Laura McHugh - The Weight of Blood

“Are you on my list of approved visitors?” I asked, flopping down next to her.

Bess rolled her eyes. “Hard to believe. I don’t guess anybody else is gonna come see you here in lockdown.”

“Tell me you brought news of the outside world.”

“Well,” she said, ducking her head to pat Merle’s belly, “you already know about Sorrel.”

“Are you doing okay?” I asked.

“You know, I don’t miss him or anything like that. It’s a relief, in a way. But I can’t help wondering if he’d have killed himself if I hadn’t called him.”

“We can’t be sure he did it himself,” I said. “Somebody could have done him in. The paper said he didn’t leave a note.” The article had referred to his wife as “estranged” and said she couldn’t be reached for comment.

“Let’s hope, if he talked to anybody, that he didn’t mention me. I’m having enough trouble sleeping as it is. I heard down at Bell’s that there’d been a fire in his burn barrel. Probably him or somebody else burning anything that connected him to Cheri. Or to me.”

Any evidence from Sorrel, any confessions pent up inside him, were now gone. I didn’t want to think about it. “Any other good gossip at Bell’s?”

Bess perked up a bit. “Yeah, your friend Becky Castle’s back.” Crete’s girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, though I thought of her more as Holly’s mother.

“I don’t know why you call Becky my friend. I don’t even know her.”

Bess laughed. “I thought you guys would get to be pals while you were working for Crete, but she hasn’t been around much this summer.”

“I never saw her once,” I said. “Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know. Visiting relatives, I guess. Pam was bartending, and I asked her how Holly was getting along, and she said Holly was staying with her grandparents and wouldn’t be back at school this year. Pam also said Becky was high as could be. Twitching and scratching like her skin was on fire.”

“Maybe it’s better for Holly, then, not to be here. Remember that 4-H show when we were nine or ten? Her mom just dropped her off there by herself with that enormous rabbit cage.”

“Yeah, I remember. Birdie kept poking us and saying we should be more like Holly, because she was always so quiet and serious.” When Becky didn’t show up to take Holly home, the little girl had set out walking, balancing the cage in her scrawny arms. Birdie had stopped and given her a ride.

“We sucked at 4-H,” I said, and Bess cracked up laughing. I was glad to see her in a good mood again and grateful that she’d come to visit me. I’d missed her.

I blew Bess a kiss as she backed out of the driveway, and she smacked it like it was a mosquito. I blew a dozen more, and she swatted those away, too, before giving in and blowing one back.

“Thanks,” I said to Birdie when I came inside.

She nodded. “A girl needs time with her friends. And you’ve only got the one.”

I started to tell her indignantly that I had more than one friend. But I didn’t, not really, unless you counted Daniel. And then it was only two.

“No gooseberries, I take it,” she said.

“No.”

“A season for everything. Walnuts will fall before you know it.” She poured two glasses of tea and gestured to the kitchen table. “The biscuits are almost ready. I got some apple butter up from the cellar just for you.”

I sat and she stood, waiting for the timer to buzz. She hustled two steaming biscuits onto plates, and we sat there together until they cooled enough that we wouldn’t burn our mouths.

“Tell me again about the day she left,” I said, dipping a spoon in the apple butter.

Birdie pulled her biscuit apart and stared at the pieces. “You haven’t asked for that story in a while.”

We ate in silence, and when our plates were empty, she started talking. “She left you with me when she went. She said, ‘Watch her for me, Birdie, please?’ The way she said it was just like she was going to the store, except she almost always took you along anywhere she went. She hated to take her eyes off you. I went over it in my head so many times after, the way she said it, the sound of her voice, the look on her face. I blamed myself, because I was the last one to see her, and maybe I could have stopped her. But there was nothing for me to notice except the fact that she wasn’t taking you along. She didn’t say ‘watch her,’ like she wasn’t coming back, like she was laying a lifetime of responsibility in my hands. She just said it like she had something to go do, something none too interesting but it had to be done, and it wouldn’t take long because she hadn’t left any of her milk for you. You squawked and kicked when I tried to get you to drink cow’s milk out of a cup, like it was the worst sort of torture and you just wouldn’t bear it.”

I’d heard this part before, how I’d given Birdie no choice but to wean me with sweet tea.

“It took me a long time to accept that she wasn’t coming back; I just didn’t believe it. She wouldn’t leave you. I knew her near as well as Carl or Gabby did, and I knew she wouldn’t leave on her own. Truth be told, plenty of folks were glad to see her gone, had no interest in looking for her, but I walked those woods every day for weeks, hoping she was somewhere lost or hurt and I could bring her back home. Your dad, they got him all talked into postpartum depression and post-traumatic stress from her living in foster care, all these ridiculous things that sounded like they could’ve been true but weren’t. They told him he shouldn’t blame himself for teaching her how to use the gun, for believing her story that she wanted to protect herself from snakes in the woods when she was really planning to shoot herself. He’d seen his mother go through so much, with her fragile state of mind, I guess he was more readily convinced that such things were possible, that it could have been going on without him seeing it. And that filled him up with guilt, near smothered him. He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it coming, but I did. There was nothing to see. She was happy. She loved you, both of you. She was troubled sometimes, but she wouldn’t say why. I figured it had to do with what happened to her right before she and your dad got married.” Her eyes sank. “I don’t suppose your dad ever said anything about that.”

I shook my head. Was it possible she was going to tell me something new after all these years?

“She was attacked, I guess you’d say. Beat up. She got bit, and it got infected. I nursed her, that’s how I knew. Nobody said anything. I don’t even know if your dad knew about the bite, though I’d guess he would have eventually seen the scar.”

Someone had bitten her? “Who was it?”

“I don’t know, not for sure. She wouldn’t say. Neither would your dad, if he knew. There was talk around town that Joe Bill Sump had been to see her. That was right before he took off, and I considered maybe that was why he left. But the bite… the mark it left… well, this is just a guess on my part, but I always wondered if it was Crete who did that to her.”

I picked at my fingernails, not wanting to look at Birdie. Sarah Cole had claimed my mother wasn’t sure who my father was. What if Crete had attacked her? What if he was the other man, the one whose child she didn’t want?

“I did like she said,” Birdie continued softly. “Kept an eye on you. I always have. I always will. You’re like a granddaughter to me, Lucy.” It was strange to hear her say that, yet it made perfect sense. “You grow up feeling the weight of blood, of family. There’s no forsaking kin. But you can’t help when kin forsakes you or when strangers come to be family. Lila found her home here. She belonged with us. She didn’t kill herself, I just can’t believe it. I don’t have proof of anything, but I’ve always had my suspicions. Crete loved her or hated her—don’t really matter which. Either one’ll drive you crazy if you let it. Now, it ain’t my place to tell you what to think of your own family, but you’ve got to look past what you’ve always been taught and listen to what you know in your bones to be true.”