Only Ever Her

by Whalen, Marybeth Mayhew

  Behind her, Clary tries helplessly to stop her mother, to pull her back inside. Then Sheriff York drives up, and they all watch as he gets out of his car and ambles calmly over to where the conflict is occurring. He puts his hand on Faye’s shoulder and gently tugs her away, speaking to her in a low voice. When he stops speaking, Clary guides her mom back toward the house. As the two of them draw closer, the cluster of people in the living room breaks up, as if they weren’t watching with mouths agape seconds earlier. People turn their heads as Clary and Faye enter, and the hum of conversation resumes as if nothing has happened at all.

  Laurel is deciding that this would be a good time to leave when Scott catches her eye and motions for her to come over to where he is standing. Tracy, Laurel notices, has already worked her way back to his side. A headline forms in her head, Bridesmaid Stands by Groom’s Side as Hunt for Bride Continues. But of course she will not write that. Tracy and Scott are doing nothing wrong as far as she can see. Still, she can’t help but wonder how Tracy is so confident that Scott isn’t involved in Annie’s disappearance. Anything is possible.

  Scott starts talking as soon as Laurel gets close enough to hear him. “Sorry, I was . . . detained when you got here. The cops are asking a ton of questions about this guy Annie knew in high school, if I knew him and all that.” He shrugs. “I mean I knew about him but I didn’t know him.”

  “Yeah, I heard something about that,” Laurel lies.

  “I sort of feel bad,” Tracy pipes up, her face intent. She looks from Scott to Laurel, clearly enjoying being part of things. “I’m the one who told the cops about him. They just asked about her friends, and once I saw Annie ignore a call and I saw his name on the screen. You know how you can see someone’s name on the screen when they call?”

  Tracy looks to Laurel for affirmation, so Laurel nods.

  “And I said to Annie, I said, ‘You can get that.’ And she said, ‘Oh, it’s gotta be a wrong number.’ But it was his name with a picture. And I remember the picture was of the British flag. But, like, Annie had to have done that on her phone—added his name to her contacts with that British flag so it would come up on the screen like that.” Tracy pauses. “At least, I think it was a British flag? The one with the cross and the X and the red, white, and blue. You know the one I’m talking about, right?” This time she looks to Scott for affirmation. Scott’s nod at her is tense, and Laurel notices a muscle working in his jaw.

  Tracy doesn’t seem to notice. She just continues, “Anyway, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of anyone who might know anything. So I told Sheriff York about it just as soon as I remembered. But I didn’t know they’d home in on him like that. I hadn’t thought about Kenny in years. Do you remember him, Laurel?”

  Laurel realizes high school is going to keep coming up, and there is nothing she can do to stop it. “No,” Laurel says. “I don’t believe I do.”

  Tracy looks around, then lowers her voice as if someone associated with Kenny might hear them. “He was real odd. Kind of kept to himself? A nerd, I guess you’d say.” Tracy narrows her eyes at Laurel. “I’m fairly sure you’d know him if you saw him.”

  Laurel has tried to forget everyone from high school—from the star quarterback down to the lady who served up slices of pizza in the cafeteria. “If you say so,” she says. “I’m sure I would.”

  This answer does not satisfy Tracy. “Thing was, he was kind of cute. But weird, so it was like he couldn’t be fully cute. Like maybe if he grew out of his weirdness, he’d turn hot. I do remember Annie was always nice to him. But she never said they kept in touch.” Tracy is puzzling this out in front of them, giving Kenny Whatever His Name Is far more thought than she ever has before. Without thinking that she’s standing beside Annie’s fiancé—or maybe because she’s standing beside Annie’s fiancé—she says, “Maybe that’s what happened?” she asks.

  “Maybe what’s what happened?” Laurel asks.

  “Maybe they stayed friends, and Kenny turned hot. And . . .” She wrinkles her nose, as if this theory smells bad. “That still doesn’t explain that British flag, though. I don’t remember him having an English accent. That I’d remember. I love English accents.”

