Crooked River: A Novel (11 page)

15
sam

L
ater that evening, Franny came into the guest room at the top of the stairs. She sat on the edge of one of the beds and said, “Deputy Santos and I talked with the social worker. They’re going to let you girls stay with us until we can get in touch with your grandparents.”

Ollie and I were on the bed opposite her, sitting apart from each other. I was at the foot, nearly spilling onto the floor. Ollie was up near the pillows, pressed close to the wall. She was wearing one of Franny’s old T-shirts and had her legs curled up inside it, her chin resting on her knees, making herself as small as possible.

Before Mom died, Grandpa and Grandma had booked a two-week cruise across the Atlantic from Fort Lauderdale to Lisbon for their fortieth wedding anniversary. A week before their departure date, they were all set to call their travel agent and cancel, but their tickets were nonrefundable and so I told them to go. Bear could take care of us just fine, they didn’t have to worry. According to the itinerary they left with me, their boat was floating somewhere now in the mid-Atlantic. Deputy Santos might be able to reach them, but they wouldn’t be able to do anything except worry about us until Thursday when they were expected to reach port in Lisbon.

So much could happen in those five days. So much could change.

I picked at the sleeves of the old flannel shirt Franny had given me to wear when she’d thrown my blood-streaked clothes in the wash. I could hear the machine somewhere below us, chugging and thumping.

“Our paperwork’s not up-to-date,” she continued. “But given the circumstances and the good word Deputy Santos put in for us, Child Services is willing to make a temporary exception.”

“What about our things?” I asked.

“From the teepee?”

I nodded.

Franny said, “Maribel said she’d bring everything over as soon as they finished processing the scene.”

The scene. Bear’s meadow.
Our
meadow. Our home.

I rubbed my eyes. Ollie clutched her knees even tighter to her chest.

“There are those boxes in the barn, too,” Franny said. “We can open those up tomorrow, see if we can’t find you both some clothes that fit a little better.”

After Mom’s funeral, we’d gone through the house in Eugene, deciding what to keep and what to give away or take to the dump. The things we kept, we packed in boxes and brought with us to Zeb and Franny’s. Storing everything in the barn was supposed to be a temporary arrangement. We were supposed to be moving into a bigger place, an apartment or a house, with rooms and closets and plenty of space to stretch out. We were supposed to be figuring out how to be a family again, not worrying about a dead woman and how long my father might be in jail.

“I know it’s not what you’re used to.” Franny smoothed her hand across the pink-and-yellow quilt. “But the sheets are clean. And the fridge is full. And here, at least, you’ll be safe. That’s the important thing.”

Ollie sighed.

“How about we go to the store tomorrow after church?” Franny said. “Stock up on a few things. Toothbrushes, underwear, socks. Mint chocolate chip ice cream.” She smiled, but it didn’t stick. She leaned forward and the bed creaked. She grabbed our hands and squeezed. “We want you girls to be comfortable here. Our home is your home. Whatever you need, just ask.”

In the hallway, floorboards groaned, and Zeb cleared his throat.

“Mother,” he said. “Time to let these girls alone. Let them have their rest.”

Franny rose to her feet, rubbing her back. She shuffled to the door and stood there a moment longer, leaning in the frame, watching me and Ollie. Then she said, “We’re right down the hall if you need anything. Anything at all.”

She left the room—Ollie’s and my room now—and closed the door behind her.

I
woke tangled in sheets.

I woke suffocating, choking on a panicked, half-formed nightmare in which I was being buried alive inside a grave with Taylor Bellweather, who was also somehow my mother. Bear held the shovel. Every time I opened my mouth to scream, I swallowed more dirt. More and more until I couldn’t breathe and that’s what woke me—this feeling of drowning.

Kicking off the covers, I sat up and stared straight ahead into a dark too thick to be night. No crickets, no frogs, no wind. No scent of morning dew and damp pine needles. I wasn’t used to sleeping indoors in August, stifling between four walls and a shingled roof. I needed air. I needed to see the stars.

I turned my head toward the room’s only window. The curtains were partway open, letting in a thin slit of silver moonlight. I wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping. Ollie stood with one hand pressed to the glass, staring out into the yard. Her unbraided hair fell loose around her shoulders. The hem of her nightshirt, like an old-fashioned gown, brushed against the floor. She was still and silent, a silk-spun dream against the black night. She pushed the window open. A breeze rushed in, smelling of parched earth and stirring the hair around Ollie’s face into a shimmering halo, a flutter of pale ribbons.

I stood, and a floorboard creaked.

Ollie swung her head around and then, when she saw it was only me, turned again to the open window.

We stood side by side, not touching, not talking, just staring out over Zeb and Franny’s fields toward the distant, ragged trees that surrounded our meadow. The wind hissed through the tall grass and bowed the tops of the firs. The chimes on the front porch clattered, their songs erratic and shrill. This wasn’t the kind of wind that pushed in rain clouds or cool mornings. It was a dust bowl wind, swollen with heat and sighs. The kind of wind that dried you out and left you feeling thin. In the morning, we’d wake with parched throats and burning eyes.

“I know you’re mad at me,” I said. “I know you think this whole thing is my fault.”

Ollie gathered all her hair in one hand and curled it around her fist.

“And maybe it is. Maybe if I had turned that jacket over to Deputy Santos at the beginning the way Bear wanted, then things would have worked out differently.”

Ollie pushed her lips out like a duck, then sucked them back in again, pressing them together between her teeth.

“But maybe not.”

Ollie looked at me. The moonlight turned her skin gray and her eyes ink black. She let her hair go, let it slide and tumble and cascade around her shoulders again. She seemed to be waiting for me to say something else.

