He chuckled drily. “I know, you’re not that kind of kid.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
“It won’t,” he said. I stared at him expectantly, waiting for him to move out of the way and let me by. Instead, he reached down and took my hand. “We got something to talk about.” My heart stumbled and then resumed its frenetic pace.
Uncle Crete’s grip was firm but not rough. He led me up to the kitchen and sat me down at the table. He got himself a beer out of the fridge and cracked open a soda for me. My throat was dry and I took a sip, holding the can with both hands to keep it from shaking.
“I know you been worried about that girl Cheri Stoddard,” he said, sitting down in the chair opposite me. “I remember back when she first left, you couldn’t believe she’d run away. And you were so upset when they found her. It hurts me to see you hurting, I hope you know that.” My limbs felt detached, like they didn’t belong to me. I wondered, if I got up to run, whether I’d be able to. “I never wanted you in that trailer. That was Judd’s fault, and I should have talked to you right after, cleared some things up. But I didn’t realize then what you were putting together. Not until you started asking around town about Cheri. From what I been hearing, you’re out there playing Nancy Drew.”
I wanted to get up from the table and run out the door. I wondered if he would stop me.
“I have to tell you some things I didn’t ever wanna have to tell you. I been keeping ’em to myself so nobody’d get hurt, but it looks like I’m gonna have to let you in on it.”
I stared numbly. I was thinking of the saying I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. I glanced at my watch. Nowhere near late enough for Bess to call my dad.
“Your friend Cheri, she had it rough. Left home of her own free will. Somebody came to me to help her out a bit, and she did stay in that trailer. But I had nothing to do with anything that went on over there. I collected my rent and kept out of their business. From what my renter told me, that girl was as happy as a pig in mud to be out of her mama’s place. I didn’t ask details.”
I thought of what Jamie had told me, how Cheri had been running for her life down the river. Maybe she had decided to leave home on her own, but her decision-making skills were poor. She could have gotten talked into anything, even into a situation worse than the one she was trying to escape. I had a hard time distinguishing what part of Crete’s story was true, if any. He could have been lying about everything.
“Now, it kills me to say this, but I don’t see what choice I got.” He leaned in close and took my hand. “Your daddy was the last person to see Cheri before she was found in that tree. He’s the one who put her there.”
I was hollow inside, a gulf opening up. “That’s not true,” I said.
“Ask him,” he said. “See if he can lie to you.” He sat back and finished his beer. “So if you were planning on talking to anybody else about Cheri, you should know you could get your daddy in a whole lot of trouble. I reckon they’d take him away. Now, if that happens, you’re always welcome here. You’re family, and I’ll always take care of you, no matter what, just like I always done. But I sure would hate to see my baby brother locked up. Or worse.”
I stared at the soda can, struggling to form coherent thoughts. He could be lying to protect himself. That made the most sense. Dad couldn’t have been involved. But what would my dad say if I asked him? If he lied, would I know he was lying?
“This ain’t the first time I’ve had to cover up for him,” Crete continued. “He killed a man that fancied your mother. There were witnesses. Go ahead and ask him. There are all sorts of things that could send your daddy to prison if they came to light. I’m sorry I had to tell you, but you’re old enough to hear it now, and it’s better if you know. I’ve only ever tried to help.”
I sat in the chair for a long time. Crete cleaned the kitchen up a bit, throwing beer cans in the trash and moving dirty dishes to the sink. After a while it seemed that he wasn’t going to keep me from leaving. He’d already tethered me with his words. No noises came up from the basement to break the silence. At last I stood up and slung my backpack over my shoulder.
“You need a ride home?” he asked.
I stiffened.
“You ain’t gotta be scared of me,” he said. “Or your daddy, neither. He’d never do anything to hurt you. We’re blood, and we stick together. Now, you remember everything we talked about. I know you’ll do the right thing.” He ruffled my hair and walked me to the door. “Careful out there. I’ll be keeping my eye on you.”
