The Dead of Summer

by Heather Balog

  Those words again…the words we read on Mark Ryan’s Facebook page back when I thought he was an impostor. They chilled me to the core. What was rightfully his? What was he here for? Mama? Did he see her as his possession?

  Mama looked away like a scared child, and then I knew; I knew what it was she was trying to shield me from. I understood why she had done what she did. And I understood that I needed to help her, no matter what she did because she had done it for me. Mark Ryan had been intending to take me away from her. And Mama wasn’t about to let that happen.

  “It’s okay, Mama. You don’t have to explain anymore. We’ll figure this out. Carson’s dad probably knows a lawyer that can help—”

  “No, Kennedy,” Mama said firmly. “I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to say here.”

  I stood up, my hands still clasped in hers. “You don’t have to say anything, Mama. I get it. You killed him trying to save me. There’s gotta be a way to get you out of this mess and we—”

  “Kennedy, will just listen to me for once?” Mama screamed as she pulled away from my hands. I recoiled like she had slapped me. I stared at her.

  “Thank you.” She smoothed down her hair that was becoming frizzy from the heat. My own hair probably looked like a rat’s nest and I could feel unattractive sweat stains forming underneath the armpits on my tank top.

  “As I was saying, Mark was basically threatening to take you back to Texas with him. He had all sorts of letters from lawyers that stated I violated this law and that law and he kept shoving them under my nose and pointing at big words. It was very overwhelming and I felt like I wanted to cry. He yelled that I had deprived him of your childhood and it was against the law what I did, and that now I was gonna go to jail and never be able to see you again after he was through with me. And he laughed, Kennedy…this evil, maniacal laugh that didn’t even seem human.” She shuddered as if she were hearing it again.

  “And then, he pushed the mug away and stood, all six foot of him…” Her voice trailed off as I imagined him hovering over her—she was so tiny, even shorter than me.

  The thought made me shudder at first, and then I started to realize…wait a minute! How did my tiny little Mama, kill a big bad mountain of a man? This puzzle suddenly wasn’t coming together like the picture on the front of the box.

  “He asked me where you were. I ignored his question and asked why we couldn’t be reasonable about this. After all, you would barely remember him and he couldn’t expect that you would be comfortable just leaving with him. I was trying to buy some time to figure out what I should do. I would have never let him take you. Trust me…he would have to pry you from my cold dead hands first.

  “He moved closer to the stairs. My heart was in my throat and I felt like I was going to throw up as I followed him, taking the steps two at a time as he always had. I couldn’t bear the thought of him in your bedroom, touching your things. Part of me wanted to call the cops to get him out of there and just deal with the consequences of my…kidnapping you, later on.”

  “Oh Jesus, Mama! Don’t say stuff like that! You didn’t kidnap me for God’s sakes!” I yelped. The word kidnap made me cringe.

  Mama shrugged. “I’ve lied to myself about it long enough. If your daddy showing up here taught me one thing it was that I can’t lie to myself in order to keep secrets anymore.

  “He climbed the stairs so slowly…my heart was damn near exploding in my chest. I knew you weren’t upstairs, still, I couldn’t help but picture him finding you up there anyway. And what would you do? Would you wrap your arms around him like a little girl and let your daddy carry you off into the sunset like a prince? Or would you remember his abuse and his steel toed boots and realize what I had done?”

  I swallowed hard. I’m not sure what I would have done had my mysterious daddy found me that day. Been damn confused, that’s for certain.

  I didn’t answer and Mama didn’t push the issue. “He walked into your bedroom and instantly it felt wrong, like he was intruding on something that wasn’t his to intrude on. Then he started touching things and I confess, I got really mad. I felt like I could pick up that giant rock and club him over the head with it.” She jerked her head toward the purple paperweight on my desk.

  My eyes grew wide as I stared at my treasured paperweight I had won in a sixth grade spelling bee. Did she murder my daddy with the paperweight and then it sat on my desk for a week? The thought made my stomach lurch; as if a dead daddy in my basement wasn’t enough, I had the murder weapon resting three feet away from me the whole time? I visually inspected it for blood stains or hair or pieces of flesh.

