by E. C. Diskin
“How ’bout the shortcut?” one of them yelled.
“Margaret, you better be careful. I think your friend might be in danger,” another of them said before laughing.
Anthony dropped her hand from his grip just as Evan took a wild swing. Anthony ducked and grabbed him by the shirt collar, whipped him around like a rag doll and took him down. It only took a second and Evan was on his back, his upper body hanging over the edge of the rock, Anthony’s full body weight holding him in place. Evan began a panicked scream. Anthony looked back at Evan’s friends. “Don’t move.”
“Hey man, we was only playin’,” one of them said.
“He never touched you,” another of them shouted.
“Get off me!” Evan yelled. Anthony got up and pulled Evan back to standing. “You’ll regret this,” Evan said. Anthony let go as Evan continued the rant. “Picked a real winner, Margaret. Fuckin’ animal.”
“Let’s go,” Anthony said to Margaret. But then Evan stumbled and tripped, losing his balance. Margaret and Anthony looked back to see Evan’s eyes widen as he took another step toward the edge, unable to stop himself, like an invisible force was pushing him back. Margaret screamed. He was going to fall off the cliff. The other guys gasped, coming closer, but Anthony stepped forward, grabbed Evan’s arm, and yanked him back from the edge. They both tumbled to the ground and Evan fell hard against a rock. “Aaaa!” Evan cried out. “My shoulder!”
His friends rushed to get him, and Anthony took Margaret’s hand, helping her climb down. He put his arm around her and neither said a word as they carefully began walking the path back to the car. “We’re not done here,” Evan yelled. He followed up with a few more words for Anthony, the kind that showed how dark Evan’s soul really was.
Anthony knew his luck in that town was running out.
Brooklyn continued reading. She’d heard this part from Ginny—that it was May of their senior year when she took a pregnancy test. Anthony held Margaret close after she told him, and she said she felt nothing—no morning sickness, no weight gain. He said maybe the test was wrong. Margaret grabbed onto that hope and said she’d go to the clinic in the next town the following morning to find out for sure—early, before anyone might see her. He offered to go, but she said no.
The story continued, from Anthony’s point of view, when Margaret found him in school the next morning and told him what happened in the parking lot. They agreed that speaking up would only compound their problems. But then Margaret was accused, then cleared, thanks to Pastor Ed, who naturally wanted something in return. He wanted her back in the teen group again. He wanted her to go on the mission trip.
And then Brooklyn got to the part she hadn’t heard from Ginny. Anthony went to the pastor’s office and confronted him. He said if the pastor ever laid another hand on Margaret, he’d go to the police. He’d tell them what he saw last year.
The pastor’s reply made Brooklyn’s skin crawl.
“We both know she was at the clinic that morning. Maybe the two of you have your own secrets. I’d think twice about those threats if I were you. I know Margaret’s dad. Who do you think he’s going to believe?”
Anthony swung hard, his fist meeting the pastor’s jaw first, then his nose. He fell back against his desk, bleeding. “Grave mistake,” the pastor said.
Anthony panicked. A black kid assaulting a white pastor the whole town revered. His dad’s words flooded his mind: “We always gotta work harder, be kinder, be more careful. A black man who gets in trouble with the law will always lose. No assumptions of innocence, no excuses. It’s a stacked deck.”
And Anthony had just hit the man without physical provocation. He’d never be able to explain—not without complete honesty, which Margaret wasn’t ready for. The pastor wiped his nose. “I better not see you in here again.”
Anthony ran.
The story followed Anthony to New York, where he found an apartment and a job in a restaurant. They’d planned for him to call Margaret every week. He couldn’t call her house, so he was to call a pay phone in downtown Eden each Sunday at noon. But the third Sunday after he left town, the phone rang, and no one answered. The fourth Sunday, Margaret answered.
Brooklyn cried as she read of Ginny and Darius’s breakup. Margaret said the baby was gone and she’d changed her mind. She wasn’t coming to New York. Anthony was heartbroken.
