Beane Odette - Reawakened - A Once Upon A Time Tale

She saw it from her window: «TRAMP».

Someone had written it on her car, and now David was outside, trying to scrub it clean. Perfect. He knew he was responsible. No, he hadn’t written it, but it was his lies that made it happen. And because he knew, he was trying to clean it up. Superficially, awkwardly. And way too late.

She went out to the street.

— Who did this? — she said.

He turned, surprised, and gave her a pleading look.

— I don’t know. I don’t know how anyone knows.

— I’ll tell you how, — Mary Margaret said. — They know because your wife came to my school and slapped me today. In front of everyone.

He took a moment to absorb this. She imagined his scheming brain doing the tabulations: How did my lies come undone?

— I’m so sorry, — he said. — You shouldn’t be the one who has to take the brunt of this.

— She told me, David, — Mary Margaret said, arms crossed. — She told me that you never said anything. That you didn’t tell her about us.

— I don’t understand, — David said. — Then how did she know?

— That is exactly the wrong question to ask right now, — Mary Margaret said, enraged by his audacity. — What you should be asking yourself is why you thought lying — lying to both me and to Kathryn — could ever have been the right thing to do. Do you see how much damage has been done? You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, David.

— I also can’t control how people will react to news, — David argued.

— That’s right. But you can control what you do. And you lied. That’s what caused this. That’s why this whole town thinks that I’m a tramp. — She nodded toward the writing on her car and shook her head in frustration.

David dropped the rag into the bucket, leaned against her car, and put his head in his hands.

— I thought, — he said, — that she would just leave town. I didn’t want anyone to get more hurt than they needed to be.

— And now everyone is hurt, — she said. — Imagine that.

— We’ll make it right, — he said, reaching for her. — It’ll take a little time.

— Don’t touch me, David, — she said. — You can’t fix this.

— What are you saying? — he said. — I don’t understand.

— It’s simple, David. It’s over. We’re done. You blew it.

He laughed a pathetic little laugh, and Mary Margaret’s face didn’t budge. She was not able to feel bad for him. Not right now.

— Do you think I’m joking? — she said. — I’m not. You get to live with this. Forever.

She left him there and stormed back into her apartment.

Maine was a frozen place in the dead of winter, and there was no colder day than this day. There hadn’t been much snow this year, but it was below zero as Emma made her way home after August dropped her off at the station. She was exhausted, and she was worried for Mary Margaret. The whole town was talking about the affair, and things were going to get ugly. She’d seen it happen before — she’d been the center of the controversy, and she didn’t like the memory. Not one bit.

Crossing the street, something caught her eye behind the tire of an old pickup. Something poking out from a pile of dirty leaves.

Emma frowned and knelt to investigate; she could not believe what she was seeing.

The book. Henry’s book. Right there on the street.

She stood up, dusted it off, flipped through the pages. She opened to the story Henry had told her about Mr. Gold and the girl, and looked at some of the pictures.

She didn’t know why, but she’d found the thing. At the very least, Henry would be happy, and that made her happy. She headed off toward the station.

She didn’t have much time to feel happy about the book, though, as the emergency calls started coming in the moment she walked in the door. First from a motorist, next David, and after that, Regina.

Kathryn was missing. She was nowhere to be found.

Her car, empty, was in the ditch near the edge of town.

She was gone.

Emma did the only thing she could do: She organized a manhunt. What seemed like the whole town showed up the morning after Kathryn Nolan disappeared, and they combed the woods, thirty-wide, hoping to find any sign of her. David was there, as was Mary Margaret, but they stayed far away from each other. Emma was distressed to overhear hushed muttering from so many of the citizens. Why was it that Mary Margaret was taking the brunt of the hit to her reputation, while nobody seemed to care that David — the man — had willingly participated in the same affair?

She wasn’t surprised, but she didn’t like it.

Both of them had made mistakes. Mary Margaret was the one who was suffering.

The manhunt turned up nothing.

Emma had gotten nowhere with the search. Until the morning that Sidney Glass, the former editor of the town newspaper and her old challenger for the badge, showed up in her office with a piece of interesting information.

Emma knew that Sidney had been fired by Regina after the storm, but she didn’t know why, and in truth, she didn’t want to know the details. She suspected it had something to do with the failed campaign for sheriff, but she also suspected there was more to it than that. The man had always put her off. Not just because of the campaign, but because of the sleazy article he’d written about her past, and the irritating way he was always — before now, anyway — hanging on Regina’s every word.

Since he’d been fired, though, Sidney had been spending a lot of time drinking at Granny’s and at the Rabbit Hole. Emma had been forced to «escort» him home one night after finding him drunk and raving in the middle of Main Street at midnight. He’d gone down a rabbit hole of his own, apparently, which was why she was skeptical when he came to her office with a manila envelope, claiming to have David Nolan’s «real» phone records.

— As opposed to what? — Emma said. — His fake records?

— That’s right, — he said. — The records you have are falsified. — He handed her the envelope. — These are the true phone records.

— You’re telling me that the police have the wrong records, — she said. — And you, the former newspaper editor, have the right records?

— That’s right.

Emma took it and looked at the paper inside. It resembled the official records she’d subpoenaed from the phone company, but there was one telling difference: Glass’s version showed an eight-minute call between David and Kathryn an hour after Kathryn had last been seen.

Emma tried to think it through. Had Glass manufactured these? If so, to what end? And what was the other possibility? That she had in fact been given falsified records by the phone company? If that were true, who had done it, and why?

— Why would you expect me to take this one as the real version and the other as the false?

— Because I don’t have an agenda, — Sidney said.

Sure you don’t, Emma thought.

Problem was, when Emma went down to the phone company herself to straighten out the mix-up, she discovered that Glass’s records were accurate, and the original copy she’d received — through the mayor’s office — was incorrect. That was the difference. The original records had gone through Regina’s office. And they’d changed on their way through. She asked around to find out how such a thing could happen, but they couldn’t explain it and neither could Regina’s office.

Sidney Glass had come to her with good information. That was interesting. And for whatever reason, it looked as though Regina was trying to push her away from David as a suspect.