  “He turned around and headed into my room—”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “You didn’t hit him over the head with the paperweight?” I was definitely confused.

  Mama appeared shocked. “Jesus, Kennedy Ann! What do you take me for?” Her eyes spelled out hurt, like I accused of her of skinning kittens to make rugs.

  “Well you were saying—”

  “I was just telling you what I would have liked to do. Not what I actually did.”

  “Well then how did he get that gash on his forehead?”

  Mama sighed with exasperation. “Are you gonna let me finish this story or are you gonna interrupt me every five minutes?”

  Properly chastised, I stared down at my hands. “Sorry, Mama,” I mumbled.

  “Thank you. Anyway he rummaged around my bedroom for a while which was horrible, as you can imagine. I was really afraid he would…” Her voice trailed off and I caught her blushing deeply as I raised my head. Oh dear Lord please don’t make me listen to this…I could only imagine what Mama thought was gonna happen in the bedroom.

  But Mama quickly glossed over my daddy’s foray in her bedroom and continued her tale with my daddy now back downstairs.

  “He stared at me with his cold green eyes and said, ‘Where is she? Where are you hiding her?’ I swore up and down that I didn’t know where you were, which wasn’t a lie…well, I mean, I knew you were with Lindy, but I didn’t know where…and he started calling me all sorts of names. He…” Mama bit her lip. “He slapped me across the face so hard I fell down and hit the basement door. Something on the shelf by the bottom of the steps must have rolled off when I hit the door because there was a loud clattering noise downstairs. Mark looked at me with a smile and said, ‘She’s hiding downstairs, isn’t she?’ I shook my head and tried to explain that it was a can or something falling, but he pushed me out of the way and stomped down the steps. I got really nervous then, even more than before because that’s where I hide the money

  “You hide money downstairs?” Jesus.

  Mama waved her hand in front of her face as if this wasn’t important. “So I got behind him to try to stop him. I don’t know if I grabbed his arm or what…it all happened so fast. He reached around to shake me off and he lost his balance, I guess. He tumbled down the stairs and smacked his head on the drain at the base of the steps,” Mama finally said.

  “Oh my God,” I couldn’t help but gasp as I covered my mouth with my shaking hand.

  “I’m not sure if it was the fall or hitting his head, but he wasn’t moving. I sat on the steps for a couple minutes, not sure what I should do. I mean, I guess I should I have called an ambulance? But would it have made a difference? But I couldn’t move, Kennedy…you gotta understand that.” She glanced up at me pleadingly, as if I had the power to absolve her for all of her sins.

  “Oh, Mama, I know. It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  “He wasn’t moving,” she repeated. “He definitely wasn’t breathing, that much I could see.”

  “Then he probably was dead already,” I tried to reassure her. I patted her hand sympathetically. I felt like we were talking about some stray dog she tried to rescue rather than the man who was responsible for my being. And lying dead in the cellar at that very moment.

  “I don’t know long I sat there—it felt like hours—but I finally went over and w
as able to take his pulse. There was none, of course, and he was already feeling cold and I knew that he was really dead.” She paused for a second and stared at her own trembling hands. She waved them in front of her like they weren’t even attached to her body and she was seeing them for the first time.

  “Mama?” I tried to gently bring her back to reality.

  “I just was like a robot…I pulled him over to the side of the basement and put the tarp over him and then I cleaned up the blood. Thankfully there wasn’t a lot of blood.”

  I shuddered, thinking of the body I had touched in the basement. And then—

  What are we going to do now?

  It wasn’t going to look good that Mama hadn’t called an ambulance or police and proceeded to cover the body with a tarp and let it sit in the basement for well over a week. No, that wasn’t going to look good at all. The way I saw it, there were only a few ways out of this conundrum and not one of them was leaving a good taste in my mouth.