And then Brooklyn got to the scene when Anthony returned to Eden. He sat in his car, parked down the road from Margaret’s house, trying to work up the nerve to see her. A car pulled into the drive. Margaret. He let his tires roll forward, watching her go inside the house. He sprinted after her and rang the bell. Her father answered the door.
“Sir, you don’t know me, but I’m Anthony Forrester,” he said, holding out his hand.
The man looked at Anthony’s hand and crossed his arms. “So you’re the one who violated my child. I’m guessing you’re the one who assaulted the sheriff’s son too.”
“Sir, no, it’s not—”
“You know that someone punched a pastor at our church?” he asked sarcastically. “Black kid,” he added, shaking his head. And then he stepped closer, his breath on Anthony’s face. “You come near my daughter, I’ll have you arrested or shot.”
Anthony stepped back. “Sir, I love your daughter. And she loves me.”
Mr. Carr left him on the porch. Anthony thought he went to get Margaret, but the man came back with his gun and cocked the trigger, raising it to Anthony’s face. “I don’t want to hear another word. I should put a bullet in your head right now.”
Anthony backed up. “Sir, please. Margaret!” he called out. “I know you hear me. Please!”
“How old are you, boy?”
“Nineteen.”
“Since when?”
“Last week.”
“And how long you known my daughter?”
“We met junior year, sir,” he said.
“Tell you what,” Mr. Carr said. “Round here, any adult who’s been with a minor has committed statutory rape. You wanna go to prison? I got friends who’ll make it happen. You best walk away and never look back if you know what’s good for you.”
In that moment, all Anthony saw was a white man, a war hero, the sheriff’s best friend, beloved by the community, pointing a gun at his face. Mr. Carr could kill him and get away with it. Anthony was just a young, poor black kid who got a white girl pregnant. He could just imagine Evan making up lies about him, and that pastor too. He’d crossed the wrong people.
Anthony walked to his car. He didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know if he’d committed statutory rape. He was barely a year older than Margaret. But Margaret never came to the door. Her parents had obviously found out about the pregnancy. He didn’t know what she’d told them. As he pulled out of the drive, he glanced up and saw her looking, her hand on the bedroom window. He knew then it was over.
Brooklyn was now reading the part of Darius’s story that she’d known nothing about. It was a scene after Anthony returned to New York, to the apartment he’d found for them in Brooklyn. The stage direction indicated that Anthony was sitting on the couch as the camera panned through the near-empty space, across the few bits of furniture, moving into the bedroom, across the poster of the Brooklyn Bridge over the bed, and then into the closet. It was to be one continuous shot, ending in the back of the closet where the camera would focus on the large box: a crib.
Brooklyn smiled. He’d wanted her.
She skimmed through the final pages, covering his life in New York over a ten-year span, until the final scene.
Anthony was starring in a Broadway play. A woman came to the dressing room after the show, and he turned to the door. It was Margaret, wiping tears, smiling but unable to speak. He recognized her immediately.
“You let me leave,” he said.
She said nothing.
“Did you tell your parents you were raped?”
“No. Mom found me in the bathroom after the miscarriag
e.” Brooklyn had to stop and remind herself that Darius would have never guessed that Ginny had the baby. He’d seen her get out of the car and go in the house when he came back in August, and she had probably looked no different than when he left in June. She’d never even showed.
Margaret said her mom refused to believe that she could have intentionally broken her chastity vows. She didn’t even have a boyfriend. Her mother said God took care of the pregnancy because it wasn’t meant to be. “But then you started calling and you showed up at the house,” Margaret said. “They knew.”
“How could you not say anything?” Anthony asked.
Margaret began to cry, and the story flashed back to her, standing in her bedroom the day Anthony came to the house, listening to her father shouting at him at the front door. Her mother was standing in the doorway, listening with her. “I have to go down there,” she’d said. But her mother said no. “Let him go, Margaret. The world will never accept you with that man. And neither will your father.”
