In summation, it is of my opinion that Mr. Maxwell Mason Foxberry III drowned because he was so inebriated he fell into Lake Goldie. （Corroborated by the Nancy Simmons eyewitness account/interpretation of blood alcohol report to follow.）
Final Notes on the Maxwell
Mason Foxberry III Investigation,
from the Desk of Chief
Mickey Johns
Closed. After reviewing the autopsy findings and blood alcohol report, I find no further need for investigation. It was an accident, not a murder. Unfortunately, Mr. Foxberry never learned to swim. （His death will also be listed as misadventure, since perhaps there’s a chance he was so inebriated he forgot that fact and jumped in anyway.）
54
Kasey
“Caro’s husband died? What happened?” Devon asked over the phone.
“He drowned. It’s a long story…well, no, it isn’t. He drowned. That’s it,” Kasey said. She was standing outside the farmhouse, looking at the water.
He drowned. That’s it.
“Kase, everything sounds crazy right now and being there with you for a couple days didn’t make me feel any better about it. I have no clue what’s going on and you won’t tell me,” Devon said. His voice was sharp and dark, a tone she’d only heard a few times in their relationship. She understood how he was feeling, and if she could stop it, she would, but she couldn’t.
“I don’t know what to say, Dev,” she said.
“Are you having second thoughts about us? Is that what this is about?”
“Devon—”
“Tell me how I’m supposed to feel, then.”
“I can’t tell you how to feel!”
“I feel…well, I feel terrible, Kasey. I love you and you ran away from me.”
“I did not run away from you and I love you too! You know how much I love you!”
“Do I?”
“Yes! You do!”
“Enough to marry me?”
“Yes!” Kasey said. Yes. She loved Devon enough to marry him. That was the plan.
*
Devon had shown up on the farmhouse porch and they’d talked and kissed and had sex in Kasey’s old bedroom. After she told Devon the full, truthful history of the house and why it was so hard for her to come back, he chilled out. After she talked some more about what had happened to Caro and told him that she and Rosemarie and Ada were trying to help her get out of her marriage, he chilled out even more. But when she couldn’t tell him exactly when she’d be coming back to New York, he got upset and confused, and nothing she said could make him feel better.
Kasey explained to him that her friends were really busy, and Caro was still in the hospital and everything was weird. She and Devon had gone for one walk through the town square, and Kasey showed him the diner and Plum everything and Goldie High and her other high school haunts. She distracted him when he got too close to the copies of the Goldie Gazette in the newspaper box so he wouldn’t see Trey’s face splashed on the front page. She didn’t want Devon asking questions; she didn’t want to talk to him about it yet. Instead, they went to the dog park and peeked at the puppies. They got japchae and triangle kimbap from Korean Gold and ate on the back porch of the farmhouse, looking out at the water. Having Devon in Goldie was jarring, but no more jarring than killing your best friend’s husband or finding out that your other best friend was dying of cancer.
And fast-forwarded: definitely not more jarring than the Goldie police deciding that the coroner’s report was complete, the murder investigation was closed, and no crime had been committed. Trey Foxberry had drowned, plain and simple, and RACK had been so overjoyed about it they were speechless. They’d gathered at Leo’s and sat in silence, holding hands while Leo softly played George Harrison on the guitar and Esme made holy basil tea in the kitchen.
Before Kasey knew that relief, she and Devon had talked and eaten and reconnected in that bed in her old bedroom a lot. It’d only been a couple of weeks, but she missed his kisses and tried her best not to think about the Silas kisses on the couch. She missed sex with Devon and eating with Devon and laughing with Devon, but she also asked Devon to please go back to New York so she could figure Goldie out on her own, and he agreed to that.
“I’m going to my mom’s grave today. I’ve never been,” Kasey said to Devon on the phone after they’d talked some more.
“Will you call me later?”
“I will. I promise,” she said.
*
Kasey went to Roy’s grave first. It wasn’t right next to her mom’s, but it was too close and she hated that, but also, anywhere on the planet would’ve been too close.
Kasey hated spit—even the word saliva grossed her out—but she spit on Roy’s grave because she’d been wanting to do it since she was in high school, and it was one thing she could do now as an adult that she couldn’t make happen when she was a kid.
Her mom was closer to her dad’s grave, where she belonged. She walked over to her dad’s and sat there for a bit, looking at his name. Isaiah William Fritz. She got up and sat in front of her mom’s headstone and cried. Grandma Mimi and Duke had helped her pick out the headstone, and Duke had paid for it, promising Kasey he would take care of everything. When she’d gone to Duke and Cherry’s for pie, Duke had let her know he kept an eye on Angie’s grave and made sure it always looked as pretty as possible.
And it did look pretty.
The grass was cut short, but there were some pokes of violets and clovers and a tight bunch of wildflowers growing up behind it. When Kasey got up the courage, she touched the ANGELINA JOSEPHINE FRITZ carved into the stone. She was wearing a crescent moon necklace she’d brought with her to town but hadn’t put on until that morning. She pulled another like it out of her bag and draped it over the headstone. She got a jingle bell necklace out of her bag too and put it there with the enamel snack food pins she’d ordered. She lined them up in a neat row on top of the stone—a tiny MoonPie and a tiny Twinkie. A little pickle and a translucent glass strawberry that caught the sunlight. She kissed the headstone and told her mama she loved her. She left flowers in the grass—red roses for Rosemarie, pink ones for Ada, sunflowers for Caroline, white peonies for herself.
She went back to her dad’s grave and left him the third moon necklace she’d brought with her, kissed his headstone too. Kasey wasn’t a cemetery person and neither was her mom when she was alive, but being there brought Kasey an unexpected peace in the middle of the raging storm of emotions inside of her.
Moonshadow.
Kasey imagined both of her parents looking down on her, knowing what she’d done for Caroline, knowing what she wished she could’ve done for her mom, and she didn’t feel condemned. She sat there for a long time, waiting for it, but it never came.
*
On the way home from the cemetery, she called Devon and told him about the moon necklaces and attempted to soothe him as much as she could, promising she’d talk again soon. When she spotted Paula Foxberry on her phone in front of the courthouse, Kasey walked right up to her.
“I know what you did. I know what your family did for Roy Dupont…I know everything. Everyone knows now. Everyone knows what kind of family y’all are and what kind of son you raised, and there’s nothing we can do about any of that now, but I know. We all know,” Kasey said to her. The peace of the cemetery was running warm and smooth through her veins. It made her voice lower than she thought it’d be, and it was steady, not shaking a bit.