by Amy Engel
I nodded, even though I was pretty sure it was exactly what I thought. He’d valued something more than Junie’s life. End of story. But the sooner he started talking, the sooner he’d be done.
“I was doing it for her. For Junie.”
That surprised me, and my head whipped in his direction. “Doing what for Junie?”
“The money. I wanted her to be able to leave this place, go to college, something. Get out. But what I make isn’t enough, not even close. And one night I ran into Matt and he started saying how Land had been giving them some hassle about how big the operation was getting. How they could really use someone on the inside to help things run a little more smoothly. At first I told myself I was only listening. I wasn’t actually going to do anything. But then I talked to Jimmy Ray and it seemed like a perfect deal.” He shrugged. “They were selling the drugs anyway. Whether I helped or not. Why not gain something from it? It’s not like I was stealing from babies. It seemed like a fair trade.”
What did people around here always say? That you could take the kid out of the holler, but you could never take the holler out of the kid. I hadn’t wanted to believe it, but Cal and I were living proof. Dress us up in a cop uniform, give us a child to care for, and we might walk the straight and narrow for a while. But our history always rose up to meet us. Or dragged us down to its level. That night in the bar, Cal had been right. We were exactly who Mama’d raised us to be.
“And it was going fine,” Cal continued. “I was making good money. Socking it away for Junie. I never spent any of it.”
“Were you ever going to tell me?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure. But not until it was time for her to use it. I figured you wouldn’t object as much if the money was right there when she needed it. And by then I planned to be done with all that, anyway.”
If he actually believed that, then he had no real idea about how Jimmy Ray worked. He never would have let Cal walk away. “She didn’t need money from you,” I told him. “She could have gotten a scholarship if she wanted to go to college, or I could have figured something out.” But we both knew I couldn’t have. As much as I’d loved my daughter, there were some things I never would have been able to give her, no matter how much I wanted to. As Mama liked to say, you couldn’t get blood from a stone.
“I didn’t want her to leave here poor. Go to college and have everyone know she came from nothing. I wanted her to have a leg up, the way we never did. That way she’d have had a fighting chance at something better. And it was going fine, just like I planned. But then Izzy took a liking to Matt. I was the one who introduced them. Can you believe that shit? I was talking to Matt in front of the laundromat, and Izzy wandered by, stopped to say hi to me.” He shook his head. “You have no idea how many times I’ve gone over it. Over it and over it on nights I can’t sleep. How that one thing, that one stupid thing, ruined it all.”
“I think you’re the one who ruined it all.” My voice was cold and hard and didn’t sound like me at all. Or at least not the me my daughter would have recognized.
“I didn’t mean to,” Cal said again, and my hand tingled with the urge to punch him. “It was all such a huge clusterfuck. I was over at Matt’s, sorting drugs and counting money, and Izzy barged right into his trailer. She’s lucky she even made it that far, hitched a ride out on the highway.” He shook his head. “I thought maybe it was still okay. She was young, maybe she didn’t even know what she was seeing. But her mouth dropped open and her eyes went wide and all I could think about was her telling Junie and Junie telling you and everything falling apart. I’d lose my job. Land would be so pissed I’d gone behind his back that he’d push for criminal charges. It would all be ruined. I talked to Izzy. Told her how important it was to keep quiet. And how I wouldn’t say anything to anyone about her and Matt, either. We’d do each other a favor.”
“And she went along with it?”
Cal nodded. “Yeah. But I could tell it wasn’t going to hold. I talked to her a few times around town, and she hinted about wanting to tell Junie. I knew she wasn’t going to be able to keep it a secret forever. She didn’t have it in her. I think she liked the idea of having something she could use to hurt Junie with. You know how teenage girls can be, petty and jealous. She’d talked a few times about how she thought her dad liked Junie more than her. Someday when she was feeling slighted it was going to come bursting out of her, a way to take Junie down a peg.”
“Because Junie idolized you,” I said, voice flat. “Thought you were her perfect Uncle Cal.”