“My dad might have killed you,” Margaret said. “We both know what he was capable of. And I knew that you were better off. You had dreams and plans, and I didn’t want to ruin that. If I’d gone with you . . . I don’t know. I just couldn’t do it.”
“So why are you here now?” Anthony asked.
Margaret looked around the room and smiled nervously.
Anthony didn’t say anything. He wasn’t going to make it easier.
“I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry and to tell you . . .” She hesitated and shook her head. “This is stupid. It’s been ten years. I’m sure you’ve moved on and you’re probably in love with some beautiful actress . . . Maybe you’re married.”
“I’m not. What did you want to say?”
Margaret met his eyes then, and it was as though the years between them dissolved. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Anthony smiled.
She smiled.
Fade to black.
Brooklyn lowered her phone, letting her emotions overwhelm her. In that moment, she couldn’t hate Ginny for what she’d done.
But she did hate John Anderson.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
DAY SEVEN
10:00 p.m.
BOLINE COUNTY JAIL
BROOKLYN WAS CURLED UP ON her side, her hands sandwiched between her legs, trying to turn off her brain. It was impossible. This morning she’d still been planning to bring her dad home; she’d been excited about her audition, assuming that things might actually work out. And less than twelve hours later, everything she’d ever known had fallen apart. Darius Woods was her father, and twenty years ago John Anderson had put a gun to his face, threatening his life and freedom, ridding his family of Darius like a virus.
Her stomach turned with every memory twisted under the new lens. Her dad had once guilted Brooklyn into chores while sharing stories of how difficult her life might have been in that orphanage. He’d watched her dress like a beach bum in high school, her desperation to understand her history so clear in every request for more stories about Eimy. He’d seen the pain of feeling like an outsider; he’d seen the way kids treated her.
He’d hurt so many people. Even the way he died was hurting people.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
AFTER BROOKLYN FINISHED THE SCRIPT, she stood outside her dad’s hospital door, shaking, willing herself to go inside and confront him.
When she finally stepped inside, he looked at her blankly. “Yes?”
Just one word, and she knew what it meant. He wasn’t really there. There was nothing to say.
The doctor came in and reminded his patient to take it easy, accept help, stand slowly, and use the cane they were providing. Brooklyn played the role of concerned daughter, despite the new brew of emotions bubbling under the surface. Her dad said nothing, offering only impatient groans.
Neither of them spoke during the ride, but once she pulled into the driveway, he opened the door and used the cane to pull himself up and out of the passenger seat before she could help. “Get my bag, Brooklyn.” He was back.
She ignored his request and ran over to help him up the front steps. He pushed her hand away and braced the banister carefully, easing himself back into his home.
“What is this?” he barked, waving the cane toward the bed in the living room. He was lucid again, fully aware of who she was and what was happening, and he was just acting like the stubborn man who refused to be babied. He’d walk upstairs to his own bed, he yelled. No one was going to tell him how to live his life.
She stood inside the front door, watching him inspect the room, bellowing his demands, seeing him with new eyes. The air felt toxic. She couldn’t breathe. “You’re a monster,” she exploded before turning and throwing open the screen door. It smacked against the frame behind her.
That old wood floor in the hall creaked, and the screen door squeaked behind her as he pushed it open. “What’s gotten into you?” His voice had softened, as if he had no idea what he’d done.
She turned. He stood there, looking so harmless with that cane, both his brows raised. He was dumbfounded.
“You’re a liar,” she said.
“Watch your mouth, young lady. I’m your father.”
She leaned against the porch railing and held it tight. “But you’re not.”
His brows came down, and he pressed his lips together. He understood that she knew the truth. But instead of responding, he ignored the comment, focusing on her stance. “Don’t lean on that. It makes me nervous.”
“Seriously? You’re going to act concerned for my welfare? You’ve lied to me my whole life!”
He swatted the air dismissively and shuffled to the bench under the living room window. “You wouldn’t understand,” he uttered, as he lowered himself to sit.
