“So you don’t think that boy you brought in did anything to her?”
“I think he knows more than he’s telling. But I don’t think he killed her, no. I think this was an accident.”
“So are you going to let him go?” she asks. She does not want any more lives ruined. She wants, somehow, for them to all move on, to move forward. It will take a long, long time and a lot of healing, but Faye wants that to be possible. She thinks Annie would want that, too.
“I’d like to hear the truth from him first, but yes.”
“I think he might’ve really loved her,” Faye says. She is only guessing, based on a feeling. Her heart is a tight ball inside her chest, and someone is gripping it with all their might.
“We all did,” Hal says, his voice thick with tears. Then he doesn’t say anything at all.
“I’ll let you get on with it,” Faye says. And she doesn’t know if she means the investigation or grieving Annie or his life. She supposes it doesn’t matter.
Kenny
He has not slept, he has drunk far too many cups of coffee, and he is bleary-eyed. The walls of the small room they’ve kept him in are closing in. The cops rotate in and out, each trying to rattle him in a new and experimental way. One plays sympathetic. One plays tough. One hits him with the facts they have. He is the most interesting because he reveals what they have against him.
The cop tells him about the call records, the witness who says she saw the two of them together on that last walk. Kenny knows they have good reason for their suspicions; he’s been waiting for this moment. He’d thought he would know what to say when the time came. But no words come, so he sits, mute, as the mouthy cop reveals, Kenny guesses, probably more than his supervisors would’ve wanted. But no one comes in to stop him.
He is debating telling them the whole story when a woman comes in the room and whispers in the cop’s ear. Her face is a grim line, and it is as if she transfers her exact expression onto the cop’s face when she speaks. He nudges his partner with his elbow; then they both stand and exit the room with no explanation. Kenny can feel that something significant has happened.
The cops leave him in the little room for a very long time. It is two o’clock on what was to have been Annie’s wedding day. He paces back and forth, drums out a rhythm on the tabletop, drains the last of his cold coffee, and grimaces at the taste. They have provided him with pen and paper, but he doesn’t dare write down what he is thinking, lest it be used against him later. He gets up and peers out of the tiny glass window in the door, tries the knob. Surprisingly, it turns. He is not locked in. He is free.
He steps out into the hall, looks to the right and left, prepared to use the classic and nonnegotiable “I have to go to the bathroom” if someone comes along to ask why he’s standing in the hall. But no one comes along.
He walks into the lobby, thinking they will tackle him, but no one follows. The lobby is, in fact, empty. This is odd. When the cops brought him into the station earlier, he’d raised his eyes long enough to see someone at the reception desk, a few cops milling around, several people in the waiting room chairs. But now it is a ghost town. He stands there, feeling stupid for pausing, for giving them more time to figure out he is gone and hunt him down. He does not want to go back into that small, windowless room.
But he can sense something is wrong. So, like a character in a horror movie, his curiosity gets the better of him, driving him to turn around and go in search of where everyone has disappeared to. He turns and heads back in the direction he came from, his ears pricked for the sound of voices, or coffee brewing, or . . . something. But the station is deathly silent. He looks around for a camera that is recording his movements, wonders if somewhere the whole lot of them are gathered around, watching him search, and laughing. He is so used to people pranking him, poking fun at him, using him as the butt of a joke, he half expects it, even now.
He hears the sound of chair wheels rolling across the floor and moves toward the sound. His legs carry him to a room located behind the lobby, a room he hasn’t ever seen. It is, he finds out when he rounds the corner, the squad room, and everyone in the station looks to be crammed into it. But they aren’t milling around, making casual conversation or barking out orders or refilling their coffee cups. They are all frozen, speechless. Sheriff Hal York, who must’ve been speaking before, now stands silent at the front of the room, his head bowed.
