When Ghosts Come Home(69)

“Then I reckon you can go.”

Winston stood in the yard and watched Frye’s truck drive around the cul-de-sac at the end of the road before turning and gunning his engine on the way past Winston. Winston stood there until the truck’s taillights disappeared and he could no longer hear the noise of its engine. The sounds of the night—frogs, the lap of the water, crickets—lifted up around him like a television set that’s volume was slowly being raised. He considered stopping by the address on Spoonbill where the call had come from, but the lights in the neighborhood had all gone off for the night and the fire had been put out, and whatever would need to happen next could wait until morning.





Chapter 12




Colleen woke to the sound of her father’s voice outside her bedroom door, his knuckles tapping gently. She’d been dreaming—something about the water knocking through the pipes of an old European city, a place she’d never been. She opened her eyes now, slices of sunlight cutting into them like razor blades. Her wristwatch sat where she had left it on her bedside table, and she picked it up and examined it, but her vision was too fuzzed with sleep to read it, though she was able to see and feel that she still wore her mother’s ring. She let her head fall back onto her pillow.

“Colleen,” her father said. He knocked again. “I need you to wake up, honey.”

She knew he was knocking because her mother had woken up and gone downstairs and had been unable to find her ring. She imagined the fear and panic that had probably shot through her upon discovering it gone. For a moment, Colleen wanted to feel that it served her mother right for leaving the ring exposed while a stranger spent the night in their home, and then she felt guilty for being the one who had taken it.

“Okay,” Colleen said, just loud enough for her voice to escape her mouth. A headache thrummed on the edge of her temples, but she fought it with thoughts of a hot shower, Tylenol, and a glass of water.

“You up?” her dad asked, apparently not having moved from his spot outside in the hallway.

“Yes,” she said, frustrated now, remembering what it was like to be woken up for school as a teenager or called by her parents to some other morning duty she didn’t want to perform. Her mind confronted the possibility that perhaps Scott was on the phone, and her chest seized in an icy panic. She’d unplugged the jack from the back of the phone the night before just as she was falling asleep on the off chance that it would ring in the night for her father or in the early morning for her mother, and she had not considered that Scott might call her. But if it was early here it was even earlier there, and there was no way he would call unless it was an emergency. And Scott was alone in Dallas. There could be no emergency when Scott was alone because he was the most self-reliant person she’d ever met.

She stretched her arms above her head, her mind turning toward Danny and what he’d said the night before about her not having anything more in common with anyone in the world than she had in common with Scott, and she knew it was true and that Danny was right. At their wedding, Scott’s parents’ pastor had read the verses—she couldn’t remember the name of the scripture—about love being patient and kind. But where were the verses about grief? Where were the verses about grief being selfish and cruel and solitary?

She sat up on the edge of the bed and put her elbows on her knees. She rubbed her eyes and ran her fingers over her face. She squeezed her mother’s ring off her swollen finger and closed her hand around it. She checked her watch again, now fully awake. It was a little after 8:00 a.m. Her father knocked again.

“Jesus,” she whispered to herself.

She stood and walked to the door, turned the lock on the knob, and opened it. Her father leaned against the door frame in the hallway. She opened her hand and showed him the ring. He was already wearing his uniform, but his eyes were red and rimmed with sleeplessness, and his face had a look of confused exhaustion.

“Why are you showing me that?” he asked.

“I figured you were looking for it,” she said. “I had it in my room.”

He took it from her and held it in his hand. “I don’t think your mother even noticed it was gone,” he said.

Colleen leaned out into the hallway and saw that the door to Groom’s room was open, but he was nowhere in sight. And then she heard the shower turn on in the bathroom across the hall.

“I need you to ride out to Rodney Bellamy’s house with me,” her father said.

“Why?”

“I need to question his widow,” he said. “I know Rodney was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I need to at least ask about it now that she’s had a day or two to recover from the shock of it.” Her father stepped back and folded his arms. He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “And there’s some other things.”

“What other things?” she asked.

“Bradley Frye,” her father said. “He’s been driving through the Grove at night with some of his good ol’ boys, flying rebel flags, shooting guns in the air, trying to scare people. I need to let her know I’m working on it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” she said.

“I didn’t figure it would.”

“I saw him out last night with Danny. Danny said that he—” But she was interrupted by her mother’s voice calling from downstairs.