A tightness spreads across my chest, and suddenly the shed
seems way too small, the walls cramping in, the ceiling lowering down. I get outside only to find that the whole world doesn’t seem big enough any more.
The clouds are back, the sun completely gone now. Dusk is
here, and it’s a little hard to make out the scenery. I find the SUV
and drive to my daughter’s grave. There I sit until a few nearby mourners leave the area. Then I carry her gently, scared she’ll fall apart, scared that I’m going to fall apart. I rest her on the ground, then climb six feet closer to the Hell that I’ve proven again I’m destined for. I reach out and scoop her up, then lay her down. She doesn’t look like Emily. She may be wearing the same dress, have the same hair, but everything else is different. It’s different in a way I don’t want to think about. I tuck her hair away from what face she has left and stroke it behind what ears she has left. I close the lid, not wanting to spend any more time with her, but at the same time I want to spend all night here, holding her hand.
I use the same shovel that killed Sidney Alderman to bury her.
It seems right I do it this way, and I relish the pain that courses from my thumb and up through my entire arm. It takes me an hour, and when I’m done my shirt is covered in dirt and is damp all over and the day is dark and the makeshift bandage on my thumb even darker. I throw the shovel in the back of the SUV
The vehicle is covered in my fingerprints. My own car is still here.
I’m a murderer, and if I’m not careful the world is soon about to know.
I drive back to the shed. I find some turpentine and soak some rags in it, then I go around wiping down every surface I’ve come into contact with. I drive to Alderman’s house and park up the driveway and I do the same thing there. I wipe down the SUV
and I carry the shovel back to my own car. When I leave, nobody follows me. Nobody seems to care.
The nursing staff at the home don’t appear thrilled to see me.
Carol Hamilton has gone for the day, and nobody else asks me
what in the hell I was on about this morning. Nobody asks why I look like shit, my clothes messed up, my skin black with dirt, why I have a filthy handkerchief on my thumb. I spend an hour with my wife, and now more than ever I need something from
her — a squeeze from her hand, or her eyes to focus on me and not past me — but she can offer me none of this. I don’t fill her in on anything that’s happened. I stare out the same window she stares out, and I see the same things, and this is the closest I have felt to her in two years. Part of me envies her world.
When I get home I break the shovel into half a dozen pieces.
I wipe each of them down, but I know I’ll need to do more than that — will have to dispose of them where they’ll never be found.
I climb into the shower then, and watch the dirt and blood wash away, though I still feel covered in it. I remove the handkerchief from my thumb and rinse the wound, which continues to bleed weakly. It needs stitches but I’m not going to get them. I bandage it and make some dinner, but I can’t eat. I turn on the TV but can’t understand what the news anchors are even talking about. I grab a beer and sit out on the deck and stare at a piece of concrete we left exposed five years ago when we built the deck. The cement was wet and we carved our names into it so they could never be washed away. Daxter comes out and jumps up on my lap but only stays a few seconds before jumping back down. I stare at the names in the cement as I finish my beer, and then I stare at the ceiling of my bedroom while looking for sleep. I think of Quentin James and the Alderman family and the four dead girls I’ve never met. I have robbed their families of any closure, because the man who could help me is dead. Any hopes they had for answers I took down into the abyss with me.
chapter twenty-four
At four in the morning I give up on sleep and sit at the table drinking coffee. I keep going over what I’ve just done, as if by picturing each detail there might still be the chance to go back and change it.
Two years ago, after I spoke to Quentin James, I slept like the dead. I got home and made some dinner, I watched some TV, and an hour after midnight I went to bed. It was a new day and I was a new man, and when I slipped between the sheets I closed my eyes and pictured my family and I fell asleep. There were no nightmares. No questions. No guilt.
But not this time.