Sadie stared at him steadily. “You did escape it, Josh.”
“No. I didn’t. It’s there. It’s always there.”
“What? Anger? Anger is normal, Josh. Everyone gets angry.”
“Not everyone punches a hole through it two inches from the face of the woman you said you loved.”
Sadie’s face went stony and her eyes closed down to slits. His heart was pounding and he had to concentrate to slow the ragged breathing. Consciously unclench his fists and jaw. Sadie looked away with a deep sigh of her own.
“It happened, Sades,” he said in a low voice. “I can’t pretend it didn’t. I am my father’s son. Nurture and nature.”
She looked back at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Nature is in your genes. Nurture is the environment you grew up in. My father was a violent, wife-and kid-beating monster. I lived in that environment the first five years of my life.”
“Oh, so that automatically makes you a wife-beating monster?”
“I’ve already abused one woman. I won’t abuse another.”
“Josh. You were eighteen. Tossed out on the street. Just trying to survive. Ruby had her own issues. Both of you were young and angry. Neither of you had any coping skills. That you didn’t hit her only proved that you aren’t your father.”
“Still. It was there. It’s still there.”
Sadie threw up her hands. “I can’t even talk to you when you’re like this.”
“Like what? Telling the truth?”
“Playing the martyr.” Her voice raised in a parody of woe. “I’m so mean! I must never allow anyone to love me! I’ll stay alone and lonely all my life!”
“I’m going to go talk to the cop. The one who found Kimmie and me that night.”
That cut through her dramatics. “Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just feel like I should do it. Just like how you felt you needed to face your mother. I have no one to face, Sadie. You forced your mother to confess her wrongs. Maybe the cop knows something. I don’t know.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. I get needing answers, Josh. You know I understand that. But I’ve known you a long time and I’ve watched you heal and grow into a good man. I want you to see that in yourself, too. It can’t make the other stuff go away, but you can’t ignore that you’ve created an entirely new, better life.”
“I do. It’s just still there. Like some dark spot that I can feel inside me still. I want it to go away.”
Sadie dropped her feet and rolled the chair closer to him. She took his hands in hers and looked into his eyes. “It will, Josh,” she said in a rough whisper. “It will. And I’ll be here for you no matter what it takes. You’re my baby brother and I love you. That will never change.”
* * *
FINDING RETIRED NORTH CHARLESTON police officer Nathaniel Gathers required Wyatt’s aid, and his address had been easily procured. Finding the actual house was a different story. A number on a back country road. Mailboxes were few and far between, and Josh slowed the Harley at each one. The landscape was an unrelenting repetition of farmland, woodland, farmland, woodland. Occasional dirt roads broke off, heading to the farmhouses presumably. His GPS dinged off a warning as he rounded a curve. He brought the motorcycle to a halt. There at the edge of another dirt road was a mailbox, neatly painted bright white with stark black numbers. The same numbers he was looking for.
His heart began a hard pulse in his chest as his fingers clenched on the handlebars. Do you really want to do this? Just ride up there, knock on his door? What if he doesn’t even remember? What could he say that would make any difference?
He sat for a long minute or two staring at the road. It was so isolated out here and not a single car passed him as he summoned his courage. Nothing to lose. If he doesn’t remember, no harm, no foul. But maybe he knows something that will help. Maybe.
He turned up the dirt drive careful to stay out of the ruts, going along at about ten miles per hour. The road was well maintained and whatever the crop was that was growing in the field beside it was green and he could hear the cicadas even over the rumble of the engine. At the end of the road was a small, neat brick house with a long, wide front porch. As he puttered to a stop, an older black man stepped out on the porch.
The man shaded his eyes with his left hand, his right hand riding lightly on his hip. Josh turned off the engine and slowly removed his helmet. The guy was a retired cop living in the middle of nowhere. For all he knew, the strange white guy who rode up unannounced on a Harley probably had a gun stuffed in his waistband.
“Officer Gathers?” he asked as he swung off the motorcycle.
“Used to be,” the man answered, coming down the porch steps. He let his left hand drop and he squinted at Josh. “I know you?”
“Sort of.”
“Did I arrest you?”
“No, sir.”
The man stepped even closer. He tilted his head and squinted harder. “I do know you.”
“From a long time ago.”
Josh searched the man’s face. Nothing about it seemed familiar. But the voice. That deep, mellow voice, rich with a country Southern accent. As he watched, the man’s face changed. Something dawned in his expression and he held both his hands out to Josh.
“Little man,” he whispered. He walked closer and put his hands on Josh’s shoulders, looking up into Josh’s face with dark brown eyes full of sadness. “Little man. You’ve been on my heart all these years.”
The echo of those words—little man—hit him hard in the gut. Gathers pulled him into an embrace and Josh did something he’d never done since that horrible night. He cried. This man remembered him. Thought about him. He had meant something to this man. Meant enough to be remembered.
After a bit, Josh pulled back, wiping at his face with his arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think...”
