Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,95
Alice thought she needed to go into the hospital where they’d…” She didn’t want to have to explain the electroshock treatments and all of that with him. “I didn’t think she needed to go and she didn’t want to go. My aunt tried to insist, but I finally won the argument.” Anna felt her lower lip start to tremble and she bit down on it to stop the quiver. Jesse was so still and quiet that she barely knew he was next to her. “I came home from job hunting one day,” she said, “and I couldn’t find her. I knew she was home because I could see her car through the windows in the garage door. I called for her. Walked around the house. Finally I went out to the garage.” Anna shut her eyes, her hands locked tight on the back of the chair. Jesse waited, still as stone next to her. “She’d hung herself from the beams in the garage ceiling.” She lifted a hand to her mouth, pressing her fist against her lips, wishing she could block out the image she would never forget. Her mother’s grotesque, almost unrecognizable face. Eyes wide open, features twisted, her skin gray. She had suffered; that much was clear. Anna could feel the beams of the warehouse high above her. She did not look up. “Aunt Alice had been right,” she said to Jesse. “She needed to go to the hospital, but I was too—”
“Weren’t your fault,” Jesse said, force in his voice. “Not no way.”
His words jerked her out of the memory, and for a moment neither of them spoke.
“I’m sorry I told you all that,” she said finally. “It’s just … I’m not myself today. It’s all I can think about. Her birthday. And that she’s not here.”
“Maybe don’t work today?” he suggested softly. “Go someplace quiet.”
She looked at him. “Have you ever lost someone special?” she asked.
“Ever’one of my grandparents,” he said.
She moved toward the mural and leaned against her paint table, arms folded across her chest. “Were you close to them?” she asked.
“Only really my granny. My mother’s mama. Two year ago, she left us. There was a big funeral and lots of food and talkin’ and you know what I did?” He widened his gentle doe eyes, waiting for her response.
“What did you do?”
“It was August and the south field was chock full o’ corn. I jest went out there and set down in the middle of all them cornstalks where no one could see me except the worms and sap beetles and thought on the things Granny used to do … like how she’d drag me around by the ear when she was mad at me.” He laughed. “But she’d play horseshoes with me and she’d smoke a pipe and give it to me when Mama wasn’t lookin’. Them kind of things.”
Anna smiled at him. He was such a tender soul. “You’re very wise, Jesse Williams,” she said. “But actually, I don’t want to go someplace quiet. I think it would be best for me to stay here and focus on my work today.”
He nodded. “That’s jest like you, Miss Anna,” he said. “But you change your mind, I can point you to some good places for hidin’ out by yourself.”
“I’ll let you know,” she said, still smiling as she turned around, reaching for her palette. She didn’t say what she truly wanted to say: This was the first time I’ve said it all out loud. It feels good to tell someone what happened. Thank you for listening. Perhaps now that she’d told the story, it would lose its power over her. She hoped she would never have to repeat it to anyone ever again.
Chapter 41
MORGAN
July 12, 2018
It was nearly three in the morning by the time an orderly wheeled me out of the emergency room toward Oliver’s van. I was wearing the awkward walking boot, and it took some careful maneuvering for me to stretch out on the van’s second-row seat, my back against the side door. Finally, we were off.
“How’re you doing back there?” Oliver asked once we’d put a few miles between us and the hospital.
I watched my walking boot glow each time we passed beneath a streetlight. “I’m okay,” I said. “It’s not too bad.” The van’s radio was on, playing softly. A guy was singing about Vietnam, and I smiled. “We have to do something about your music, though,” I added, and Oliver laughed.