Sam said, “To be clear, the deal was that Zach would keep silent about Daniel’s innocence—and your guilt—in exchange for two thousand dollars a month to be paid by your parents to his son, Danny Culpepper?”
Mason nodded. “I didn’t know. Not until my mother told me. Eight years had gone by. Culpepper was still on death row. He kept getting out of his execution dates.”
Charlie clenched her jaw. Eight years after the murder. Eight years after Sam clawed out of her grave. Eight years after Charlie was ripped apart.
Sam had been starting her master’s at Northwestern. Charlie was applying to law school, praying that she could make a fresh start.
Sam asked, “How did my father get roped into this?”
“I went to him to confess,” Mason said. “Here, in this house. We sat in the kitchen. I don’t know why, but in a way it made it easier to sit at the table and unburden myself. The scene of the crime. I got sick just letting it all out, every piece of the truth. I told him how I was torn up about Mary-Lynne, how I paid Zach to help me get my revenge. When you’re young like that, you see things so clearly. You don’t understand how the world works. That there are consequences you can’t predict. That bad choices, bad deeds, can corrupt you.” Mason was nodding, as if to agree with himself. “I wanted to explain to Rusty what happened, why it happened, man to man.”
“You’re not a man,” Charlie told him, sickened by the thought of Mason and Rusty sitting in the kitchen where Gamma had died, that the setting had brought Mason absolution rather than pain. “You’re an attempted murderer. You’re an accomplice to rape. To the murder of my mother. To abduction. Kidnapping. Breaking and fucking entering.” She could not let herself think about all the girlfriends he’d had, the parties he’d attended, the birthdays, the New Year’s Eve celebrations, while Sam got out of bed every morning praying that she could fucking walk. She told Mason, “Joining the Marines does not make you a good man. It makes you a coward for running away.”
Charlie’s voice was so loud that she heard her words echo up the hallway.
Ben said, “Rusty had him sign a confession.” He looked at Sam, not Charlie. “I found it in the safe.”
Charlie looked up at the ceiling. She let her tears fall. She would never forgive herself for making Ben find out from a piece of paper.
Mason said, “I wanted to sign the confession. I wanted to come forward. I was sick with it, the lies, the guilt.”
Sam held onto Charlie’s arm as if to keep them both rooted in place. “Why didn’t Dad turn you in?”
“He didn’t want another trial,” Mason said. “You guys were living your lives, getting past it.”
“Getting past it,” Charlie mumbled.
Mason continued, “Rusty didn’t want it dredged up again, to make you come home, to make Charlie go on the stand. He didn’t want her to have to—”
“Lie,” Sam finished.
The box, sealed for so long, placed high on the closet shelf. Rusty had not wanted to force Charlie to choose between lying under oath and opening up the box for the world to see.
The Culpepper girls.
The torture those nasty bitches had put her through—still put her through. What would they say, what would they do, if proof came out that they had been right about Daniel’s innocence all along?
They had been right.
Charlie had pointed her finger at the wrong man.
Sam asked, “Why did my father write the checks?”
Mason said, “That was one of Rusty’s stipulations. He wanted Zach to know that he knew, that somebody else could blow up the deal, cut off the money to Danny, if Zach didn’t keep his mouth shut.”
“That put a target on his back,” Charlie said. “Culpepper could’ve had him killed.”
Mason shook his head again. “Not if he wanted the checks to keep going to his son.”
“Do you think he really cared about his son?” Sam asked. “Culpepper was taunting him. Did you know that? Every month, he sent Rusty a letter telling him You owe me. Just to rub it in. To remind Rusty that he could tear apart all of our lives, rob us of our peace, our sense of safety, at any moment.”
Mason said nothing.
Sam demanded, “Do you know what kind of stress you caused our father? Lying to us. Hiding the truth. He wasn’t built for that kind of deception. He’d already lived through his wife being murdered, his daughter almost dying, Charlie being—” She shook her head. “Rusty’s heart was already weak. Did you know that? Do you know how much your lies, your guilt, your cowardice, contributed to his bad health? Maybe that’s why he drank so much, to chase away the bad taste of his own complicity. Complicity that you drew him into. He had to live with that every day, every month when he wrote that check, every time he called me—”
Sam finally broke. She took off her glasses. She pressed her fingers to her eyelids. She said, “He was protecting us all of those years because of you.”
Mason leaned his head between his knees. If he was crying again, Charlie did not care.
Ben asked, “Why are you here? Did you think you could talk them out of turning you in?”
“I came to confess,” Mason said. “To tell you I’m sorry. That I have tried every day since then to make up for what I did. I’ve got medals.” He looked up at Sam. “I’ve got combat medals, a purple heart, a—”
“I don’t care,” Sam said. “You’ve had twenty-eight years of your life to plead guilty. You could have walked into any police station, confessed, and taken your punishment, but you were afraid you would end up with life in prison, or on death row, the same as Zachariah Culpepper.”
Mason did not answer, but the truth was self-evident.
Charlie said, “You knew we never told anybody about what really happened in the woods. That’s how you got my father on your side, isn’t it? You blackmailed him. My secret for yours.”
Mason wiped blood from his mouth. He still said nothing.
Charlie said, “You sat in that kitchen where my mother was murdered, and you told my father that you would use your family’s money to fight a murder conviction, no matter who it hurt, no matter what came out during the trial. Sam would’ve been dragged back down here. I would’ve been forced to testify. You knew Daddy wouldn’t let that happen to us.”
Mason only asked, “What are you going to do now?”
“It’s what you’re going to do,” Sam said. “You’ve got exactly twenty minutes to drive to the police station and confess on the record, without a lawyer, to lying to the police and taking Kelly Wilson’s gun from the scene of a double homicide or so help me I will take your written confession to attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder straight to the chief of police. This town doesn’t forget, Mason. Your excuse that you were just standing there, that it was an accident, still constitutes felony murder. If you don’t do exactly as I say right now, you’ll end up in a cell beside Zachariah Culpepper, where you should’ve been for the last twenty-eight years.”
Mason wiped his hands on his pants. He reached for his broken phone.
Ben kicked it away. He opened the back door. “Get out.”