When Kenny enters the room, their heads all swing around to look at him in unison, their faces a mixture of shock and confusion. For a moment, he wonders if the looks on their faces are for him. But then he hears a woman start to weep. She pushes past him as she exits the room, her hand on her mouth in a futile effort to stave back her sobs. One by one, they turn away from him, turn back to look at their desks, their coffee cups, their feet encased in utilitarian nondescript shoes, the kind worn by people who expect to be on their feet all day.
He is left blinking and scanning the room, wondering why no one has demanded to know why he’s out walking around. He thinks maybe he should just turn and leave. But something keeps him rooted to this spot; something tells him to hold on to this moment, because it is a moment he will remember for the rest of his life. He feels a new fear, fresh and tight, in his throat.
The sheriff catches his eye, nods for him to come forward. Kenny nods back and goes to do so, but his feet are stuck to the floor. He cannot figure out how to unstick them. His brain commands his feet to rise, but they remain frozen in place. His mind knows what his feet do not: he must not go to the sheriff because the sheriff is going to tell him the worst bad thing. He sees Annie at the school dance in the eighth grade, refusing to smile because she doesn’t want anyone to see her new braces. She thinks she looks ugly. He should’ve told her that nothing could make her ugly. That to him, she was—and is still—the most beautiful girl in the world. He should’ve been braver. And now it is too late. He knows this before the sheriff speaks a word.
Hal York calls out, “Whoa, whoa!” as he crosses the room toward Kenny with his long, loping stride. For a moment, Kenny cannot figure out why Sheriff York is telling him to “whoa,” when he isn’t moving at all. But then he realizes that, while his feet aren’t moving, his body is. He sees the floor rising up to meet him. Only when it is too late does he try to put out his hands to catch his fall.
JUNE 2
ONE DAY AFTER THE WEDDING DAY
Body of Missing Bride Found
By Laurel Haines, staff reporter
“This was absolutely not the outcome we wanted,” said an emotional Sheriff Hal York upon relaying the news that the body of Annie Taft, a Ludlow bride reported missing on Wednesday, was found in a wooded area deep within Eden Hill State Park. Taft appears to have fallen to her death. Sheriff York has promised a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death.
Annie Taft was the only witness to the death of her mother, Lydia Taft, when she was just three years old. The three-year-old identified her mother’s killer as Cordell Lewis, a family friend. Lewis served twenty-three years in prison for the murder but was recently released.
The town of Ludlow grieves with Taft’s friends and loved ones, many of whom are still gathered in town for what was to have been her wedding ceremony. The Ludlow Ledger will provide funeral details as soon as they are released. We invite all citizens to pray for this family as they are again touched by unspeakable tragedy.
Faye
Now she must make “the arrangements.” She and Clary are going to the funeral home in a bit. They are picking a casket, figuring out where to have the service, where to bury Annie. They must wait until her body is released and the investigation is over before they can bury her. She has begged Hal to be as expedient as possible, and he has promised he will move things along as fast as he can.
Faye simply cannot make it all work out in her mind: how they are planning a funeral when they are supposed to be recovering from a wedding. It is like a horrible, cruel joke that someone
is playing on her. She keeps waiting for someone to say, We were just kidding. Annie is fine. Of course she is.
Annie, Annie, Annie, child of my heart. You cannot be gone. This is not right. Faye thinks this again and again, like a song stuck in her head.
Hal comes to tell her what happened to Annie. He brings the recording of Kenny giving his statement. They sit side by side on Faye’s bed as they listen.
“Well, Mr. Spacey,” Hal says. “You ready to give your statement?”
Faye hears Kenny’s voice, still thick with tears after receiving the news that Annie is dead. “Yes, sir,” he says. “I’m ready.”
“You going to tell the truth now?” Hal asks; he has his cop voice on.
“And nothing but,” says Kenny. She can hear the nerves in his voice. “So help me God.”
“Well,” Hal says, “let’s hear your story.”
