“You knew part of him,” she’d said, cubing cheese. “And that part was true.”
I opened my mouth to argue, to ask how it could possibly be true given what he’d done and what he’d allowed. She put her knife down and strode over to me, grabbing my chin. She smelled like swiss cheese.
“That part was true,” she repeated firmly. “But so was the rest. All the bad stuff. Men in packs can do terrible things, things they wouldn’t have the hate to do alone. It’s no excuse, just something you should know.”
The front door opened. “Grab a vase, Gloria,” Mom called out. “I have enough flowers to open a store.”
But Gloria kept her eyes trained on me, kept gripping my face. “You’ll recognize those men, the ones inclined to their dark side, because they’ll expect you to carry their load. They’ll smother your anger with their pain, they’ll make you doubt yourself, and they’ll tell you they love you the whole time. Some do it big, like Ed, but most do it in quiet steps, like your father.”
My heart was hammering as loud as a bass drum.
“You meet those men, you turn and don’t look back,” she said. “Leave them to it. There’s nothing there for us. We’ve got all the good stuff right here, everything we need.”
She said that last part just as Mom slipped through the amber beads, her color high, her smile enchanting, her beauty almost painful to see. She held a glorious bouquet of sweet pink roses in her gloved hands.
“Those are as gorgeous as you, Connie!” Gloria said, turning to my mom.
I stared at Gloria’s back, realizing that was that. It was all she’d ever say about my dad. I didn’t know how I felt, so I stored it away, for the time being. I still hadn’t shown Gloria Maureen’s diary and didn’t think I would. It would only cause more pain. We wouldn’t ever know who Maureen had been afraid of, Jerome Nillson or Ed Godo.
I suspected it was both men. Maureen had great instincts, even if she wasn’t always able to listen to them, not with all the Pantown rules for girls crowding her thoughts.
Beth decided to enroll at St. Cloud State University rather than attending college in Berkeley. She didn’t feel safe traveling that far from her parents anymore. “For now, anyhow,” she said, during one of her weekly visits. “Not forever. You can’t keep a good woman down.”
I smiled at Beth, but I knew what I’d seen in her eyes back at the cabin. That terrible awareness that life could twist on you in a blink wasn’t something a person could forget. Well, I now knew something about that, too, and I was happy to have Beth around. It gave the world more color.
I think it helped her to spend time with us, too, even though when she dropped by, she’d rush inside like she’d left a stove on and would need to touch Junie and me—our cheek, a hand, our hair—before she could draw a full breath. Still, every time she came to see us, she was growing stronger. Her muscles were returning, her eyes becoming clearer. She also swore a lot. I didn’t know if she’d always been that way but decided that if anyone deserved to cuss like a sailor on shore leave, it was Beth McCain.
Both Ed and Ricky were dead.
Ricky had drowned, not surfacing until divers came for his body. Beth had taken care of Ed in the basement—Ed, who Agent Ryan established had murdered his first girlfriend in a rage when she told him she was leaving, then kept the look-alike waitress in Saint Paul alive for twenty-four hours, killing her when she tried to escape. Agent Ryan believed Ed had learned from that and was planning to keep Beth indefinitely.
The newspapers called Beth “The Heroine Who Saved Herself!” She laughed when she saw that headline, but it wasn’t a happy laugh.
“Wouldn’t have minded some help,” she’d said.
Sometimes Beth, Junie, and me just sat on the couch and were all quiet in the warmth of each other. Other times, Beth’d beg me to play drums, so I’d haul her and Junie over to Gloria’s, and we’d pick up Claude on the way. We’d open the garage and fire up the lava lamps. I’d pound away while Junie shook the tambourine, Claude twanged the triangle, and Elizabeth danced. No one played bass or sang. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I did my best to keep my face happy, but sometimes it split my chest open how bad it hurt to be in the garage without Brenda and Maureen. I think Claude felt it, too, because sometimes he’d come over and hug me when I needed it the most.
We were officially dating now. It’d been weird at first. Until we finally kissed. I’d been all tense, but then Claude’s warm lips met mine, his tasting sweet like 7UP and sending bubbles all the way to my toes. I felt so safe that I cried. A lot of other guys would have freaked out at that. Not Claude. He cried right along with me.