  Laurel glances outside, at the reporters who have moved off Faye’s lawn and are now resettling in a common area across the street. They’ve found the same story she has. But she is here first. She is being given access those people outside would kill for. It’s all about being in the right place at the right time. Damon asked Scott for a favor, threw her a bone because of his connection to Scott. So she is here only because of Damon, and she sort of hates that. But she also appreciates it. Because, as Professor Sharp used to say, it doesn’t matter how you get there. It just matters that you’re there. And today she is.

  She fishes around in her purse and pulls out her notepad and pen. Outside, the station from Greenville is clamoring for a story and being rejected. They’re just the first outlet to show up. There will be other stations coming soon, no doubt. But this is her story. Hers. The blood is electric in her veins, whooshing quickly through her whole body as it lights her up inside. She has to fight to keep from smiling. There is a woman missing, after all; there is a tragedy happening inside this room.

  Scott speaks up, interrupting Tracy’s diatribe on the mysterious Kenny. “I guess I should give my statement now,” he says. He glances over at Tracy as if to say, Are you sure I should do this?

  Tracy nods.

  “We”—he glances at Tracy again, and she gives another nod, the look on her face both maternal and devoted—“decided to give it until six tonight for Annie to show up before I made the call. But with tomorrow being the rehearsal and still no sign of her, we think it might be best to call off the wedding.” He swallows. “For now.”

  Laurel writes four words on her notepad in all caps: THE WEDDING IS OFF.

  Tracy jumps in. “If Annie returns tomorrow, she will most likely not be up for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. If she left of her own free will, then there’s the question of why she wasn’t here. That will be a conversation she and Scott will need to have. And if she didn’t leave of her own free will, well . . . she won’t be up to getting married now.” Tracy’s mouth turns down, and for a horrifying moment, Laurel is afraid she’s going to start bawling. But she composes herself.

  Scott speaks again. “I thought you could go ahead and write a story about the decision, then people would know why I’m calling it off without my having to repeat myself again and again,” he says. His eyes stray to the reporters across the street. “I meant it just for the town. For our friends and family. Damon thought it would be a good idea to, you know, control the story that gets out. I guess I didn’t know they’d show up here. Now.”

  His voice sounds less strong by the minute, like someone has kicked him in the chest and he’s having trouble taking a deep breath. Laurel knows that the police are looking at him, but like Tracy, she doesn’t think Scott Hanson did anything to Annie Taft. She thinks he is a victim, too, that his intended life has been stolen right out from under his nose.

  “I will,” she says. She swallows. “And I’m sorry. About the wedding.” This story, she understands anew, is far from over. It is only going to get bigger. Her story in tomorrow’s paper will most likely get picked up, go viral. More news outlets will show up, looking for an angle, some insight. But she has the insight. She has the exclusive that Scott has called off the wedding.

  “I’ll go get to work on the story right away,” she says to Scott and Tracy. “So it’ll make the morning paper.”

  Scott nods grimly. “Thank you,” he says.

  “Yes, thank you,” Tracy echoes.

  Laurel shrugs. “Just doing my job,” she says. She exits the house and walks quickly past the news van and its crew, busy as bees in a hive, buzzing over a story unfolding.

  Faye

  She lies on her back and stares at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of her house at night, tuning her ears
toward any sounds that don’t belong but hearing none.

  Would Annie return in the night, just show up under cover of darkness? Would she offer an explanation or withhold it? Faye knows it wouldn’t matter. She would just wrap that girl in her arms and be glad.

  A wave of what can be described only as physical pain assaults her as memories play out in her mind. Annie at eight years old shyly handing her a permission form to go on a field trip. When Faye checked the box for guardian instead of parent, Annie piped up, “Why’d you check that box, Aunt Faye?”

  “Because I’m not your mama,” Faye had answered, then handed the paper back to the child and hurried off to the next task.

