Karin Slaughter - Skin Privilege

So, why was she still here?

'Lee?' Hank stood in the doorway, tattered robe wrapped around his body.

Her voice was trapped somewhere in her throat, but she managed, 'I can't talk to you right now.'

He obviously didn't care. 'I want you to go home. Just forget what I said. Just go home and get on with your life.'

'Did that man shoot my father?'

Hank looked over her shoulder. Lena knew there was a Rick Springfield poster behind her, a remnant from her teenage years.

'Tell me the truth,' she insisted. 'Tell me how they really died.'

'Your father was shot. You know that, Lee. I showed you the newspaper article. You and your sister both.'

She remembered this, but how could she trust him? How could she even trust her own memory after all this time?

She asked, 'What about my mother? You said he killed my mother.'

His throat worked as he swallowed. 'Losing your daddy killed her, is what I meant.' He scratched his neck, his chin. 'It wasn't the man you saw what shot him, but people like him. Bad people you need to stay away from.'

'You're lying,' she said, never more sure of anything in her life.

He started picking at a sore by his ear. She knew he would start twitching soon, needing the drug.

'When did it start?' she asked. 'When did you get hooked again?'

'It don't matter.'

'Then tell me why,' she said, aware that she was almost begging. 'Why would you go back to this, Hank? You worked so hard to-'

'It don't matter.'

'You're an old man,' she told him. 'You won't be able to fight it this time. You might as well go ahead and pick out a coffin.'

'Just put me in a hole,' he said. 'That's where I belong.'

'Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?'

'You're supposed to leave,' he shot back, sounding for a moment like the old Hank again, the one who laid down the rules, said my way or the highway.

'I'm not going until you tell me the truth,' Lena told him. 'I won't leave until you tell me why you're doing this to yourself.'

'Go back to Grant. Go back to your job and your friends and just forget me.'

She stood from the bed, gripping the towel in her hand. 'I mean it, Hank. I won't leave here until you tell me the truth.'

He couldn't look at her. Finally, he said, 'There ain't no truth to tell. Your mama and daddy died. There's nothing you can do to change that.'

'I deserve to know what happened.'

He pressed his lips together, shaking his head as he turned to leave. Lena grabbed his arm to stop him. 'Tell me what happened to my mother. Tell me who killed her.'

I killed her!' he yelled, trying to pull away. 'You wanna know who killed your mama? Me. It was me! Now go on home and let the dead stay buried.'

She felt his skin slide under her fingers, knew that she was pressing a broken needle deeper into his flesh. She tried to let go but he clamped his hand over hers, held her in place.

Tears wet his eyes and his expression softened, as if for just a moment he could see past his need. 'You and your sister were the light of my life. Don't ever forget that.'

Lena jerked her hand away. There was a tiny sliver of dried blood just below his jugular where he must have taken a hit while she was drying her hair.

She cleared her throat, tried to speak past the lump that had formed there. 'If you puncture an artery-'

'Yeah.' He seemed resigned.

'Your neck will swell up,' she continued. 'You'll suffocate.'

'Go home, Lee.'

'Hank-'

'I know what will happen,' he told her. 'I don't want you to be here when it does.'

In the twenty years since Lena had last set foot in the Elawah County Library, the only thing that had changed was the addition of a lone computer desk crammed up against the back wall between romance and general fiction. Even the lame Halloween decorations looked the same: the purple papier-mache skeletons with their orange top hats, the black cats with glittery tails, the cauldrons of witches' brew. The only thing missing was the plastic pumpkin filled with candy corn that usually sat on the information desk. Lena guessed from the current clientele that the librarian didn't feel they were worth treating. The woman seemed to spend most of her time riding up and down in the freight elevator with her rolling cart and a sour expression that was scarier than any Halloween costume.

Sibyl had spent hours in the library when they were kids. She had been the good student, the one who whiled away her time catching up on homework or reading the latest science magazines Miss Nancy, the former librarian, ordered in Braille especially for her. Lena was the one who moped around, complaining under her breath, until Hank finally picked them up to go home. He used the library as a babysitting facility, making the girls stay there until he could get away from the bar and take them home.

Now, Lena regretted her youthful insolence, her lack of interest in how the library worked. Even blind, Sibyl would have been able to figure out the microfiche machine. Lena couldn't manage to thread the damn thing. She'd scrolled out two rolls of filmed newspaper archives like a kitten with toilet paper by the time the librarian came up from the basement again. Her look of perpetual disapproval went up a notch when she spotted Lena.

'Lemme have that before you break it,' the woman ordered, snatching the film away from Lena. With her gaudy jewelry, loud voice, and bad attitude, she was certainly no Miss Nancy. From the smell of her – a sickly sweet perfume which did little to mask the stench of cigarettes – Lena guessed the woman was spending her time down in the basement smoking and hiding from the kids.

That was another thing that had not changed -downstairs was strictly off-limits to patrons. The library building had originally been the town's city hall until the government outgrew it. Built in the 1950s, the structure had all the modern touches, from a sunken concrete seating area you could smack your head open on to a bomb shelter in the basement. Lena had sneaked down there once and been very disappointed to find old voting registers and property deeds instead of the pornographic books and dead bodies that rumors suggested might be hidden in the library's bowels. The only things that pointed to the windowless room's former identity were a couple of metal bunk beds crammed into the corner and floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with cans of water and Dinty Moore beef stew.

Lena imagined the whole place reeked of unfiltered Camels now, courtesy of the bitchiest librarian to walk the face of the earth.

'I don't know why you want this,' the woman snapped, holding up the microfiche. 'Do you even know what you're looking for?'

'I want a particular date,' Lena told her, trying to sound patient. 'July 16, 1970.'

'Whatever,' the woman mumbled in a way that made Lena think she hadn't been listening. She seemed more intent on rolling the films back tight enough to fit into their canisters. The key to the elevator was on a springy chain around her wrist and it kept hitting the metal tabletop with annoying, regular clinks.

Lena sat back, giving the librarian more room, trying not to let her impatience show. She finally stood up to avoid a jutting elbow and let the woman have her seat. When Lena was a kid, libraries were silent places – Miss Nancy had made sure of that. She had something she called her 'six-inch voice,' which meant you spoke low enough so that only someone six inches away could hear you. There was no running or roughhousing allowed on Miss Nancy's watch, and she certainly would not have cursed like a sailor as she struggled to thread the microfiche machine.

There was a group of teenagers behind Lena. They were sitting at a table, books splayed out in front of them, but she hadn't seen one of them doing anything but giggling since she'd walked through the front door. One of the girls saw her and quickly looked down at the book in her hands, but Lena 's eye had caught something else.