Chapter Thirty-One
The storm had knocked out the power lines, the old house an eerie silhouette from across the field.
Lightning cracked the night sky, rumbling the walls of the barn as I dug, my only light the dim, flickering lantern on the ground beside me.
I was sweating, face covered in dust, and my arms that were once throbbing with pain were now completely numb with exhaustion. Baring my teeth, I flung another mound of dirt and gravel to the side and slammed the shovel back into the earth.
The barn had always had a dirt floor … but it had been replaced with a layer of gravel before I moved in. I don’t know when Jack added the gravel, but it had to have been while I was away at college.
I was terrible with measurements—always had been—and I had no idea how far I’d dug. At least three, maybe four, feet? I stood back, leaning dizzily on the shovel, staring at the worthless hole in the ground. I’d kill for a glass of water right now.
At this rate, it would take me a week to dig up the floors in this barn. There was no real reason to believe I was right—those bales of hay could have been arranged that way for any number of reasons … by accident, perhaps? Or, even if Jack arranged them that way purposefully, it doesn’t mean there’s something below them…
My logic for choosing this spot now seemed stupid and faulty … in fact, this whole theory that what lay hidden was somewhere here in the barn felt off.
But I’ve come this far. I might as well go farther.
Wiping sweat from my brow, I looked around the entire barn space, trying to guesstimate how much ground there was to cover.
If I dig much deeper, I’ll reach the doors of Hell itself.
So be it, I thought, wearily.
The dusty lantern cast hazy shadows around the walls of the barn. I watched them dance, hypnotized by it, as pellets of rain drummed the roof of the barn like heavy artillery fire.
It’s like a war out there … no one I can trust, not my neighbors and certainly not my family. Living or dead: did I know any of them, really? How much can you truly know a person—like, really know them?
Groaning, I adjusted my grip on the shovel and smashed it into the dirt. I flung two, three, four more mounds aside … and that’s when I heard a thud. The metal shovel connecting with something…
I’d expected metal—the metallic clank of a knife, or weapon, evidence of Jack’s crime buried below … but as I scraped loose dirt from the surface, I recognized it immediately: the deep brown leather, the old-fashioned brass plates … here it is: my brother’s trunk.
I’d only dug enough to uncover the top third of it. Exhilarated that I’d found it, I grabbed the shovel and began, moving ten times faster than before.
A deafening blast of thunder shook so hard, I could feel it deep in my bones. But I didn’t let it deter me … I kept on, determined to get the trunk loose and see what was inside it.
I was shocked to discover I was crying—or was that sweat? No, it was tears, dirty black rows of them streaming down my cheeks.
I lifted the shovel and spent the next few minutes clearing the dirt completely.
Oh, Jack. What were you hiding?
Maybe there was a part of me—a small, unforgivable sliver—that already knew it was bad. Once you find out, you can’t un-know it.
Pretty truths or ugly lies, which one do you choose?
With the dingy old trunk uncovered, I selected a hammer from my father’s wall of tools. The rotted old padlock broke off with one steady tap.
I choose…truth. Always, truth.
I lifted the heavy lid, holding my breath.
At first, all I saw were cobwebs. A nest of them, thin and wiry. Silver like the moon.
But under that wiry wisp of gray, the rotting hair was attached to a rotting scalp … and the shrunken dead face of my mother stared up at me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rotting bits of blue fabric clung to her chest. Her skeletal legs were bent—she’d obviously been folded and placed inside it.
The fabric on her body had decayed, but I could still pick out the pattern … one I’d seen a thousand times. My brother’s old Star Wars blanket. The very same blanket I puked on the morning I saw Jenny’s bloated body, rotting in the sun, through my brother’s binoculars.
My mother’s hair was all that was left, the flesh on her face rotted away, but those teeth … that face … and the heart shaped locket at her neck … there was no doubt: this crate was my long-lost mother’s grave.
I moaned with grief, stumbling away from my gruesome discovery.
I needed to feel something, to cry … to scream … but, once again, in that scary moment, I was frozen in time. My brain playing catch-up with its reality.
I took my cell phone out of my back pocket and dialed my Great Aunt Lane with shaky fingers.
As I stared into my mother’s makeshift grave, eyes blurring with tears, I listened to the phone on the other end ring and ring and ring. Just as I was about to give up, I heard a thick cough on the other end and Lane’s unmistakable husky smoker’s voice: “Hello!”
“You. Fucking. Lied.” I said, through clenched teeth, gripping the phone until my knuckles turned white.
Lane sighed noisily on the other end, as though she already knew what I was about to say. Well, of course she did, I realized. She’s known the truth all along.
“What do you mean?” she asked, quietly.
The tremor was uncontrollable now, my entire body quivering. I tried to muster up the right words for my liar of an aunt.
“My mother hasn’t been to visit you. There were no letters. No post cards … no fucking birthday cards…”
“What? Of course there were,” Lane said, half-heartedly. But I could already hear the defeated tone of her voice…
“I know you’re lying. Want to know how I know? Because I’m standing next to her dead body. And it’s a skeleton, Lane! She’s been here a long time…”
I heard Lane on the other line, taking in a sharp breath.