“I’m your granddaughter,” she yelled. “I’ve been a misfit in this town my entire life. The little brown-skinned orphan with this fictional backstory. You’d rather I be from a foreign country, just so you—what?—didn’t have to admit that Ginny had gotten pregnant? Or was the worse sin that my father was black?”
The weight of her accusation hung in the air between them. She wanted to be wrong, but there was no other explanation.
“I knew you wouldn’t get it,” he said, exhaling hard, as if exasperated by her nonsense. “This is why I never wanted you to know.”
He actually thought he’d done the right thing. She hardly knew what to say.
“I can’t make you understand what we were thinking back then,” he said. “We couldn’t let her give you up. Who knows what might have happened to you.”
“But why the lies? You could have just told the world you were helping Ginny. You were raising your grandchild. You could have at least acknowledged that I’m your blood, that I belong in this godforsaken town just as much as any of these people.”
“No, we couldn’t.”
It stung to hear him admit it.
“We could have lost you,” he continued. “That boy could have claimed a right. We didn’t know what might have happened.”
“That boy was my father.”
“Stop! You don’t understand,” he shouted, a vein bulging along his temple. It was that anger she’d seen in the hospital, a rage she’d never known inside the walls of this house.
“I don’t even know who you are. Don’t you see how much you messed up Ginny? Forcing her to live with that secret? Threatening the man she loved?”
“Is that what she said? That girl made a mess, and we cleaned it up.”
Brooklyn couldn’t stop the tears, but she wiped them aside, refusing to fall apart. “You put a gun to Darius’s face. I’d say she had good reason to fear you. And she saw you at that clinic.”
Her father stared out into the horizon, pushing his hand over the top of his head, as he considered this. He looked confused. Brooklyn remained motionless, waiting for a response.
He said nothing.
“Are you going to finally admit it? You do what
ever you want. Your Bible-thumping nonsense, all to cover your violence. You shot that doctor as if it was hunting season or something, as if he was not even human. You’re like a terrorist.”
He finally looked at her, his brow raised. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Brooklyn.”
“Ginny was at the clinic that morning. She saw you.”
“No, she didn’t,” he said quickly.
“She told me! She saw you speed off in your truck. We all know you keep a pistol in the glove box.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Jesus. I’m not wearing a wire! Just tell the truth!”
“You watch that mouth.”
The anger was sapping every ounce of her. It was hard to do more than whisper. “Enough with all the secrets.”
He leaned against the house siding, crossing his arms. “It doesn’t matter.”
She raised her voice one last time. “It matters to me.”
The air stilled between them, the silence broken only by the birds in the trees, blissfully unaware of his crimes. Finally, he uncrossed his arms, placing a hand on each thigh, ready to leave. “I wasn’t driving the truck. I wasn’t even there.”
Her heart began to pound; heat flushed her cheeks as the words and the implication finally came together in her mind. There was only one other person who drove the truck. “You’re lying,” Brooklyn said.
He looked at her. “If I’d shot that doctor, he’d be dead.”
“How? Why?”
“It wasn’t planned. It just happened.”
“How did she—”
“She had to stop Ginny.”
“Jesus. She knew about the pregnancy.”
“Please don’t talk like that.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me right now. We’re talking about my mother trying to murder a man and you’re angry that I said ‘Jesus’? JESUS F-ING CHRIST.”
“Stop!” He leaned forward, wincing, holding his head.
Maybe it hurt to have someone finally talk back. He couldn’t control her anymore. She was glad to see him suffer.
“Eddie came to see me at the store about a week before it happened,” he continued, his head still in his hands, his eyes on the porch floorboards. “Sheriff Wilson’s boy. He had a black eye. His face was all scraped up. He wouldn’t say what happened, but he looked like he’d been hit. He said I needed to keep an eye on Ginny, that he didn’t wanna snitch, but he thought I should know that she was spending time with someone I wouldn’t approve of.”