The Good Daughter

by Alexandra Burt

  Shhhhh. Do what I tell you to do.

  Just like that, Beard, Bony Fingers, Pimples, and Ponytail fade in, they stand in a circle around me dropping bugs on my naked bleeding body. I will them to disappear, tell myself this is a different place and a different time, the woods have no memory. That I’m safe and there’s no reason to be afraid.

  I stand up and forge ahead, trusting that I will find what I’m looking for. There’s no map, no directions to follow, nothing but a narrow path covered in knotted roots, but they form steps for me. The silence around me is unnerving and all I can hear is my wheezing breath.

  Don’t scream. Not a word.

  I empty my mind but panic immediately fills the void and every time I step on a twig or kick a stone, I freeze with horror. I fear I’ve left too late in the day; darkness is descending quickly and without mercy. The black trunks against the dark backdrop take the shapes of the hunters with their guns pulled.

  In front of me the path branches off. I take the left one. When I see a massive live oak I know I have found what I’m looking for. My eyes scan the thick, dark trunk in the deepest and darkest part of the forest where shadows are abundant. Its branches are interlocking, almost like a stairway, easy to climb, even for an old woman like me. The dense growth leaves numerous spots to hold on to and to tie the rope to. I press my palm against its rough bark, and breathe in the scent of the forest.

  I swing the canvas bag with the gun and the rope over my shoulder and start climbing upward. With every inch I gain courage, increase my resolve. Three points of contact—foot, hand, foot; hand, foot, foot—and before I know it I am far off the ground. I find a perch where I can lean against the tree’s trunk, take the rope, allow it to dangle, and start tying my body to the tree. I move quickly as not to lose courage. I start with my feet, wrap the rope around my thighs and the trunk, my waist, then my chest. My left hand is last. I loop the handles of the bag through the rope and tie one last knot, binding the gun to my hand. It rests there.

  Those jars in Nolan’s shed—the ones full of crickets dying on a bed of plaster, their legs curled up, antennae pointing about aimlessly—it dawned on me some time ago that I have spent my entire life in one of those jars. The ghost I had created was out there pretending to live; the other one, the real me, was in a jar, trapped.

  You want this. Beg. Beg for it.

  The past is so much more than a memory. There’s no escaping it, but this is as close as I’ll ever come to being free.

  The scent of the forest pales in comparison to the wind that rustles these leaves. To think that my last breath will be carried off by it is nothing short of splendid.

  I turn the gun toward my heart and I pull the trigger. I’m aware of one last breath and my ears ring.

  There is a scent of death. The forest is heaving with it.

  Then all goes black and I welcome the darkness.

  Forty-four

  DAHLIA

  JAMES Earl Bordeaux Jr. confessed. Bobby, after he gave me his gun, went to the Lark and confronted him. At the same time the call came in that Jane Doe was awake. Bobby lied, told Bordeaux she had identified him, took him to the precinct, and during the interrogation Bordeaux confessed.

  Kayla Hoffman suffered a horrible fate but she survived. The story eventually came together, piece by piece: She left the university campus, told friends she’d be back in a few days. It was something she’d done before, and so her disappearance never raised any suspicion. Whenever the pressure became too much for her, she holed herself up in some hotel and returned days later with a new lease on life. Lots has been made about the fact that her family was tightlipped after it was all over but it was merely a college student bowing under the pressure of school and grades. Kayla is back home and safe. The last thing her family wants is for her to be in the headlines another day.

  That time she was looking to get away, she ended up in Aurora and checked into the Lark. Bordeaux smelled an opportunity, never officially checked her into the database. There are conflicting reports but according to Bobby there is no proof that the system was down that day. The minute details will come out at trial, I’m sure. The short story is that Bordeaux drugged her, took her to the woods, where he raped and beat her. He was in the process of burying her when I came jogging up the dirt road and stepped into the woods. He stood nearby and watched me as I came upon Kayla’s body. He watched me scream, watched me run, watched me fall in the creek.

  And he considered killing me.

  “You were lucky,” Bobby says. “If it hadn’t been for you freaking out and running off, falling into the creek, if you had seen him standing there, if Kayla had been able to speak, if you had just looked up . . .” Bobby stops right then and watches me closely.

  “He was that close?” I ask.

  “Just behind a tree nearby.”

  I remember feeling as if someone was watching me, as if some sort of presence was in those woods when I found Kayla.

  What sleight of hand and twist of fate had made me argue with my mother that morning, delaying my run, what made me step into the shade of the woods? I go further with those realizations: what made Memphis cross paths with those hunters, what made Tain show up at Aella’s trailer, what brought the storm that made Tain end up at Creel Hollow Farm? What if Memphis hadn’t stood in the kitchen window, hadn’t spotted her out there in the rain?

  “Don’t think about this too hard,” Bobby says. “It’s over.”

  “What about the other bracelets?” Three more are missing from the briefcase. I want to believe that whoever wore them got away.

  “The samples in the briefcase are from the late nineties. They are checking into missing women from as far back as the eighties who have any connection to the Lark and Aurora. They are turning the motel inside out at this very moment.”