“Why did you cover for him, huh? How long have you known the truth?” I demanded, gripping the phone till my knuckles went numb. “Hell, maybe you even helped him. You always hated my mother.”
I could remember hearing my mother say it: that my dad’s family never liked her. But Lane had always been my father’s favorite aunt. He talked about her so fondly that there were times I often wondered why we didn’t go see her more often … but as I grew older, I understood. Mom didn’t feel welcome.
“Listen, Natalie. Your mama…”
“My mama what?” I shrieked, defensively.
“She killed that girl. The one in the field.”
My heart lurched in my chest. “Excuse me?”
“Listen here. She did it to protect your brother. That Jenny girl was crazy, nuts … claiming your brother had raped her.”
I gasped, for the first time connecting it with Chrissy’s version of events. She didn’t want to steal Jack, she wanted to destroy him…
“The night your daddy called me, asking me to take in Jack for a while … I never questioned it. Not then, and not later either … I knew something was up, especially after I saw what happened in the papers … but I wasn’t sure which one of them did it. I didn’t know it was her. And your brother, when he finally found out the truth, about what your mama did … I guess he thought she had to pay for it. I was the only one he told, you know. I’m the only one he could trust.”
“Yeah, because you lied for him!” I screamed over the roaring of the storm outside, and the one deep in my chest.
“You know your father … he couldn’t handle that sort of thing. I don’t think he wanted to know the truth, honestly. He skirted around it. Told me to tell you that your mother was fine to make you feel better … but he knew. Deep down he had to know what Jack had done. Because your mama would never just up and leave. She thought she’d go to prison one day, yes … but she never would have abandoned you all.”
“My mo
ther wouldn’t kill Jenny … and Jack wouldn’t kill his own mother,” I moaned, staring at the evidence right in front of me. Mom told me … said she might be going away for a while … was she trying to warn me that she might one day be arrested for killing Jenny? Or was she telling me she planned to leave town for good…?
“There was an incident when your mom arrived home from work that day; Jenny was there waiting when she pulled in. She followed your mom inside, making chit chat, and then announced that Jack had raped her. Said she was going to the cops and there was nothing anyone could do to stop her. Jack was upstairs asleep, you see … my sweet boy. He never even knew about the confrontation.”
This isn’t real. This isn’t real. Please tell me this isn’t real.
Lane continued, “And your mother … well, she was boiling water for noodles when she told her. And your mama, always so impulsive, she was … she freaked. Tossed that pot of boiling water right at her. She had to finish the job after that … you know, there was no coming back after…”
Crime scene photos flashed before my eyes. Those burn marks on Jenny’s face… I imagined her holding up her hands to protect herself, boiling hot water striking her hands and cheeks…
“Your mama did it for Jack. That girl would have ruined his life, Natalie. She killed her there, you know. After the burns, Jenny tried to run. But your mama chased her. Ended up right out there in the barn with a kitchen knife…she choked and stabbed her to death. Didn’t know how else to stop her! And after she realized what’d she done, she used a wheelbarrow to push her. Left that stupid girl in the middle of the field. That girl never should have told lies … if Jenny wasn’t lying about your brother, then she never would have died … she backed your mama into a corner. ”
“But Chrissy…” I said, mind spinning as I tried to imagine my mother in the dark, pushing a dead girl’s body through the field. The mother I knew could never do that … could she?!
Lane was still talking. “Oh, don’t feel sorry for that stupid Chrissy bitch either … that girl was dumb enough to admit to it. And your mother snuck in and planted the shoes for good measure; for once she had some brains about her. She didn’t like those two together. Your brother was too good for a Cornwall. Let’s face it. Being a Cornwall, she was probably headed to jail anyway. Your mama just put her on the fast track there. Honestly, when your parents told me what happened, and explained that your mother was protecting Jack … well, that was the first time I actually respected your mother. At least she protected her own. That’s a mother’s job, you know. Or, I guess you wouldn’t know that, would you?”
Now that Lane was talking, all I wanted to do was make her shut the hell up.
“My sweet Jack … he had no idea your mother killed her. Like everyone else in town, he believed it was his little trashy girlfriend that did it. And I sure as hell wasn’t planning to tell him, or anyone else for that matter. I would have taken that secret to my grave, just like your daddy did. But it was your mama herself who told him. Chrissy had been convicted and she was off the hook. But your mother finally admitted the truth to Jack, thinking your brother would be grateful that she protected him from a rape charge. But he was still hung up on that girl … the men in our family don’t pick them well, do they? I don’t think Jack meant to kill your mother … he was just so shocked, and angry. And pissed at your mama for letting Chrissy go down for the crime. When I heard he killed himself on the anniversary of your mother’s death, it ate me up with grief … he should have just moved on like it never happened. But I guess, in the end, he had that weakness in him, just like you and your mother. He always was a pure, kind soul…”
My mother never left me. She never left…
In my mind, I rewound the clock … seeing her face, the worried look in her eye leading up to those days before she “left”. She thought she was going somewhere … jail, possibly. But she never expected my brother to kill her. My mother’s been dead since I was fourteen. All this time, she’s been here … right here … under my feet. I felt her … I never stopped feeling her presence here on the farm.
