The Ground Beneath

by Stephanie Vercier

  “I miss you too, Mrs. Mitchell.” In a different world, she’d be my mother-in-law now, and there was a time I’d felt so glad for that.

  I return my cart, telling her that I’ll do my shopping after our visit, and then I wait with her in line while she checks out. There are no incidents, no dirty looks from the cashier or the bagger or anyone else like there’d been for Hunter and myself at The Harvest Plate. Mrs. Mitchell is handed her receipt with a courteous, “Thank you for shopping with us,” and then I follow her out and help her load up her groceries.

  “Climb on in,” she says. “It’s kind of an old heap by now, but it still runs!”

  “That’s all that’s important,” I say, the passenger door creaking as I pull it closed.

  Sometimes Wyatt would borrow the minivan when his truck would break down. Fond memories come to mind, even if they’re tainted by what Wyatt was doing behind my back.

  She cranks the heater up and keeps just to the speed limit on the freshly plowed roads, and while she goes in the direction I’d expect her to in the first few minutes, she eventually begins to turn down roads that don’t seem familiar to me at all. She’s either taking some kind of shortcut, or my memory is failing me.

  “Did you move?” I ask her.

  “Move? Oh, no, I didn’t move.”

  “This just seems like a different way to get to your house is all.”

  “Well, we aren’t going to my house exactly,” she says casually. “You know, Micah works so hard, so I do his grocery shopping and clean the house for him.”

  “We’re going to Micah’s?” I had no clue this was part of the plan, and I’m tempted to tell her to pull over, turn around, and take me back to the grocery store.

  “Now, don’t you worry about a thing,” she says in that strangely animated tone of hers. “Micah doesn’t bite, and he might not even be there. See, I have my own key, and he doesn’t mind at all.”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Mitchell. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

  “Don’t be silly. Everything is going to be just fine.”

  Before I can argue any further, she pulls down a long driveway to a small, two-story house, then stops behind a familiar vehicle.

  Hunter’s SUV.

  “I don’t understand,” I say, reaching into my purse to grab my phone.

  “Understand what?”

  “That’s Hunter’s SUV in front of you.” I’m sure of it.

  “Hunter?” she says his name like she honestly hasn’t a clue of who I’m talking about.

  “Hunter Lawrence,” I say very clearly. “He’s my husband now, Mrs. Mitchell.”

  As if she hadn’t even noticed my hands before, she looks down, her eyes widening when she sees the rings. “Those aren’t the rings Wyatt gave you.”

  “No.” I pause, deciding I need to be delicate. “A while back, I decided it was time to take those off.”

  She sighs. “Well, of course you did. We all have to move on, don’t we?”

  “I still don’t understand why Hunter’s here,” I say, ready to text or call him to figure it out.

  “I’m sure Micah invited him over. It’s good for him to have a friend visit.”

  Unless it was years ago, I don’t believe Micah and Hunter have ever actually met in person, so I can’t imagine this is just some friendly visit.

  She’s already out the driver side door before I can press her for more details. I get out too, meeting her as she starts to unload the grocery bags.

  “Help me with these, would you, Allison?”

  I have a weird feeling about what’s going on, but I comply, taking several bags and following her up the porch, passing Micah’s sheriff cruiser along the way. I won’t be able to relax until I see Hunter, to know just why he’s here. I hope it’s not to punish the son for the father’s crime.

  “Here we go,” she says, putting a key into the front door and turning the lock. She picks the bag back up she’d set on the porch, then opens the door and says, “Hello! Just your mother bringing you groceries, Micah!”

  Going in behind her, I close the door. We just make it past the entryway to the living room where Hunter and Micah both stand up from the opposite chairs they appear to have been sitting in.

  “Alli?” Hunter asks, just as Micah mirrors with, “Allison?”

  Hunter walks toward me, rubbing the back of his neck, a confused expression on his face.

  “I ran into her at the grocery store!” Mrs. Mitchell says. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen this girl, so I invited her over for a visit. I don’t think you mind, son, do you?”