Cal breathed in a watery sob. “All Izzy had to do was keep her mouth shut. That’s all she had to do.”
“And she wasn’t going to, so you decided to kill her.”
“No,” Cal said, fierce. “No. I only wanted to talk to her. I texted her on a burner phone. Asked her to meet me at the park.”
“When it was snowing. And no one else was around.”
“Yeah, but only because I didn’t want anyone to see us together, not for a conversation this serious. I had no idea Junie was even there. We met behind that tunnel, and I didn’t even see Junie. Izzy must have told her to wait somewhere else in the park.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “I thought I could convince her, but she said Junie deserved to know. I don’t even think she cared that much. She liked having a secret, knowing something no one else did and holding it over my head.”
“She was twelve, Cal. She wasn’t some criminal mastermind out to ruin your life.”
“I know that,” he said. “I know that now. But in the moment I was pissed and panicking and she wouldn’t listen to me. She never listened! I swear to God, I didn’t even know what I’d done until I saw the blood.” He looked down at his hand. “There was blood all over my arm, and I thought, What the fuck? I didn’t even know where it had come from at first.”
“Bullshit,” I said, flat. “For someone who went there with no plans to hurt anyone, that knife sure came in handy.”
“I always have my knife,” he said. “Every second person who lives around here has the same thing in their back pocket. I didn’t plan on using it. I swear, Evie, I didn’t. I took it out to scare her, that’s it. I thought that would be enough. But she was going to ruin me. She was going to open her mouth and fuck it all up. I’d risked everything—my job, my relationship with you and Junie, my freedom—and she didn’t even care. All I could think about was stopping her.”
“What about what you did to Junie?” I asked, and the world went still. The sun lowered in the sky, and a shadow skimmed across our faces.
Cal lowered his head into his hands, spoke through his fingers. “I had no idea she was there. None at all. Izzy never said a word about bringing Junie along. I was standing there, watching Izzy bleed out, wondering what the hell had happened, and I heard a noise behind me. I reacted, turned with that knife in my hand. That’s all it was. Some animal instinct. I didn’t even realize it was Junie until it was too late, until I’d already . . .” He breathed in deep, his lungs stuttering on a sob. “I never would have hurt her intentionally, Eve. Never. Not Junie.” He raised his head and looked at me through tear-bright eyes. “I stayed with her. Until the end. I held her hand and told her it would be okay.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I asked, my own tears threatening. “Because it doesn’t. Not even a little bit.” Almost as bad as knowing the truth was the realization of how badly I wanted to believe him. I didn’t doubt for a second that on any other day, in any other circumstance, he would have laid down his life for Junie. And I could picture it playing out exactly as he’d said: the split-second reaction, that hair-trigger instinct our mama had ingrained in us whenever we smelled danger. Kill or be killed. By the time he understood what he’d done, it was already over. Whether he’d realized that it was Junie or not, he was only doing what he’d been taught. And now, so was I.
“I’ll turn myself in,” Cal
said. “Right now. If that’s what you want.”
“That’s not what I want,” I told him.
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay, then how do I make it right?”
“There’s no making it right. You can’t rewind time, Cal. You can’t bring them back.” I raised my right hand, the one he hadn’t seen yet, the one that was holding a gun, and laid it across my knees. “There’s only making it even.”
It gave me a certain dark satisfaction to watch his eyes go wide, see his cheeks pale. He started to push up from the ground, and I raised the gun, steady and sure. “Don’t,” I told him. He didn’t, dropped back down to sitting. He knew about me and guns. How good I was. Hell, I’d learned at his knee.
“What are you doing, Evie?” he asked.
“I think you know.” I thumbed the safety off and watched his gaze follow the movement. “Even if what you did to Junie was an accident, all this time, you let me wonder what happened. You let me think Junie was keeping secrets from me about Izzy. You let me drive myself crazy about the explosion at Matt’s trailer, when it was you who’d lit the match. You let me feel guilty for accusing you of being Izzy’s older guy when you’d actually done something so much worse. I told you, I told everyone at that press conference, what I’d do when I found the person who killed her. You had fair warning.”
