“Dani, please, you heard him.” Hauck took her by the arm. She took a futile glance around the room, ending on Allie, who nodded back at her with a look that conveyed something like, Thanks. It’s best. I’ll see you at home.
At the door, Hauck turned back. The farmer was still standing there with his hands balled around his cap. “I do know,” Hauck said. “I lost a daughter myself. She was five. So I do know how it is.”
Watkins just stared with an empty and impassive expression.
“So, Mr. Hauck …?”
Hauck looked back.
“They say it’ll get better. With time.”
“Which part, Mr. Watkins?” Hauck looked into the farmer’s hooded eyes. “The grief or the guilt?”
As soon as they were on the porch, Dani grabbed onto Hauck’s arm. “Something’s going on here. How can you just leave and not make them see it?”
“Because I can, Dani. That’s all there is to it. You don’t understand.” He went down the steps to their car.
“Uncle Ty, listen, please …” She caught up to him. “Allie told me inside, something’s not right here. She said she heard Trey’s father and mother arguing. She heard her tell him something like ‘You’re not responsible.’ ‘You’re not responsible,’ Uncle Ty … Allie was sure she was talking about Trey.” She latched onto Hauck’s arm and swung him around. “We can’t just leave. She wants to know the truth.”
“Then let her find it. We’re going home. We’re sticking our noses into something where we don’t belong.”
“What do you mean we don’t belong …? What’s happened, Uncle Ty? Why are you suddenly agreeing with him?”
He pulled the car door open, the blood heating up inside.
“Mr. Hauck …”
They heard the front door open behind them. Kelli Watkins came onto the porch. She came down the steps and over to them. “I’m sorry about my father. He’s not that way. Really. You can see, he’s toiling his whole life away, and look what’s happening …”
Hauck said, “You don’t have to apologize. I—”
“I’m not apologizing. I know you both felt from the start that Trey’s death wasn’t an accident, and I don’t want to get my father in trouble, or put anyone else in harm … But if my brother was the victim of something”—she looked up at him—“then I don’t want to keep it quiet, either.”
“I think he was, Kelli,” Dani said to her. “It’s just that no one wants to hear.”
“I want to hear.” She looked at Dani and then at Hauck, and pushed the bangs away from her eyes. “My father was always a courageous man. And look what’s happened. You don’t know the truth of what’s really happening here. My father and a few other townspeople got involved and …
“Just look around,” she said, her gaze swept over the parched, brown fields. “You can see what we’re struggling with here. None of them grew up with a nickel in their pockets other than this land. Now look at it. Then this thing comes like a gift from God that can save us. This was a quiet town, Mr. Hauck. Like some Norman Rockwell painting. Now it’s turned people against each other. To my dad, it was like making a deal with the devil to sell your soul. And now we all see the cost, what’s happened. The real cost …”
Hauck put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Tears came into her eyes.
“Look around at this shit, Mr. Hauck. God knows why anyone would want to give their lives up to save it. Other than just their own will and stubbornness.” She wiped the tears away with her arm. “And look what it’s cost us now.”
“Kelli, if you want us to just go home, we will.”
“I don’t want you to go home.” She shook her head and looked up at Hauck, a fire of something, maybe a last hope, flickering through her watery eyes. “Everyone goes home. I’m sorry for what you said in there, about your daughter. I wouldn’t blame you if you did go. We’ve been afraid of the truth, because of what might happen next. But I loved Trey, and if something bad did happen, well then I damn well want to know. And the people who did it made responsible. He was a good kid, whatever my father feels.” She turned to Dani. “You knew that, right?”
Dani nodded. “Everyone did.”
“You go back now and not look into it.” Kelli shrugged. “I don’t know who will.”
They stood here looking at her.
“So actually there is someone … Someone who you can talk to. In Greeley. She’s a lawyer. She might be the only one left who’s not on RMM’s payroll. But you have to understand, you’ll be going up against a lot here, Mr. Hauck, both with RMM and the town. They may be simple folk here, but trust me, they don’t take kindly to someone getting in their way. We see that now.”
“What this person’s name?” Hauck inquired.
“Jen Keeler. She’s with some environmental group. I could find out for you.”
“Keeler …” Hauck said. “Won’t be necessary.” He squeezed her shoulder in a bolstering way.
They got in their car. Kelli took a step or two toward the house as Hauck started the engine, then she turned back to them and Hauck came around.
“So you gonna stay or leave?” Kelli asked. The hot wind whipped her hair and she pushed it off her face. Her eyes seemed to convey that she had seen this picture before.
“Everyone leaves …” She shrugged with an air of futility. “Or ends up being part of them.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Hours later, Hauck lay on his bed at the motel. The Golf Channel was on the tube. Some obscure tournament in Dubai with a lot of European players he had never heard of. After a couple of beers and some decent Mexican, he’d left Dani a while back and went back to his room.
You gonna stay or leave? Kelli had asked him.
It had taken him two visits to see it. But standing at the door, looking into Watkins’s haunted eyes, he saw the very same thing that had been etched onto Hauck’s own countenance ten years before. The same cast of grief and helplessness and rage.
Guilt, too.
They always leave.