your sister’s case is more than the fact that I found her. As it turns out, my brother knew her too. And even though neither of us had anything to do with her death, the cops are still suspicious.”
Janie nodded. “Go on.”
“So I understand what it’s like to fight a bunch of nameless, faceless people who don’t know you, who don’t care. I’m not a cop or a reporter or a lawyer. I’m not one of these Phoenix people. All I want is information.”
“Let me guess,” she said dryly. “You want me to give you some.”
“I promise I’m not out to ruin her reputation. I just want to know the truth.”
The cigarette smoke clouded her face in a gray haze. “What makes you think I care about her reputation?”
That caught me off guard. “I guess I just assumed. If I had a sister—”
“She wasn’t really my sister, just this brat my older brother dropped off right before he took off with some slut from out of town. Everybody tried to pretend otherwise, you know. Called her my sister. And then last year, the son of a bitch died. And now she’s dead too. So nobody has to pretend anymore, least of all me. I’m an only child now.”
Janie ground her cigarette out on the pavement, twisting her foot with more effort than purely necessary. “Eliza started off bad, I mean, right off the bat. Spoiled. Whiny. She never worked for a thing her whole damn life. But she was the baby, and she looked just like my stupid brother, so everybody cut her slack all the time. In the meantime, I’m out busting my butt, working to put myself through school, taking care of Mama after Daddy died, ’cause it wasn’t like my brother ever helped, but did anybody ever care? No. ’Cause that’s what I always did.
“And Eliza goes from one bad relationship to another. I tell her to stay away from the stuff, to stay away from Bulldog, but does she listen? No. She tracks down my brother, and he fills her head full of nonsense about how she’s better than us, and she believes him. She hits the road, and I don’t hear from her again until she’s gotten messed up with these Atlanta people.”
What Atlanta people? I thought. What stuff? But I didn’t get to ask. Janie was on a roll.
“So now she’s gone and got herself killed. And what’s Mama tell me? You better keep your sister’s name clean, she says. We don’t need no more trouble. Like it’s my fault all this crap happened in the first place.”
Janie put her palms flat against her thighs and looked straight at me. “And she’s right, we don’t need no more trouble. And I guess it’s my job to make sure we don’t get any more. But you know that Bible story, the one where the prodigal son runs off and wastes his whole life and then when he comes back, his father throws this big damn party for him while the good son, the one who did stick around, who did do what he was supposed to do, that son gets the shaft. You know that story?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know that story.”
She shook her head. The tears were back again. “I always hated that story.”
Then she wiped her eyes. Her voice hadn’t changed the whole time—it was still rock steady. “And now you want a story too, and I just don’t know what to tell you.”
“Tell me you’ll help me find out what happened.” I hesitated. “Look, if there’s dirt, it’s gonna come out, and the cops don’t care one way or the other. But I do care, and if you’ll help me, maybe I can find something under the dirt that can spare your family—and my family too—any further grief.”
She sent this look my way. “Uh huh. Like you care about me. Like you’re not just saying that to get what you want.”
I started to protest. “I didn’t—”
She waved me quiet. “Oh, don’t say you didn’t mean it. Of course you did. But you know what? Maybe you’re right.”
She stood, wrapped her arms around her waist. “Let me think about it. I’ll let you know tomorrow.” She looked off toward the horizon, like she was trying to glimpse South Carolina there. “I just don’t want any of this getting back to Jackson. That’s my home. I don’t deserve to have to deal with it there. I’ve dealt with enough already.”
I stood too. “Here’s my