Sweet Jiminy (19 page)

Jiminy felt the same sense of frustrated agitation she got when she watched
Romeo and Juliet
or
Titanic
—she desperately wanted to alter an unchangeable ending. Lyn shook her head.

“He had to stay in Fayeville to look after his mother and be close to his brothers and sisters. He wanted me, but he understood if I wouldn't come.”

“And you obviously told him you would.”

“I married him that day,” Lyn said.

“So Jiminy could still have been Edward's daughter, then,” Jiminy exclaimed. “I mean, Edward could have been the father just as easily as my grandpa.”

Again, Lyn shook her head.

“I couldn't ever get pregnant again,” she said. “We tried for seventeen years. Jiminy was Henry's.”

Jiminy took a moment to absorb this.

“So what did my grandpa do?” she asked. “Nothing?”

Lyn sighed.

“We only spoke of it once, which was plenty. He blamed me for marrying Edward after what we'd done. Told me I was fickle and immoral, and that Edward deserved better.”

“But you really did love Edward,” Jiminy said.

“More than anything in this world,” Lyn replied. “I woulda done anything to erase what happened with Henry. Anything. I kept it secret, and I don't think Edward ever suspected. Folks said his real father was a white man who'd raped his mother, so he always believed this accounted for Jiminy's lighter skin. And make no mistake, Edward was Jiminy's father in every other way that mattered.”

“How did my grandpa treat Jiminy?”

“He loved her. Doted on her, to tell the truth, which made Edward so proud. It was me Henry hated.”

“He really never forgave you?”

“Not till it was too late,” Lyn replied. “He never wanted me around. Made me get another job at the Brayers even, which . . .”

As Lyn trailed off, Jiminy looked over at her quickly.

She pressed: “Which what?”

Lyn crossed her arms to hug herself.

“Which is when everything went wrong.”

Lyn shook her head slowly, and Jiminy wondered how she could possibly carry so much pain around with her every day.

“What do you mean?” she asked softly. “What went wrong?”

Lyn stared at the river far below them.

“Travis Brayer took an interest in me, and Travis Brayer don't like bein' told no.”

Jiminy felt suddenly and deeply chilled. She shivered violently.

“Henry felt awful about it,” Lyn continued in a detached monotone. “After Edward and Jiminy were killed, he just fell apart. He didn't know how to make sense of any of it; he didn't know how to grieve. He just got worse and worse. He asked me to take that photograph of him in December of '66, right before Christmas. We came here to take it.”

Jiminy looked at the photo again. It was true; it had been taken right where she was now standing. She could see the magnolia branch above her grandfather's head and the edge of Edward's gravestone beside him.

“He told me it was important that I take the photo, that we needed a record,” Lyn continued. “He was a little out of his mind then, searching for something he couldn't find. And then he just broke.”

Jiminy stayed very still, trying to imagine what her grandfather must have been feeling, standing here, over four decades earlier.

“He'd lost a close friend, and his daughter,” Jiminy said, almost to herself. “My mother's half sister—my aunt . . .”

The full weight of this impacted her. She and Jiminy Waters shared more than just a name. They shared blood.

Jiminy looked at Lyn.

“Which makes you my . . .”

She stopped. This was getting too confusing. No, Lyn wasn't actually related to her, she quickly worked out. And thankfully, neither was Bo. But they were all tangled up in the same web.

“So now you know,” Lyn said. “I'd just as soon the Henry part stay between us. For Edward's sake.”

Jiminy nodded slowly.

“I won't tell, but with the DNA testing, it's hard to say what might come out,” Jiminy replied.

Lyn nodded, resigned to being disappointed. Jiminy ached for her. She ached for all of them. Things got so complicated when blood was involved.

Chapter 16

O
f all the many things
Willa could be worrying about, she found herself preoccupied with the whereabouts of Jiminy's kitten. Cholera had slipped out the window per her normal routine, to hunt or wander, but failed to return, and had now been missing for several days. Perhaps a coyote had carried her off in the night. Perhaps she'd left of her own free will. When someone or something disappeared, did the reasons really matter all that much in the end? People yearned to sweeten absence with explanations, Willa knew. But did they provide any real, lasting solace? In her opinion, the jury was out.

Still, Willa missed Cholera. She'd never before allowed live animals in her house, because she'd been raised to keep them outside, to maintain some separation between human and beast. In a family as poor as hers had been, the distinction had been important. But she'd made an exception for Cholera, because she'd come to welcome her visits. The first one had happened the day after Willa returned from the hospital to recuperate at home. The kitten slunk into the bedroom and leapt up onto the mattress, where she stretched and used her little claws to knead the blanket like it was dough for biscuits. Willa could feel the tiny pricks on her skin below, but she hadn't cried out or shifted. She'd just watched the kitten settle into the little space she'd kneaded for herself, and reflected that that's what you did with a bed that you made. You lay in it.

