Faithless (15 page)

“He asked if I wanted to come to church.” Tessa paused a beat. “Being up there in physical therapy, seeing all these people who are so much worse off than I am…” She shrugged. “It really put things into perspective, you know? Like how much I’ve been wasting my life.”

“You haven’t been wasting your life.”

“I’m thirty-four years old and I still live with my parents.”

“Over the garage.”

Tessa sighed. “I just think what happened to me shouldn’t go to waste.”

“It shouldn’t have happened at all.”

“I was lying in that hospital bed feeling so sorry for myself, so pissed at the world for what happened. And then it hit me. I’ve been selfish all my life.”

“You have not.”

“Yes I have. Even you said that.”

Sara had never regretted her words so much in her life. “I was angry with you, Tess.”

“You know what? It’s like when people are drunk and they say they didn’t mean to say something and you should just excuse them and forget it because they’d been drinking.” She explained, “Alcohol lowers your inhibitions. It doesn’t make you pull lies out of your ass. You got angry with me and said what you were thinking in your head.”

“I didn’t,” Sara tried to assure her, but even to her own ears, the defense fell flat.

“I almost died, and for what? What have I done with my life?” Her hands were clenched in fists. Again, she shifted her focus. “If you died, what’s the one thing you would regret not doing?”

Instantly, Sara thought but did not say, “Having a child.”

Tessa read her expression. “You could always adopt.”

Sara shrugged. She could not answer.

“We never talk about this. It happened almost fifteen years ago and we never talk about it.”

“There’s a reason.”

“Which is?”

Sara refused to get into it. “What’s the point, Tessie? Nothing’s going to change. There’s no miraculous cure.”

“You’re so good with kids, Sara. You’d be such a good mother.”

Sara said the two words that she hated to say more than any others. “I can’t.” Then, “Tessie, please.”

Tessa nodded, though Sara could tell that this was just a temporary retreat. “Well, what I would regret is not leaving my mark. Not doing something to make the world better.”

Sara took a tissue to blow her nose. “You do that anyway.”

“There’s a reason for everything,” Tessa insisted. “I know you don’t believe that. I know you can’t trust anything that doesn’t have some scientific theory behind it or a library full of books written about it, but this is what I need in my life. I have to think that things happen for a reason. I have to think that something good will come out of losing…” She stopped there, unable to say the name of the child she had lost. There was a tiny marker out at the cemetery with the girl’s name, tucked between Cathy’s parents and a much-loved uncle who had died in Korea. It pained Sara’s heart every time she thought about the cold grave and the lost possibilities.

“You know his son.”

Sara furrowed her brow. “Whose son?”

“Tom’s. He went to school with you.” Tessa took a mouthful of Cheetos before folding the bag closed. She talked while she chewed. “He’s got red hair like you.”

“He went to school with me?” Sara asked, skeptical. Redheads tended to notice each other, what with sticking out from the general population like a sore thumb. Sara knew for a fact that she had been the only child with red hair her entire tenure at Cady Stanton Elementary School. She had the scars to prove it. “What’s his name?”

“Lev Ward.”

“There wasn’t a Lev Ward at Stanton.”

“It was Sunday school,” Tessa clarified. “He’s got some funny stories about you.”

“About me?” Sara repeated, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“And,” Tessa added, as if this were more enticement, “he’s got the most adorable five-year-old son you’ve ever seen.”

She saw through the ruse. “I meet some pretty adorable five-year-olds at the clinic.”

“Just think about going. You don’t have to answer now.” Tessa looked at her watch. “I need to get back before it gets dark.”

“You want me to drive you?”

“No, thanks.” Tessa kissed her cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

Sara wiped Cheeto dust off her sister’s face. “Be careful.”

Tessa started to leave, then stopped. “It’s not just the sex.”

“What?”

“With Jeffrey,” she explained. “It’s not just the sexual chemistry. When things get bad, y’all always get stronger. You always have.” She reached down to scratch Billy, then Bob, behind the ears. “Every time in your life that you’ve reached out for him, he’s been there. A lot of men would just run the other way.”

