chapter fifteen

With Daddy’s tire iron in one hand, I staggered through the cemetery. The skies split with sheets of cold rain. I felt like I’d sunk into an ice bath; hard, jolting shivers twisted me off balance.

There weren’t any lights at the graveyard, so I made my way by memory and luck. Bad luck, mostly, because I stumbled into low stones that bit my shins, and I nearly fell into the black iron fence that surrounded one of the family plots. Pushing myself away from that, I shuddered when lightning lit up the spikes I’d barely missed.

The Claibornes’ crypts lay farther in than I thought. The white limestone seemed to glow, collecting the brightness of the lightning and holding on to it when the flashes faded. Circling Cecily, I curved a hand on my brow to hold off the rain and examined the seam that ran between the top of the slab and the crypt.

Finding a slightly chipped spot, I forced Daddy’s tire iron between the crypt and the slab and pushed hard. The muscles in my arms screamed, threatening to snap, but I didn’t stop. Grinding my teeth, I pushed again, the ache radiating into my shoulders, then down my back, but the slab wouldn’t move.

I kept at it anyway; then my hands slipped and I crashed headfirst into the stone. Sliding to my knees in the mud, I rubbed the throbbing goose egg rising on my forehead. The pain jangled around in my head, throbbing until my brain felt too big for my skull.

The stone pulled my hair, yanking strands of it out as I struggled to my feet again. Shaking off the pain, I told myself those little stings meant nothing. I dried my hands on my shirt and shoved the tire iron back into the crack.

Twisting for leverage, I fought the grave as hard as I could. The iron felt dangerous; my hands were cold on the slick metal, and the nub end of the iron pressed into my chest. Even though it was blunt I could imagine impaling myself on it, and I shuddered. But I had to keep going.

The crypt’s soft stone ground each time I pried, sending a nasty, bone-crunching sensation up the metal that made me want to boil my hands in bleach. After another failed push that sent me off my feet again, I sat there for a minute and just stared.

Rain poured down my face, and a strange, warm numbness started through me. It began at my hands and flooded my body with each pulse until I stepped out of my icy skin, hot-blooded and strong

Instead of pushing, I laced my hands together as tight as I could and looped them around the iron. I hung from it, bouncing to use all my weight. Something gave, and for a minute, I thought the iron had bent; if I wasn’t already in trouble, I would have been for destroying Daddy’s tools, but the iron was fine.

Cecily’s slab lifted just a tiny bit, a thin black line that encouraged me to push harder. The gap spread by tiny inches, and I felt like my head might pop from the strain, but I didn’t stop.

I dropped my full weight hard on the iron and pushed the stone just enough to set it askew. As soon as I saw that tiny patch of space, I dropped the tire iron and darted to the other side of the crypt, shoving on one corner, then ducking back around to push the other. The stone rubbed my hands raw, but I couldn’t quit; I was almost there.

A blinding light flashed in my face, and I stopped just long enough to look into it. From the road, I saw the shadow of a car and a man climbing out of it. The police.

I should have run, but I pushed harder instead, beating the slab with my hands, urged on by the man yelling at me to stop, and with a final, great shove, the slab teetered on the edge of the crypt, then fell. It broke into three pieces, waxy, irregular breaks that seemed unreal.

I climbed up the side of Cecily’s grave, desperate to get a look inside. Even without the lightning, I recognized pieces of the jersey shirt, black sleeves and gray body, rotten through in places.

Trying not to gag on the smell that rolled up, I made myself look where Elijah’s eyes should have been. From then to forever, I knew who carried the grave lanterns—long-dead boys with half a face, soft and green with moss.

A thin length of rope lay in a coil beside his head. It must have been white once; it was the kind we used to hang laundry in the backyard, but it had turned black.

Footsteps rushed up behind me, but I held on tight to the grave. Elijah’s body was a horrible thing to look at, but I couldn’t close my eyes. It was real; he was real; the whole summer was real.

I’d found him where he was sleeping, the first place I’d seen him, him and his jersey shirt, him and his torn jeans. Nobody in their right mind could believe Mrs. Cecily Claiborne had been put to rest in clothes like that.

Right before the sheriff yanked me down, I saw an old canvas bag split open at Elijah’s feet. River rocks poured out of it in a heap, all of them smooth and flat just like the one in my pocket, and that was when I started to cry.

