A Grant County Collection: Indelible, Faithless and Skin Privilege

  The problem was, Sara knew perfectly well how Jo had managed to snatch him away. It had to have been a game for Jeffrey, a challenge. Jolene was much more experienced at this kind of thing than Sara. She had probably known to play hard to get, balancing just the right amount of flirting and teasing to get him on the line, then reeling him in slowly like a prize fish. Certainly, she had not ended up at the end of their first date with the balls of her feet braced against the edge of the kitchen sink as she writhed in ecstasy on the floor, biting her tongue so that she would not scream his name.

  Tessa asked, 'Why are you smiling at the sink?'

  Sara shook her head, taking a drink of wine. 'I just hate this. I hate all of this. And Jimmy Powell is sick again.'

  'That kid with leukemia?'

  Sara nodded. 'It doesn't look good. I've got to go see him at the hospital tomorrow.'

  'How was Macon?'

  Unbidden, Sara's mind flashed onto the image of the girl on the table, her body flayed open, the doctor reaching into the womb to extract the fetus. Another child lost. Another family devastated. Sara did not know how many more times she could witness this sort of thing without cracking.

  'Sara?' Tessa asked.

  'It was as awful as I thought it would be.' Sara used her finger to swirl what remained of the chocolate sauce. Somewhere in all of this, she had eaten the entire piece of cake.

  Tessa walked to the refrigerator and took out a tub of ice cream, returning to the original subject. 'You have to let this go, Sara. Jeffrey did what he did, and nothing's going to change that. Either he's back in your life or he's not, but you can't keep yo-yoing him back and forth.' She pried off the top to the ice cream. 'You want some?'

  'I shouldn't,' Sara told her, holding out her plate.

  'I've always been the cheater, not the cheatee,' Tessa pointed out, taking two spoons from the drawer, closing it with her hip. 'Devon just left. He didn't cheat. At least I don't think he cheated.' She dropped several spoonfuls of Blue Bell onto Sara's plate. 'Maybe he cheated.'

  Sara held her other hand under the paper plate so that it wouldn't fold from the weight. 'I don't think so.'

  'No,' she agreed. 'He barely had time for me, let alone another woman. Did I tell you about the time he fell asleep right in the middle of it?' Sara nodded. 'Jesus, how do people stay interested in each other for fifty years?'

  Sara shrugged. She was hardly an expert.

  'God, but he was good in bed when he was awake.' Tessa sighed, holding the spoon in her mouth. 'That's one thing you have to keep in mind with Jeffrey. Never underestimate the value of sexual chemistry.' She scooped more ice cream onto Sara's plate. 'Devon was bored with me.'

  'Don't be silly.'

  'I mean it,' she said. 'He was bored. He didn't want to do things anymore.'

  'Like go out?'

  'Like, the only way I could get him to go down on me was put a television on my stomach and wire the remote control to my –'

  'Tess!'

  She chuckled, taking a big bite of ice cream. Sara could remember the last time they'd eaten ice cream together. The day that Tessa had been attacked, they had gone to the Dairy Queen for milkshakes. Two hours later, Tessa was lying on the ground with her head split open, her child dead inside of her.

  Tessa braced her hands on the counter and squeezed her eyes shut. Sara bolted from her chair, alarmed, until Tessa explained, 'Ice cream headache.'

  'I'll get you some water.'

  'I got it.' She put her head under the kitchen faucet and took a swig. She wiped her mouth, asking, 'Yeesh, why does that happen?'

  'The trigeminal nerve in the –'

  Tessa cut her off with a look. 'You don't have to answer every question, Sara.'

  Sara took this as a rebuke, and looked down at her plate.

  Tessa took a less generous bite of ice cream before going back to the subject of Devon. 'I just miss him.'

  'I know, sweetie.'

  There was nothing more to say on the matter. In Sara's opinion, Devon had shown his true colors at the end, slinking out when things got tough. Her sister was well rid of him, though Sara understood that was hard for Tessa to grasp at this point. For Sara's part, the one time she had seen Devon downtown, she had crossed the street so that she would not have to pass him on the sidewalk. Jeffrey had been with her, and she had practically ripped his arm off in order to keep him from going over and saying something to the other man.

