Mariah Stewart - Hard Truth

“Ever hear her say, ‘My mother said she’d kill me if I did…’ whatever?”

“Yes, but all kids say stuff like that.” Lorna stood and followed the chief to the porch railing. “I remember times when I did something stupid, or maybe got a C on a test I should have gotten an A on, and said, ‘My mother will kill me for this.’ It’s just something kids say.”

“Your mother ever hit you hard enough to leave a mark, or grab you hard enough to leave a bruise?”

“Are you kidding?” She shook her head. “My mother never raised a hand to anyone, as far as I know.”

“Billie Eagan did. I can’t help but wonder if that was all she did.”

“Wait a minute, you’re not suggesting that she killed either Melinda or Jason?”

He turned and looked at her. “When the girl went missing, I really thought the brother had killed her. He was the last person that we could prove had been with her. Then, right before we go to arrest him, he disappears. We figured he ran. Now it looks like if he did, he didn’t get very far.”

“I can’t believe Mrs. Eagan had anything to do with what happened to either Melinda or Jason. Yes, she was rough with them, I know that, but I can’t believe she would have gone that far.”

“Who knows where the line is drawn?” he said. “If you can lose it enough to break your kid’s arm, can you lose it enough to go one step further? Where does it end?”

Lorna frowned. “But why would she have done that?”

“Maybe the boy did kill the sister,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe she found out that he did it, maybe he even told her he had, and she hit him. Could have been accidental, but could have killed him, all the same.”

“Does the medical examiner know what killed him?”

“A blow to the head with something heavy. One blow to the front, one crushing blow to the back. Either one could have killed him.”

“That’s horrible.” She shivered. “Poor Jason.” Even though she hadn’t liked him, had even feared him, he hadn’t deserved that. No one did.

“Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know what was going on, since you were friends with the girl, and the remains were found on your property.”

“Not mine anymore.”

“It was when the body was buried. And, like I said, you were friends. In any case, I should probably get going. You take care, now, Lorna.” He walked to the police car and got in the still-open door. “We’ve been keeping an eye on the place while you were gone. We’ll continue to check on you when we do our rounds at night.”

“I appreciate that, but I’ve been fine.”

“All the same, you’re by yourself here.” He waved and then slammed the car door.

“Thanks,” she called to him and returned the wave.

She walked after the retreating car and watched as it disappeared a few hundred yards up the road to the left. Then she walked back to the house and stepped inside and poured herself a glass of iced tea. The temperature was already well into the eighties, and it was barely nine-thirty in the morning.

She returned outside and sat on the top step, wondering if Billie Eagan had had a hand in the disappearance of either or both of her kids. It had made Lorna uncomfortable to admit that she’d known that Melinda had been abused by her mother but had pretended not to. All these years later, Lorna still felt guilty that she’d been too much of a coward to have confronted Mellie with it.

But how do you make someone talk about something they don’t want to talk about, or confront something they’re not ready to deal with? she asked herself, not for the first time. Mellie had angrily brushed aside the few feeble attempts Lorna had made. How could she have forced her friend to admit that her mother had hurt her, when maybe Mellie didn’t want to admit it to herself?

There had been times Lorna had wanted to talk to her own mother about it, but she’d always rationalized her way out of it. What if she was wrong? What if Melinda really had fallen down the steps that time she’d broken her arm? What if Melinda got really mad and stopped talking to her? And what if her mother had said something to Melinda’s mother and Mrs. Eagan got mad and really hurt Mellie? It would have been Lorna’s fault. The list of what-ifs and possible consequences seemed endless. As a child, Lorna had hid behind excuses for her silence. As an adult, she was ashamed that she had, but still wasn’t sure what she could have done differently back then.

What if Chief Walker was right? What if Mrs. Eagan had killed Melinda, even by accident? And what if she had killed Jason, too?

What, Lorna wondered, could she have done-should she have done-that would have made a difference, all those years ago?

The question stayed with her, nagged at her. It followed her to the family burial site that afternoon when she took one of the urns holding her mother’s ashes, as she had promised she would do.

“Okay, Mom, we’re here,” she said aloud as she went through the black iron gate into the enclosed area that sat by itself on a slight rise. She held the silver-colored urn to her chest as if it were a child. “I’m not really sure how to do this, but I’ll give it a shot.”

She walked among the graves, some of them ancient, the engraving on several of the markers now little more than faint scratches on stone. The air was heavy with the sounds and scents of August, the zzzzz of the cicadas only barely drowning out the buzz of the yellow jackets as they fed on the season’s first fallen apples rotting on the ground on the other side of the fence.

“Guess you’d want some here, by Gran, and some over there, by your aunt Emily.” Lorna removed the lid and tilted the urn slightly, letting the breeze catch the coarse gray dust and carry it. “Maybe a little by Grampa… and the rest over here by Dad.”

Lorna stood behind her father’s headstone and sprinkled the ashes, watching them disperse on the ground around her. He’d been gone for so long, it was hard sometimes to remember all the things she’d thought she’d never forget. She could recall his laughter and the sound of his voice, and the way his eyes narrowed when something displeased him, and the look on his face when her mother came into the room. Mary Beth had been his life; the children had often seemed to be afterthoughts, as far as he’d been concerned. He had loved them in his own way, Lorna felt certain, but he’d always somehow looked upon them as belonging more to his wife than to him. She was his. The children were hers. They had never held the importance in his life that she had, and all three children had instinctively known.

When Lorna was growing up, her mother had always been the dominant force in her life, her father’s absence felt more than his presence had been. The one thing she could never forget was the way they had all grieved when he died so unexpectedly, the anger that first year after his passing, how Rob had withdrawn and for a long time after been awakened nightly by nightmares, and the way her mother had never been quite the same.

Well, she thought, tears coming for the first time since she’d stepped through the iron gate, they were together again, wherever they were. She’s all yours again, Dad.

When the container was empty, she set it on the ground. She had thought it would have been more difficult. Then again, she’d shared her mother’s last days, watching the life fade away, mystified by the way it had drained from her in stages. The end had come quickly, mercifully, and having held her mother in her arms as she’d breathed her last, for Lorna, watching the ashes scatter was almost anticlimactic. She did it because she’d promised to, but she felt no more or no less of her mother’s presence once the urn was empty.