The Last Breath

by Kimberly Belle

  “Bo, it’s Gia.” My voice is relaxed and singsong, as if I’m calling to wish him a happy birthday. “Hey listen, I just wanted to invite you to my Nancy Grace interview tomorrow night at the house. You know Nancy, right? That blonde on Headline News? Anyway, I told her I could probably get her a few choice quotes from you. And, oh, I almost forgot.”

  I pause for a breath, enough to fuel every ounce of menace I can force into my tone. “Cal and I are hosting a family get-together at Lexi’s tomorrow after church. Attendance is mandatory. Don’t test me on this, Bo, ’cause you won’t win.”

  I hang up.

  Cal’s face clears, and he gives me a smile that lets me know my previous blunders are forgiven. “Baby girl, are you sure you don’t wanna be the next Tennessee Tigress? Because that was one kick-ass bit of prowling.”

  * * *

  My sister lives in a charming brick cottage with shuttered windows smack in the middle of Rogersville’s historic district. I follow Cal up the narrow walkway, looking longingly in the direction of Roadkill, only a few blocks up the road. I imagine Jake upstairs in bed, sleeping off what was surely a busy Saturday night, and I wonder if he’s alone. For a man who promised to spend the weekend thinking about me, he could have at least texted.

  “Looks like we beat your brother,” Cal mutters without turning, right before he stabs the doorbell.

  “He’ll be here.” My voice is thick with authority I don’t own. Bo better show. Nancy Grace is a beast I’d really rather not face.

  Lexi answers the door in sweatpants and the remnants of yesterday’s makeup, her normally perfect hair is a greasy knot on top of her head. I haven’t seen her like this in, well, ever. Even in the privacy of her own home, she was always trying. Now, her pretty lips don’t even smile.

  “Interesting look for church,” I say.

  She points to my left eye. “I think you went a little overboard with the purple shadow, Tammy Faye.”

  I would roll my eyes, but it would hurt. Lexi motions us in, shuffling across the hardwood floor in giant SpongeBob Squarepants slippers. Cal and I step inside, clicking the door shut behind us.

  My sister’s house is, to put it politely, a pigsty. Crap everywhere. Blankets and pillows strewn about, a scattering of papers and magazines and books, three days’ worth of dirty dishes and food wrappers on every horizontal surface. Not like my sister at all.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I say over the flat screen blaring from the living room wall. “Are you sick or something?”

  “Peachier than ever.” Lexi digs under a blanket for the remote and punches the mute button with a chipped thumbnail. “What’s this I hear about you perched on Jake Foster’s bar stool again yesterday?”

  Good Lord. The gossips in this town. I give her my most casual shrug. “He fed me.”

  “I hear he did a whole lot more than that. I hear he took you upstairs and closed the blinds.”

  I flash a glance at Cal, who chomps down on his toothpick. “Maybe we should go ahead and get started.”

  “Why don’t we give Bo a few more minutes?” Cal shrugs off his coat, folding it in half and draping it neatly over a chair by the window. “His church service must’ve run long.”

  I check my watch—12:43 p.m.—and a new wave of dread twists in my stomach. Why couldn’t I have threatened with something less hard-hitting than HLN, something like wine hour with Hoda and Kathie Lee?

  Cal moves a jumbled stack of newspapers from the couch to the floor and sits, crossing his legs and looking like he’s getting comfortable enough to wait all day. “I’m sure he’ll be here by the time coffee’s made.”

  Cal’s reminder of Lexi’s manners seems to snap my sister out of her sloth. She nods, snatching up as many plates and cups from the coffee table as her hands will allow, and gestures for me to follow her into the kitchen, where she dumps them unceremoniously into the sink. When she crosses her arms and leans a hip against the countertop, I sigh, reaching for the coffeepot.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove with this helpless act, Lexi, but I also don’t care.” I dump the used grounds into the sink, drop in a fresh filter. “Not after you ditched me this weekend.”

  Lexi grins. “Sounds like you found something else to occupy your time, you big ole slut. So what is it? Eight, nine inches?”