The barn was spinning, the shadows playing tricks on my eyes … the phone fell to the barn floor with a shattering thud.
I stumbled around several steps, then fell to my knees. Somewhere in the distance, I could still hear Lane’s croaky voice, trying to shout to me through the phone … but all I could see was my mother stuffed in that hellish trunk…
I forced myself back on my feet and barreled through the heavy barn doors.
In the marshy field, I stared up at the sky as a tunnel of rain hammered down on me. Lightning cracked the sky, thunder rocking the ground.
I screamed at no one and everyone, the rattling horror in my voice echoing through the empty field and bouncing back and forth through the trees … spreading like a storm through the entire town of Austin.
Chapter Thirty-Three
They say that the truth will set you free. But sometimes truth is the prison.
My truth … the truth of my family’s lies … has created its own little prison inside me. I set out to write a book, Chrissy’s biography and detailed version of her crime. Instead, it turned out to be a memoir—the story of my own family’s legacy, and how little white lies evolved into a decades-long web of suffering.
It’s no longer her story to tell. It’s mine.
I ask Chrissy often: when are you going to sue the state for sending you to prison when you were innocent?
She always counters with: when are you going to write that book?
That shuts me up really quick.
Because the truth is, I could write the story and people would probably read it. There will always be people who need to hear the details of other people’s pain, and I can’t say I blame them. I’ve had offers from other writers to do it, asking if they can write my family’s story…
But, for some reason, I keep telling them no.
Because that’s the thing about the truth: it’s harder to tell than lies. Especially when it’s an ugly truth like mine.
It’s not that I don’t love writing. I still want to write a book someday. But I’m thinking about something fun—maybe a rom-com or a western.
Something so far from the truth that I can almost believe the lie.
Once again, the Breyas farm is littered with pieces of crime tape. Only this time they’re on the inside as well as the out. The blood inside the barn was too degraded for DNA testing, but luminol revealed a gory scene on the walls of the barn.
I’d like to say my mother was doing what she had to, protecting her own … but now I’m questioning everything about who she was … who they all were.
The knife she used to kill Jenny Juliott was buried in the trunk alongside her. I’d hoped for more … a note from Jack inside her tomb, some type of explanation…
But his suicide spoke for itself—he killed our mother when he learned the truth, but he never recovered from his own monstrous actions.
Lane was arrested on a sunny Sunday afternoon for her role in the murder. She may not have been directly involved in the killings, but she was responsible for covering them up. I doubt she’ll get much time because of her age, but it only seems fair to Jenny’s family that she answer for her role in the murder.
The townspeople flock to Chrissy now, eager to give their condolences. Their “I always suspected you didn’t do it” pats on the back. And the town is coming alive again, the old fears subsiding, as though there’s no longer evil in the world now that my mother and brother are dead.
Now I’m the leper, crowds of people parting like the Red Sea when they see me coming. I don’t think they blame me, exactly, but I think I make them uncomfortable. Surprisingly, Adrianna has been one of my biggest supporters, offering me a place to stay while the cops tore the farm apart.
I considered burying Mom next to Dad and Jack in the family plot. But doing that felt wrong. She’d spent enough time underground … I wanted her to soar for a while. She was cremated
, her ashes tossed off the bridge over the Ohio River, a place she took me fishing once. It was a lovely day and although we hadn’t caught anything, it was one of the best days of my life. I hope it was one of hers too.
Her body was so badly decomposed that the cause of death was undetermined. I hope that however he did it, it was quick and painless. I hope she didn’t see it coming. Even though she did a terrible thing, I miss her. Somehow, knowing the truth—that she was a killer—hurts less than the thought that she abandoned me. Which is really fucked up, I know.
There are days when I wish I had never sent that letter to Chrissy. That I never would have unearthed these ugly old truths … but now that feeling inside me—the one that always felt so unresolved—has faded. The truth might be its own version of prison, but at least I know the walls … there’s no more baggage left hanging, nothing unresolved to deal with.
When I went away to college, I was focused on the future. And in Austin, I was firmly stuck in the past.
Now all I want to do is start over, in a town where no one knows my name, and keep my feet firmly planted in the present.
I accepted a job at a bookstore in West Virginia—the pay is shit but the store looks amazing, and there’s a cute little apartment complex nearby. I’ve never seen the mountains, but I want to.
Unlike me, Chrissy has decided to stay in Austin after all. So, she is staying and I’m going—a strange ending to it all, I guess.
But there’s something thrilling about untangling myself from those deadly roots, letting myself go free…
Chrissy promised to stay in touch. I made no promises in return.
And Officer Nash, one of the few other people in town who has stood by me, has asked if he can come visit me some time in West Virginia. I told him that I would like that, but again, no promises made.
I left town with very little on a Wednesday afternoon. A tiny pack of clothes and toiletries. My car. Some cash I made from selling the farm.
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