  “So it started with Bordeaux Sr. and continued with his son?”

  “Seems that way.”

  I wonder if I could have been his next victim. It would’ve been plausible for me to leave town—another argument with my mother, another lost job, easy to make my disappearance believable. Who would have missed me? My mother? Bobby’s cruiser across from the Lark might have spared me a horrible fate.

  “You know, me and Bordeaux, at some point, we were friends.”

  Bobby tells me how they skipped school and how Bordeaux changed over the years, especially when he had a few drinks. How he pulled a knife once, and boasted how he could get away with anything.

  “Goes to show we don’t really know what people are capable of,” I say and I can’t help but think of the real culprit: the secrets people keep. How they eat them up. What is done in the dark.

  But light does get in.

  Quinn, Tain, and Nolan are as alive as they were all those years ago, on the farm. There are peculiar occurrences that I can’t explain: floating lights—nothing remotely resembling a ghost, nothing that concrete—more a presence that seems to be frozen in place. Sometimes there is the outline of a face, but I could easily be mistaken, and certain round shapes seem like wide-set eyes, yet the presence is lifeless and slack. It is indecisive in its passivity and every time I take a step toward it, it disappears. I long to step into its path or even be entirely surrounded by it and sometimes, somewhere off in the distance, a door slams shut or footsteps echo as if Nolan and Tain are playing games with me. Yet they seem less angry, no longer haunt the night as if they chose to step into the light too.

  We all need closure.

  I never heard the actual words from Memphis. She never said I killed your mother. She didn’t go that far. She thought her confession was it; she’d told the truth, her truth, and now we’d just all go on with our lives.

  I will never forget the last time we spoke.

  “What about me? What about Tain? My mother?” I asked her.

  She cocked her head, then she looked away. I had ca
lled Tain my mother.

  “Tain was unable to raise you,” she said. “You wouldn’t have lived to see your first birthday. I did what I thought was right. Please believe me, Dahlia, please.”

  “Why is this about you? What about me?”

  “What about you, Dahlia?”

  I just shook my head, fighting back the tears.

  “How was this hard for you? You were fed, safe, I took care of you. Was that not enough?”

  “Enough? You can’t see what you’ve done to me?” I said, shaking my head.

  She looked at me intently. I know she was racking her mind. “Because I took you with me?”

  “So I wasn’t raped, my husband didn’t get someone else pregnant, and therefore I must be okay? Is that what you’re saying? That I have no right to be upset?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. It’s not the same thing.” She leaned forward as if a certain closeness gave her more power over me. “I’ve never met anyone more normal than you. You are strong. Resilient. I’ve done right by you.”

  “You think I’m normal, Mother?” I spit Mother at her like a cherry pit. “You think the way I grew up was normal? Living in cars, and trailers, and motels, not going to school? You might as well have locked me in a closet.”

  “I did this for you. Everything I did was for you.”

  I could tell she believed her own stories, but I knew better. A woman who spent half her life living in hiding, under an assumed name, doesn’t just wake up one day and tell the truth. I doubted every word she said. Every single word.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” I told her. “None of what you did was for me. You protected yourself.” I got up and looked down on her. “I don’t know if I can even believe you. Look around you. There are graves that beg to differ.”

  “Dahlia—”

  “You killed my parents.”

  “I did it all for you,” she insisted, as if she had committed the murders on my behalf and therefore they were somehow less wrong or punishable.

  This is what I know for sure: After a horrendous rape, and after having constructed a duplicate of herself, Quinn married a man named Nolan Creel who owned a once-sprawling farm in Aurora, Texas. Her infertility was known to her, but dreamer that she was, she hoped for a child. She made a pact with something or someone, with the help of a woman named Aella, a pact that didn’t go her way; Tain’s baby was stillborn. Tain was, in Quinn’s mind, not a child, but a childlike creature, and Quinn loved her, even looked the other way when her own husband got her pregnant. When I was born, Quinn wanted to make compromises, was willing to agree to concessions, but Nolan failed her yet again. Nolan took everything from her and he paid the ultimate price. Confronted with a woman who’d never be able to care for me and a man who spent his life among bugs and beetles and crickets, she chose to kill to get her way.

  My feelings for her still teeter back and forth, but dragging me over state lines, making me live in motels and cars, not allowing me to go to school, is another thing altogether.

  What hurts the most—I also know this with certainty—what hurts the most is that in the years to come, I’ll continue to go back and forth, and maybe I’ll be forever torn. Having to get used to this feeling might be the worst of all. The blame I assign shifts, at times remains long enough to feel like hate. My entire life, every single memory, is an accumulation of moments, words I looked up in a heavy encyclopedia. I know now that I was attempting to make sense out of what no child can understand; an attempt to fill in blanks that adults leave for us, resulting in a contorted image of just about everything around me.

  My second-to-last memory of Memphis: After she confessed to killing my mother, or to whatever blame she accepted in that regard, I watched her take the porch steps one by one, in an easy motion, her gait that of a younger woman, her litheness making her powerful. She was shaken, I could tell, and I wanted to pull away the mask of Memphis to see the person inside, the woman she was all those years ago, the woman who was carried over the threshold of this house, the woman who held a baby on the Galveston beach. I felt shame because I hated her, but then I knew if I listened to Memphis’ words and paid attention to her smile, to her eyes, I might catch a glimpse. I want to believe Quinn was still in there as much as she ever was.

