David Bell - Never Come Back

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“He asked me to do one more thing,” Paul said. “He told me one of the girls needed a ride to the bus station, and he asked me to drive the car. I didn’t know it was Beth at first. I thought it was strange. Gordon rode in the back with the girl. He had her down low, a coat or something over her. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t want to know. I just turned the radio on and drove, kept my eyes on the road.”

“Classical music,” Beth said, her voice small and hollow. “You were listening to classical music.”

“You didn’t know it was Beth at first,” I said. “When did you find out?”

“When she was gone,” Paul said. “Right after that, she was gone. I put it together. Gordon’s secrecy that night. The girl hidden in the backseat. I was an accessory to Beth’s disappearance. Or her running away. Whatever it was, I had played a big role. I’d helped it happen.”

“So why didn’t you come clean?” I asked. “Tell Mom? Tell the police?”

“I went to Gordon and told him what I knew,” Paul said. “I asked him where Beth had gone and told him we needed to make it right.” Paul sighed. “He had leverage over me. The crimes I’d been involved in. Even driving Beth away. He knew those things, and he threatened to use them against me.”

“You gave your niece away,” I said. “She was a kid. You couldn’t stand up to him?”

He didn’t answer me.

“Well?”

There was a long silence. When at last he spoke, he looked at Beth. “I’m sorry, Beth. But the truth is… it sometimes seemed Leslie would have been happier with you gone. And you seemed like you might be happier as well.”

Beth kept her composure, but I could see the hurt and regret in her eyes. Her top teeth bit down on her lower lip.

“That’s such bullshit, Paul,” I said. “You’re making excuses for your pathetic life.”

He turned to me. “It was pathetic. Is pathetic. I agree. I just hope you never get to find out how bad a life can get, Elizabeth. I hope you don’t find anything like that out at all.”

Five months after Paul’s confession, the three of us—my siblings and I—go to the cemetery to visit Mom’s grave. It is mid-March, and the sky is the color of steel wool. In the corners of the cemetery, in the shadow of the stone walls, snow remains on the ground. The grass is soggy and springy as we walk across it, our shoes squishing in the soaked earth.

What can I say about our lives? They move forward.

I am back in school, arranging my schedule around Ronnie’s needs. Ronnie is working at his part-time job and going to speech therapy. He spends fifteen hours a week or so at the Miller Center, interacting with other adults with Down syndrome, learning the new skills he may need to live on his own—away from me—someday. Although when that day will come, I cannot say. But it is the goal, a goal Ronnie understands and pursues.

During the times when keeping up with school and Ronnie becomes too much, Dan helps me out. Our relationship has continued to progress. Slowly, but it’s progressing. I’ve tried to keep the door open wide enough to let him in.

Beth is harder to read. She lives her life in Reston Point. She sees her children and grandchildren and works in a local clothing store. We visit and talk as often as we can, although not as much as we did in the immediate aftermath of Gordon’s death and Paul’s confession. Back then, we all three clung to one another, survivors of the same wreckage. We spent many a late night talking through the things on our minds, sharing the images from our nightmares.

I used some of the insurance money to install a security system in Mom’s house. And, yes, Ronnie and I did move back in there. It seems like the only place to be, bad memories and all.

But over time, we all started to recognize the differences in our lives. If siblings grow up in very different circumstances, in very different times, and for all intents and purposes in very different families, are they still siblings? Can they ever feel the way other siblings feel?

We reach Mom’s grave. The grass has grown in and covered her plot. I stare at the headstone. Mom’s dates have been etched in next to Dad’s. I think about that, the two of them lying side by side for eternity. I’ve thought about it many times over the past five months, and I can only guess that Dad must have known about all of it before he married Mom. Gordon, Beth, the disappearance. How could he not? But the only person I could ask—Paul—is not someone I am willing to speak to. He sits in his prison cell, alone. I am finished with him. Once and for all. I’d like to say he is no longer my uncle, but I know that isn’t true. He is my uncle and always will be. He is part of the story.

I knew my dad well enough to guess how those things about Mom must have made him feel. It wouldn’t have mattered one bit to him. He would have taken her on—her life and whatever came with it—without a second thought. He loved her. For Dad, it was always that simple.

The three of us line up at the foot of the grave in a little half circle. Beth has brought flowers, and she lays them in the grass. We all stand there for a moment, alone with our thoughts.

Then Ronnie says, “Sis?”

I look over at him. He wears a winter coat and earmuffs. Beth looks too, and Ronnie notices.

“Sis and sis?” he says, his voice uncertain.

“What is it, Ronnie?” I ask.

“We’re not normal, are we?” he asks. “I mean, everything that’s happened. This family. It’s not really normal.”

I don’t know what to say to that. Mom lived her whole life making sure Ronnie felt and acted normal, and I am trying to carry that on. Not just because Mom wanted it, but also because I love my brother. I want a normal life for him.

Before I can formulate a response, Beth says, “I’ve been in a lot of families. A lot of them. Marriages, in-laws, kids, grandkids. Not one of them is normal. As far as I can tell, there’s no such thing, Ronnie.”

This seems to satisfy him. He even laughs a little and nods his head.

“Okay,” he says. “Who wants to be normal?”

The breeze picks up. It moves the clouds, allowing a little sliver of sun to peek through. The wind chills me as well, and I shiver. My brother and sister move closer to me, one from each side.

And that’s the way we stand in the cemetery:

Together.

Thanks to all my friends and colleagues in the Western Kentucky University English Department and the Potter College of Arts and Letters for a great work environment. Thanks to Lanna Kilgore for legal advice about wills and other matters. (Any mistakes are mine and not hers.) Thanks to Jim Weems, Glen Rose, Jeff Weems, Barrett Griffin, the McMichael family, and the folks at Lost River Cave in Bowling Green, Kentucky, for the book trailer. Thanks to Marianne Hale and Samantha “Super” Starr for assistance and support. Thanks to Kara Thurmond for the Web site. And, once again, I owe a huge debt to my friends and family.

Major thanks to the booksellers, librarians, bloggers, reviewers, book club members, and readers who love books and keep them alive in all their forms. And a special thanks to the Warren County Public Library in Bowling Green and Barnes & Noble in Bowling Green for all of your help and support over the past few years.

None of this would be possible without the efforts of everyone at New American Library/Penguin, including my splendid publicist, Heather Connor, her amazing team, and all the folks in sales and marketing.

Danielle Perez is the best editor on the planet. She knows the right questions to ask, when and how to ask them, and always pushes me to be a better writer. Thanks, Danielle.