Willa heard the front door close and wondered whether it was Lyn, Jiminy, or Jean. Jean had moved into the farmhouse to help tend to Willa's recovery, though she spent an equal amount of time playing virtual tennis in the room down the hall.

“Yoo-hoo,” Willa called.

“It's me, Grandma,” Jiminy answered, entering Willa's bedroom from the hall. “We need to talk.”

 

Half an hour later, Willa longed to rest her brain and eyes, but her granddaughter was still asking questions. Intensive conversation was new terrain for them, and even had Willa been in perfect health, she wasn't sure she'd have been up for it.

Jiminy hadn't shared anything that Lyn had told her. Her aim was to gather information rather than dispense it, and to that end, she'd been peppering her grandmother with queries about the past, claiming curiosity about her mother's childhood. Jiminy had calculated that Willa would be more forthcoming if she believed Jiminy was simply trying to understand just what exactly had gone wrong with her mother.

So far, the strategy was proving fruitful. In response to Jiminy's probing, Willa had tried her best to explain how much Margaret had worshiped the first Jiminy, and how fiercely she'd mourned her and Edward's deaths. Willa had admitted she'd lied about the circumstances of their deaths at the time, ascribing them to a tragic car accident in an attempt to shield her young daughter a bit longer from the devastating actuality of the world.

Willa remembered clearly how Margaret had cocked her little head and pronounced her a liar. Apparently she had been eavesdropping outside Willa and Henry's door right after the bodies were found, and had heard her father sob and rage and ask desperately how anyone could do such things to another human being. She'd heard him declare he didn't want to be on a planet that condoned this, in a life where this went on. Margaret had been haunted by his words, both at the time and years afterward, whenever she'd thought about her father's premature death. She felt she'd witnessed the exact moment he'd decided to leave.

Jiminy listened carefully as her grandmother relayed all of this in her thin, tired voice.

“So maybe that's why Mom decided she'd prefer an alternate world, too,” Jiminy said. “And after her car accident, after the pills took over, she finally fully went for it. She cracked and went for it.”

And had proceeded to live an irresponsible life on her own selfish terms. But who were they to question this, in the end? Maybe it was the only way to be.

“She's not completely unaware, you know,” Willa said. “She called the other day. And she sent this.”

Willa indicated a package resting on her bedside table that Jiminy hadn't even noticed. It was addressed to her, mailed from a Greek seaport.

Jiminy picked it up and tore open an end. A mound of bubble wrap slipped out into her lap. Buried within its many layers was the wooden doll she'd played with in her youth. The beautifully carved boy who'd once been her constant companion.

“It's him,” she breathed.

He was accompanied by a note:

Cricket,

Remember this guy? You never lost him—he's been with me—I take him on all my trips. He was mine first, you know. Edward made him for Jiminy, and Jiminy gave him to me. He was only on loan to you, but I figured you could use his company now.

Love, Mom

Jiminy let the note fall to her lap. Gazing at her long-lost little cohort triggered strange sensations of forgotten times when her brain had still been maturing and she'd thought wooden objects could spring to life. The sensations seemed pleasant at first, but they were unsettling, too. As she ran her fingers over the little wooden boy's limbs, she felt as though she were regressing.

“He came back,” she said softly.

After all this time, now that she had a fully formed brain no longer comforted by magical thinking.

Gunshots interrupted her reunion. Jiminy jumped, but her grandmother stayed remarkably serene.

“It's just Jean,” Willa said calmly. “She must've lost another game.”

Jiminy went to the window, where she saw Jean aiming her rifle at something she'd perched on the fence post. Jiminy squinted. Sure enough, it looked like one of the videogame consoles Jean had brought with her and hooked up to the television when she'd moved into Willa's. She'd been playing tennis against the machine every day for exercise, but apparently the latest match hadn't gone well.

“She really hates losing,” Willa explained.

Didn't they all.

Carlos wasn't at the courthouse like he'd said he'd be, so Jiminy decided to try his room at the Comfort Inn. She was eager to pursue the leads she'd uncovered, armed with the insight she'd acquired. As she rapped on Carlos's door, she tried to calm her jiggling leg. She wondered if she wasn't also a little excited to see Carlos himself.

From inside, she heard muffled murmurs and hurried rustling.

“One second,” Carlos called.

Perhaps she'd caught him napping. They'd been battling a sense of impatient frustration lately, haunted by the worry that they were running out of time. The car discovery had provided fresh momentum for their case, but unless they could come up with positive DNA matches, it wasn't going to help them prosecute anyone.

Adding to their angst was the fact that Carlos had begun receiving a significant amount of pressure from people associated with Bobby Brayer's gubernatorial campaign to back off the case altogether, and though he was impervious to such influence, he worried that the law enforcement agencies he relied on might not be. He had emphasized to Jiminy that they needed to crack something soon.

Jiminy knew that Carlos meditated to work through thorny problems, and that this practice often led to unplanned naps. She hadn't meant to interrupt or embarrass him.