  As a single working mom, she was always so busy, so short with both the girls. Now she thinks about the little-girl version of Annie, standing there holding that paper, puzzling over the word guardian, probably too afraid to ask any more questions. And Annie never did. She must’ve figured out on her own what guardian meant. Faye wants to go back in time, to slow down long enough to look into Annie’s eyes and explain it all to her, to be a guardian in the truest sense of the word.

  Having Annie was a luxury she never fully appreciated. Having Annie was a gift her sister was denied. She should’ve treated her as such. Why does it take loss to make you realize what you had? This is one of the great injustices of life. It was the same with losing Lydia. She never knew how much her sister meant to her until she died. Lydia used to call her after she got Annie down for the night and beg her to come visit. “I’m so lonely, Faye. You’ve got to come keep me company. I feel like I might die of loneliness.”

  Sometimes Faye has thought of this—wondering if Lydia’s loneliness caused her to let the wrong person into her life. She wonders if, in its own way, loneliness did kill her sister. And she kicks herself for not just telling T. J. Wilkins where to stick it and coming to Ludlow to rescue her sister. They were both lonely, back then, each isolated by their individual circumstances, both too proud to tell the other what was really happening in their lives. What if Lydia had confessed that she was, as the rumor went, seeing a married man? What if Faye had told Lydia that she was afraid of her husband? Perhaps the two could’ve rescued each other.

  She tries to think about something else, her mind shifting to Tracy and Scott sleeping on her couches for a second night. They’re out there right now, maybe whispering in the dark, maybe cuddling together on one couch doing God knows what under the blankets that Faye has provided. What would Annie think if she walked back in and saw her best friend and her fiancé all cozied up? It’s tacky, and they should see that without having to be told. Some people just have no sense.

  Faye wonders if she should be allowing this, but she also doesn’t know how she can stop it. They’re grown-ass adults who can conduct themselves any way they see fit. The two of them have been thick as thieves, sitting together for meals, huddling in corners talking, acting as if each is the other’s long-lost best friend. She meant to ask Clary what she thought about it, but things got so crazy that she forgot. The truth is, in the grand scheme of things, Faye doesn’t really care. All she really cares about is finding Annie. The cops have told her that the likelihood of that is growing smaller with each passing hour, but she can’t listen to such negative talk. She has made a promise to herself: she will find Annie. She has to.

  The last time she felt this intent was when she vowed to find Lydia’s killer. It had driven her nearly crazy, the desire to identify and punish whoever it was who had put his hands around her sister’s throat and choked the life out of her. Annie had told her story about Cordell Lewis, but Faye was hesitant to take a little child’s word for it. Night after night, she wrestled over what to do. Annie seemed so certain that Uncle Cord had done it. Yet Faye didn’t want to point the finger at an innocent man unless she was sure.

  The police seemed to take their cues from her, and this was not a position she relished being in. She could feel the town’s desire to solve Lydia’s murder mounting with each passing day. She’d gotten so desperate she’d gone to see a psychic, a woman who lived in the North Carolina mountains and had contacted her promising a revelation she’d been given. Faye had gone there on impulse and in desperation, which, in hindsight, was not the best combination.

  Clary and Annie napped on the drive, then watched cartoons in the woman’s living room while she and Faye sat on the front porch of her very normal, very modest house that overlooked a ring of mountains. There were no crystals or talismans or tarot cards. There was no incense or candles burning. The psychic was just an average-looking middle-aged woman with a pensive look and a dachshund. She could’ve been a teacher or a florist. She could’ve been anyone at all.

  It had been a chilly day, the weather turning colder the longer they sat there. Faye had hung on the woman’s every word, desperate for insight, ignoring the chill. The woman had known things without Faye having to tell her. Things she could’ve gotten from the paper, sure, but some things that weren’t reported. She’d known that Lydia was a single mother, that she’d potentially been involved with several men at the time of her death (that was the rumor, but Faye never did believe it), and that she loved the outdoors. She’d known that Lydia died outside; she’d said that Annie was cold after Lydia died, that she’d wandered out of the tent, away from her still, silent mother, and that the police had wrapped her in a blanket when they found her.

