Only Ever Her

by Whalen, Marybeth Mayhew

  “Well, we think Scott here might,” Hal retorts. Scott looks afraid, and for a moment Faye wonders if he’s afraid of being caught or afraid of what’s in the trunk. She squints at the rear of the car, but with the tinted windows it’s impossible to see what’s inside. Around her, the cops maintain their safe distance, waiting, she knows, for the moment they can descend on that car.

  Tracy turns to Scott. “You don’t have to do this. And I don’t think you should without a lawyer present—”

  “Aw, come on,” Hal interrupts, losing his cool. “We ain’t got time for that. Do you want to find your friend or not?”

  Tracy, indignant, gestures to the scene, to the abandoned car in the middle of the woods, to the muddy creek filled with stagnant water nearby, to the ring of stalwart officers. “This,” she says, “is a crime scene. Who’s to say that you’re not going to use his presence here now as some sort of indication that he was present here before?” Faye thinks Tracy sounds like she’s watched one too many true-crime shows.

  Hal looks at Faye, realizing, seemingly for the first time, that she’s there, too. She sees him start to tell her to get back in the truck but then decide against it. “Look,” Hal says wearily. “I need that trunk open.” He points at the rear of the car. “Because I need to see if Annie Taft is inside it. Possibly still alive. Possibly hearing all this, wishing you’d shut your damn mouth and let us get on with it.” He turns back to Scott. “Hit the button, son,” he says, turning his back on all of them and moving toward the car.

  “Wait!” Tracy calls out.

  They all turn around with a huff, out of patience with her now. Tracy holds up her phone, fiddles with it, then turns it around and begins to take a video of the scene.

  “Okay, go ahead now,” she calls out.

  Faye has to admit, she would’ve never thought the girl had it in her. She can’t wait to tell Annie about this just as soon as she sees her. They will laugh and laugh.

  They all watch as the trunk hatch sails into the air, revealing its contents. They move in unison toward it, Scott included.

  “No!” Tracy calls out to him to stay clear of the trunk.

  Scott steps back and gives Faye a stricken look. The first officer to get there calls out, “Clear!”

  Faye exhales the breath she was holding, relieved that her niece is not in that trunk. But at the very same time, the thought occurs to her: If she’s not there, then where is she?

  Clary

  She goes back to the house, again, to wait for news, again. Though Faye has not come home since Hal walked her out of the church, this is what Clary has pieced together: Kenny Spacey has been taken in for questioning based on evidence of recent contact with Annie that he didn’t share when the police first questioned him. And Annie’s missing car was found in a wooded ravine near the park where Annie’s mother was murdered.

  A text pings on her phone: her mother. With Hal at the site where her car was found. She’s not here.

  Clary puts the phone back in her pocket, swallows the hope of a miracle—of Annie being somehow found alive. In the morning volunteers from the community are gathering to walk the wooded area where her car was found, to search for her. But until daylight, there is nothing they can do but wait. The police are searching Annie’s car.

  Clary gets up, passes through the house, out the back door, toward the dove shed. The four walls have been moving closer and closer with each passing hour. It is full dark now, and she wonders if they have brought lights out to where Annie’s car is or if they’ve stopped searching it for now. She doesn’t want them to stop, not until they find Annie and this is all over. She hears a voice a few feet away and realizes it is Travis, standing near the dove shed, talking on the phone, trying to get some privacy. The doves’ cooing masks the sound of her creeping closer.

  She knows she should step back inside, but she can’t help but listen, picking up what’s going on from his one-sided conversation. He is talking to Deandra. Clary understands from what he is saying that she is flying back to Florida, to their son, who they left with her mother. She is at the airport now. He says he loves her, tells her to keep praying for Annie, and hangs up.

  Clary hurries back to the house and flattens herself against the wall, thinking that perhaps in the darkness he won’t see her when he passes by. Her mother is not there, Scott and Tracy (of course she went with him) haven’t returned from going to open the car for the police, and Travis’s wife, she has just learned, isn’t here. The officers who were there earlier have left. Somehow, in the crush of constant company, they have ended up alone.

  She feels her mouth go dry as he stops in front of her. He turns to face her, and there is a flash of memory, the barest flicker, but it is so real it is as if it is happening here and now. She imagines his mouth against her neck, saying to her, “This place is boring; let’s go find some trouble.” She’s always thought of that boy—the one in her memory—as a kind of ghost. And now he has materialized in front of her. The last time they were alone was when he told her he was going to become a pastor. He’d been called, he’d said. Then he’d leveled her with six words. “But you’re not pastor’s wife material.” In that moment, the words in her mouth had died on her tongue, and to this day she’s never spoken them. But Annie wants her to now.

  She tries to think of something to say, something that will explain her presence there, outside, where he was talking privately on the phone. But before she can speak, he says, “I sent Deandra home.” He shrugs, closes his eyes. From the floodlight on the back of the house, she can see him as clear as day.

  He continues, “There’s not going to be a wedding, so there was no sense in her staying. Our little boy is cutting some teeth, fussing a lot. He needs his mother. I thought about going home, but . . . I feel like I’m needed here.” He looks at her, and she wonders, does he think she needs him? Is he talking about her—or all of them?

