“Did it seem likely to you that I wouldn’t follow through on my threat?”
“It seemed likely that you would’ve killed him if someone had put a knife in your hand.” Charlie winced at the thought, but only because she didn’t want Sam to have literal blood on her hands. “He didn’t just lie to the GBI. He lied to an FBI agent.”
“I’m sure the arresting officer will happily explain to him the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony.”
Charlie smiled at the neat trick, which could mean years in federal prison as opposed to monitored probation with weekends at the county jail. “Why are you so calm right now?”
Sam shook her head, puzzled. “Shock? Relief? I always felt that Daniel got away with something, that he hadn’t suffered enough. In a strange way, it brings me some satisfaction to know that Mason was tormented. And also that he’s going to go to prison for at least five years. Or at least he’d better unless the prosecutors want me hounding their very existence.”
“You think Ken Coin will do the right thing?”
“I don’t think that man has ever done the right thing in his life.” Her lips curved into a private smile. “Maybe there’s a way to knock him off his perch.”
Charlie didn’t ask her to explain how that miracle would come about. Men like Coin always managed to weasel their way back on top. “I’m the person who pointed the finger at Daniel. I said that Zachariah called the second man his brother.”
“Don’t put that on yourself, Charlie. You were thirteen years old. And Ben was right. If Mason and Zachariah hadn’t been here in the first place, none of it would have happened.” She added, “Ken Coin is the one who took it upon himself to frame and murder Daniel. Don’t forget that.”
“Coin also stopped the investigation into finding the real shooter.” Charlie felt sick when she considered the unknowing part she had played in the cover up. “How hard would it be to figure out that the rich kid who was suddenly shipped off to military school in the middle of the night was involved?”
“You’re right. Zachariah would have flipped on Mason without inducement,” Sam said. “I want to care about Daniel, even about Mason, but I just can’t. I feel like it’s behind me now. Is that strange?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Charlie sat in Rusty’s cleared-out space on the couch. She tried to examine her emotions, to explore how she felt about everything Mason had told them. She realized that there was a feeling of lightness in her chest. She had expected to feel unburdened after telling Sam the truth about what happened in the woods, but it hadn’t come.
Until now.
“What about Dad?” Charlie asked. “He hid this from us.”
“He was trying to protect us. Like he always did.”
Charlie raised her eyebrows at her sister’s sudden conversion to Rusty’s side.
Sam said, “There is value in forgiveness.”
Charlie wasn’t so sure about that. She slumped back into the couch. She looked up at the ceiling. “I feel so tired. The way cons feel when they confess. They just go to sleep. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the middle of an interview and they start snoring.”
“It’s relief,” Sam told her. “Am I wrong for not feeling guilty that Daniel was a victim in this just as much as we were?”
“If you’re wrong, then so am I,” Charlie admitted. “I know Daniel didn’t deserve to die like that. I can tell myself he’s a Culpepper and he would’ve eventually ended up behind bars or six feet under, but he should’ve been allowed the luxury of making his own choices.”
“Apparently, Dad got past it,” Sam said. “He spent most of his life working to exonerate guilty men, but he never cleared Daniel’s name.”
“‘Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility.’”
“Shakespeare?”
“Mr. Darcy to Bingley.”
“Of all people.”
“If it wasn’t his pride, it was his prejudice.”
Sam laughed, but then she turned serious. “I’m glad Dad didn’t tell us about Mason. I think I could handle it now, but back then?” She shook her head. “I know this sounds horrible, because the decision obviously haunted Dad, but when I consider where my mind was eight years after being shot, I think that making me come back here to testify would have killed me. How’s that for hyperbole?”
“Pretty accurate, if you include me.” Charlie knew that a trial would have accelerated her own downward trajectory. She would not have gone to law school. She would not have met Ben. Neither she nor Sam would be here talking to each other. She asked, “Why do I feel like I can handle it better now? What’s changed?”
“That is a complicated question with an equally complicated answer.”
Charlie laughed. This was Rusty’s real legacy. They were going to sit around quoting a dead man quoting dead people for the rest of their lives.
Sam said, “Dad must have known that we would find the confession in the safe.”
Charlie easily spotted one of Rusty’s high-stakes gambles. “I bet he thought he’d outlive Zachariah Culpepper’s execution date.”
“I bet he thought he’d figure out how to fix it on his own.”
Charlie thought they were probably both right. There was not a plate that Rusty would not try to spin. “When I was little, I thought Dad was driven to help people because he had this burning sense of justice. And then I got older and I thought it was because he loved the idea of himself as the scrappy, asshole hero fighting the good fight.”
“And now?”
“I think he knew that bad people did bad things, but he still believed that they deserved a chance.”
“That’s a very romanticized way to look at the world.”
“I was talking about Dad, not me.” Charlie felt sad that they were talking about Rusty in the past tense. “He was always searching for his unicorn.”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” Sam said. “I think he found one.”
19
Charlie stood with her nose a few inches from the television screen. She scrutinized the right-hand corner of the paused school security footage for so long that her eyes started blurring in and out. She took a step back. She blinked to clear her vision. She studied the entirety of the image. The long, empty hallway. The vivid blue lockers rendered navy by the ancient camera. The lens was angled down, capturing the hallway roughly to the middle point. Her eyes went back to the corner. There was a door, possibly closed, a millimeter out of frame, but clearly there. The light from the window cast a shadow onto something that was reaching into the hallway.
Charlie asked, “Is it Kelly’s shadow?” She pointed past the TV, as if they were both standing in the hallway rather than Rusty’s living room. “She would’ve been standing here, right?”
Sam kept her own counsel. She had her head turned, using her good eye to view the image. “What do you see?”
“This.” Charlie pointed to the shadow reaching into the hall. “It’s a blurry, hairy line, like a spider’s leg.”