“Aw, ain’t nothing. That was a night that left a mark on all of us. Come on in the house. Clean yourself up a bit. I’ve got some good sweet tea. We can rock on the porch and talk.”
* * *
AS JOSH SPLASHED his face with cold water, he couldn’t quite look at himself in the mirror. The rush of emotion had shocked him. He remembered Sadie saying she’d felt invisible until she’d faced her mother. He hadn’t understood it until just now. Someone knew about him. He’d been real to this man.
“Guess you’re wondering about your family. What happened that night. How old are you now? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?” Mr. Gathers asked as they settled on the porch.
“Twenty-eight.”
A long mournful whistle fled from Mr. Gathers’s lips. “Time. It sure does pass.”
“Yes, sir. It sure does.”
“Tell me what you’ve been up to, little man.”
Josh filled him in. The foster homes. The trouble fitting in. Finding Sadie. Building a new life. And now, finding his sister.
“Your momma and daddy were well known to the police.”
“I figured that.”
“Yeah. Your daddy tried. He’d get sober. Stay sober a few months and slip up again. Your mother was trying to get away.”
“She was?” He’d never even considered the possibility.
“Yep. If I recall correctly, the time he hit her before that night, she took the information on how to get in touch with the women’s shelter. You may not know this, but trying to leave an abusive man is the one thing most likely to get a woman killed.”
Josh stared at Mr. Gathers. His face and hands felt oddly numb. “You think she told him she was leaving and that’s why he...”
“I couldn’t answer that,” Mr. Gathers said with a slow roll of his shoulders. “The shelter doesn’t encourage announcing it or using it as a threat to try to get the man to straighten up. If I had to guess, I think he fou
nd out about it somehow and that’s what set him off.”
“You think she was really leaving?”
“I talked to the director of the shelter as part of the investigation. But, yeah, she’d called and talked to them. She was planning to bring y’all there. She’d told the director you were both getting too old to watch what your daddy was doing.”
“She did it for us.”
The words slipped out softly. This was something completely new. Like a flare shot up into the darkness. His mother had tried to help them. Tried to save them. She had cared about them. Cared about how they were living. Trying to save them was probably what had gotten her killed. But she’d saved Kim. Kim had gotten out before she could remember what had happened. Before she could be abused. Adopted. Loved. And me, what did I get? Ten families in thirteen years. Moved from house to house, school to school. Constant chaos. But you were safe. No one beat you. You didn’t witness beatings.
“You in touch with your sister?”
“No. They separated us that night. I talked to my last social worker about it and she looked into it. She said it was because the emergency foster home available didn’t take under-four-year-olds so she had to go to another county. We were never reunited. She got adopted. I’ve found her now but haven’t approached her.”
Mr. Gathers nodded. “Why not?”
“I don’t know what to do. I want to know her. But she’s about to get married and I don’t want to just show up and ruin everything.”
“Is that why you’re here, son? To ask what you should do?”
“No. No, sir. I don’t know why I’m here. I just needed to talk to someone who knew my parents, knew what happened. Try to get some sort of grasp on it.”
“Did anything I say help?”
“Yes. It did. Immensely, actually. Just knowing my mother was trying to get us out of there... I don’t know. I can see her differently now.”
“I’m glad you came. I’ve thought of you all these years. My late wife and I talked about trying to get you, but before we could finish qualifying to be foster parents, she got the cancer.”
Josh briefly touched the man’s hand. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Mr. Gathers nodded. “Thank you. It was a blow. We sure did want to get you. But after she was gone, I wasn’t in any shape to take on a young boy.”
“You wanted me, though. Why?”
“You just looked like a boy who needed a good momma and daddy. There was something good in you, Josh. I saw it that night. The way you protected your sister. Do you remember leaving the house?”
Josh shook his head. His memory went from Officer Gathers lifting him to his feet and picking up Kim, to sitting in a stranger’s kitchen the next morning while a police officer asked him questions.
“I had to lead you out. Past the...past the bodies. You insisted I give your sister back to you. So I let you carry her. I thought it might help distract you, so you wouldn’t see anything.”
“I don’t remember seeing anything.”
Mr. Gathers shrugged. “I saw your eyes cut in that direction, but I was right beside you so maybe I blocked your view. But you turned your sister’s face away. You made sure she didn’t see. How’s a five-year-old boy gonna know do to that unless he’s got a mighty wide streak of loving kindness inside him?”
Josh sat back and sipped some tea to wash down the lump in his throat. He either hadn’t seen anything or it was so repressed that his brain wasn’t going to give him access to the memory. He’d known for some time that the reason he was moved around so much when he was younger was due to his anger. He’d acted out. But, jeez, what kid wouldn’t? “I had a lot of trouble adjusting to foster care,” he said. “I always thought I never got adopted because I was a bad kid.”