  “Can you be serious for ten seconds?” I flick on the water, hold the pot under the stream. “Things with Dad are going quicker than anyone expected.”

  “For such a slut, you certainly are a prude.”

  “Fannie says if we’re lucky, he might live only three more weeks.”

  “Fannie Miles? The one whose husband spent their retirement fund on drag queens and meth?”

  “It was cocaine and prostitutes, but yeah, that’s her.”

  “What a disappointment. My version is so much more interesting.”

  I whirl around to face her so fast, water from the pot in my hand sloshes down Lexi’s sweatpants and onto the floor. “I need you to focus here. I’ve been thinking about what that lawyer said about Cal’s defense, and about Dean Sullivan. And the fact that he’s an alcoholic now.”

  “So?”

  “So what if it’s because he can’t live with himself since the trial? What if it’s because he feels guilty for something he did or didn’t do?”

  “Like what? Dean saw him, Gi. He saw him pretending to break into his own house the night Ella Mae was killed. You do the math.”

  “I did the math, over and over for sixteen years. But what if the math was right, but the equation was wrong?”

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  “It means, what if this professor is right? What if all this time we were adding up evidence that didn’t exist, basing our judgments and beliefs and guilty verdicts on a shoddy defense and coerced testimony? Don’t you get it? If this professor is right, Dad might not have been found guilty. He might never have gone to prison.”

  Lexi presses her lips together and drops her head, mopping the spilled water with a slipper. I’ve seen that expression before, right before she threw up on a Sunday drive over Grandfather Mountain. Still. I don’t back down.

  “I think we should talk to this Jeffrey Levine,” I say.

  Her head pops up, her eyes wide. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.”

  “Come on, Lex. Ten minutes. Let’s just hear him out for ten minutes, and then—”

  Cal interrupts with a loud harrumph, and his expression tells me he heard more than I would have liked. “Your brother’s here.”

  16

  Ella Mae Andrews, December 1993

  ELLA MAE DROVE up Main, snapping off the car radio with a flick of her fingers. If she heard one more song about the holly, jolly season, Ella Mae swore she would slit her wrists. Those damn carols reminded her too much of the one thing she wouldn’t be getting this Christmas.

  Dean.

  Oh, she got him every now and then, stolen moments when their families were out or when Dean and Ella Mae could get away for an hour or two. Cheap motels along the interstate, gas station bathrooms a few towns over, a secluded parking spot by Burem Lake Dam. Dean wasn’t particularly choosy, and neither was Ella Mae. But their time together was never enough, their trysts too sporadic and infrequent, and Ella Mae found herself obsessing over the next when, where, how.

  Nine days. It’d been nine whole days since Dean had surprised her during one of her morning walks down by the river, pulling up next to her with a grin and a hard-on. But now that the kids were out for Christmas break, she didn’t know when either of them would be able to get away again. The uncertainty niggled and poked, especially in her quieter moments. Had Dean already had his fill of her? Ella Mae hoped not, because she was nowhere near done.

  She found a spot a few doors down from the pharmacy and
squeezed her Jeep in. Almost closing time, and Rogersville’s late-afternoon, last-minute shoppers clutched lists and paper bags as they hurried from shop to shop. Ella Mae waved to a few of them as she jaywalked across Main to the pharmacy.

  Louise Moore, a blue-haired woman who couldn’t be a day younger than a hundred and thirty, poked at the register with gnarled fingers. She glanced up when Ella Mae pushed through the pharmacy door. “How-do, Ella Mae. Happy birthday.”

  Ella Mae figured birthdays wouldn’t be so bad if people didn’t keep reminding her she was forty-five today, a number she couldn’t quite believe and would really rather forget. Lately birthdays felt more like she was counting down instead of up. Counting down until the end.

  She pushed up a smile. “Thanks, Louise. Is Ray here?”

  Silly question. Ludicrous, really. If Ray wasn’t at the house, he was sure enough at his beloved pharmacy, counting pills and filling prescriptions and reminding whoever would listen to take their multivitamins.