“I met Annie Taft on the night of May twenty-eighth, because it was the last time we would be able to be alone before her wedding. We agreed that it would be the last time we would see each other, that we wouldn’t see each other again after the wedding because it wouldn’t be right, her being married and all.” Kenny pauses, but no one says anything, so he continues.
“She wanted me to drive her new car, because she said that way she could always picture me sitting there, even when she was in Georgia and I was here. She said that way I could still be part of her new life. So I drove the car to Eden Hill State Park, because she wanted to go there.”
Faye hears Hal’s voice. “And she was in the car?”
“Yes, sir,” Kenny responds.
“In the passenger seat?” Hal asks.
“That’s right,” Kenny says. “She was feeling sad about her mom not being there for her wedding, and she was also upset because she felt guilty about Cordell Lewis being in jail all those years. She said she knows now that he didn’t do it. She said she wanted to go there—where her mother was killed—because she thought she would have a memory come to her if we did. She wanted to go at night because her mother was killed at night. She said that she had a suspicion, but she couldn’t be sure yet.”
“Did she say what the suspicion was?” Hal asks.
“No, she didn’t. She said she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. Just that something had happened, and she’d had this feeling that it was tied to her mom. She wouldn’t say any more. But she promised she’d tell me once she knew for sure.”
“Okay,” Hal says.
“I begged her not to go because it had started raining. But when she got like that, there was no stopping her. So, we get to Eden Hill, and we park in this out-of-the-way place she always parks in. She never wants anyone to see her car and figure out she’s gone there. So she always hides her car.”
“I didn’t know that,” Faye interjects.
Hal quickly stops the recording. “You didn’t?”
“No. I mean, I knew that’s where she went whenever she was upset, but I had no idea she took such precautions to keep it a secret.”
Hal shrugs. “Maybe we all need our secrets,” he mumbles before quickly pressing “Play.”
“Once we parked, she was about to get out of the car, but I reached over and stopped her. I asked her to sit with me a minute and, well, I—” There is silence, but Faye can hear Kenny’s ragged breathing. “I just went for broke, I guess you could say. I told her I was in love with her and I knew she loved me, too, and I wanted her to call off the wedding and let me take her to England, like we’d always talked about. I told her I’d do anything. I . . . begged.”
There is another period of silence. Then Hal’s voice says, quietly, “What’d she do?”
Faye hears Kenny take in a long, shuddering breath. “She told me she had no intention of calling off her wedding or of going with me to England. She told me that, yes, she loves me, but not like that. Not like a husband. And I said, well isn’t that interesting, since we just did what husbands and wives do back at my apartment? And she said, ‘Don’t be gross,’ and I said, ‘I’m not being gross; I’m being factual.’ And she said, ‘Look, you were my first time’—I was, you know—‘we were each other’s first time, and because of that, you’ll always be special. But, Kenny, surely you know I can’t marry you. Back at your apartment? That was goodbye.’”
There is another pause. Faye hears Kenny sniff, hears his voice go funny. “I just lost it. I started screaming at her about how she was a selfish bitch and how she used me all these years and how I hated her and never wanted to see her again. Then she just jumped out of the car and ran off into the woods.”
“And did you go after her?” Hal asks.
“Of course I did,” Kenny says, “Though not right away, to be honest. I debated just leaving . . . but of course I couldn’t do that.” In his voice Faye can hear the raw devotion, the pure love. “By the time I got out of the car it was raining even harder. I ran after her, but it was dark, and I couldn’t see a damn thing. I called her name again and again, but I’m not sure she could hear me calling on account of the pouring rain. I searched as best I could, but . . . I never found her. Finally, I just decided maybe she was hiding somewhere, waiting for me to leave. Then she’d come out, ya know?”
Hal’s voice says, “Mm-hmm.”
“So I left the keys in the front seat of her car, left it unlocked, and started walking home. I laid awake all night hoping she’d call, but she never did. Nothing the next day, either. And then my girlfriend came home, and I convinced myself that that was it, that it was over. She was done with me. We’d never see each other again. She’d get married, and we’d go on with our lives. And I’d keep my promise to never tell anyone. I didn’t know she was missing until the cops showed up at my door.”