  Memphis disappeared the day she concluded her story.

  I came home after the reporters had packed up, and she was gone. Just like that. Her clothes remained in the closet, her purse sat on the kitchen table, her belongings were strewn all over the house, yet Memphis had disappeared.

  For the first time in my life I opened her purse. She used to guard it with her life, maybe set this all in motion when she lost it that night. She had never let it out of her sight, and I can now imagine the panic that must have overtaken her when she realized it was gone.

  There’s a wallet, worn down, the top layer peeling off. It’s a coin purse and within it are folded dollar bills and some coins. Something is tucked in one of the inside pockets. I unfold it. An old photograph, black-and-white, yellowed with age, its surface cracked. I see two women—they are looking at each other, laughing. I recognize Memphis, her curls blowing in the breeze, leaning against a fence. The other woman is shorter than Memphis, so slim that her frame borders on being gaunt. But her grip seems strong and determined; she sits sideways on the fence and one of her feet is propped up by its heel on the horizontal rail. She has long dark hair, wild and untamed. The photograph is too old to make out her face but I know that I’m looking at Memphis and Tain, more than likely the only photograph of them in existence.

  They gaze at each other lovingly, they are familiar to one another, laughing as if there is nothing else in this world but them. Their hands are slightly out of focus as if they’re reaching for each other the moment the picture is taken.

  All her tracks she covered, destroyed everything bound to expose her, set fire to a house. And out of all the things she thought worth keeping, this was it.

  After Bordeaux was arrested, Bobby surrendered his badge. There wasn’t any fingerpointing at him, to my knowledge my involvement with the briefcase never came up. Between my finding the bracelets and Kayla waking from her coma, it all fell into place like marbles in a jar.

  Initially they looked for Memphis on the farm property, on deserted roads, and in town. Then Sheriff Goode organized a search. Her picture appeared on the local news, and quite a few people from town joined the search party. We started at the farm in rows five feet apart, and with sticks we poked and prodded the earth, through the entire meadow and into the woods. There wasn’t a trace of her. Not that day and not the next. A month passed and eventually flyers on local shop doors were the only likenesses that remained of her.

  I didn’t tell anybody but I knew she was dead.

  I knew because that same night I saw the ghost of Memphis Waller.

  The old clock in the living room ceased to tick and everything went silent. There was no sound, not a bird sang, not even Tallulah’s claws on the hardwood floors could break through the dense stillness that fell over the house. The air became cold, and as my body heat quickly drained, an awareness crept over me that she was no longer among the living. I looked up and on the landing she stood, just for a second or so, beautiful in her yellow dress.

  She smiled and then she was gone. And that is my last memory of Memphis Waller.

  —

  Now, weeks later, as I desperately look for answers to all the questions swirling in my mind, Tallulah comes from behind and nudges me. It is hours still before the sun sets, and I take her for her daily walk. She trots along the path by the side of the meadow and makes eye contact every few steps to make sure I’m still close.

  Looking at her, I realize her face will soon be completely gray; her paws and her belly have already taken on a slight silver sheen. She deliberately stops often and sniffs, taking her time, inhaling every single scent.
She’s slowed down ever since she had the surgery, and we don’t get far anymore on our walks. Down her belly is a jagged scar where her coat never grew back, where the mummified puppy she carried with her was removed. Life is like that, I guess. Some things just won’t stay buried. Spaces dark and deep everywhere.

  We make it all the way to the woods. When we cut through the tree line, an earthy smell wafts up from the ground, a fragrance that conjures layers of pine needles and dark, fertile soil. Tallulah sniffs the air, nervously, and I call out to her, but she doesn’t pay me any mind.

  There’s a scent in the air that seems peculiar, in a fruity way. The scent is so mesmerizing that Tallulah changes directions every few feet, sniffing the ground, just to walk in a circle and then find her way back to the original spot.

  I watch her for quite some time, then I look up, wondering if people ever do that, look upward in the woods when the ground is covered in treasures like tangled roots, acorns, and pinecones. It’s an odd thing to do, yet I feel somehow compelled. The tree before me is tall, and it’s knotted and peculiar, its trunk wide, five feet or more, and its branches spread close to the ground.

  Something catches my eye. I step closer and touch the short, tapering trunk that so generously supports the picturesquely gnarled branches and limbs that over time have spread horizontally to a great distance from the main trunk. A yellow hue stands out, makes me pause and step closer to the oak. At first it’s merely a this is out of place feeling, the same way a nature photographer might spot a red cardinal among a flock of sparrows.

  High above in the barren crown of the tree, a piece of yellow fabric flutters in the wind.

  I see it but then I don’t. It seems like a vision of sorts, and I think of all the ghosts this farm seems to house—none of them concerning or evil, just present as if they belong—but this vision of buttery color looks like a body in a yellow dress.