Sure enough, he was barefoot and rumpled when he cracked open his door a moment later. Jiminy had an unsettling urge to crawl into bed with him.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Everything's great—I'm sorry to bother you,” Jiminy began.

“I gotta go anyway,” a woman's voice said from behind Carlos.

She was tan with frosted blond hair. She looked familiar, but Jiminy couldn't place where she'd previously seen her.

“I was just interviewing Gloria,” Carlos explained.

The woman laughed a smoker's husky cackle.

“Yeah, I hope you got what you needed,” she said, swatting Carlos's butt as she breezed out the door. She didn't look at Jiminy as she passed. She just straightened the straps of her dress, donned her sunglasses, and strode toward the parking lot. Jiminy watched her go, still too surprised to speak.

Carlos cleared his throat.

“What's going on?” he asked.

Jiminy refocused her attention on him. He was leaning against the door frame, observing her. In his gray T-shirt, with his limbs akimbo, he reminded her of a spider. Jiminy thought of all the times she'd used a glass and a sheet of paper to trap in lieu of squashing.

“We need to get to Travis Brayer,” she said brusquely. “You seem busy, so I'll give it a shot myself.”

Her voice sounded different to her—more solid and sure. She wondered if this new confidence also showed in her stance and posture, and in the look she was giving Carlos now. Appraising, rather than seeking or questioning. She was hardening into her actual self all on her own, she could feel it.

“That'll be delicate,” Carlos said slowly. “I should be there. I've just got one more interview here and then I'm free. Wait for me.”

Jiminy heard a car easing into the Comfort Inn parking lot and turned to see the librarian parking, looking toward Carlos expectantly. Her hair was curled, and she was wearing bright red lipstick.

Jiminy took her Polaroid camera from her bag and snapped a photo of Carlos.

“I'll let you know how it goes,” she said, before turning and walking away.

In her car as she was driving off, the picture of Carlos slowly came into focus. Jiminy contemplated it, and the road ahead, without looking back.

Chapter 17

F
rom his perch at Grady's Grill
, Walton saw Willa's car glide by, driven by Jiminy, who seemed in a hurry. Walton wondered what lives she was racing to upend next. He certainly recognized the role she'd played in rattling his. Without her, he never would have committed his darkest secrets to paper.

He stubbed out his cigarette, pleased at the symmetry of ending it along with his latest, most essential project, and gathered his manuscript as he pondered what to do. He'd written a definitive history of the Waters murders, complete with a confession. He'd determined to be painfully, importantly honest, and now he was done.

He might share this loaded document with the rest of the world, or he might burn it. He hadn't made up his mind.

Outside, storm clouds were gathering to the north and the air felt charged. Walton glanced to his right and saw Carlos standing on the upper balcony of the Comfort Inn, staring off down the road. Nearby, Tortillas looked as though it had been shut down, and Walton felt his reawakened impulse to investigate. “Curiosity killed the cat,” ran through his head in the warning voice of his late father. “Satisfaction brought her back,” chimed the answer at its heels.

 

A short time later, Walton was yelling Carlos's name as he limped hurriedly across the Comfort Inn parking lot. Carlos took the stairs down two at a time to meet him, concerned by the agitation in the old man's voice.

When they got to Tortillas, the door was still ajar, the way Walton had left it. Inside, the place was a mix of orderliness and chaos. The chairs had been put up on the tables in preparation for the floor to be mopped, but there was nothing clean about what lay beneath them. For a moment, Carlos thought it was blood, but he was relieved to see a can of red spray paint discarded in a corner of the room. Whoever had done this must have used more than one can, though. The floor was covered with spray paint outlines of bodies, the kind that are normally drawn in chalk at crime scenes. There were dozens of them, covering every inch of Tortillas floor space. They even climbed up the walls with a splayed limb here or there, in a way that would have struck Carlos as artistic if the whole thing hadn't been so grotesque.

Inside each of the bodies was a name. Carlos read some of them, unaware that he was pronouncing them aloud.

“Juan Gonzalez. Rosa Gonzalez. Penelope Gonzalez. Maria Gonzalez. Paco Hernandez. Teresa Hernandez. Guillermo Lopez. Isabella Lopez.”

“These are real people,” Walton said behind him. “Juan and Rosa own this restaurant. Or they did.”

The place looked like it had been left in a hurry. Above the doorway to the kitchen, “Care of K.S.O.” had been spray-painted in large, red letters.

“Who are the others?” Carlos asked, waving his hand over the outlines of dozens of labeled bodies.

Walton shook his head.

“I don't know.”

Carlos nodded. His stomach felt hollow.

“But they're why I'm giving this to you,” Walton said, handing over the stack of papers he'd been carrying. “I have to. This can't go on.”

Carlos was still staring around him at all the hypothetical bodies, unaware of the significance of Walton's decision—oblivious that the horror around them had inspired a momentous atonement.

“Let's get out of here,” he said sharply.

There was nothing Walton wanted to do more.