The Last House on the Street(102)

“Yes, you did, Buddy.” Ellie leans forward. “Back when I lived here you surely did. All the time.”

Buddy wrinkles his brow. Adjusts the oxygen tubing in his nose. “You might be right,” he says. “Before I got that fancy lock on the shop door, maybe I did. So long ago.”

“Who the hell cares where Buddy kept his keys a hundred years ago?” Miss Pat slaps the newspaper on the end table. “Just listen to yourselves going on and on about the ancient past! I knew as soon as Ellie showed up back here in Round Hill everything would go to hell.” She looks at her daughter. “You were a pain in the backside as a girl and you’re a pain in the backside now. You’re sixty-five years old, for heaven’s sake! When are you goin’ to grow up? You don’t see me moonin’ around over your daddy killin’ himself, do you?”

“Mama—” Ellie frowns, but her mother plows over her.

“Yes, it hurt, havin’ him shoot his damn head off,” Miss Pat says. “But I just kept goin’, didn’t I? Put one foot in front of the other.” She shakes her head at Ellie. “Why do you always think the world revolves around you? What the hell’s wrong with you that you’re so stuck in the past?” She points a trembling finger toward her daughter. “If you must know, Eleanor,” she says, “everybody was there that night. Back in the woods. Every goddamn body! Everybody was disgusted by you and that boy.” She shudders, as if sickened by the thought of her daughter and Win together. Then she turns to Brenda, who looks like a deer caught in headlights. “Even Brenda was there that night,” she says, “though she stayed in the truck, her bein’ expecting and all. Didn’t you, honey?”

“Mama…” Brenda’s voice is small, but the word sounds like a warning.

“Mama what?” Miss Pat asks, but it’s not really a question. She frowns at Brenda, who seems frozen in her chair. We’re all frozen. But then Brenda suddenly finds her voice. She looks directly at my father.

“Just admit you were driving your damn truck and get it over with, Reed,” she says. “Everybody knows it. They’ve known it for forty-five years.”

Next to me, my father stiffens. “That’s not true,” he says.

“Oh, bullshit.” Miss Pat wears a mocking smile, and for the first time, I have the tiniest sliver of doubt about my father’s innocence.

“I was not driving that truck,” Daddy says. “I had nothing to do with whatever went on in the woods.”

Ellie doesn’t seem to hear him. Her face has gone white. She’s looking across the room at Brenda. “You were my best friend,” she says. “How could you have been part of it all?”

“Mama’s not well, Ellie,” Brenda says. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.” She rests her hand on Miss Pat’s arm, but Miss Pat snatches her arm away from her.

“I’m perfectly fine,” she says. “Sane and sober.”

“Her memory is off,” Brenda continues. She looks at Miss Pat. “You know how you are, Mama. You can’t remember where you put your glasses two seconds after you take them off.”

“You’re the one with the memory problems,” Miss Pat argues.

My father leans toward me, hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right, Kayla?” he asks softly.

I don’t answer him. I glare at Brenda. “You’re the woman who took my daughter,” I say. “You were the woman in my office who tried to scare me away from Shadow Ridge.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Brenda snarls, and I hear a bit of the gravelly voice she used in my office. “What is wrong with everybody today?”

“Seriously, Kayla.” All of Ellie’s attention is on me. “What do you mean?”

“You shot a bunch of squirrels with a pellet gun and threw them on my redbud tree.” I’m guessing now.

“That was Brenda?” My father sounds astonished. I don’t answer him. I’m too busy staring her down.

“You’re insane,” she says.

“Leave Brenda alone,” Miss Pat says. “I thought you were a nice girl, but you—”

“You went to tremendous lengths to try to prevent anyone from finding that grave,” I say to Brenda. “Why? What’s your connection to it?”

Brenda laughs. “You’re completely out of your mind,” she says. “You’re so obsessed with your ‘Shadow Ridge Estate’ that you can’t think straight.”

“You tried to scare me away,” I say. “It had to be because of Win.”

“Don’t say that name!” Miss Pat nearly shouts, and I ignore her.

“You didn’t want anyone to find him,” I say to Brenda. I’m trembling, afraid of her. She took my daughter. She told me she wanted to kill someone. What is she capable of? Yet, I can’t stop talking. “You probably were there the night everything happened, like Miss Pat said. You knew Win was buried in my yard, didn’t you?”

She glares at me, opening her mouth as though she’s about to say something, but she can’t seem to find the words, and I keep talking. I look at Ellie.

“Your uncle Byron,” I say. “Remember how he wanted to buy my lot?”