Chief Ward read through the letter. Sat down. Looked up. “You know what this says?”
Leni dragged a chair over and sat down facing him. She was afraid her legs would stop supporting her. “I do.”
“So your mother shot your dad and disposed of his body and you two ran away.”
“You have the letter.”
“And where is your mother?”
“She died last week. She gave the letter to me on her deathbed and asked me to deliver it to the police. It was the first I’d heard of it. The … killing, I mean. I thought we were running from my father’s abuse. He … was violent. Sometimes. He beat her really badly one night and we ran away while he slept.”
“I’m sorry about her death.”
Chief Ward stared at Leni for a long time, his eyes narrowed. The intensity of his gaze was unsettling. She fought the urge to fidget. Finally he got up, went to a file cabinet in the back of the room, riffled through a drawer, and pulled out a folder. He dropped it on his desk, sat down, and opened it. “So. Your mother, Cora Allbright, was five-foot-six. People described her as slight, fragile, thin. And your dad was nearly six feet tall.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“But she shot your father, dragged his body out of the house, and, what—strapped him onto a snow machine—and drove up to Glass Lake in the winter and cut a hole in the ice, loaded him with iron traps, and dropped him. Alone. Where were you?”
Leni sat very still, her hands clasped in her lap. “I don’t know. I don’t know when it happened.” She felt the need to add on, layer words to solidify the lie, but Grandpa had told her to say as little as possible.
Chief Ward set his elbows on the desk and steepled his blunt-tipped fingers. “You could have mailed this letter.”
“I could have.”
“But that’s not who you are, is it, Lenora? You’re a good girl. An honest person. I have glowing reports about you in this file.” He leaned forward. “What happened on the night you ran away? What set him off?”
“I … found out I was pregnant,” she said.
“Matthew Walker,” he said, glancing down at the file. “People said you two kids were in love.”
“Uh-huh,” Leni said.
“Sad as hell about what happened to him. To both of you. But you got better, and he…” Chief Ward let it hang there; Leni felt her shame hang on the hook of the unspoken. “I hear your dad hated the Walkers.”
“More than hated them.”
“And when your father found out you were pregnant?”
“He went crazy. Started beating me with his fists, with his belt…” The memories she’d spent years submerging broke free.
“He was a mean son of a bitch, from what I hear.”
“Sometimes.” Leni looked away. Out of the corner of her eye she saw MJ reading his book, his mouth moving as he worked to sound out the words. She hoped these spoken words didn’t find purchase in some dark corner of his subconscious, able to rise one day.
Chief Ward pushed some papers toward her. Leni saw Allbright, Coraline in the corner. “I have sworn statements from Marge Birdsall, Natalie Watkins, Tica Rhodes, Thelma Schill, and Tom Walker. All of them testified to seeing bruises on your mother over the years. There were a lot of tears when I took these statements, I can tell you that, a lot of folks wishing they’d done things different. Thelma said she wished she’d shot your dad herself.”
“Mama never let anyone help her,” Leni said. “I still don’t know why.”
“Did she ever tell anyone he beat her?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You have to tell the truth if you want real help,” Chief Ward said.
Leni stared at him.
“Come on, Leni. You and I both know what happened that night. Your mom didn’t do this alone. You were a kid. It wasn’t your fault. You did what your mom asked of you, and who wouldn’t? There’s no one on the planet who wouldn’t understand. He was beating her, for God’s sake. The law will understand.”
He was right. She had been a kid. A scared, pregnant eighteen-year-old.
“Let me help you,” he said. “You can get rid of this terrible burden.”
She knew what her mother and grandparents wanted her to do now: to keep lying, to say Leni hadn’t witnessed the murder or the drive to Glass Lake or her father sinking into the icy water.
To say: not me.
She could blame it all on Mama and stick to that story.