  “I thought we were going to her house,” I quietly say to Hunter, not wanting him to imagine I’d been off behind his back to see Micah.

  He nods at me and puts his hand around my back. “I just got here too,” then whispers into my ear, “Micah got my number, called me and said he has information about my mom’s accident.”

  Mrs. Mitchell has already scurried into the kitchen when I finally get a good look at Micah. He’s pale with dark circles under his eyes and several days’ worth of beard growth. I’m not sure he ever said it was okay for me to be here, but I decide his mother’s question was a rhetorical one.

  “She comes whenever she feels like it.” Micah looks annoyed as he says this to Hunter and myself, his head shaking when Mrs. Mitchell starts to sing in the kitchen.

  “I should help her,” I say, lifting one of the bags.

  “We’ll both help.” Micah comes up next, picking one of the bags up, his proximity bringing an unpleasant, ripe odor, like he’s skipped several needed showers.

  “Such wonderful little helpers!” Mrs. Mitchell says when we deliver the groceries. “I think I’m going to make some Christmas brownies. You all like peppermint chocolate chips, don’t you?”

  There is a very faint yes from Micah.

  “You all go into the living room and have fun, talk or play cards, whatever it is you young people do these days.”

  I look at Hunter who twists the wedding band I gave him on his finger, looking just as freaked out and nervous as I feel. Mrs. Mitchell hadn’t had any reaction at all to his presence here, and she had to feel something about Hunter. I hoped it would be along the lines of compassion and sorrow for what her now dead husband had done to him, but what she displays instead is total indifference.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Mom?” Micah asks her, his voice strained.

  She wrinkles her nose and sort of cringes, as if she’s also taking in how malodorous her son is. But then she smiles, shakes her head dismissively and says, “I’m fine, son. You go and enjoy yourself. I’ll catch up with you all later.”

  “Come on,” he says to Hunter and myself, and we follow him into the living room.

  This is not a place I imagined being today. In a way, it doesn’t even feel real.

  “You know something about the accident?” I ask Micah after Hunter and I sit down together on a couch, Micah across from us in a chair.

  “I wasn’t really prepared to tell you too, Allison,” he says, a blank look in his eyes.

  “Well, she’s here.” There’s a sharp edge to Hunter’s tone. “Whatever you have to tell me, you can say to her.” He puts his hand on my thigh, and I place mine over his, the anxious tap of his foot vibrating through his skin.

  Micah stares first at our hands, then up at me for what feels like way too long before he finally turns his attention back to Hunter. “I might as well get it out and have her hate me now instead of later.”

  I don’t say anything because there are so many places Micah could go with this, at least half a dozen things I can imagine him having done or kept secret that, at the very least, would make me angry with him.

  “You should know first that my father suffered,” Micah begins, a somewhat confusing way to start the conversation. “He had pancreatic cancer—I know people around here just heard cancer and not what kind, but it was bad, real bad. He lost all kinds of weight, had a lot of
sleepless nights, but he refused to take anything for the pain. He said taking that stuff was for the weak.”

  A sound of disgust slips out of Hunter’s mouth, and I slip my fingers through his.

  “My mom took care of him the best she could. Even when he was lying there sick, not even able to get up and use the bathroom himself, he wasn’t very… nice to her. In public, he always put on a show, but in private, he treated her like shit.”

  “I’m sorry,” I find myself saying, never having known Mrs. Mitchell to be unkind and sad she’d been treated so poorly by her husband. Then I think that perhaps his death brought her relief and newfound happiness.

  Micah shrugs, like there’s no reason for pity now. “She should have put a pillow over his face and called it done, but he traumatized her so much that she couldn’t even tell him to keep his filthy mouth shut.”

  “You hated your father,” Hunter says, just as I’d been thinking the same thing. With a degree of compassion, he asks, “Did he hurt you too?”