The police didn’t come to my house that time; Daddy had to come to them. A nice lady deputy had given me a cup of tea and a dry blanket to wrap around my shoulders, and when I shared an embarrassed whisper with her, she took me to the bathroom and gave me a quarter for the tampon machine.

After that, she left me alone in a big green room that smelled like medicine. I huddled in a hard plastic chair, staring at myself in a wall-length mirror. The door had a window in it, and every so often, someone would peek through it, like I was a new panda bear at the zoo.

I’d heard them buzzing, talking about me as one of the two deputies who’d shown up at the graveyard brought me in. The other one stayed behind, because after I quit fighting and screaming, I convinced them to look inside Cecily’s crypt.

I enjoyed watching their faces go blank when they shone their flashlights inside, because I got the impression they just wanted to prove me wrong so I’d shut up and go quietly. As the deputy walked me to the car, I told him the body was Elijah Landry’s, but I don’t think he believed me.

When the door finally opened, a woman I didn’t recognize walked in. She wasn’t a police officer; she wore a navy blue suit that looked nice with her frosty blond hair, and she carried a thick briefcase that she swung to slide onto the table.

Right behind her came Daddy, still in his work shirt and looking so ragged I expected him to fall down from exhaustion. “This is Billie Jo Camp, Iris. She’s your lawyer.”

“Did anyone try to make you talk about what happened tonight?” Billie Jo asked, snapping open the latches on her briefcase. She had stacks and stacks of folders in there, and she dug through them until she found one that was almost empty.

I shook my head. Actually, I’d been waiting for somebody to talk to me so I could explain who I’d found, but after the lady deputy left, I’d been by myself the whole time. “No, ma’am.”

Waving a pen at my face before uncapping it, she squinted down at me. “Did they do that to you?”

Looking into the mirror, I smiled weakly. My skin had turned papery gray, which showed off the bruise on my forehead. “No, ma’am, I fell.”

The folder went back in her briefcase, and she snapped the lid shut. With a pointed look, she said, “You stay put,” like I had a choice about it, and walked out, her heels clacking on the floor.

Daddy sank into the chair across from me and folded his hands on the table. He kept his head low; all I could see of him was the part in his hair and just how many silver strands had threaded in with the dark.

When he looked up, his face was dry, but a faint shade of red rimmed his eyes. I had never seen my daddy cry. Seeing how torn he was made my heart ache.

He swallowed and swiped at his mouth, shaking his head slowly. “What did I do wrong, Iris?”

“Nothing!” I reached across the table for his hand, but he didn’t stretch his fingers to meet mine. I covered his fist anyway, thinking I should feel guilty then, but instead I felt relieved. It was over, and I wouldn’t disappoint him anymore. “I just had to find him, Daddy, and now I’m done. I promise.”

Working a hand free, he plastered it against his forehead, like his head had grown too heavy to stay up on its own. We just sat there in silence until Billie Jo came back to say we could go home.

Daddy took his vacation to stay home with me. We kept our curtains closed and the doors locked, because the morning after I found Elijah, I was a headline.

I was Local Girl Destroys Historic Grave, Finds Evidence of Murder? The way they wrote it made me want to laugh. I kept that to myself when I saw the look on Daddy’s face.

He didn’t just throw the paper away; he tore it in pieces first and jammed it all the way down in the garbage. He sent Collette away when she came to the door, too. We were locked in and staying put until my court date.

Billie Jo said I’d probably get community service, but that changed after the autopsy on Wednesday. That day’s paper finally told the world what I’d been insisting all along: I’d found Elijah Landry. A discovery like that, even though I’d been caught desecrating a grave, might mean I’d just get a fine. I wondered how many weeds I’d have to pull to pay for that.

The paperboy shoved our copy through the mail slot, so I got to read it while Daddy was in the shower. I shivered when they talked about me without really talking about me—I wasn’t grown, so they couldn’t use my name.

The story said the police planned to open the investigation again, and I snorted when I read that Deputy Wood claimed he had known the body would be found eventually. For four pages, the Citizen detailed the disappearance and the mystery and speculated on how Elijah had ended up sleeping with Cecily and how I’d come to find him.

Since Billie Jo did all my talking for me, and all she told anybody was “No comment,” the newspaper reporters made up wild stories instead. I didn’t care, because I knew the truth.

Instead of being embarrassed, I found it interesting to have people camped out on our street, waiting for us to come outside. Daddy chased them off the lawn, but the news vans just parked farther away, the people that came with them milling around like hungry dogs.