  Louise gestured to the back wall, where Ray’s work station overlooked the store from an elevated platform. “You know where to find him.”

  Ella Mae wound her way through the aisles, past the scented candles and collectible figurines and sugar-free candy. She rang the bell, an old-fashioned silver desk version Ray insisted added ambiance, and his head appeared above the counter.

  “There’s my birthday girl.” It was Ray’s pharmacy voice, animated and singsong and loud enough they could hear him clear up by the register. “I was worried you were going to stand me up.”

  “I had trouble finding a parking spot.”

  Ray leaned way over the counter and winked. “’Tis the season for holiday shoppers. This place has been jam-packed with ’em all day, isn’t that right, Elroy?”

  Ella Mae turned to find Ray’s assistant stocking a display of reading glasses. “Only two more shopping days left, thank you, Jesus.”

  Ray laughed, shedding his white pharmacist coat and draping it neatly over a hook. He was such a completely different person in his pharmacy—cordial, lively, often even funny. Ella Mae was no longer surprised by this fact, but she found herself wishing he could make more of an effort at home. Like just about everybody else in town, she rather liked Pharmacy Ray.

  After a few hasty instructions for Elroy, Ray turned to Ella Mae. “You ready for your big night on the town?”

  Was she ever.

  When Ray had asked Ella Mae what she wanted for her birthday, she couldn’t come up with a single thing. She didn’t need clothes or makeup or a new appliance, and other than a plain wedding band, she hardly ever wore jewelry. All she wanted was a night out. Dinner, maybe a movie in Kingsport afterward, mostly so they wouldn’t end up marking the occasion by watching old Baywatch reruns in the den.

  The pair set off for the door, fifty feet or so at best, but a trek that took at least ten minutes. Ray stopped about a million times, to straighten a display of greeting cards, to point Otis Olsen to the cough syrup, to inquire about Mrs. Crigger’s bunions. Ella Mae waited patiently, and as she watched her husband socialize with his customers, she almost remembered why she’d fallen in love with him, coming up on a decade ago.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked once they were finally on the street.

  “I thought we’d start with a drink at Hal’s, then head over to Main Street Grille. How does that sound?”

  “Heavenly.” Ella Mae actually meant it.

  At Hal’s, Ray’s pharmacy mood continued. He swapped greetings and clapped backs and shook hands, and he even bought a round of drinks and led the place in a loud and off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Afterward, he dipped Ella Mae in a kiss that felt strange and familiar at the same time. By the time he led her two doors down to Main Street Grille, Ella Mae was flushed and giddy and more than slightly tipsy. Why didn’t they go out every night?

  At the restaurant, they ended up in a candlelit booth in the back, Ella Mae on the seat facing the bar and Ray directly across.

  He cocked his head and studied her. “Did you do something to your hair?”

  Ella Mae brushed her fingers through a curl at her temple. “Just touched up the gray. I guess now that I’m forty-five, I’ll be spending a lot more time down at the Hair Loft.”

  “Well, tell Diane to keep doing whatever it is she’s doing, because it’s working. You really do look beautiful tonight.”

  Ella Mae was flattered and surprised, pleasantly so, at the compliment. “Thanks.”

  The waitress stepped up with a basket of bread and their drinks. She began listing off the night’s specials, but somewhere right around the chicken-fried steak, Ella Mae became distracted by a slow burn that sparked deep in her belly. Automatically, she began searching the crowd, craning her neck to try to see over the edges of the booth.

  “And for you, ma’am?”

  The burn exploded up her chest, and Ella Mae’s heart thundered hard enough to shudder the fabric of her new birthday blouse. She ordered the first thing she read from the menu. “I’ll have the chicken marsala.”

  “What would you like for your side?”

  Ella Mae could barely hear her through the bells— ear-piercing bells, warning bells—clanging in her ears. She leaned a little to the left, craning her neck, but the waitress’s backside blocked Ella Mae’s view of the room. “I’m sorry?”

  “Mashed potatoes, cheese grits, sautéed mushrooms, creamed spinach, corn on—”

  “Creamed spinach will be fine.”

