The Almost Sisters(98)

Wattie saw me. Just her. Her eyes went wide, horrified, and she opened her mouth. She snapped it shut again. Cody was already turning back. He was writing on the sticker. I watched him affixing it to the wrong bag, as horrified as Wattie was. My bad hands buzzed and trembled, so that I had to work to not drop the bag holding the real sample.

This is a felony, I thought. I am holding a felony, and I did it. This is how fast a person’s hand can move, almost without permission. An impulse, a breath, and then it’s done, and then you did a felony, forever.

I didn’t want to think about Birchie with a hammer, about what she did in her own worst moment, but I already was. I clutched the bag so hard my knuckles were white.

Wattie was purely panicked. I could see it in her wide, wide eyes. She opened her mouth again and then closed it. We were telegraphing urgent eye messages back and forth in total silence.

She was telling me that I was stupid, and God, but she was right. My hands had done a felony, and it could not be undone. Cody had already put the wrong sample in the box and labeled it.

If it had been our chief, Willard Dalton, I could have said, Oh, wait, I did something bad and stupid. He could have switched them back or taken a whole new sample. Hell, if it had been Willard Dalton, observant and smart, my bad hands would never, never, never have had the opportunity. But this was Cody Mack. If we spoke up now, I’d be leaving the house in handcuffs.

Hush! Hush! I don’t want to have my baby in a prison, I thought-beamed at Wattie, and she closed her mouth up for the third time.

Frank, oblivious, began a round of cool, polite good-byes as Cody clicked his stupid briefcase shut. I croaked out some kind of good-bye, too, and so did Wattie. I hoped I didn’t look as red and sweaty as I felt. I could hardly hear myself over the blood roaring in my ears.

“How long until we get results?” Frank asked.

“Well, this kinda thing, it can take months,” Cody said, and I felt his words both as relief and as a heavy sword on a thin string, hanging over my head. Months? Months of not knowing if I’d be caught. Months of this baby growing here in Birchville with my grandmother unable to leave the state, stuck in this dangerous, fork-and stair-filled house. I couldn’t put her in a temporary place until I could move her close to me. Not when I had no idea where I’d be living and every tiny change was so hard on her. But this also meant months of putting off a prosecution. Which was worse? Then Cody flashed a big, shit-eating grin and added, “But Tackrey’ll fast-track this one. So say a week? Ten days?”

I had my answer. Fast was worse.

Frank was walking Cody out now, leaving with him, mouthing polite things. Birchie and Wattie stayed glued to the love seat, both dead silent for different reasons.

I closed the front door behind the men. Turned and leaned against it because my legs were weak and shaking now, made of rubber bands and putty.

“Let’s go plant pumpkins,” Birchie said, cheery, as if all the unpleasantness were done now.

I didn’t answer. Wattie and I both cocked our heads, listening to the voices and the clomp of big man feet down the stairs until we couldn’t hear them anymore. Then Wattie stood so fast it was like she’d borrowed better knees. She was across the parlor and over to me in a flash, grabbing my arm in a grip so tight it hurt.

“Girl, what have you done?”

“I don’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t know!” I said, clutching the tops of her arms.

“What happened?” Birchie asked from the sofa, still sitting, unalarmed.

“You are going to be sharing a cell right down the hall from us. Your fingerprints must be all over that plastic bag,” Wattie said, in a state, trying hard not to flat-out yell into my face.

“Why would they fingerprint that bag? They won’t know. Maybe it’s a good thing. If they can’t identify the body, how can they proceed? With no working theory?” I was trying to convince myself as much as her. “The case will never be solved, and one day people will talk about the bones the same way they talk about the Pig Man in the Holler, or the giant alligator gar down in Lake Martin—the mysterious remains found in the Birch house.”

Wattie rolled her eyes to heaven, calmer now, but not by much. “Are you stupid? You gave them my genes, child! My genes! Lord help you. Lord help your baby—do you think that I am black here like a paint upon my skin? Do you think he will be, too?”

I didn’t understand her for a moment. “You mean they can tell from that swab that you’re black?” That didn’t seem right. In fact, it seemed a little racist, for genes to know that. For genes to tell that. I wanted us all to be the same, under.

“Of course they can! Lord help your baby,” Wattie repeated, throwing her hands up. Then she fisted them in her short curls, walking away from me, back into the parlor. I trailed after. “We have to call Willard Dalton. Now. Get him to swap them back.”

I shook my head. “We can’t. Tackrey doesn’t trust him. Cody is going to take that box straight to her or to the lab. It’s not going to stay in Birchville.”

“What did you do?” said Birchie, and she was alarmed now. Wattie’s distress had penetrated whatever fog had gathered around her, and she was sitting up as tall as she could.

“She swapped the tests out. Yours and mine,” Wattie said, pacing, frantic, hands still fisted in her hair. “She gave them my cells.”