“Please don’t tell them exactly what happened,” I begged through my tears. “Don’t put that image in their minds. Please don’t tell them how he died.”
He stared at me, the whites of his eyes already red behind his glasses. “Doesn’t matter what I tell them,” he said. “There’s no good way for your son to die.”
Chapter 47
KAYLA
2010
“Can you imagine what it would be like to be pulled behind a truck like that?” Ellie asks me. “Your skin coming off? The agony?” She’s crying softly.
We’re in my great room, Ellie on the sectional, me in an armchair, and the barely touched tea in our cups cold by now. I’m horrified. I have that feeling at the back of my throat that tells me I’m going to start crying any second. I had that feeling every day for the first couple of months after Jackson’s death.
“I’ve tried my best to put it behind me,” she says. “It’s why I never came home before now. I knew it would just wake up the pain and no matter how many years—how many decades—have passed, I didn’t want that pain back again. Losing someone I loved. Imagining what he went through.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, not for the first time. I’ve said it over and over again as she told me her story. But I’ve also been biting my tongue. I’m certain my father had nothing to do with what happened to Win. I’m waiting for her to get to that part of the story—to the part where she tells me my father is innocent. Yet the way she acts toward Daddy … I have the feeling she still thinks he had something to do with it.
“Did you ever find out the truth about that whole thing with Daddy’s truck?” I ask. “He’d never be in the Klan, Ellie, much less do something like that. You don’t really still believe he had something to do with it, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she says, wiping her eyes with the napkin I’d given her. “I don’t think Byron ever questioned him … or anybody else, for that matter … but he had to know something, Kayla. He lied about when he left the truck at Buddy’s shop. Why would he lie if he wasn’t guilty of something?”
“You’ll never convince me he had anything to do with it,” I say. “Daddy’s no bigot.”
“Maybe he wasn’t a bigot, but he was a jealous man.” She gives me a small smile. “And you’re a good daughter, defending him. And all I can do is hope that his conscience has punished him enough over the years. I wish he’d tell me the truth, though, whatever it is. One way or another, I could finally put that horrible time of my life to rest.”
I will talk to my father about it. Ask him for the truth. For my own peace of mind, I need to know that he had no part in this horrific story.
“I guess you and Brenda became friends again over the years?” I ask, mostly to get the image of that poor guy tied to the truck out of my mind.
She presses her lips together, taking a moment to answer. “Not exactly,” she says finally. “We hadn’t talked since I left. Some forty-five years, not one word or letter. But Buddy and Mama were always close to her—Mama especially. Brenda’s been the daughter to her I was never able to be. So when I knew I was coming back here, I wrote to her. I asked if we could let bygones be bygones. We’ve both lived long lives and I didn’t want to hang on to ugly feelings about her. I was surprised when she wrote right back and said how much she wanted to see me and what it would mean to Mama for us to … reunite. We agreed to forget the past and start fresh. Pretend we were two sixty-five-year-old women meeting for the first time. So that’s what we’ve done. Or at least, what we’ve tried to do. It’s not all that easy, with that history. There’s tension between us, still.”
I’d noticed that tension the day of my yoga class at Ellie’s house. “She was so hurtful,” I said.
“She probably felt the same way about me, though. Her husband had just died and I was too wrapped up in my own life to console her. But anyway, I made up my mind to judge her on the person she is now.” She taps the rim of her teacup thoughtfully. “The truth is, if she and I were meeting today, I doubt we’d become friends,” she says. “We’re so different. But I’m glad she’s here. She’s a huge help with Mama. I’m sure Mama would rather have her as her daughter than me.”
“I doubt that,” I say, although remembering my conversation with Miss Pat the day I drove her to her doctor’s office, I think Ellie might be right.