The Familiar Dark(59)

“Hey,” Cal said. “What’s going on? You’ve got Mama worked up into a tizzy. And you know that takes some doing.”

I could barely look at him; hearing his voice was bad enough. Reminding me of all our childhood hours. The times he’d fed me when I was hungry, comforted me when I was hurt, reassured me when I was terrified. Cal, who I loved more than myself. More than anyone but Junie.

He sat next to me, and I could feel his eyes on my face, smell his shampoo when the breeze kicked up. “Are you okay?” he asked. “I kind of freaked out when Mama showed up and said I needed to get out here. I think she thought you might have . . .” He gestured toward the river, where water crashed over rock in an endless spill.

I didn’t say anything. Pulled Izzy’s phone from my jacket pocket and set it on the ground between us.

Cal inhaled once, sharp and fast, scrambled backward on his butt like I’d put down a grenade instead of a cell phone. “Listen,” he said, voice high and trembling “I can explain it. I can—”

I turned and looked at him. “You can explain how Izzy Logan’s phone ended up hidden in your house, or you can explain why you killed them?”

Cal’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, but nothing came out. He looked like one of the countless fish he’d caught and gutted right at this very spot, and I felt the insane urge to laugh. And I knew from the look in his eyes that my worst fear was true. He’d been the one to wield the knife after all.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said finally. “It happened fast. It all got away from me. So fast.” His voice broke, and fat tears spilled down his cheeks. He covered his face with both hands and wept. I turned back to the river, watched the wind ruffle through the grass on the far side. I could be patient. I could let him cry, and talk, and explain. None of it mattered because this was already ending only one way.

“Please,” he said, reached out and laid a hand on my arm. I looked down at his fingers, imagined breaking each one until he let go. “Let me . . . let me tell you what happened. It’s not what you think.”

I nodded, even though I was pretty sure it was exactly what I thought. He’d valued something more than Junie’s life. End of story. But the sooner he started talking, the sooner he’d be done.

“I was doing it for her. For Junie.”

That surprised me, and my head whipped in his direction. “Doing what for Junie?”

“The money. I wanted her to be able to leave this place, go to college, something. Get out. But what I make isn’t enough, not even close. And one night I ran into Matt and he started saying how Land had been giving them some hassle about how big the operation was getting. How they could really use someone on the inside to help things run a little more smoothly. At first I told myself I was only listening. I wasn’t actually going to do anything. But then I talked to Jimmy Ray and it seemed like a perfect deal.” He shrugged. “They were selling the drugs anyway. Whether I helped or not. Why not gain something from it? It’s not like I was stealing from babies. It seemed like a fair trade.”

What did people around here always say? That you could take the kid out of the holler, but you could never take the holler out of the kid. I hadn’t wanted to believe it, but Cal and I were living proof. Dress us up in a cop uniform, give us a child to care for, and we might walk the straight and narrow for a while. But our history always rose up to meet us. Or dragged us down to its level. That night in the bar, Cal had been right. We were exactly who Mama’d raised us to be.

“And it was going fine,” Cal continued. “I was making good money. Socking it away for Junie. I never spent any of it.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure. But not until it was time for her to use it. I figured you wouldn’t object as much if the money was right there when she needed it. And by then I planned to be done with all that, anyway.”

If he actually believed that, then he had no real idea about how Jimmy Ray worked. He never would have let Cal walk away. “She didn’t need money from you,” I told him. “She could have gotten a scholarship if she wanted to go to college, or I could have figured something out.” But we both knew I couldn’t have. As much as I’d loved my daughter, there were some things I never would have been able to give her, no matter how much I wanted to. As Mama liked to say, you couldn’t get blood from a stone.

“I didn’t want her to leave here poor. Go to college and have everyone know she came from nothing. I wanted her to have a leg up, the way we never did. That way she’d have had a fighting chance at something better. And it was going fine, just like I planned. But then Izzy took a liking to Matt. I was the one who introduced them. Can you believe that shit? I was talking to Matt in front of the laundromat, and Izzy wandered by, stopped to say hi to me.” He shook his head. “You have no idea how many times I’ve gone over it. Over it and over it on nights I can’t sleep. How that one thing, that one stupid thing, ruined it all.”

“I think you’re the one who ruined it all.” My voice was cold and hard and didn’t sound like me at all. Or at least not the me my daughter would have recognized.

“I didn’t mean to,” Cal said again, and my hand tingled with the urge to punch him. “It was all such a huge clusterfuck. I was over at Matt’s, sorting drugs and counting money, and Izzy barged right into his trailer. She’s lucky she even made it that far, hitched a ride out on the highway.” He shook his head. “I thought maybe it was still okay. She was young, maybe she didn’t even know what she was seeing. But her mouth dropped open and her eyes went wide and all I could think about was her telling Junie and Junie telling you and everything falling apart. I’d lose my job. Land would be so pissed I’d gone behind his back that he’d push for criminal charges. It would all be ruined. I talked to Izzy. Told her how important it was to keep quiet. And how I wouldn’t say anything to anyone about her and Matt, either. We’d do each other a favor.”