  The waitress moved on to the next table, and Ella Mae understood the roaring in her head and the fire in her veins. Time skidded to a stop, and so did her heart. The entire room around her went about its business. A man laughed, a woman knocked over her wine, a kid shrieked, but Ella Mae barely noticed. She barely noticed, because Dean Sullivan was right there, standing by the bar with the high school football coach and a beer, his gaze glued to Ella Mae.

  A wave of longing seized her so strongly she almost swooned. Almost hopped out of the booth and sashayed across the bar, shedding clothes along the way. Her body craved Dean Sullivan like her lungs craved oxygen, like her cells craved nutrients. Like her heart would bleed out without his touch on her skin.

  “Are you okay?”

  Ella Mae dragged her gaze back to her husband. “What? Oh, yes, I’m fine.”

  “Are we?”

  “Are we what?”

  “Okay.” For the first time Ella Mae could remember, Ray looked uncomfortable, and worry crawled up his face. “You just seem so...I don’t know. Distant. Like you’re always somewhere else, thinking of something else. Even when we’re, you know,” he leaned forward, whispered, “intimate.”

  Ella Mae reached for her chardonnay with a shaking hand. “Don’t be silly.” She forced a smile. “There’s nothing the matter with me. With us.”

  After an endless moment, Ray nodded and reached for the bread, and that was that.

  Somehow—Ella Mae didn’t know how—she made it through dinner. She choked down her meal and held up her side of the conversation, but just barely. After his third glass of wine, Ray was too tipsy to notice. Dessert came, loud and conspicuous, a slice of candled cake brought by a procession of clapping waitstaff. Dean sipped his beer and watched from his bar stool the entire time.

  “I know you said you didn’t want a gift,” Ray said after he’d paid the bill, reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket for a tiny box, “but I got you one anyway. Happy birthday.” He pushed it across the table.

  Jewelry. That much was clear from the box, small and square and tied with a red bow, and Ella Mae’s stomach flipped and kicked. She didn’t want to open it, not with Dean watching. And she knew Dean was watching. Her skin sizzled wherever his gaze roamed.

  Ray grinned, hitched his chin at the box. “Go on. Open it.”
>
  She tugged at the bow, peeled off the lid and peered inside. A golden heart pendant and chain gleamed from a white cotton cushion. Her heart turned over, but not in a good way, twisting something painful behind her breast.

  “Oh, Ray. I...”

  “Does that mean you like it?”

  Ella Mae glanced over at Dean. Since that first afternoon when he reached for her in her kitchen, she’d seen plenty of lust and longing and desire on his face. But now she saw something she’d never seen there before. She saw jealousy.

  “Put it on,” Ray said. “Let me see how it looks.”

  Ella Mae did as she was told, clasping the necklace behind her neck while Ray beamed and Dean scowled. She was suddenly desperate, breathless with the need to escape. Escape Ray. Escape Dean. Escape the guilt that seared her insides and clogged her throat and blurred her vision.

  But Ella Mae couldn’t do any of that. Not without telling Ray. Not without losing Dean.

  So she did the only thing she could think of. She slipped out of the booth, reached for her husband’s hand and went home.

  And later, when Ray took her upstairs for happy-birthday sex, she closed her eyes and pretended he was Dean.

  17

  BO’S HERE.

  Relief hits me, as hard and fast as Dad’s liquid morphine, at the same time another wave of frustration flushes my skin. Cal and I may have orchestrated the four of us under one roof, but it’s the wrong roof. My father is still dying in a bed four miles away, without his three children by his side. I shove the coffeepot into place, stab the on button and follow Cal into the living room.

  He points us to the couch with a look none of us would dream of disobeying and pulls up a chair directly across. Once we’re all settled, he leans forward, elbows planted on his knees, fingers steepled before him, and lasers us with a glare.

  “Okay, this is the way it’s gonna go. The three of you are gonna get your asses over to your father’s bedside this afternoon. You’re gonna cry and carry on about how glad you are to see him, and how sad you are he’s dying. I don’t care if you mean it or not, but you’re gonna goddamn well act like you do.”