When Cal swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbed like he’d swallowed a rock. I wondered how hard his heart was hammering. Mine felt even and smooth as glass. “This is me, Evie,” he said. “I fucked up. I know I did. But you can’t kill me.”
“Sure I can.” The conversational tone of my voice surprised even me. I raised the gun, close enough there was no chance of missing him. A sure-thing target.
“Where’d you get the gun?” he asked, voice quiet. He already knew, but he wanted to make me say it.
“Mama,” I said, after a pause. “Because you made a mistake, Cal. One of many, as it turns out. You introduced her to Junie. The one thing I asked you never to do. The one thing you promised me you never would. The day Junie was born, you held my hand in the hospital, you looked into my eyes, and you swore to me you’d never let Mama get near her. We were going to stop it from happening all over again. Stop her from ever getting her claws into Junie. But you lied.” He opened his mouth to speak, and I shushed him by tightening my finger on the trigger. “And guess what? Mama loved my girl. She loved her more than me. More than you. More than anything. When she found out what you’d done? She couldn’t give me this gun fast enough. And you know Mama, this gun’s passed through so many hands, it’s probably untraceable. She’s already got a story all cooked up for where you are, what happened to you.”
“God,” Cal said, shaking his head. “You and Mama. I should have known she’d get there in the end.” He looked up at me, eyes shimmering with tears. “Stay away from her, Evie, if you can. Promise me you won’t let her get too close.”
I gave him a sharp-edged grin. “I think we’ve already established that promises don’t mean shit when it comes to Mama.”
Cal shook off my words, his voice strained. “Promise me. She’ll drag you down to hell if you let her.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore, Cal.” I gestured between us with the gun. “I’m already there.”
I watched as tears slid down his cheeks. He reached out with careful fingers and grasped my free hand. “It’s always been you and me, Evie. Remember? Always.”
I thought of all the nights we spent as kids, huddled together on the edge of our property, waiting out Mama’s drug-fueled parties. We stayed far away, enough that the greasy spill of light from the trailer windows didn’t reach us. We made promises to each other in the inky blackness, hands twined together like the branches overhead. We’ll get out of here. Both of us. I won’t leave you behind. I’ll always trust you. I’ll always keep you safe. Always. Cal’s pale blue eyes glimmering in the moonlight. The breeze sending strands of golden-blond hair skating across his face. We were more than siblings; we were each other’s lifeline. Together, we survived a childhood designed to destroy.
The things we said to each other on those endless nights, against the ugly backdrop of our probable futures, weren’t just words. Each syllable reeked of power, left our mouths heavy with intent. Our promises lifted up into the night air, through wet, humid steam, on puffy clouds of breath, through all the months and seasons. The words didn’t belong to us alone; they had been released into the world. We had been heard. Both of us. Always. The sacred weight of vows.
And yet, they’d been only words after all. Because here we were, destroying each other anyway. And it was so much easier than it should have been. My lips trembled, and my dead heart cracked open. Tempting as it was to lay all this at our mama’s feet, that wouldn’t be fair. She’d shown us the path, but we’d both chosen to walk it. No one dragged that knife across my daughter’s throat but Cal. No one pointed this gun but me.
“I love you, Evie,” Cal said, squeezed my hand and let go. He could have been ten again, tucking me into bed. Trying to reassure me that everything would be okay, even when we both knew that it wouldn’t.
“I love you, too,” I told him. “Always.”
The dying sun lit him up like a corona, glinting off his hair. He smiled at me, small and sad. And then I blew him away.