  Out of the blue, Tessa said, 'I'm not going to have sex anymore.'

  Sara barked out a laugh.

  'I'm serious.'

  'Why?'

  'Do you have any Cheetos?'

  Sara went to the cabinet to fetch the bag. She tried to tread cautiously when she asked, 'Is it this new church?'

  'No.' Tessa took the bag. 'Maybe.' She used her teeth to open the package. 'It's just that what I've been doing so far isn't working. I'd be pretty stupid to keep on doing it.'

  'What isn't working?'

  Tessa just shook her head. 'Everything.' She offered the bag of Cheetos to Sara, but she refused, instead tugging open the zipper of her skirt so she could breathe.

  Tessa asked, 'Has anyone told you why Bella is here?'

  'I was hoping you'd know.'

  'They won't tell me anything. Every time I walk into the room, they stop talking. I'm like a walking mute button.'

  'Me, too,' Sara realized.

  'Will you do me a favor?' Tessa asked.

  'Of course,' Sara offered, noting the change in Tessa's tone.

  'Come to church with me Wednesday night.'

  Sara felt like a fish that had just been thrown from its tank, her mouth gaping open as she tried to think of an excuse.

  'It's not even church,' Tessa said. 'It's more like a fellowship meeting. Just people hanging around, talking. They've even got honey buns.'

  'Tess . . .'

  'I know you don't want to go, but I want you there.' Tessa shrugged. 'Do it for me.'

  This had been Cathy's device for guilting her two daughters into attending Easter and Christmas services for the last twenty years.

  'Tessie,' Sara began. 'You know I don't believe –'

  'I'm not sure I do, either,' Tessa interrupted. 'But it feels good to be there.'

  Sara stood to put the roast in the refrigerator.

  'I met Thomas in physical therapy a few months ago.'

  'Who's Thomas?'

  'He's kind of the leader of the church,' Tessa answered. 'He had a stroke a while back. It was pretty bad. He's really hard to understand, but there's this way he has of talking to you without saying a word.'

  The dishwasher had clean dishes from several days ago, and Sara started to empty it just to give herself something to do.

  'It was weird,' Tessa continued. 'I was doing my stupid motor exercises, putting the pegs in the right holes, when I felt like someone was staring at me, and I looked up and it was this old guy in a wheelchair. He called me Cathy.'

  'Cathy?' Sara repeated.

  'Yeah, he knows Mama.'

  'How does he know Mama?' Sara asked, certain that she knew all her mother's friends.

  'I don't know.'

  'Did you ask her?'

  'I tried to, but she was busy.'

  Sara closed the dishwasher and leaned against the counter. 'What happened then?'

  'He asked if I wanted to come to church.' Tessa paused a beat. 'Being up there in physical therapy, seeing all these people who are so much worse off than I am . . .' she shrugged. 'It really put things into perspective, you know? Like how much I've been wasting my life.'

  'You haven't been wasting your life.'

  'I'm thirty-four years old and I still live with my parents.'

  'Over the garage.'

  Tessa sighed. 'I just think what happened to me shouldn't go to waste.'

  'It shouldn't have happened at all.'

  'I was lying in that hospital bed feeling so sorry for myself, so pissed at the world for what happened. And then it hit m
e. I've been selfish all my life.'

  'You have not.'

  'Yes, I have. Even you said that.'

  Sara had never regretted her words so much in her life. 'I was angry with you, Tess.'

  'You know what? It's like when people are drunk and they say they didn't mean to say something and you should just excuse them and forget it because they'd been drinking.' She explained, 'Alcohol lowers your inhibitions. It doesn't make you pull lies out of your ass. You got angry with me and said what you were thinking in your head.'

  'I didn't,' Sara tried to assure her, but even to her own ears, the defense fell flat.

  'I almost died, and for what? What have I done with my life?' Her hands were clenched in fists. Again, she shifted her focus. 'If you died, what's the one thing you would regret not doing?'

  Instantly, Sara thought but did not say, 'Having a child.'

  Tessa read her expression. 'You could always adopt.'

  Sara shrugged. She could not answer.