  When she’d looked at Faye and said, “Trust the child,” the air had shifted, blowing in a new direction, raising the hairs on the back of Faye’s neck.

  The woman charged her $200 for the revelation. Faye wrote a check for the last of her money and wondered how she would buy groceries. Later, Hal gave her money, told her she was stupid for paying some psychic who claimed to know something.

  “You can’t fall for that,” he’d said. “She could’ve gotten every single thing she told you right out of the papers.”

  But Faye had fallen for it. She’d fallen for it so much, she’d believed the woman wholeheartedly. She’d pushed to prosecute based on Annie’s word. She’d trusted the child like the woman had said to do. Once she’d given her assent, small-town justice had taken over. And it had cost a man twenty-three years of his life. She wonders again if that man decided to seek retribution on the child Faye had trusted all those years ago. The police say he has an alibi for when Annie went missing, but something niggles at her. The timing is just too close: his release and Annie’s wedding. If it were her, in jail for all those years for a crime she didn’t commit, she would want someone to pay.

  She rolls over in her bed with an audible sigh, punching her pillow into a better position for her head, filled with all its busy, sleep-stealing thoughts. She stares up at the ceiling, wishing Lydia were here, that she could tell Lydia all that is happening and ask her what she should do. But Lydia isn’t here, and neither is Annie. And Faye has never felt so alone.

  MAY 31

  REHEARSAL DAY

  ONE DAY UNTIL THE WEDDING

  Ludlow Ledger

  Missing Bride’s Fiancé Calls off Wedding

  By Laurel Haines, staff reporter

  Scott Hanson, fiancé of missing bride Annie Taft, has decided to call off their wedding, which was to take place this Saturday at First Baptist Ludlow. Scott Hanson said of the decision, “I hate to use the word cancel. I’m saying postpone. But I just don’t see another way. I gave myself a deadline that, if she wasn’t back by six p.m. on Thursday, I would have to do something. We’ve reached a point that, even if she returns tomorrow, she’s not going to be up to going ahead with the original plans.”

  Scott Hanson is a twenty-eight-year-old medical sales representative who met Annie Taft in Greenville through mutual friends. After a year of dating, they began discussing marriage. Scott proposed on a weekend trip to Savannah, Georgia, one of their favorite places. “It was so romantic,” says Tracy Douglas, one of Annie’s oldest friends who was to be a bridesmaid in the wedding. “Annie was thrilled. She couldn�
�t wait to marry Scott.”

  Family and friends are holding out hope that Annie will fulfill her dream of saying, “I do,” to the man she loves, and that they will celebrate her safe return very soon. A candlelight prayer vigil will take place this evening at First Baptist Ludlow at the time her wedding rehearsal would’ve been held. Anyone who would like to gather to pray for Annie Taft’s safe return is invited to come at six o’clock.

  Laurel

  “Nice job,” Damon says. He is standing over her desk, holding up today’s paper. Her story is the lead, and probably the only story anyone will read. Already, hits on the paper’s site have quadrupled as people hungry for information on the lovely missing bride have searched it out. Twenty-six hundred people and counting have shared the story on Facebook, and the number grows each time Laurel checks, which is often. It is breaking news, and she is the one who broke it. Okay, it was given to her—she didn’t have to go uncover it—but no one has to know that.

  Damon starts prattling on about sending her to cover the prayer vigil, adding his thoughts about angles and sidebar stories she might want to pursue. She stops listening. This is her story, and she will cover it her way. She sees it all in front of her: who she will talk to, what she will write, how she will angle it. It is as clear to her as if it is already done. Some people see lines on a page and can turn them into a physical building. Some people see a blank canvas and can turn it into a masterpiece. Some people see a mangled human body and can make it whole again. Her? She sees a story and knows exactly the way it should be told. This is her gift, the one thing in life she knows for sure she has been given.