuggled deeper into his embrace and closed her eyes.
18
ON SATURDAY MORNING, KATE woke up and squinted at the alarm clock. “Oh my God. I overslept!”
James was standing in front of the mirror, freshly shaved, showered, and ready for work. “Relax. You’ve got time.”
“But the funeral’s at ten!”
“I thought you said noon?”
“Oh shit. I was going to write something over coffee this morning.” She leapt out of bed. “Nikki’s mother asked me to say a few words.”
“Okay, so? Plan B.”
“That was Plan B.”
He put on his tie, expertly shimmying the knot up to his neck. “How can I help?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got writer’s block. My head keeps filling up with clichés.”
“Just express how you feel. Clichéd or not. Write what’s in your heart.”
She focused on his face. “Oh wow. I never thought of that.”
He grinned. “Shut up.”
“Can I quote you? ‘Let yourself feel. Express what’s in your heart.’”
“Yeah, I get it. I’m a pompous ass.”
“Well, you got your PA from Harvard, didn’t you?”
“Pompous Ass? Don’t be absurd. Yale.” He kissed her goodbye. “Relax. You’ll do great, like always.”
After he was gone, Kate ran around getting ready and wasted precious time debating with herself—gray, black or navy blue? What did people wear to funerals nowadays? She accidentally ripped her pantyhose and spent the next five minutes looking for a pair that didn’t have any runs in it. She settled on a dove-gray suit. She didn’t have time to make a cup of coffee.
As Kate drove out of the city she tried to shape a speech inside her head, but yesterday’s conversation with Nelly kept crowding everything else out. She felt a stark churning in her stomach. What if James was wrong? What if Nelly was telling the truth? She’d let James reassure her, because he was her rock and she wanted to believe him. She didn’t want to think Savannah’s killer was still out there, abducting little girls. There had been a couple of slightly similar cases in Blunt River County over the past decade or so, and they’d both happened while Henry Blackwood was on death row. Still, that didn’t mean much; teenage girls were often the target of predators.
She tapped the steering wheel, trying to remember the cases. Ten years ago, a hiker stumbled across the remains of a murdered teenager in The Balsams, a densely wooded area west of town. Fourteen-year-old Hannah Lloyd had been found strangled to death. The sensational murder trial dominated the news at the time. The defendant, a convicted pedophile and Hannah’s next-door neighbor, had ultimately gone free when the trial ended in a hung jury. Before the DA could mount a second trial, the suspect shot himself in the head.
Then, about a year ago, fifteen-year-old Makayla Brayden went missing, and she had never been found. A $15,000 reward had been posted for information leading to an arrest. There was no reason to connect the two cases—Hannah Lloyd’s killer was known, and according to the papers, Makayla Brayden took drugs and ran away from home, putting her at high risk for predation.
This line of thought wasn’t getting her anywhere. Kate spotted a Dunkin’ Donuts and pulled over. She hurried inside and bought a donut and a large coffee. Back inside the car, she opened her spiral notebook, dug a pen out of her bag, and stared at the blank page. Write from the heart.
Loss. Grief. Kate understood what it was like to lose a loved one. You shut down, you broke down, sometimes you screamed. You got angry with yourself and you got angry with God. You threatened to stop believing in Him, even though you were on the fence. You cursed Him out, you pleaded, you seriously lost your shit. You lost your appetite. You felt sorry for yourself. You felt sorry for the world. Why—this word rang out inside your head like a cathedral bell. Why why why? Why was this beautiful person gone? Why did the universe allow it? You hated this hollow feeling. You hated the sun for rising. Sunsets made you cry. Nights were hard. Weeks passed and the hurt didn’t get any better.
She checked her dashboard clock. Time to go. She’d written two barely legible pages, which she jammed into her bag.
She hadn’t touched the donut. She capped her coffee and took off.
Ten minutes later, she heard church bells ringing in the pricey Boston suburb where the McCormacks lived. It was a gorgeous February morning, sunny and breezy. Gas-guzzlers competed for space with hybrids in the church parking lot. A large crowd had gathered in front of the church—Nikki’s family and friends, her neighbors and classmates, many holding one another for comfort. Kate found a parking space and joined the crowd, worried what they would think of her once she’d introduced herself. Oh, you’re the shrink who couldn’t save Nikki.
Savannah’s funeral had been crammed with strangers— reporters and camera crews straining at the barricades, volunteers and well-wishers from all over. The Blunt River Police had done their very best to protect Kate and her father from media scrutiny, but a good story was hard to ignore. Their dumbstruck faces were plastered all over the nightly news, shots taken as they scurried up the church steps or led the funeral procession. In those grainy images, Kate looked like a child experiencing adult pain for the very first time.
Now her nerves were frayed. The notes she’d made for her speech were crumpled up in the bottom of her bag. Nikki’s biological father stepped out of the crowd and greeted her warmly.
“Dr. Wolfe, thanks for coming.” He gave her a hug. “Nikki adored you. She learned so much about herself in her sessions with you.” He had short red hair and hazel eyes that were shot through with broken blood vessels. He was a couple of years older than Kate, but so deferential and full of goodwill that he made her feel ancient.
Other introductions were made, more kind words were exchanged, and then Kate followed the other mourners into the church. A rose-draped cherry-wood coffin was propped in front of the altar, in between an arrangement of balloons and a large glossy photo of Nikki—her high school picture. Kate happened to know that Nikki hated this picture, which she claimed made her look like an artificial person.
Kate found a seat next to some of Nikki’s cousins, while the minister took his place behind the carved mahogany pulpit and said, “We’re gathered here today to celebrate a precious life, one that was taken too soon from this world…”
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