I stumbled out into the night, and when I hit the trees, I started running. I ran until my breath seared my lungs and my side hurt enough to double me over, and when the pain subsided, I ran some more, all the way up the back steps of the house and into the kitchen, where Dad sat at the table with a beer, horribly reminiscent of the scene I’d just left. Crete’s accusations clamored in my head. Your dad killed a man. He put Cheri in that tree.
“Look who’s grounded,” he said. I stared at him, wheezing, trying to catch my breath. There were several crushed beer cans and a dwindling bottle of whiskey on the table. How long had he been sitting here, drinking, waiting for me? “I bet you’re wondering why I’m home.” I didn’t say anything, but he continued anyway. “I got a call from Daniel Cole today up in Springfield, and we got together to talk a bit. He’s worried about you. Said you’re trying to track down Cheri’s killer, and he’s afraid you’ll get yourself in trouble without one of us here to keep an eye on you.”
Anger kindled inside me. Daniel hadn’t bothered to call me since he’d moved. What right did he have to call my dad?
“Birdie had some things to say, too. Seems there’s been traffic out here at odd hours. Past curfew. What’s going on with you, Lucy? And where were you? Out with Bess? You better not have been drinking.” I didn’t answer. He circled me, sniffed my breath, my hair, laughable, considering the fumes coming off him. “At least I know you weren’t out with some boy, since your boyfriend’s outta town.”
Boyfriend?
“Though now I think I’d probably rather you were out with him. He’s older than I’d like, but he seems like a smart kid. Trustworthy. I really wish you would have had the courtesy to introduce us.”
My breathing had almost returned to normal, though my heart was pumping overtime. I’d barely begun to process everything that had happened at Crete’s, and now Dad was in my face, raving drunk, talking about Daniel and scaring me enough to make me wonder about all the things Crete had said.
“It’s late,” he said. “We’re gonna have a nice long talk in the morning. I’ve got the next few days off work.”
I nodded, finding my voice. “I just need to call Bess, let her know I made it home.” I didn’t want her worrying, or worse, calling my dad because she hadn’t heard from me.
“No,” he said, grabbing the phone as I reached for it. “I’ll do it. I haven’t decided yet if you’re losing your phone privileges.” He squinted at the list of phone numbers taped to the fridge and clumsily jabbed the buttons to dial. “Bess? Lucy’s home. And you might not see her for a while, because she’s gonna be grounded for breaking curfew and God knows what else.”
He listened for a minute, exasperated by whatever Bess was saying. He tried to break in, but apparently, she just kept going and he relented with a frown. He shoved the phone at me. “She’s gotta tell you something,” he said. “You have one minute, and then your ass best be in bed.”
“Lucy?” I couldn’t tell if Bess was whispering or crying. I wished Dad would leave me alone so I could talk to her, tell her what had happened, but he stood at arm’s length, glaring, tapping his watch like a prison warden.
“What is it?” I asked, turning my back to Dad.
“It’s Sorrel,” she said. “He hung himself. He’s dead.”
I lay in bed until I heard Dad snoring, then crept across the hall to the bathroom and took a long shower. When the hot water ran out, I sat down in the claw-foot tub and let the cold spray pelt me until my teeth chattered. Back in my room, I tried to make sense of things in my journal. I didn’t yet know how to categorize everything that had happened, everything I was feeling, so I wrote it all down in one jumbled list. I wasn’t convinced that my dad was a murderer. It didn’t feel right. The man Crete accused Dad of killing—it could have been self-defense. And when I replayed the conversation, he hadn’t exactly said that Dad had killed Cheri. Just that he had put her in the tree. But it was hard to believe anything Crete said at this point. I had no idea which parts were true.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the sounds that had come from the hidden room. Though I had no reason to assume a person was trapped in there, the thought lingered in my head. Not so long ago, such a thing never would have occurred to me: that my uncle, whom I often felt closer to than my own father, might have someone locked in his basement. I knew it wasn’t likely, but I realized with horror that I believed it was possible. If he had something to do with what had happened to Cheri or my mother, who knew what he was capable of.