Missing Pieces(59)

Gilmore: Were they?

Dean: I don’t know. I guess so. Jack talked about the two of them running away together sometimes.

Gilmore: Did their parents know about this?

Dean: I don’t know.

Gilmore: Come on, Dean. You’re Jack’s cousin. If Jack’s going to talk to anyone, it’s you. Did his mom find out?

Dean: Jack’s mom knew.

Gilmore: How’d she find out?

Dean: I think she found some notes between Jack and Celia when she was cleaning Jack’s room.

Gilmore: Were you there last week when they were arguing or did Jack tell you about it? Say yes or no, so the tape recorder picks up your voice. Were you there?

Dean: Yes.

Gilmore: When was this? What day?

Dean: I’m not sure. About a week ago, I guess.

Gilmore: How did she react? Was she angry?

Dean: They were yelling. But it was no big deal.

Gilmore: So they fought a lot? Jack and his mom?

Dean: Maybe. I don’t know.

Gilmore: They argued. It was no big deal. What did Mrs. Tierney say?

Dean: She told him she didn’t think that he should see Celia for a while. They were getting too serious. It was interfering with his schoolwork, his work on the farm.

Gilmore: What did Jack say?

Dean: He told her to mind her own business. To stay out of his room.

Gilmore: Those were his exact words?

Dean: He said to mind her own effing business and to stay out of his effing room.

Gilmore: I bet that didn’t go over well.

Dean: No, she was mad. Told him not to talk that way in her house and he said, “Fine, I’ll leave.” She tried to stop him.

Gilmore: How did she do that? Did she physically try and keep him from leaving the house?

Dean: She grabbed his arm and Jack pulled away and we left.

Gilmore: That’s it. Nothing else?

Dean: That’s it.

Gilmore: Come on, Dean, what aren’t you telling me? We’ve got pictures of the crime scene. Someone beat your aunt’s head in, left her to die on the cellar floor. We need to figure out who did it.

Dean: It wasn’t Jack.

Gilmore: How do you know that? You just got done telling me that they argued. She grabbed Jack’s arm. Some of the bruises looked old. About a week old, I’d say. Maybe when Lydia grabbed Jack’s arm he grabbed back.

Dean: He didn’t mean to. He was just trying to get her off him.

Gilmore: So he hit her?

Dean: No, it was more like he pulled away. Hard. And she fell down. He didn’t mean to hurt her.

Gilmore: She was hurt?

Dean: No. I mean, not really. She fell forward, on her hands. Like this. I think she hurt her wrist.

Gilmore: What did Jack do? Did he apologize? Did he help her up?

Dean: (Inaudible.)

Gilmore: Speak up.

Dean: No, he left. We left. She fell...

Gilmore: She fell or was knocked down?

Dean: He didn’t mean to knock her down. It was an accident.

The tape ended and Sarah remained sitting on the bale of hay, trying to make sense out of what Dean had said. Jack and Celia had talked about running away together? To where could two fifteen-year-olds possibly run? And Jack, accident or not, had knocked his mother to the ground and left her there.

Sarah stood and went to the large door that looked over the farm. She stared out at the blue sky that was just beginning to smudge with pearly gray that bled into the landscape. The cornfields were recently harvested, the hay fields newly shorn, the remaining stalks chewed down to jagged nubs, and large barrel-shaped bales of hay sat in wait across the pasture as if anticipating the upcoming winter. Big bluestem lined the ditches and black-eyed Susans bobbed their weighty yellow heads. Her eyes fell on the overgrown, weedy farmyard, the low-slung red barn, the tall silver silo. Such a beautiful landscape, Sarah thought, hiding such an ugly history.

Sarah looked across the fields and could see Hal’s farmhouse and outbuildings. Just like Celia had mentioned, the two farms were close, about a fifteen-minute walk through the cornfield. She imagined a young Jack and Amy dashing through the corn, back and forth between home and their aunt and uncle’s house.

She wondered if Jack had brought Celia here when they were teenagers, made love in the straw. Sarah could imagine what Celia was like as a teenager. Smart, beautiful and in love with Jack, the boy Celia thought she might marry.

“Sarah,” came Jack’s voice from down below. “Are you up there?”

Sarah wanted to stay hidden, didn’t want to face Jack. Again, she had discovered more secrets. He and Celia had planned to run away together. His mother found out and a week later she was dead?

She wanted to get out of here. She wanted to leave Penny Gate that morning. She wasn’t staying for the wake or the funeral. She was going back home to her children, far away from Jack, far away from here.

“Sarah,” Jack called again. Sarah took a deep breath. She would have to come down sometime.

“Coming,” Sarah called back. She put the Walkman back into her purse and cautiously climbed down from the hayloft.

“What are you doing out here all by yourself?” Jack asked, examining her face carefully.

“I needed some space to think,” she answered, pulling off the barn jacket and replacing it on the hook. “I’m leaving today,” she said matter-of-factly. “The first flight out I can get.”