  “Did you hear about the car?” he asks. “That there’s no sign of her?”

  She nods, thinking of what Annie wanted her to tell him. The truth. The truth is always the right answer. Faye used to say that. But the truth is too far away now. And he is so scarily close. She wants to get away from him. She wants to turn around and run, but she is frozen against that wall. She wishes Annie were here. But if Annie were here, Annie would tell. She would open her mouth and tell about that time she surprised her in Charlotte after graduation. She would tell him what she saw. Which is why they had that fight. Because Clary can’t afford for Annie to tell.

  Travis speaks, interrupting her thoughts. “I prayed so hard.”

  “We all prayed,” she says.

  “I know, I know,” he says. “We all did. I just thought—”

  She hears it but doesn’t believe what she has heard. “You just thought what?” She laughs, because it is just the confirmation she was looking for. If only Annie were there to witness it. I was right! she thinks.

  “You thought that your prayers were special? That God hears you better? That if you prayed, He would have to do as you ask?”

  Travis looks at her, stunned at being challenged, and she sees anger uncurl inside him, an anger that matches her own. She sees him again as the kid he was, remembers the angry boy who would ball up his fist and swing at anyone who threatened or teased him before he even thought about it, back before God got ahold of him. She sees now that the angry young man is still in there. She has just gotten a full glimpse of him, the boy who was once all hers. He is still in there. And she both hates and loves this knowledge.

  She wishes that she could replace this man with that boy, in all his wildness, all his passion. Because it did not scare her; it thrilled her. She feels all his anger rise to the surface, anger at being called out, and she realizes that he has forgotten what it is to be challenged. His sheepish wife, his subservient staff, his stalwart followers—they do not challenge or question him. They make things happen for him. She knows what he has become. And she has protected their daughte
r from that.

  Annie wanted her to tell him about that child’s existence, the one she went to Charlotte to have, the one she kept secret and lied about. The child who is now living in a happy home, with two loving parents who waited years for her. She gets a letter every quarter updating her on their daughter’s life—her friends, her favorites, her school. She also gets a picture of a beautiful little girl with dark hooded eyes and a wide, daring grin. Those letters are the highlight of Clary’s life. She will not let him take that away from her. He took his love away a long time ago, but he left her with this one thing she could still do right. And she’d done the rightest thing she knew to do.

  “I can’t believe what you’ve become,” she says.

  He moves closer, leans his full weight onto the wall she is still flattened against. She feels his closeness, smells his skin. Though he is so different, he still smells like she remembers. He looks at her, and she sees his confusion, his brokenness, giving her a glimpse of himself she doubts he lets anyone else see, ever.

  “I can’t, either,” he says. Then he walks away. She watches his back until he moves out from under the spotlight and disappears into the darkness.

  Faye

  When they leave the site where Annie’s car was found, Faye tells Hal she wants to go to the salon rather than home.

  “I’ll pay bills or tidy up. I don’t want to go back home. I just can’t sit there anymore,” she says.

  “I understand,” he says, and turns them back into town instead of away from it. She is glad they are in his truck and not in an obvious patrol car. Though everyone knows the sheriff’s truck. It’s not like they are incognito. They never have been, and that is the trouble.

  As he drives, Hal keeps his eyes on the windshield, and she watches his profile. It has softened through the years; his eyes droop slightly at the edges now; his chin isn’t nearly as taut. She’s sure if someone were to stare at her, they would note similar changes. They have both grown older. She’d like to say they’ve also grown up. They’ve made good decisions ever since that one bad one when he took her to fetch her things from her ex, T. J. She’d been afraid, and he’d offered to go with her, to protect her, as a friend. They both knew it was more than that, but they’d lied to themselves and each other.

  They began because she needed someone to hold her: she was staying in a town she’d never intended to live in, her marriage was ending, and she had no one save the two little girls clinging to her. But she didn’t want to be clung to; she wanted to be held. Somehow he knew that just by looking at her. It was just the one time, on the way back from Virginia. They’d gotten two hotel rooms, but one of the two was never slept in. Since then, they’ve done everything they can not to hurt anybody. But look where it’s gotten them.

  He parks the truck and starts to open his door. She reaches out to stop him, out of habit. Each of them is careful to remind each other of the danger zones. Being alone at night is one of them. “I’ll be fine by myself,” she says, and opens her door. “You should go on home to your wife.”

  The dome light goes on, and in the starkness, she sees the lines beside his eyes, the creases beside his mouth. But none of that matters. This, she imagines, is what a lifelong marriage would be like. You look at the older version, but all you see is the person you fell in love with. Only without the guilt for feeling that way. She knows he sees her the same way because when he describes her, it is always as if she’s the same young woman who came blowing into the police station all those years ago. He sees the earlier model, not the current one. It is a trick of love, she thinks. The best trick of all.

  “I’m going to walk you in,” he says. “With everything going on, I’m not going to let you go into a dark place alone.”