  'We never talk about this. It happened almost fifteen years ago and we never talk about it.'

  'There's a reason.'

  'Which is?'

  Sara refused to get into it. 'What's the point, Tessie? Nothing's going to change. There's no miraculous cure.'

  'You're so good with kids, Sara. You'd be such a good mother.'

  Sara said the two words that she hated to say more than any others. 'I can't.' Then, 'Tessie, please.'

  Tessa nodded, though Sara could tell that this was just a temporary retreat. 'Well, what I would regret is not leaving my mark. Not doing something to make the world better.'

  Sara took a tissue to blow her nose. 'You do that anyway.'

  'There's a reason for everything,' Tessa insisted. 'I know you don't believe that. I know you can't trust anything that doesn't have some scientific theory behind it or a library full of books written about it, but this is what I need in my life. I have to think that things happen for a reason. I have to think that something good will come out of losing . . .' She stopped there, unable to say the name of the child she had lost. There was a tiny marker out at the cemetery with the girl's name, tucked between Cathy's parents and a much-loved uncle who had died in Korea. It pained Sara's heart every time she thought about the cold grave and the lost possibilities.

  'You know his son.'

  Sara furrowed her brow. 'Whose son?'

  'Tom's. He went to school with you.' Tessa took a mouthful of Cheetos before folding the bag closed. She talked while she chewed. 'He's got red hair like you.'

  'He went to school with me?' Sara asked, skeptical. Redheads tended to notice each other, what with sticking out from the general population like a sore thumb. Sara knew for a fact that she had been the only child with red hair her entire tenure at Cady Stanton Elementary School. She had the scars to prove it. 'What's his name?'

  'Lev Ward.'

  'There wasn't a Lev Ward at Stanton.'

  'It was Sunday school,' Tessa clarified. 'He's got some funny stories about you.'

  'About me?' Sara repeated, her curiosity getting the better of her.

  'And,' Tessa added, as if this were more enticement, 'he's got the most adorable five-year-old son you've ever seen.'

  She saw through the ruse. 'I meet some pretty adorable five year olds at the clinic.'

  'Just think about going. You don't have to answer now.' Tessa looked at her watch. 'I need to get back before it gets dark.'

  'You want me to drive you?'

  'No, thanks.' Tessa kissed her cheek. 'I'll see you later.'

  Sara wiped Cheeto dust off her sister's face. 'Be careful.'

  Tessa started to leave, then stopped. 'It's not just the sex.'

  'What?'

  'With Jeffrey,' she explained. 'It's not just the sexual chemistry. When things get bad, y'all always get stronger. You always have.' She reached down to scratch Billy, then Bob, behind the ears. 'Every time in your life that you've reached out for him, he's been there. A lot of men would just run the other way.'

  Tessa finished with the dogs and left, pulling the door gently closed behind her.

  Sara put up the Cheetos, contemplating finishing the bag even though the open zipper on her skirt was cutting into her flesh. She wanted to call her mother and find out what was wrong. She wanted to call Jeffrey and yell at him, then call him back and tell him to come over and watch an old movie on television with her.

  What she did instead was return to the couch with another glass of wine, trying to push everything from her mind. Of course, the more she tried not to think about things, the more they came to the surface. Soon, she was flashing through images of the girl in the woods to leukemia-stricken Jimmy Powell to Jeffrey in the hospital with end-stage liver failure.

  Finally, she made herself focus back on the autopsy. She had stood behind a thick glass wall while the procedure was performed, but even that had seemed too close for Sara's comfort. The girl's physical results were unremarkable but for the cyanide salts found in her stomach. Sara shivered again as she thought about the plume of smoke rising from her gut as the state coroner cut into her stomach. The fetus had been unremarkable; a healthy child who would have eventually led a full life.

  There was a knock at the front door, tentative at first, then more insistent when Sara didn't answer. Finally, she yelled, 'Come in!'

  'Sara?' Jeffrey asked. He looked around the room, obviously surprised to see her on the couch. 'You okay?'

  'Stomachache,' she told him, and in fact her stomach was hurting. Maybe her mother had been right about not eating dessert for dinner.

  'I'm sorry I couldn't talk earlier.'