Mr. Gathers laid a warm, strong hand on Josh’s forearm. “Josh. Angry doesn’t mean bad. And you had plenty to be angry about. But that little five-year-old boy was strong and brave and loved his sister and was taking care of her the best he could. That’s a good heart. And you can’t be bad if your heart is good.”
“I don’t know about that,” Josh said with a laugh.
“I do. I saw a lot in thirty years. It comes down to heart. You got a good one or a bad one. Now, good hearts can do little bad things and bad hearts can do little good things, but at the core, you either care about others or you only care about yourself. I think you know which side you fall on, son.”
Josh smiled. “I’m still figuring that out, but I do know what side you fall on, Mr. Gathers. Thank you.”
“Let me give you my number. Call me if you have any more questions.”
They exchanged numbers and Josh stood to leave, reaching out to shake the man’s hand.
“Anything else I can answer for you?” Mr. Gathers asked.
“Do you know where they are buried?”
The question took Josh by surprise. It’d just rolled out unbidden. He’d never even wondered about it before. But it seemed right now that it had been asked. It felt like the next step to take.
* * *
HE’D BARELY REACHED the end of Mr. Gathers’s driveway when his phone rang. Sadie. Josh knew better than to not answer. He just wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk to her yet. He shut off the engine.
“How’d it go?” she asked the second he answered.
He pulled the helmet off and ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. Good.”
“Okay. Good. Wow. As well as all that, huh?”
“He remembered me.”
“I’d guess so. A crime that like would stay with a person.”
“No, Sadie. He remembered me. Stared at me for a minute and recognized me. Called me ‘little man’ just like he did the night he found us.”
His throat burned and he put a hand across his eyes.
“Really? That’s amazing.”
He took a deep, calming breath. “I keep thinking about how you said facing your mother made you not feel invisible anymore. I don’t know. Something about knowing that someone is somehow out there who remembered us and cared about us.”
Sadie’s breath was the only sound for a long moment. “I’m glad, Josh. Really. So glad for you. The smallest things can be so important.”
“There’s more.”
“Are you ready to talk about it? I called because I wanted to know you were okay. That you didn’t need me. I understand if you need time to digest it all. You know I did.”
“I’m okay. It was a good thing. It was a lot and I’m still trying to process it all.”
“I understand. Facing my mother caused me to have to reevaluate a lot of things I believed about myself.”
“Can you do something for me?”
“I’ll do anything for you.”
“He told me where they are buried. It’s in North Charleston. Can you meet me there?”
“Now?”
“I’m way out near Sumter. It’ll take me an hour or so to get there.”
“Give me the address. I’ll be waiting for you.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SADIE WAS SITTING on the hood of her SUV, waiting for him as he puttered up the paved road that circled the cemetery. The land itself was flat and treeless. A few small azalea bushes bloomed by the road. Small gravestones marked most of the sites. A few had larger headstones. He parked the motorcycle and pulled off his helmet. Sadie slid off her car and approached him. After pulling him into a tight hug, she pushed back and looked in his eyes.
“I talked to the groundskeeper. I know where they are.”
The words sent a chill down him. He had no idea why he was here.
Sadie’s arm slipped around his waist. “You ready to do this? You need some time?” she asked.
“Will I ever be ready?”
“I wanted t
o run away right up until the moment I saw my mother. Then I was too terrified to run.”
“You didn’t look scared. You looked pretty fierce to me.”
“That was after I got mad.” She gave him a squeeze. “You need a minute?”
He shook his head and moved to open the saddlebag on the bike. He’d stopped at the Bi-Lo just up the road for a small bouquet of flowers. Sadie looked from the flowers to his face. She didn’t say anything but the question was there.
“She was trying to leave. She was trying to get us out.”
Sadie nodded. “Whenever you’re ready.”
He looked out over the large cemetery. “Is this like where they bury the poor people? What’s it called? Pauper’s graveyard?”
“I don’t know. They were buried at the county’s expense, so I’m supposing there was no family, or no family who wanted to claim them.”
He dropped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “You were a busy little bee while you were waiting.”
“Didn’t have anything else to do.”
He smiled. She always made it seem like nothing. She went and asked the hard questions so he wouldn’t have to. She’d smoothed this path the best she could. “Are they together?”
“Next to each other but a separate plaque for each.”
His jaw clenched. That made him angry. She’d been trying to get away from the monster. Now she was spending eternity next to him? Didn’t seem right.
“Okay. I’m ready.”
He purposely didn’t look. He watched the ground in front of him as Sadie led him through the silent cemetery. No, not quiet. The buzz of cicadas could be heard from the swatch of trees that separated the property from the strip mall next door. Cars could be heard whizzing along the highway.
Sadie’s hand appeared in his line of vision. “Your mother is on the left there.”
As if she knew. He shifted his eyes to the plain white marker and stepped closer. Martha Baxter Sanders. Had he ever known her name? He didn’t think so. Born 1971. Died 1993. He looked over at Sadie. “Damn, she was...” He did the math. “Seventeen when I was born. Twenty-two when this happened. Shit, Sadie.”
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