  I’d never really known Mr. Mitchell myself. He died before Wyatt and I started dating seriously, so I didn’t see the dynamics of their family up close. The only thing I thought I could say with some degree of certainty was that Wyatt hadn’t been abused, but I couldn’t say the same for Micah.

  “He never touched me like that,” Micah says, adding, “And yes, I hated him. Wyatt was his favorite, his athletic, football god of a son. Even if I was the one who took interest in the law, who would take on the same career he had, he never made me feel good enough to be his first-born. And then, like one last punch to my gut, he confessed things to me that made me sick, made me want to scour his words from my brain.”

  “What did he tell you?” Hunter sits forward, his body stiff.

  “To begin with… he told me about a metal box he had hidden away in his hunting cabin,” he says, keeping his words steady. “Then he told me to get it for him, and I drove out there, found the thing and brought it back, thinking it was a family heirloom or gold coins he’d stashed away, something he would trust me and not Wyatt with.” He shakes his head. “But then he opened it up in front of me, and I’d been so fucking wrong.”

  “What was in the box?” Hunter demands.

  His lip curls. “Pictures. He took them out, one by one, and he had this insane gleam in his eyes. When I saw what they were, pictures of young boys and girls without their clothes on, it made me sick… so sick I ran to the bathroom and threw up.”

  “Pictures. He took pictures?” Hunter’s voice is flat, his shoulders sagging.

  Does he think one might have been of him?

  “I don’t know if he took them or printed them or traded them with some other sicko. I didn’t want to know—I grabbed the box away from him, took them outside and threw them into the burn pile. He was surprised and angry I’d destroyed them, like he wanted me to have the same twisted craving, to enjoy the depraved things that he did.”

  I move to the edge of the cushion and slide my arm through Hunter’s. “So, he admitted everything to you?” I ask Micah.

  He nods. “Even if he was pissed off at me and knew how revolted I was at his true self, he couldn’t help himself from naming the people he’d gone after when they were kids. There’s more than just you guys that have come forward, and he was proud of it. He said he was misunderstood, that he was just helping you all. But I knew that wasn’t true. I knew what a perverted bastard he was, and I told him. I told him I hoped he’d die soon for what he’d done.”

  Hunter remains quiet, but his entire body is clenched, and I know how angry he must be, how he must be thinking about the other victims that might never come forward, might live in secret with their childhood pain forever.

  “There’s more he told me.” Micah’s eyes are dark and haunted and directed at Hunter when he says, “Your mother found out about what my father was doing. I’m not sure he even knew how, but she confronted him and said she was going to turn him in. He said he laughed at her, said nobody in the entire county would believe her. But I guess she was prepared for that. She said she’d be telling the law in the next county over where he didn’t have any power. She must have confided in your aunt, and that’s where they were headed, that same afternoon, to the next county to report him.”

  Hunter is still and breathless, and so am I, as if we both know what’s about to come in this new, unexpected revelation.

  “He followed them, caught up and sped past. They probably figured he was trying to outrun them to the next county and do some damage control, but that wasn’t his plan. No, he got up ahead a ways, then turned the cruiser around, sped back and played a game of chicken. He probably didn’t care if he lived or died at that point—ya know, better dead than to be accused of molesting kids—so it was your mom that veered away, that ended up going over the edge of the ravine.”

  I feel the air being sucked out of me, this new truth a wrecking ball to my gut.

  “You piece of shit,” Hunter growls at Micah. He’s up and across the room and grabbing at Micah’s collar, yanking him from the chair and pulling back his other arm.

  “Stop!” I reach him, pulling at his arm before he can slam his fist into Micah. “Don’t do this, Hunter.”

  Micah looks like a ragdoll, like he doesn’t have any energy to fight back, like he doesn’t care. Or maybe he thinks he deserves whatever it is Hunter wants to do to him.

  “Why did you wait! Why did you wait so long to tell the truth!” Hunter is still holding Micah’s collar, and I have to nudge his hand to get him to pull it away.