  Choice one; we could just leave the body down in the basement. Of course that would cause all sorts of problems with rodents and wild animals, not to mention the stench, so pretty much choice one was out.

  Choice two; we could call the police. While the death would most likely be ruled an accident or self-defense or whatever, there was still the fact that my mama waited over a week before calling. That certainly wouldn’t help her case. Mama would go to jail for sure, even if it was just to await trial. And what would happen to me, without any other family? I would end up in a foster home or worse.

  Choice three; we bury the body. Ewww.

  Choice four; we leave.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  There was a knock at the front door. Mama and I exchanged frightened glances. And then, I sighed with relief.

  “It’s Carson,” I said as I stood. “Remember? He was waiting for me?”

  Mama nodded and I turned to go downstairs to answer the door when Mama grabbed my hand. “We have to leave, Kennedy.”

  I bit my lip, fighting my urge to simultaneously cry and throw up. “I know,” I said as I wrested my hand free from hers.

  I practically flew down the steps; Carson was now pounding on the front door, probably hoping my mama hadn’t gone crazy and killed me, too.

  When I threw open the front door, and shielded my eyes from the sun which was now setting, Carson looked alarmed. And then, his tense shoulders relaxed and he let out a deep breath that he must have been holding in.

  “Wow, you guys were talking for a long time,” he said as I stepped onto the front porch and closed the door behind me. Colt struggled to his feet and cocked his head to the side as if he was also concerned.

  “We had a lot to talk about,” I replied. Colt nudged my hand with his snout and I petted him absentmindedly.

  Carson clasped his hands together and placed them on his head, like he didn’t know what to do with them exactly. “Everything okay? I mean, beside the dead guy in the basement and all that.”

  I shook my head and headed toward the path between the houses, the one that led to the marshes.

  “Anything I can help with?” Carson asked as he followed closely behind.

  Wordlessly, I grasped Carson’s hand and led him onto the trail. We walked silently, the only noise being the snapping of twigs underneath our feet and Colt’s panting. We seemed to walk for miles, time stretching out in front of us as if we would never reach our destination.

  When we finally stopped near the edge of Lindy’s backyard, I found that I couldn’t speak. I started to stare at Carson, the final setting light breaking through the trees casting an angelic glow on his face, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I wanted so badly to reach out, pull him close, and kiss his lips. God, how I ached to feel them, to put this whole mess with the body in the basement behind me, as if Carson’s lips would solve that problem. I willed him to kiss me with my thoughts, dared him to solve everything.

  Suddenly, without a word from me, his mouth was on mine, his lips warm and moist, his tongue feverishly pushing its way past my lips. My tongue, with a mind of its own, joined his, halfway between our mouths in a strange, awkward dance of sorts. The only thing I can liken it to, now as I think about it, is a tango where one partner is an expert and the other barely knows how to put on her dance shoes. I was so nervous, I wanted it to be over as quickly as it started so I could obsess about how it went wrong.

  Still, it was my very first kiss, and I swear Carson practically sucked the life out of me with it, because as we pulled away from each other, I felt unnaturally dizzy and as if I were about to faint dead away on the ground. I wondered if my blood sugar could plummet from kissing. But still, I wanted more.

  And then, as if possessed by Lindy herself, I grabbed Carson’s shirt aggressively and pulled him close to me. Without a second thought, I pressed my lips firmly against his. His body was tense, but then I felt his face relax, his lips giving way to my kiss. His hands touched my bare arms and despite the fact it was easily a hundred degrees out, goosebumps erupted up and down my flesh. His lips parted and I found my tongue seeking his until I felt as if I could no longer breathe and I pulled away.

  As our lips broke away from each other, Carson’s hands gripped my arms tighter, causing me to tingle. He pulled me closer, but didn’t kiss me. Yet, somehow, being enveloped in his arms, inhaling the scent of his deodorant and shampoo, it was a thousand times more intimate than a kiss. At that very moment, I felt closer to him than I had felt to anyone ever before in my life.