On the fifth day, the headlines turned to Old Mrs. Landry. She swore the autopsy was wrong-—God had taken her boy into heaven, body and all. That thing in the Claiborne crypt, it was a lie, maybe a demon, but definitely not Elijah.

That was the day my daddy sat me at the kitchen table to go over paperwork. I had a lot of it, too.

Technically, I was arrested. They only let me go home because Daddy promised to keep me under his thumb. I had a court date the next month and an appointment with a psychiatrist that Friday. No more Father Rey; I celebrated that quietly by myself.

With a cramp in my hand from signing papers I didn’t understand, I slumped on the table in relief when the doorbell rang. Daddy wouldn’t answer it, but he would at least get up to tell them to go away, which gave me a minute to breathe.

Lying my head in my arms, I frowned when I heard soft conversation at the door instead of a curt goodbye. I leaned back in my chair, frowning when Mr. Lanoux and two strange men in suits walked in. Collette’s daddy looked tired, with dark circles beneath his eyes, and he edged closer to Daddy, like he wanted distance between them and the other two men.

Both in brown, the men talked low, so I couldn’t make the words out. When they put their hands in their pockets, I saw badges on their belts.

Slowly, I pushed my chair back and wandered to the kitchen door. “Daddy?”

Daddy looked back at me, blank and calm. “Go on upstairs, Iris.”

I knew better than to argue with him. I took my time going up, though, and I stopped three steps from the top to sit and listen.

The detectives had musical voices, rolling like water, with upstate accents that made me wonder how they’d ended up in Ondine. Mr. Lanoux hadn’t said a thing, that I could tell.

“I can make some coffee,” Daddy said, his voice moving from the living room toward the kitchen. The detectives said that wasn’t necessary, their footsteps following Daddy’s.

Sliding down one stair, I strained to hear. Billie Jo had told us to keep our mouths shut, because that was our right. I didn’t understand why Daddy let the police in, let alone why he’d offered them coffee.

One detective sounded bored, the sound of flipping paper punctuating his words. “We’d just like to ask you a few questions about the Landry boy.”

My eyes went wide, and I slid down another step. I knew Daddy knew things, stories he’d never tell me, secrets he planned to always keep, but if the police asked, he had to tell the truth.

A second later, worry took over my curiosity. Daddy had known Elijah was dead all along. It came to me just then that I still didn’t know how. If he’d done something. If he’d seen something.

Panic squeezed me; my thoughts ran fast and hot. The newspaper said murder over and over. No matter my visions, no matter what I knew in my bones, my daddy had known Elijah was dead, and everybody was calling it murder.

A cry caught in my throat. Because of me, my daddy could go to jail.

Kitchen chairs scraped, cutting the silence, and after a long time, Daddy cleared his throat. “We didn’t mean any harm. We were young and stupid then, and I reckon we’re old and stupid now.”

My breath faltered. Daddy was going to confess something, something horrible Mr. Lanoux knew about. Snuffling on tears, I missed some of it but shut myself up in time to hear Daddy finish another sentence.

“We were trying to help a friend, sir. That’s all.”

“Well, you can see how we’ve got a problem, Mr. Rhame,” one of the men said. The other one coughed like he wanted to call Daddy a liar but didn’t dare out loud.

The chairs squeaked again, and I heard them heading for the stairs. I yanked myself up by the rail and bolted for my room, closing the door as quietly as I could before throwing myself on the bed. They startled me by opening my door instead of Daddy’s.

“This one, Eddie,” Daddy said, drawing Mr. Lanoux to one of my bookshelves. He didn’t once look at me and neither did Collette’s daddy. The police huddled in the doorway, watching them with sharp eyes.

I wanted to ask what they were doing, but I was afraid of getting Daddy in more trouble. It felt wrong to have all those men in my room, rifling through my things.

Daddy took handfuls of my books down, stacking them neatly at his feet. Mr. Lanoux helped him, and soon the shelves were bare again, as if I hadn’t just spent three days putting my room back together.

Then, with Daddy on one end and Mr. Lanoux on the other, they lifted my great big shelf—the one Elijah’d torn up first in my dream—and pulled it back from the wall. Cottony brown cobwebs clung to the back of the shelf. The paint behind the shelves was an unfamiliar shade; I couldn’t remember my room ever being green, but there was the evidence of it, in a tall, rectangular patch.

Setting the bookcase down, Daddy shoved it around and nodded toward an envelope taped to the back of it. The paper had gone yellow.