  'It's okay,' she told him, though it wasn't really. 'What happened?'

  'Nothing,' he said, his disappointment evident. 'I spent the whole fucking afternoon at the college, going from department to department looking for someone who could tell me what poisons they keep around there.'

  'No cyanide?'

  'Everything but,' he told her.

  'What about the family?'

  'They didn't offer much. I sent out a credit check on the farm. It should be back tomorrow. Frank's been calling all the shelters, trying to get the story on what exactly happens on these missions.' He shrugged. 'We spent the rest of the day going through the laptop computer. It was pretty clean.'

  'Did you check instant messages?'

  'Brad cracked that first off. There were a couple back and forth with the aunt who lives on the farm, but mostly those were about Bible studies, work schedules, what time she was going to come over, who was going to fix chicken one night, who was going to peel carrots the next. It's hard to tell which were from Abby and which were from Rebecca.'

  'Was there anything during the ten days after the family left?'

  'One file was opened the day they went to Atlanta,' Jeffrey told her. 'Around ten fifteen that morning. The parents would've been gone by then. It was a resume for Abigail Ruth Bennett.'

  'For a job?'

  'Looks like it.'

  'You think she was trying to leave?'

  'The parents wanted her to go to college, but she'd said no.'

  'Nice to have an option,' Sara mumbled. Cathy had practically poked her girls with a stick. 'What kind of job was she looking for?'

  'No idea,' he said. 'She mostly listed office and accounting skills. She did a lot of stuff on the farm. I guess it'd look well-rounded to a potential employer.'

  'She was homeschooled?' Sara asked. She knew this wasn't true everywhere, but in her experience, people tended to homeschool for two reasons: to keep their white children away from minorities or to make sure their kids weren't taught anything other than creationism and abstinence.

  'Most of the family are, apparently.' Jeffrey loosened his tie. 'I've got to change.' Then, as if he felt the need for an explanation, he added, 'All my jeans are over here.'

  'Change for what?'

  'I'm going to talk to Dale Stanley, then Lena and I are going to the Pink Kitty.'

&nbsp
; 'The titty bar on Sixteen?'

  He scowled. 'Why is it okay for women to call it that, but men get kicked in the nuts for it?'

  'Because women don't have nuts.' She sat up, feeling her stomach lurch. Thank God she hadn't eaten any Cheetos. 'Why are you going? Or is this your way of punishing me?'

  'Punishing you for what?' he asked as she followed him back to the bedroom.

  'Just ignore me,' she told him, not really sure why she had said that. 'I've had a really, really bad day.'

  'Can I do anything?'

  'No.'

  He opened a box, 'We found a book of matches in the girl's room. They're from the Pink Kitty. Why would I punish you?'

  Sara sat on the bed, watching him root through boxes to find his jeans. 'She didn't strike me as the Pink Kitty type.'

  'The whole family isn't the type,' he told her, finally finding the right box. He looked up at her as he unzipped his pants and kicked them off. 'Are you still mad at me?'

  'I wish I knew.'

  He pulled off his socks and threw them in the laundry basket. 'I do, too.'

  Sara looked out the bedroom windows at the lake. She seldom closed the curtains because the view was one of the most beautiful in the city. She often lay in bed at night, watching the moon move across the sky as she drifted off to sleep. How many times last week had she looked out these same windows, not knowing that just across the water lay Abigail Bennett, alone, probably freezing cold, certainly terrified. Had Sara lain in bed, warm and content, while under cover of darkness, Abby's killer had poisoned her?

  'Sara?' Jeffrey stood in his underwear, staring at her. 'What's going on?'

  She didn't want to answer. 'Tell me more about Abigail's family.'

  He hesitated a second before returning to his clothes. 'They're really weird.'

  'Weird how?'

  He pulled out a pair of socks and sat on the bed to put them on. 'Maybe it's just me. Maybe I've seen too many people using some sick religious justification for their sexual attraction to teenage girls.'

  'Did they seem shocked when you told them she was dead?'

  'They'd heard rumors about what we found. I don't know how since that farm sounds hermetically sealed. One of the uncles gets out a bit. I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about him I don't trust.'

  'Maybe you've got a thing against uncles.'