  Intoxicated by his touch, the words came pouring forth—I was unable to stop myself. “I’m leaving, Carson. We have to go. The body—”

  Carson placed his finger on my lips. “You don’t have to tell me…I understand.”

  I shook my head. “No, you don’t understand…Mama is innocent. She didn’t kill that man. She didn’t kill…” My voice trailed off and I gazed up at him. “It was my daddy. She didn’t kill him. He fell.”

  “What? I thought your daddy was dead? How’s that possible?” Carson’s eyes widened, confusion apparent. I could hardly blame him. Hell, I was still confused.

  I leaned up against the nearest oak as I sighed, “No. Apparently my mama ran away from him because she was afraid he was going to hurt me.” In the most abbreviated way possible, I quickly recounted my mama’s story.

  “Wow,” Carson said, scratching his mop of hair, when I was finally finished “Do you believe her?”

  “Of course I believe her. You don’t know my mama like I do. She’s not a violent person. She just did what she had to do to protect her family. Me.”

  Carson nodded. “Parents do crazy things when bad things happen to their kids.”

  I shrugged. “I guess that’s one excuse. I just can’t help thinking that everything would have been fine maybe if she just went to my grandma. Maybe things could have been different. Or maybe if Mama had not gone out that night. Or I had stayed out of my daddy’s way—”

  Carson shook his head. “You can’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “You can’t do the ‘what if’ game. You’ll never know and you’ll drive yourself crazy.”

  I knew it was true, but it was difficult to not think that way. I nodded and tried to smile.

  “You want to go?” he asked.

  I caught a glimpse of Lindy’s house, her bedroom light on. “I do,” I said slowly as I pulled out my cell phone. “But there’s something I need to do first. I have to talk to Lindy.”

  Carson glanced at my phone and asked, “Are you gonna tell her you’re leaving?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. She’ll want to know why and I can’t—” I swallowed. This was too difficult. I couldn’t leave her without saying goodbye, but I couldn’t really say goodbye either.

  “I get it,” Carson said. “Colt and I will wait for you here.” He sat against the nearest tree, disappearing into the shadow like my protector.

  I took a few steps toward the hydrangea bush, texting a messag
e to Lindy that I would wait for her outside by the bush.

  She appeared within seconds out of nowhere, as if she had been waiting for me to show up all along.

  “There you are!” she cried out in an exasperated voice. “Oh my God, you won’t believe what my mama did when we went to see the bands!” She plopped down dramatically in front of the hydrangea bush.

  I sank to the ground next to her, my legs trembling. How would I say goodbye without uttering those words? “What did she do?” I could only imagine, knowing Lindy’s mama.

  Lindy gripped my arms and shook me. Staring directly into my eyes, she said, “She got drunk. She got fricking wasted at a fricking hall in front of seven bands who were playing for nobody but us.” Lindy dropped my arms and rubbed her temples. “I swear it’s like having a child of my own.”

  “What did you do?” Although appalled, I couldn’t say I was particularly shocked by Mrs. Lincoln’s behavior. I had seen her drunk on more than one occasion. Usually when Mr. Lincoln was absent.

  Lindy waved her hand in the air dismissively. “Oh David shoved her in the car and brought her home.” She flopped her hand over her eye. “So how did you make out tracking down your daddy’s impostor?” Lindy eagerly sat up, suddenly remembering this afternoon’s excitement. I’m pretty sure she meant “impersonator”. “And the baby sister, too. What happened with that?”

  “Well,” I inhaled sharply. “Mama took care of the impersonator thing. So that’s not really a problem.” No, not if you didn’t count the dead daddy in the basement. Not a problem at all.

  “And your sister? Is she living in Texas?” Lindy asked excitedly.

  “Not exactly,” I said, pulling at that grass again. Lindy’s daddy would spit fire when he saw this. “She’s dead. She died in Texas when she was two months old.”

  Lindy recoiled like I had slapped her clear across the face. Her eyes widened and her face crumbled. “Oh my God, Kennedy. That’s. . .horrible.”