  “I don’t know,” Micah says when Hunter finally releases him. “It wouldn’t have brought them back. My father’s dead, so he’ll never pay for the crime.”

  “We deserved to know,” Hunter snarls.

  “Come on,” I say, taking his hand. “Let him finish.” I want this closure for Hunter as desperately as he must want it for himself, and I’m afraid we won’t get it unless Micah tells us everything he knows.

  “I realize that now,” Micah says, falling back into his chair while Hunter and I remain standing. “It’s been eating away at me.”

  I turn my head toward the kitchen and wonder if Mrs. Mitchell is hearing any of this or if she’s happily baking away, listening to Christmas music, her ears turned off to the outside world and all of the horrible secrets it holds.

  “He just got away with it,” Hunter says, anger still billowing out of him.

  Micah nods in a sad kind of agreement. “He was monstrous in a lot of ways, but if it means anything at all to you, I don’t think he took any pleasure in killing your mom and aunt. He did it to take care of a problem.”

  A problem. Hunter’s mother and aunt were reduced to a problem.

  “Did Mr. Turner from the paper know?” Daniella’s hunch had been right all along, and I want as many answers as I can get before Micah decides to stop talking.

  “Mr. Turner? I really doubt it,” Micah says. “I’m sure my dad told him some kind of crap to keep the story quiet, but I’m not sure anyone in this town would have covered up for him. He just got lucky.”

  Lucky.

  Clyde Mitchell’s luck was that he killed two innocent, beloved women who knew who he really was, and then he got away with it.

  I slide a hand over Hunter’s back. He’s in pain, and I can only imagine the hurt his father and brothers will have to endure when they hear this truth. It will reopen wounds that I don’t think have ever really healed in the first place. I’ll do everything I can to support my husband, to be there for him, to remind him that he’s loved and that we’ll get through this together.

  “You’ll have to make a report on this,” Hunter says, his voice still pressured. “You can’t just walk away from it. The world needs to know what this man did. And the rest of his victims deserve to have their stories corroborated, to shut down the trolls who want to tell them—tell us—that we’re liars.”

  “I plan on it,” Micah says. “It’s the right thing to do.”<
br />
  “That’s what you’ve come to realize?” I’m suddenly curious as to why now. “Not so long ago, you were practically denying that it happened. Is it really just your conscious that’s finally caught up with you?”

  There’s a flash of anger in his eyes that quickly disappears. “I found out you got married yesterday,” he says. “I’ve got nothing to lose now… because I don’t have a chance with you anymore.”

  “What makes you think you had any chance at all with her?” Hunter asks, doing nothing to mask his anger.

  I want to ask the same thing, and yet I can’t let go of the sliver of compassion I feel for Micah, for what he’s lost as well.

  Kindly, I say, “Micah, you know that nothing was ever going to happen between us, don’t you? It was your brother that I loved, and now it’s Hunter. Maybe telling the truth will set you free of some things. Maybe you’ll finally be willing to give your love to someone who will give it back.”

  I’m not sure what I expected from him in saying that, but it wasn’t the cold, dark stare he gives me, one that chills me to the bone.

  “We should go to the sheriff’s station,” Hunter says, putting his arm around me. “You have one of your deputies take all of this down, Micah, to get it on the record.”

  His eyes still cold, Micah tilts his head toward Hunter. “I’m not finished.”

  Hunter narrows his eyes at him. “If there’s more, you can tell it to us at the station.”

  “Now or never,” Micah says, his dark eyes settling back on me.

  “Let’s go, Alli.” Hunter starts leading me away, and I can sense in him that it’s growing more painful to be this close to Micah, to a man who has lied for so very long.

  I want to leave too, want to go outside and take a deep breath and drive with Hunter to the relative safety and security of the sheriff’s station where Micah’s words can be recorded, can be more than just his word against ours. But there is something in Micah’s haunted expression that I can’t dismiss, something that says whatever he’s about to say is something I can’t wait to hear.

  “I need to know the last of it,” I tell Hunter, planting my feet firmly on the floor.