“Think we ought to get pictures?” one of the detectives asked, but the other one shook his head and pulled the envelope free. He snapped on latex gloves; then, with careful fingers, he spread the flap and let his partner pull a sheet of paper from it.

They seemed to barely glance at it before folding and tucking it in the envelope again. Skeptical looks ran through their eyes, and as one detective drew a plastic bag from his pocket, the other offered my daddy a business card. “We’re not finished.”

“I didn’t figure,” Daddy said, and slid the card into his back pocket. Speaking a silent language of nods and gestures, he and Mr. Lanoux turned to put my shelf back the way it belonged.

Confused, I just bit my tongue and waited for somebody to explain something, but nobody did.

Collette stood at my window, holding the curtain aside. “There’s only one reporter there now.”

Lying on my bed, I nodded. “Yeah, the other night, Rennie slit their tires and set off a whole strip of Black Cats right behind ’em.”

“So he’s good for something,” Collette said. She smiled and let go of the curtain. My room darkened with hazy shadows. Shuffling to my desk, she sat down, wrapping her arm around the back of the chair. She looked at me for a long time; then she said something I never expected. “I’m sorry, Iris.”

I sat up. I shrugged. “What’s to be sorry about?”

“I don’t know. Everything.” She traced her brow with her nail, lost in thought. “I feel like I shoulda been in the graveyard with you.”

Teasing, I said, “You’re just jealous I got arrested and you didn’t.”

“Well, yeah,” she joked back. “I look awful fine in orange. Way better than you.”

I crossed my legs, sitting in the middle of the bed and just looking at her. Collette’s face was still, but there were all these hints of sleek sharpness. Her cheekbones were almost high; her chin had a faint edge to it. She really was beautiful, and we really were about done with childish things.

Suddenly nervous, I asked, “We’re always gonna be friends, right?”

Collette gave that all the seriousness it deserved. She reared her head back, looking at me like I was a fool. “Duh. We’re getting out of here when I get my license, remember?”

I nodded and smiled, because I did remember. I was just glad she did, too.

The silence in my house got heavier as the sun went down. Daddy made sandwiches and soup for dinner and let me eat in front of the TV. He never did that, and I watched him instead of the programs, waiting for him to say something about the envelope or the police or anything at all.

He didn’t, though; he was stone, holding an untouched plate of food in his lap.

Chasing bread crusts around my plate, I glanced at the TV, then at Daddy, wondering if I should let out any of the questions that had piled up in my head.

When I saw Daddy swallow like he was choking something back, I reached out to touch his hand. “It’s all over now.”

He kept nodding, tipping his head back a little farther each time until he stared at the ceiling. He looked even older than he had at the police station, and exhausted.

“You can tell me,” I said.

“He killed himself, Iris.” Daddy looked over, wearing a bitter, broken smile. Southern men didn’t tell secrets; it was a matter of honor. Daddy probably would have kept this one until he had his own grave if I hadn’t gone and dug it up.

“He killed himself, and he asked us not to let his mama find him like that, so we didn’t. That’s what that note was all about.”

I hurt when I heard that, and it made Old Mrs. Landry human again. Strict as she was, Elijah had loved her, enough to spare her the shame of a suicide in the family. Suicides couldn’t even be buried in the regular cemetery; in a sick way, it was kind of funny he’d ended up there, anyway.

Squeezing Daddy’s hand, I asked quietly, “But why’d he do it?” He didn’t answer, so I spread my question out a little more. “Was he pining over Mama?”

Daddy knitted his brows and stared at me. “Where’d that come from?”

“That’s what Mrs. Thacker said. It was either love or money, and he was too young to worry about money.” A chill ran between my shoulder blades when I repeated her words, because it brought to mind all the other ugly things she’d had to say.

“Adelaide Thacker talks too much,” he said.

“Well, was it?”

Daddy turned to look at me. “It wasn’t your mama.”

I tried to puzzle that out but it didn’t make sense. It was love; Daddy’d just said as much, and I felt like I deserved to know. “I don’t understand.”

Daddy’s eyelids fluttered closed, and he shook his head slowly. He took a breath, then looked up with an expression that told me this was the last he’d have to say about it, ever.

“I tried to make it up. I tried like hell. I did what that damned note asked me to, and I made sure Lee got out, so he wouldn’t end up the same way. I—”

“Daddy, you’re not making sense.”

He looked over at me, broken. Final. “It was me, Iris. I was in love with your mama, and Elijah was in love with me.”