TWENTY-FOUR
I sat next to him until it was dark, held his hand until his fingers began to grow cold, the same way he’d held my daughter’s while the life drained out of her. The tears I hadn’t shed earlier rolled in a relentless stream down my face, soaking the neck of my T-shirt. I knew I needed to get moving, but my brain seemed disconnected from my body, thoughts whirling and diving and then floating away. I might have sat there all night, I might have sat there for the rest of my life, if someone hadn’t crashed through the underbrush behind me, a slim beam of light cutting across my face. I scrambled up onto my hands and knees, feet slipping out from beneath me, and looked up to see Jenny Logan standing there. She had a shallow scratch along one cheekbone, and her breath was coming in panting gasps.
“Jesus,” she said, swiping hair off her face with the hand that held a small flashlight. “It’s hell getting back here.”
I stared at her, had a brief moment where I wondered if I was dreaming. Was Cal even here? I looked down, saw his body at my feet, dead eyes and a ragged bullet hole in the center of his forehead. My gaze flew back to Jenny, who was looking at Cal, too.
“You did it,” she said, voice even.
I croaked out something that sounded like yes.
“I’m guessing whatever reason he gave wasn’t good enough.” She barked out a laugh that held not even a single drop of humor. “I don’t even want to know. It’ll only make me angrier.” She handed me the shovel clutched in her left hand. “We need to bury him,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“Okay,” I said, slow and slurry. I felt the shovel sliding through my numb fingers and tightened my grip on the handle. I’d been calm earlier, focused, but now I couldn’t make any of the pieces fit together. “What . . . what are you doing here?”
Jenny bent down, set the flashlight on the ground. She grabbed Cal’s feet and looked at me until I got the hint and laid down the shovel, grabbed his hands. “I heard you and Zach talking. When you left, I followed you. Not all the way to your mom’s. You would have seen me for sure. I almost lost you when you got back on the highway and headed here. Took me a while to find where you’d parked.” She was still matter-of-fact, grunting slightly as we dragged Cal’s body deeper into the woods. “And then I waited until your mom showed up and dropped him off. It was a lot harder following his trail back here than I thought it would be. I got turned around a couple of times. But then I heard the gunshot. That helped. Wait a second,” she said, dropped Cal’s feet and ran back to grab the flashlight. She put it between her teeth and then took Cal’s legs again. We were quiet after that, other
than the sound of breathing, dragging Cal through the trees.
“Here,” I said, dropping his hands. “This is far enough.”
Jenny took the flashlight from her mouth, peered around. “You think?”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t stand to touch him anymore, listen to his body scrape along the ground. And the fact was, they were either going to find him or they weren’t.
Jenny went back for the shovel, and we took turns digging, the other holding the flashlight. We worked without speaking, intent on our task. When the hole was deep enough, we paused, the scent of turned earth, dark, secret things thick in the air. We dragged him to the edge and rolled him in. I flinched when he hit, but Jenny didn’t. He was just the guy who’d killed her daughter. He’d never been the one who held that same daughter and rocked her to sleep, or gave her a bath and blew bubbles until she squealed. Jenny had never loved him.
Filling in the grave should have gone faster, been easier, but it seemed to progress in slow motion, both of us exhausted and ready to be done. When Jenny had scooped the final bit of earth, we spread moss and twigs over the site, walked and kicked until it looked the same as the rest of the ground. Or at least same enough.
Jenny palmed dirt off her cheek with the back of her hand. “That’s it.” She looked at me. “Anything you want to say?” She gestured toward the grave with a dirt-stained hand.
What was there to say? He’d been my brother. My first love. The only person I’d ever trusted not to hurt me. “Yeah,” I said, grabbing the shovel off the ground. “He had it coming.”
I had to hand it to my mama, those words I’d sworn I’d never say were strangely satisfying on my tongue.
* * *
• • •
Jenny had done a good job hiding her car, although the chances of anyone happening along here were slim. I put the shovel in her trunk, and she tossed the flashlight in as well. “I’ll wash the shovel as soon as I get home,” she said. “Put it right back in the garage.” She glanced down at her dirt-streaked clothes with a wince. “And get rid of these.”