Tessa finished with the dogs and left, pulling the door gently closed behind her.

Sara put up the Cheetos, contemplating finishing the bag even though the open zipper on her skirt was cutting into her flesh. She wanted to call her mother and find out what was wrong. She wanted to call Jeffrey and yell at him, then call him back and tell him to come over and watch an old movie on television with her.

What she did instead was return to the couch with another glass of wine, trying to push everything from her mind. Of course, the more she tried not to think about things, the more they came to the surface. Soon, she was flashing through images of the girl in the woods to leukemia-stricken Jimmy Powell to Jeffrey in the hospital with end-stage liver failure.

Finally, she made herself focus back on the autopsy. She had stood behind a thick glass wall while the procedure was performed, but even that had seemed too close for Sara’s comfort. The girl’s physical results were unremarkable but for the cyanide salts found in her stomach. Sara shivered again as she thought about the plume of smoke rising from her gut as the state coroner cut into her stomach. The fetus had been unremarkable; a healthy child who would have eventually led a full life.

There was a knock at the front door, tentative at first, then more insistent when Sara didn’t answer. Finally, she yelled, “Come in!”

“Sara?” Jeffrey asked. He looked around the room, obviously surprised to see her on the couch. “You okay?”

“Stomachache,” she told him, and in fact her stomach was hurting. Maybe her mother had been right about not eating dessert for dinner.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t talk earlier.”

“It’s okay,” she told him, though it wasn’t really. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he said, his disappointment evident. “I spent the whole fucking afternoon at the college, going from department to department looking for someone who could tell me what poisons they keep around there.”

“No cyanide?”

“Everything but,” he told her.

“What about the family?”

“They didn’t offer much. I sent out a credit check on the farm. It should be back tomorrow. Frank’s been calling all the shelters, trying to get the story on what exactly happens on these missions.” He shrugged. “We spent the rest of the day going through the laptop computer. It was pretty clean.”

“Did you check instant messages?”

“Brad cracked that first off. There were a couple back and forth with the aunt who lives on the farm, but mostly those were about Bible studies, work schedules, what time she was going to come over, who was going to fix chicken one night, who was going to peel carrots the next. It’s hard to tell which were from Abby and which were from Rebecca.”

“Was there anything during the ten days after the family left?”

“One file was opened the day they went to Atlanta,” Jeffrey told her. “Around ten fifteen that morning. The parents would’ve been gone by then. It was a résumé for Abigail Ruth Bennett.”

“For a job?”

“Looks like it.”

“You think she was trying to leave?”

“The parents wanted her to go to college, but she’d said no.”

“Nice to have an option,” Sara mumbled. Cathy had practically poked her girls with a stick. “What kind of job was she looking for?”

“No idea,” he said. “She mostly listed office and accounting skills. She did a lot of stuff on the farm. I guess it’d look well-rounded to a potential employer.”

“She was homeschooled?” Sara asked. She knew this wasn’t true everywhere, but in her experience, people tended to homeschool for two reasons: to keep their white children away from minorities or to make sure their kids weren’t taught anything other than creationism and abstinence.

“Most of the family are, apparently.” Jeffrey loosened his tie. “I’ve got to change.” Then, as if he felt the need for an explanation, he added, “All my jeans are over here.”

“Change for what?”

“I’m going to talk to Dale Stanley, then Lena and I are going to the Pink Kitty.”

“The titty bar on Sixteen?”

He scowled. “Why is it okay for women to call it that, but men get kicked in the nuts for it?”

“Because women don’t have nuts.” She sat up, feeling her stomach lurch. Thank God she hadn’t eaten any Cheetos. “Why are you going? Or is this your way of punishing me?”

“Punishing you for what?” he asked as she followed him back to the bedroom.

“Just ignore me,” she told him, not really sure why she had said that. “I’ve had a really, really bad day.”

“Can I do anything?”

“No.”

He opened a box, “We found a book of matches in the girl’s room. They’re from the Pink Kitty. Why would I punish you?”

Sara sat on the bed, watching him root through boxes to find his jeans. “She didn’t strike me as the Pink Kitty type.”