“I want to believe he’s innocent, too, Oll,” I said. “But there’s a chance he might not come home. We have to be ready for that, I think.”

She turned away from the window, crossed a few steps to her bed, picked up her
Alice
book, which was lying on the pillow, and returned to me. She held the book out, already opened to a page near the beginning. She pointed at the bottom, at a sentence that read:
After a fall such as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling downstairs.

I laughed. She closed the book against her chest and leaned into my side.

W
hen we had been waiting at the hospital for someone to come get us, Ollie was still talking then and she’d asked if I was scared. I didn’t answer. She tucked her small body close to mine, covered my hand with hers, and said, “It’s okay to be scared, Sammy.” And then, after a long pause, “We can be scared together. Okay?” I nodded and swallowed back the lump in my throat and stared up at the ceiling until the tears stopped wanting to spill out all over the place. And then I pulled my hand away, stood up, and said, “I’m getting Skittles from the vending machine. You want anything?”

She wrapped her arms around her bent legs and rested her chin on her knees. “Do you think they have those mini powdered doughnuts? Those are my favorite.” They did and I bought them for her and she ate all but one, rolling the packaging up on itself and setting it on the chair beside her. She said, “I’m going to save it for Mom for when she gets better,” and then she leaned in close, cupped her hand around her mouth, and whispered, “Hospital food’s the worst.”

I didn’t tell her that Mom wasn’t going to get better, that she was already dead. I didn’t tell her because I was too scared, but I wish I had. Maybe it would have been easier if she hadn’t held on to hope for so long.

Grandma found the doughnut a few days later in Ollie’s jacket pocket and threw it away. Ollie cried pretty hard after that. There had been so much going on—between the funeral and packing and Bear fighting with Grandma about what to do with me and Ollie—that I probably didn’t do as good of a job taking care of her as a big sister should. I couldn’t think of anything to say that would make her feel better. There was no good explanation for why such a terrible thing had happened and no magic words to fix us.

T
his time, I wanted to be a better sister. I wanted to try. I said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us now, Oll. I wish I did. I wish I could tell you that everything’s going to work out and we’ll be just fine. But I can’t.”

Her hand found mine. I loved how warm she was, the inside of her palm like a stone sitting in the sun.

“I wish there was something I could do to change everything that’s happened,” I continued. “I wish I could bring Bear back. And Mom, too.” My voice cracked.

Ollie squeezed my hand as tight as she could.

“It’s just us now,” I said. “We have to look out for each other.”

She leaned her head against me. Her long hair tickled my arm, but I didn’t mind.

We stood together in front of the window until the moon slipped behind the trees and the barn became a hulking beast in the dark, until the air inside felt more like the air outside and the frog and cricket choruses were louder than our own thoughts. When we returned to our beds, we left the window open and the curtains fluttering.

That night, I dreamed us with painted faces. We crept through the woods together, hunting rabbits and howling like wolves. Living wild. And when they came looking for us, we hid in the tall grass and up among the tangled branches, and Ollie pressed her finger to her lips and we could not be found. And, after a while, they went away. They went and left us to our savage selves.

T
he next morning when Franny came to wake us for church, I told her I was sick. She leaned over me, laid her hand on my forehead, and said, “You do feel a little warm.”

I nodded and closed my eyes. “I can still go,” I said. “I can try . . .”

She pulled the blankets up over my shoulders and tucked them tight. “You’re going to stay right here in bed and rest is what you’re going to do.”

She brought me plain toast and peppermint tea and a stack of old
Better Homes and Gardens
. “We’ll be home around noon.” She kissed my forehead and left.

It was another fifteen minutes before I heard their voices drift out the front door and the truck start up and drive away. And another ten minutes of silence after that before I got up, got dressed, put on my shoes, and went out the back door.

Earlier, Deputy Santos had stopped by to drop off our duffel bags. Her car pulling into the driveway had woken me, and I’d crept to the landing at the top of the stairs, sat tucked in shadows where no one could see me. They tried to keep their voices low, but I still heard every word.

“We’ve arrested him for Taylor Bellweather’s murder,” Deputy Santos had said. “Officially.”

“Oh.” This was Franny, her voice fluttering like a baby bird. “Oh no. No, no.”

Zeb asked, “What about bail?”

“His arraignment’s scheduled for Tuesday morning. Until then, we’re going to have to hold him.”

“There must be some mistake.”

“There’s evidence. Witnesses. Too many things pointing us in his direction.”

“An explanation then,” Zeb said. “He must have had some kind of reason, something that makes sense.”

“He’s refusing to cooperate. He said even if he told us the truth, we wouldn’t believe him, that we’d already made up our minds. Then he asked for a lawyer.”

“But that doesn’t mean . . .” said Franny. “He couldn’t have possibly . . .”

“It just doesn’t look good. Things aren’t adding up right. There’s just too much . . .”

I went back upstairs at this point and buried my head under my pillow. When I told Franny I was too sick to go to church, I wasn’t lying. Not exactly. But how much of my stomachache was from thinking of all those people packed so tight together staring and whispering and casting judgment between hymns, and how much was guilt for my part in all this, I couldn’t tell.

My father, murderer. And yet, I didn’t believe it.

T
he grass in the meadow was trampled and dull. Boot prints marred the dirt. A wadded-up latex glove had been dropped and forgotten under our picnic table. Yellow tape hung limp from a tree branch beside the path leading to our swimming hole. In the apiary, the bees flew in and out of their boxes. Nothing had changed for them. Though the police had left the hives alone, the lean-to where we kept our tools was empty. They’d taken Bear’s hive tool and smoker and everything else he needed to take care of his bees. They’d even taken my suit. Evidence. That’s what they were looking for; maybe that’s what they’d found.