“You look pretty, Mom.”
She fluffed her curls from the bottom. Her hands were trembling so much it looked like she was waving at herself. “Your father sent over my makeup bag, but he forgot my favorite lipstick. Will you bring it when you come back?”
“Yep,” I said, focusing on her eyes, hoping my face reflected calm. “Do you know how long you’re staying this time?”
“Your father would like me to relax and not worry about that.” The wobbling in her hands reached her mouth. She tapped her own lips, like she was shushing a small child.
My nerves jangled. I shouldn’t have come here. What was I thinking, needing my mom? I knew better. I knew better. “Should I get the nurse?”
“You’ve always been such a worrier!” she said, her laugh high and tinny. “Hurry worry, don’t get blurry! If you keep worrying, you’ll get wrinkles early, and then no man will want you. How’s that sound?”
I was kneading the thick cotton curtain behind my back, mouth dry. I’d seen her like this at home before, like she had all the energy in the world but was tied in place. A trip to the hospital had always cured that, always brought her back to earth.
“Be kind to your father while I’m here, won’t you?” she asked. “It’s been so hard on him, losing me to you girls. That’s what happens when you have children. They become your world. Remember that!”
If I left for the nurse, Mom might get angry. I’d seen that happen before, too. This specific mood was terrible, though, even worse than the crying spells. I rubbed the necklace at my throat. “Mom—”
“Oh! Look at your pretty bauble. Is that a copper heart? Did a boy buy you that?”
I swallowed loudly. “Claude gave it to me.”
“He’s a sweet boy, that Claude. You could do worse. The necklace is lovely. I adore copper. Do you remember that piece I got your father?”
I started to shake my head, but suddenly, I froze, my blood replaced by ice water.
I didn’t want her to keep going. I didn’t want her to finish the story.
“I saved up my pin money for weeks to buy it for him. Weeks.” She laughed again. It sounded like a string of empty metal cans clattering in the wind. “We practically lived on burger and noodles, but I knew the sacrifice would be worth it as soon as he saw the gift.”
I opened my mouth to yell stop, but nothing came out.
“He about wore it out, at first. Said it reminded him of being young. But then I guess he got old and stuffy! Squirreled it away somewhere. Do you remember it? You were just a little girl, but your father never wore jewelry other than that, so it might have snagged in your memory.”
I lurched forward, my hand stretched out to silence her, but it was too late, forever too late.
“I guess the lesson learned is never buy your father a copper ID bracelet.”
CHAPTER 46
Strobe lights.
A row of three men.
Flashes of brightness then darkness scissoring them, illuminating only their waists to their knees, that same light slicing my chest, lighting up the TAFT patch sewn into the borrowed fatigues.
Elvis, singing.
Well, that’s all right, mama, that’s all right for you.
A girl on her knees, her head at the waist of the middle man.
That’s all right, mama, just anyway you do.
Her hair long and blonde.
Flash. Strobe.
With green streaks.
The hand at the back of her neck pressing her face into his crotch. He was wearing a copper-colored bracelet that I recognized.
No no no no no
My dad.
It had been my dad.
My dad.
It had been my dad.
That litany cycled through my head as I biked away from the hospital. I didn’t know how I managed to pedal, how I kept my balance. I’d been shot in the gut, my intestines turned into a slurry, the wound so gruesome that I couldn’t look down, but I felt it.
Oh, I felt it.
My dad. It had been my dad. My dad. It had been my dad.
I stepped off the bike in the front yard, walked away from it while the tires still spun, strode up the porch and through the front door, didn’t close it behind me because I was dying.
I continued to Dad’s office.
Dad who wasn’t Bluebeard, who was worse.
Dad who’d put Maureen’s mouth on him and held it there.
Who’d said he’d look into Maureen’s “suicide,” but of course he wouldn’t. Sheriff Nillson and my dad weren’t going to look in that direction at all.
His office was empty, but it wouldn’t have slowed me if he’d been in it. We were past that now. The room was arranged like I remembered from when I was a little girl and he’d let me play dolls on the floor while he worked. A desk near the window. A closet. Bookshelves. A filing cabinet. I marched to the closet, yanked open the door. Shoeboxes were stacked on the overhead shelf. Four suits and a sports shirt were draped on hangers.