Then there is a beat, and Kenny adds, “I swear on my mother’s life.”
“And that means a lot to you, does it?” Hal asks. “Your mother’s life?”
Kenny’s answer is barely audible. “Of course.”
No one speaks, but Faye can hear papers rustling as the recorder plays on. Someone clears his throat. She opens her mouth to tell Hal to shut it off, that she’s heard enough. But he holds up a hand and points at what is coming next. On cue, she hears a low, mournful keening noise, the kind of choked, strangled cry that can come only from the deepest part of someone’s soul.
“It’s my fault,” Kenny says, the words one long, painful moan. He sobs for a few seconds more, then she can hear him working to compose himself.
Hal’s voice says, “It was an accident, son.”
“No,” Kenny argues, drawing out the word in anguish. “She’s dead because of me. If I’d gone and gotten help instead of giving up on her, maybe someone could’ve found her. Maybe she could’ve been saved. If I hadn’t left her there. If I’d done something—anything—other than what I did.”
“Turn it off,” Faye says.
Hal does. “There was nothing else anyway. Just me trying to reassure him, then us taking care of the formalities.”
“Is it his fault?” she asks, her voice raspy with grief. She can feel it again, that need to blame someone, to punish a guilty party. Anyone but the person who died. She’d wanted to punish someone for Lydia’s death all those years ago, but what if Lydia had done something different? If she’d been wise and mature, not so impetuous and wild. She’d had no business camping alone with a three-year-old in the middle of the woods. And now, with Annie, who’d jumped out of a car and gone running off into the woods in the rainy darkness.
Accidents happen. Life goes sideways. And people get hurt. Her sister and her niece are both lost to her now, largely due to situations they put themselves in. Is Kenny to blame? Maybe in part. But Annie’s insistence on their secret relationship put him in that impossible situation. And now he’s going to have to live with the what-ifs for the rest of his life. The what-ifs and the loss. She and Kenny will have that in common, she supposes.
Hal stands to leave. He pulls her up, too, and holds her close before he goe
s. He kisses the top of her head, and her eyes dart toward her open bedroom door. He puts his finger under her chin, lifts her head until her eyes meet his. “Don’t worry about that,” he says.
“Someone could see,” she says. And as she says it, she is so tired of those three words, words that have governed her life for far too long. She is tired of secrets, of hiding, of lying and denying. No more rules. She cannot do this with Hal anymore. She wants to live in the open, in the bright light of day. She wills him to say the right thing, to tell her he will stand up for her, that he will claim her.
But instead he just says, “No one will see.” And she knows that he expects to go on being invisible with her. But Faye is tired of being invisible. She wants to be seen. She wants to belong somewhere, with someone. As it should be.
“You should go,” she says.
He starts to argue, but something stops him. He nods once and leaves.
Clary sticks her head in the door as soon as he is gone. Her voice is quiet and weak when she says, “Mama?”
“Yes?” Faye responds.
“I saw Hal leave,” Clary says, and swallows. She comes over to where Faye has flopped back onto the bed, sits in the spot Hal just occupied.
“Yeah, he had to get back to the station,” Faye says. She knows how this must look to Clary, Hal back here in her bedroom, sitting on her bed. The intimacy of it must look strange no matter what the situation is. Policemen usually deliver news to victims in living rooms. “He played Kenny’s statement for me,” Faye says. “I don’t think he was supposed to, but he . . . feels sorry for me, I guess.”
Clary holds up her hand, a weary look on her face. “Mom,” she says. “You can stop now.”
“Stop . . . what?” she asks, her heart kicking hard against her rib cage.
Clary gives her a smirk, looking exactly like she did when she was a teenager and thought she knew better than Faye about just about everything. “I know.” She thinks about it for a moment, looks upward, and smiles at someone who isn’t there. “We knew.”
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