  She nods once and climbs out of the car. Together, they walk across the parking lot. She notices the shadows as she does, the places someone intending harm could hide. People say Ludlow is a safe town, but none of them is the sister of a girl who was murdered here. She is grateful for Hal’s insistence on walking her in, his steady, formidable presence beside her as she unlocks the door. She fumbles with the keys, and he sees her hands are shaking. She feels his large hand cover hers.

  “Give them to me,” he says.

  As he works the lock and opens the door, she asks a question that’s been on her mind since he explained to her what was going on: they’d found Annie’s car in a ravine near where Lydia died; they’ve brought in a friend of hers from high school who was, apparently, the last person to ever talk to her. “Do you think that kid did it?” she ventures.

  “It’s likely,” he says.

  “But why?” she asks. She feels tentative this time. The same things are happening with Annie that happened with Lydia—the last person known to be with her is the first person suspected. In Lydia’s case, they never looked any further. Faye thinks of Cordell Lewis sitting in prison all those years, begging someone to believe him. And now someone finally has. And yet, history seems to be repeating itself: here we go again.

  “He didn’t tell us about seeing her the night she disappeared. We’ve got the proof on her phone, which was in her car. They were in communication that night; to what extent and what all transpired is what we’re trying to figure out. We believe he’s the one who drove her car and left it out there. We think—” He stops talking, and she feels her heart pick up speed in the space of the words he does not say.

  She swallows. “You think what?”

  He shifts on his feet and looks away. “We don’t really know,” he says.

  “Don’t lie to me!” she says, her own voice shrill in her ears. “Don’t you dare start lying to me now!”

  He steps toward her with his calm, concerned face, the same one he wore last night when he was reasoning with her about the reporters in her yard. “It’s sensitive information is all. Not anything I want to share right yet.”

  She crosses her arms and raises her eyebrows as she stares at him, waiting.

  He shifts under her gaze, opens his mouth, thinks better of it, closes it again. “Don’t give me that look,” he grouses. “You know I’ll tell you just as soon as I can, Faye.”

  He reaches for her, pulls her to him, as much to stop her from staring as to make contact. She knows he isn’t being sexual and, because of that, she allows him to do it. Because she trusts his intent, she lets herself believe that her intent is pure, too. She denies the flickers inside her that come with his touch, denies the deep need she has to be held by no one but him right now. She glances toward the front windows, to make sure the blinds are closed, before she allows herself to bury her face in his chest. They stand silent and still for a few minutes. She listens to the intimate sound of his heart beating inside his chest, the rhythm of his breathing.

  The kiss happens before either of them can think better of it. By the time she does, things are already moving too fast to stop. Or, at least, that is what she will tell herself later. Things just moved too fast. I couldn’t stop it. It was fate. Without letting her mind think about what’s happening—all the rules they’re breaking—she leads him to the spa chair, the one she told everyone she installed so she could expand her business and start offering facials. It wasn’t a complete lie. She did start offering facials.

  But mostly it was for this moment, in the hopes that one day this moment would come. How many times had she spied that spa chair in its place there at the back of the shop, looking innocuous, when she alone knew its real destiny? She’d ordered it because when the spa chair was reclined all the way back, it was wide enough and comfortable enough to make a decent makeshift bed for two people who had nowhere else to go.

  Headlights swing into the parking lot, and they both freeze in the midst of undressing. She knows he is as scared of getting caught as she is, especially now with the investigation, with their lives intersecting all over again. The waters are muddier than ever. But the car is just turning around in the parking lot. When the shop goes dark again, Faye says it aloud for the
first time, practicing it on him, her safe place, not caring if it breaks the mood, knowing that it won’t.

  “I think she’s dead,” she says, and her voice is clear and firm in the empty store.

  His response is immediate. “Don’t say that.”

  “What else could it be?” she challenges, moving as far away from him as she can get in that spa chair. “It’s what you wouldn’t say before.” She crosses her hands over her chest, aware of their mutual nakedness, aware that he is not hers to be naked with, that this is a theft of its own sort, as surely as the ones he investigates. And yet, at this point, she is helpless to abandon her crime.

  It has been that way since Lydia’s death. They grew close in the ensuing investigation; it was inevitable. Another cop—one who wasn’t married—asked her out right in front of him, and she said yes, because she was lonely and because she’d just filed legal separation papers from her husband back in Virginia, a man she’d been afraid of, a man she’d unwittingly been able to escape from thanks to a single late-night phone call.

  The next time Hal was alone with her, he’d asked her not to go out with that guy. She’d gotten angry. Asked, “Why in the hell not?” He’d wrapped his arms around her and held her close as his answer, and she’d understood why he didn’t want her to see someone else. She’d thought she was the only one with these misplaced feelings. But that turned out not to be true.

  But other than that one time in a roadside hotel somewhere between South Carolina and Virginia, they’d never crossed the line again. They told themselves it was just because of Lydia’s case, that they would most likely drift apart once they weren’t spending so much time together. But their feelings didn’t end when the bars slammed shut behind Cordell Lewis. She’d raised her kids, and he’d raised his with his wife, Brenda. She’d even done Brenda’s hair for years, learning that Brenda is a woman who is far more obsessed with her three daughters than she is with her husband.