“The whole family isn’t the type,” he told her, finally finding the right box. He looked up at her as he unzipped his pants and kicked them off. “Are you still mad at me?”

“I wish I knew.”

He pulled off his socks and threw them in the laundry basket. “I do, too.”

Sara looked out the bedroom windows at the lake. She seldom closed the curtains because the view was one of the most beautiful in the city. She often lay in bed at night, watching the moon move across the sky as she drifted off to sleep. How many times last week had she looked out these same windows, not knowing that just across the water lay Abigail Bennett, alone, probably freezing cold, certainly terrified. Had Sara lain in bed, warm and content, while under cover of darkness, Abby’s killer had poisoned her?

“Sara?” Jeffrey stood in his underwear, staring at her. “What’s going on?”

She didn’t want to answer. “Tell me more about Abigail’s family.”

He hesitated a second before returning to his clothes. “They’re really weird.”

“Weird how?”

He pulled out a pair of socks and sat on the bed to put them on. “Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve seen too many people using some sick religious justification for their sexual attraction to teenage girls.”

“Did they seem shocked when you told them she was dead?”

“They’d heard rumors about what we found. I don’t know how since that farm sounds hermetically sealed. One of the uncles gets out a bit. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about him I don’t trust.”

“Maybe you’ve got a thing against uncles.”

“Maybe.” He rubbed his eyes with his hands. “The mother was pretty upset.”

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to hear that kind of news.”

“She really got to me.”

“How so?”

“She begged me to find out who did this,” he said. “She might not like it when I do.”

“You really think her family is involved?”

“I don’t know.” He stood to finish dressing, all the while giving Sara a more detailed impression of the group. One uncle was overbearing and seemed to have a lot more power over the family than Jeffrey thought was normal. The husband was old enough to be his wife’s grandfather. Sara sat with her back against the headboard, arms folded across her chest as she listened. The more he told her, the more warning bells she heard.

“The women are very… old-fashioned,” he said. “They let the men do all the talking. They defer to the husbands and the brothers.”

“That’s typical of most conservative religions,” Sara pointed out. “In theory, at least, the man is supposed to be in charge of the family.” She waited for him to make a wistful comment, but when he didn’t, she asked, “Did you get anything from the sister?”

“Rebecca,” he supplied. “Nothing, and there’s no way they’ll let me talk to her again. I have a feeling the uncle would string me up by the short hairs if he knew I talked to her in Abby’s room.”

“Do you think you’d get anything from her anyway?”

“Who knows?” he asked. “I couldn’t tell if she was hiding something or if she was just sad.”

“It’s a hard thing to go through,” Sara said. “She’s probably not thinking right now.”

“ Lena got from the mother that Rebecca has run away before.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t find out.”

“Well, that could be something.”

“It could be just that she’s a teenage girl,” he pointed out, as if Sara needed to be reminded that one out of every seven children ran away at least once before the age of eighteen. “She’s pretty young for her age.”

“I imagine it’s hard to be worldly growing up in that environment.” She added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with trying to keep your kids away from the world in general.” Without thinking, she said, “If it was my kid…” She caught herself. “I mean, some of the kids I see at the clinic… I can understand why their parents want to keep them as sheltered as they can.”

He had stopped dressing, staring at her with his lips slightly parted as if he wanted to say something.

“So,” she said, trying to clear the lump in her throat. “The family is pretty wrapped up in the church?”

“Yeah,” he said, his pause letting her know he was aware of what she was doing. He continued, “I don’t know about the girl, though. I got this sense from her even before Lena told me she’d run away. She seemed kind of rebellious. When I questioned her, she sort of defied her uncle.”

“How?”

“He’s a lawyer. He didn’t want her to answer any questions. She did anyway.” He was nodding to himself as if he admired her courage. “I don’t guess that kind of independence fits into the family dynamic, especially considering it’s coming from a girl.”

“Younger children tend to be more assertive,” Sara said. “Tessa was always getting into trouble. I don’t know if that was because Daddy was harder on her or because she acted up more.”