Jean looked at Jewel and grinned herself. ‘It was beautiful!’ she said. ‘Jewel was like the best linebacker I’ve ever seen! Made a dive right for Megan’s knees and took her down in about two seconds!’
Jewel shrugged and tried to look modest. ‘I think it might have been more like ten or fifteen seconds, but,’ again she shrugged, ‘it was cool!’
My wife and my sister high-fived each other.
‘So what did you do after that?’ Harmon asked.
‘I dragged her ass back to the love seat!’ Jewel said.
‘And I used my cell phone to call the Kansas City cops, while Vivian used hers to call the family attorney,’ Jean said.
‘And I sat on Megan so she wouldn’t try to leave again,’ Jewel cut in.
‘What about Dru?’ I asked.
‘She called Vivian about an hour later and Vivian told her the police were there and were arresting Constance, but that she and Megan were in the clear and she could come home.’
‘But Megan dragged you into the solarium!’ Harmon said to his wife. ‘She should go to jail for that!’
Jean looked at Jewel, who took a deep breath and said, ‘I decided not to press charges. Earlier today Jean got the name of a colleague in Kansas City who works with adult victims of child abuse. Vivian said she would make sure the girls went twice a week as scheduled.’
‘But—’ Harmon started.
‘Honey,’ Jewel said, ‘Megan is a victim, too. So is Constance, for that matter. But she turned her own victimization into a family business and she needs to be punished for that.’ Jewel looked at Jean, as if to confirm her own statement, and I had a pretty good idea where my sister’s psychobabble had come from. Sorry, I’m not supposed to use that word.
‘Megan was doing it for the money,’ Jean explained. ‘She’d tamped down her feelings so deep that she could only see the goal of finishing school without student loans.’
Jewel shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Jean. Megan was pretty loyal to Constance, enough so to think about killing the two of us! And she sure didn’t stick by her twin!’
‘I think Megan had developed tunnel-vision,’ Jean said. ‘All she could see was finishing college, then she could get away from Constance and the life she’d created for her and Dru.’
‘And what about Dru?’ I asked.
Jean shook her head. ‘Dru’s a lot like Paula. More sensitive than her sister, with a higher intellect. Unlike Paula, who masked her pain with alcohol and promiscuity, Dru masked hers with bitchiness – and alcohol.’
‘You think those girls are gonna be OK?’ Harmon asked.
Jean shrugged. ‘They’ll get better with help – their own and Vivian’s and the therapist’s, but I can’t say they’ll ever be OK. They’ve lived through something that will color their lives forever. But with help they’ll be able to see beyond that and hopefully both of them will find a real life for themselves.’
‘From your lips to God’s ear,’ Jewel said softly.
EPILOGUE
It was yet another Saturday, two weeks to the day from that awful Saturday at the Longbranch Inn. But this one was different. Great big chunks of different. We were at the Holy Trinity Church of Christ in Longbranch at the wedding of my deputy, Dalton Pettigrew, and my clerk, Holly Humphries. I was all decked out in a tux and looking good. I had two roles to play at this shindig – one, walking the bride down the aisle and giving her away, and two, standing up as the groom’s best man. Anthony and Emmett were the other groomsmen and Jasmine was the matron of honor. Nita and my wife Jean were the bridesmaids.
The bride was wearing her mother-in-law’s wedding dress, a beautiful whitish (my wife called it eggshell, who knew?) thing from the fifties, satin with little pearls around the top – a bodice, my wife insists I call it. She said if I was describing what women were wearing I should have a woman’s input. Whatever. The bridesmaids were in pink – excuse me, rose-colored taffeta. We guys were all wearing tuxes we rented from Big Jim’s Men’s Store on the square. They matched.
The preacher talked too much, as preachers do, but he got the job done. After, we went into the church’s fellowship hall where the reception was to be held. The thing about that, though, is when you have a reception in a church building you can’t have liquor, and, I’m sorry, but weddings are a time of rejoicing and who wants to rejoice without booze? So Jean and I had lined up an after-reception party at our house, after which we transported the soused newlyweds back to the Longbranch Inn for their wedding night.
As the weeks and months wore on, a few things happened: Drew Gleeson moved back to Tulsa and Jasper Thorne was promoted to head EMT; Chandra Blanton and Mike Reynolds got married, with their son and Jean and I in attendance; and my deputy, Anthony Dobbins and his wife, Maryanne, were expecting their first child in just a few months. She’d made it way past the eight-week mark that had ended her earlier pregnancies, and the doctor said that everything looked real good. We put an ad in the local paper about Tornado, the golden retriever/Shetland mix that had been abusing my testicles, but nobody claimed him. He now has his own dog house, one that Evinrude, my cat, occasionally visits, when the two aren’t lying together in front of the fireplace. Go figure.
Eunice Blanton pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten years with a possibility of parole; Earl Blanton pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment; and Jean got monthly written reports from the therapist in Kansas City on the progress of the twins. She also got weekly phone calls from Vivian, which was probably a good thing for the old lady, but maybe not so good for my wife. She seemed to be bummed out after every call. During one call Jean found out that one of her earlier prime suspects – a guy named Neil Davenport, who lived next door to the Carmichael estate – had been using Constance’s services: namely sleeping with both Dru and Megan from about the age of twelve onwards. He was being investigated.
But mostly life went on, as it does in Prophesy County. Shit happens, then we clean it up. That’s just the way we roll.
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