Greg Iles - Cemetery Road

“No, I’m fine.” I move to get up again, but something holds me in my place. “I think how I feel has as much to do with my dad as Adam.”

“That was the start of your problems, right? Him blaming you for Adam’s death.”

“Yeah. And it was my fault, as much as something can be your fault when you’re fourteen. The thing is, after Dad stopped hunting for Adam’s body, he finally apologized. This was like four months after the memorial service. I’m pretty sure my mother made him do it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he didn’t mean it. Dad wasn’t sorry he’d blamed me. He’s blamed me every day since. That was the central fact of my life for three years. He never said it out loud again. But he never truly made eye contact with me after that day. Not unless I caught him staring at me when he thought I was preoccupied. And when I did catch him, I could read his mind like a neon sign blinking on his forehead.”

“Don’t say it, Marshall.”

“ Why are you here? That’s what the sign said. Why are you here when he’s gone? Where’s the justice in that? ”

“That’s your guilt talking,” Nadine insists. “You’re flagellating yourself. Your father’s a good man. He just couldn’t—”

“Sure, sure,” I say angrily. “A hero to millions. The Conscience of Mississippi, right? But to me? He was a living rebuke. Never mind that the tower climb could have killed Adam just as easily.”

Nadine takes my hands in hers. “Don’t you get it? This is why you’re back here. You didn’t come only because your mother needed you, or even because he’s sick. You came because you have to settle this between you. You have to forgive each other before he goes.”

I appreciate Nadine’s efforts, but very gently I remove my hands from hers. “That’s not going to happen. I’ve been alone with him several times now, hard as that is, and he hasn’t said one word about it. He just sits there and yells at the television. The news, of course.”

“He’ll get there,” she says with absolute assurance. “He probably carries unimaginable guilt for doing that to you. He had to blame somebody. He could have blamed God, but he didn’t believe in God. You were handier.”

For five seconds I allow myself to recall the black hole of my life from the end of ninth through tenth grade. The black hole that Buck Ferris pulled me out of. I sigh heavily, then stand. “Thanks for the coffee. Also the floor show with Dr. Bortles. I’ll update you tomorrow morning.”

She walks me to the door. “Hey, have you heard the rumor about the party tonight? On the roof of the Aurora?”

“The celebration of the mill deal? What about it?”

“They say Jerry Lee Lewis is going to be there. He’s supposed to play a set, like he used to in the old days.”

“No way. Isn’t he like eighty-five or something?”

“Eighty-two.” Nadine has gotten that glint in her eye. “But the Killer still brings it.”

“They said Trump was coming to the groundbreaking ceremony, too, but all we get is the secretary of commerce.”

“I’ve got faith in Jerry Lee.”

“That’d be something to see, all right. But I’m not invited.”

Nadine looks genuinely surprised. “But the Mathesons are co-hosting. Surely Jet or Paul—”

“I’m persona non grata since writing that piece about Buck’s discovery.”

Nadine stops at the door and turns to me with her mischievous smile. “Well, I’m invited. Why don’t you be my plus-one?”

I start to decline, but this is Nadine. And the party would be a damn good opportunity to study a lot of people who are profiting off the paper mill deal. “Can I get back to you in a bit?”

She shrugs. “Open invitation.”

“I’m a little confused,” I say, unable to resist needling her. “I heard you were gay.”

She laughs out loud. “Come to the party with me, and we’ll kill that rumor for good. People will have us engaged by morning.”

As I open the door, her smile fades, and she follows me outside.

“Take a hard look at the Poker Club at the groundbreaking,” she says. “They’re bastards to a man. They’ve ruled this town for a hundred and fifty-three years, and not one of them would lose a minute’s sleep over killing Buck.”

“I actually hope that’s not true.”

She points at a display of mysteries and thrillers in her front window. “Despite my trade, the truth is there’s not much mystery to real-life murders. Cui bono, honey. That’s the only question that matters. I’d bet my store that one of those Poker Club assholes killed Buck. But don’t kid yourself about what it would mean to take them on. They’d kill you, too. Wouldn’t hesitate. Keep that in mind during your editorial meetings.”

With that, Nadine goes inside and closes her door, leaving me to walk away with the muted ring of her bell in my ears.

THE RIDE FROM Nadine’s to the paper mill site takes ten to fifteen minutes. The land called the “industrial park” sits below the bluff south of town, where four or five large factories and a few smaller ones operated from the 1940s through the 1980s and ’90s, before going through down cycles, changes of ownership by second- and third-tier companies, and finally the sheriff chaining the gates shut. It’s the same story all over the South—all over America, really.

I drive along the bluff most of the way, thinking about Buck and who might have killed him. Both his widow and Nadine believe the Bienville Poker Club must be behind the crime. I don’t disagree in principle, but I’ve yet to see any evidence. Before I forget, I text Ben Tate, my editor at the Watchman, and ask him to find out who employed the security guards who started covering the industrial park after we published our story on Buck and whether any were on duty last night.

Again the river dominates my view for most of the route, this time on my right, as I drive south along the bluff, which is mostly covered with kudzu here. Searching the Sirius channels for some of the music Buck and I used to play together, I realize I’m thinking about my son, whom Nadine mentioned back in her bookshop. He was in my mind earlier, at the cemetery wall, just below the dark drama of Adam and my father. My talk with Nadine dispelled the clouds of sediment that memory raised, and during the drive along the bluff my little boy rises from the deep darkness.

I got married fourteen years ago, to a colleague in Washington. Her name is Molly McGeary, and quite a few TV viewers still remember her. After starting as a reporter at the Washington Times, Molly became one of the first print journalists to make the jump to television. First she moved to USA Today as a political reporter. Then a producer at NBC happened to catch her on a panel at a conference in New York, and she was off. In no time she was making appearances on the Today show, covering Washington stories and the business side of the entertainment sector.

At the time I married Molly, I believed I loved her. But looking back later, I realized I was in that situation where everyone you know—lifelong friends, colleagues, old classmates—has already been married for years and is having children, some their second or third child. Faced with this, you start wondering if you were put on earth merely to work and have a succession of sexual relationships that ultimately go nowhere. That kind of anxiety skews your objectivity, makes you persuade yourself that you’re feeling things you’re really not. You believe you ought to be feeling those things, so eventually—with the help of your parents, your cajoling friends, and a romantic co-conspirator—you do. That was my state of mind before I went to Iraq. By the time I got back, I knew that life could be snatched away at any moment, and the only sensible thing to do was get married and start procreating.