A Bad Boy is Good to Find(43)

She’d brought him here, thrown him into this hell of past nightmares, and now she wanted to comfort him?

She didn’t have the right.

“What was his name?”

“Danny.”

Lizzie could see Maisie’s growing irritation at Con’s terse answers. Maisie tucked a stray piece of fine hair behind her ear and took a deep breath.

“Tell us, Conroy. When did you leave this place and how?”

Con shifted. Lizzie shifted too, a semiconscious mirroring of his movement. The spongy mud had crept up into her sandals.

“I left here when I was fourteen. My dad had beaten me, like he always did, for doing something, or not doing something, or for just being—I don’t even remember what it was about—but I knew at that moment that the next time he hit me, I was going to hit back.” Con raised a hand and wiped it over his mouth. “I knew I was going to hit back and try to kill him.” He stared off into the dark swamp. “So one of us would be dead, either him or me. I’d be dead, or a murderer. So I had to go. I just took off. Didn’t take nothing with me. Just left and didn’t come back.”

“And you left your brother behind.” Maisie spoke very quietly, which gave the words the force of a secret, an accusation.

Con’s sweat stung Lizzie’s nostrils. Her own perspiration trickled down her back like a scratching nail.

“I left him behind. I told him I was leaving and that I couldn’t take him with me. I didn’t know how to survive on my own, let alone with a kid, and I figured things might be easier for him with me gone. More to eat with one less person around.” He hesitated, looked at the ground, then lifted his eyes and looked right at Maisie. “I rationalized it.” Lizzie could see his chest heaving beneath his shirt. “I’ll never forgive myself for that. Never.”

“Did you ever try to get in contact again, with either of them?”

“No.”

Lizzie shuddered.

“Do you want to find out what happened to them?”

Con’s Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. “Yes.”

They all stood like statues for a moment. Lizzie could almost hear the blood humming in her head like the mosquitoes outside it. Maisie shoved her hair back. “Cut. Thanks, Conroy, I’m sure that was hard for you. So shall we go talk to the neighbors, see what they know about your family?”

Con looked at her for a moment, then nodded. His expression serious and dignified. Very controlled.

“Alright, let me just talk to the crew, and we’ll roll to the next house down the road.” She strode back to the van, all business.

Lizzie pressed her hand over her mouth. Spoke through her fingers. “I had no idea.”

“Of course you didn’t. Why would you?” He wasn’t looking at her. “It’s weird how clean the place looks. There used to be a rusty boat hull I slept in sometimes, right over there.” He turned and nodded at a patch of woods. “I’ll bet you were hoping for some junk to give the place a colorful redneck flavor. Sorry to disappoint.”

Lizzie bit her lip. His tone was cruel. Worse yet, he was right. How could he talk so normally after that revelation? But of course it wasn’t a revelation to him. It was something he’d carried with him, every day, for the last ten years.

“Maybe the house got washed away in a hurricane,” she rasped.

“Yeah. Most people would have come down here to check on the place after a big storm. See if their family was okay, if they needed help, don’t you think?”

His look challenged her to respond.

“I… I…” She didn’t know what to say. There were no right answers.

“I didn’t.” He let out a harsh sound somewhere between a laugh and a growl. “Deep down, I was hoping the place—and everyone in it—was gone. Washed from the face of the earth. Then maybe my guilt would be gone too.”

He wiped a hand over his mouth. “But nothing’s ever really gone, is it? It lives on in here.” He tapped his forehead. “You can’t get rid of that.” He shook his head. “I’ve damn sure tried.”

He stared around him, and Lizzie bit her tongue. Sure that anything she said would be a mistake.

“Come see the bayou.” He reached out his hand. She looked at it like a snake that might bite, then gingerly took it. He gripped her hand hard, crushing her fingers together. She caught her breath and stumbled after him as he pulled her past the footprint of the house, into some scraggly undergrowth. He pushed through some damp, scratchy branches. “None of this brush was here. Place must have been uninhabited for years.” A branch scratched her arm and a twig poked at her exposed toes. Her hair snagged, and she wrenched it loose.

“There it is.”

Just through the thicket, they emerged on the bank of a river. The mud oozed thicker, closing over her toes, but Con didn’t seem to notice as he pulled her right to the edge. Murky blackish water gleamed in the midday sun. Lizzie shivered, despite the heat. Con gripped her hand with force, no hint of tenderness.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Beautiful? No. Strange and terrifying. All that glittering dark water looked like a bottomless chasm. An abyss that held at least one skeleton.

“Look, a heron.”

He pointed with his free hand as a huge, Wedgewood-blue bird took flight from a branch high above their heads. Lizzie flinched as it dove like a movie-screen pterodactyl, menacing in its great size and eerie color. Its beak cleaved the shining water, then with a massive flapping and splashing, it soared up again to the treetops.

“I haven’t seen one of those in years. I spent hours studying their fishing technique, trying to figure out how to do that. Great way to get wet and come up empty-handed.” He stared up at the now empty sky. “I always wished I could fly like a bird.”

How could he be so calm? Carry on a normal conversation as if he hadn’t just declared himself—on camera—to be witness to a murder? It was a burden he’d lived with and carefully hidden. Had spared her—until now.

She bit back tears that threatened.

Angry speech and rustling in the undergrowth heralded the arrival of Dino and Maisie.

“We didn’t know where you went,” hissed Maisie. “Why didn’t you wait for the camera?”

“Didn’t think of it. Sorry,” said Con. Cool as the rippling water. “I was showing Lizzie my home. This is where I really lived, out here on the bayou.”

“Are there alligators in it?” asked Maisie, wriggling her way into the shot.

“Sure.” Con flashed an alligator smile.

Lizzie searched the undergrowth anxiously, her skin prickling. He softened his grip on her hand, gave it a gentle squeeze. “You can never be quite sure what to expect around here.”

Lizzie swallowed, took in a deep breath.

“Want to see how Mudbug Flats got its name?”

“Yes,” said Maisie. “I can see it’s flat. And mudbug is a colloquialism for crayfish, isn’t it?”

Con flashed another gator grin. “That’s right. A colloquialism.” His heavy emphasis on the word made it sound ridiculous.