Goodbye Earl(63)

One last look at her on the kitchen floor.

Roy made me an orphan. My mom is dead and I have no one. Alone. I’m all alone.

Never.

Run, baby girl.

She’d never come back to that farmhouse.

Never.

*



Kasey threw the black-eyed peas in the trash and walked the miles to Caroline’s trailer in a daze. She tapped on Caro’s bedroom window, hoping she was in there sleeping and hadn’t stayed over at Ada’s. Kasey probably didn’t believe in God anymore after what she’d just seen on her kitchen floor, but there was a small godlike mercy when Caro opened the window.

“Kase. Oh no. What’s wrong? Silas told us—” Caro said as Kasey climbed inside.

“My mom…I got in a big fight with my mom, but we made up. It’s fine now. I need to go to sleep,” Kasey said. She hadn’t seen herself, but her face must’ve been a hot, crying, snotty mess.

She crawled into bed with Caroline, thinking that she’d die because she probably had a concussion. She wasn’t supposed to sleep, but she’d never been this tired in her life. She hoped it wouldn’t scar sweet Caroline forever if she found her dead in the morning. She used up her last prayers praying for her mama and Caro as she sank into the black again.

*



When Angie didn’t show up for work, Duke had been the one to tell Kasey that she needed to file a missing person report. She was too scared to tell anyone what she’d seen, what really happened; she was too scared of what Roy would do. He’d told her not to tell.

So she went along with it.

She didn’t know what Roy had done with her mom’s body. Duke had taken Kasey to the police station, and Mimi had been there with them too. After Kasey lied to Grandma Mimi and told her she’d fallen off a rope swing and hit her head and wanted to make sure she didn’t have a concussion or anything, Mimi took her to the hospital so they could take a look. No concussion, but Kasey’s heart rate was elevated, and her blood pressure was high. The doctor joked that she was too young to have high blood pressure and suggested she get some extra rest. As he said it, Kasey pictured her mom’s lifeless body.

Eternal rest.

*



It was three days later when Angie was found downstream from the farmhouse. Her body was bloated and beaten up, as she likely went over a few falls and got snagged on the rocks. It was quickly ruled an accidental death. Roy told the police she’d taken the boat out alone after getting off work and never came back. He said he saw the boat floating out there, empty. He explained away his scratches and bruises by saying he’d gotten in a fight in a bar in Adora Springs.

*



After the funeral, when Kasey was leaving the bathroom alone, Roy came out of the hallway and pulled her inside the bathroom again, locked the door.

“Mama called me. She left me a voicemail. The police will know you’re lying,” she said. Her voice was barely there and shaking, but she didn’t care. The fear of being locked in a bathroom with him was eclipsed by her hatred. She wanted him to kill her now; then at least he’d get arrested. He wouldn’t be able to lie his way out of both murders.

“If you tell anyone about that voicemail or what you saw, not only will I kill you, but I’ll kill your pretty friends out there too. I swear to God I will, and I know you believe me now,” Roy said, like a scripted cartoon villain. Kasey felt as if she’d slipped into another dimension that night on the kitchen floor, and now she was stuck in this nightmare. “It’s not just me you’ll have to deal with. I know everybody in this town. Trust me—they’ve made sure this will not fall back on me. They owe me too much.”

Kasey boldly walked around Roy without saying a word. She unlocked the bathroom door and stepped into the bright hallway.



She called the woman who ran the internship in New York and told her that her mom had died unexpectedly and she no longer had housing. She asked if there was any possible way for her to come up to the city early. She’d do anything—work anywhere, sleep on anyone’s floor if she had to. The woman let her know there were some students who were in hard situations like hers and emergency dorms were available. Kasey cried so hard thanking her that the woman told her to let her know as soon as she was safe in the city.

*



That night after taking a long walk around Goldie and having dinner and pie at Ada’s, with Rosemarie and Caro too, Kasey asked Silas to take her for a ride. They drove out of town and back into it, talking about how things would be totally different now that her mom was dead, but Silas said she could stay at the Castelow lake house or their B and B anytime she came back home. Nothing felt real and Kasey was numb. Desperate to feel something, she asked him to take her to their spot and they touched in the dark again until they both felt good. Both of them crying at the shock of everything and hanging on to each other afterward.



She told Silas to drop her off at Caro’s because she was sleeping there again. She kissed him and told him she loved him, that she’d love him forever. He returned her kisses and said the same.

Once he drove away, she walked past Caro’s trailer down to the lake, threw her mom’s phone in the water, and hers too. She walked to the bus station in her dad’s Gremlins T-shirt and bought a ticket to New York. When she got on that bus, she put her iPod earbuds in and turned up “Wide Open Spaces.”