them both. I didn’t care if my father told everyone what those men had done to me. I just wanted him to be with us. I…I didn’t want him to die on my account. And I said things to my mother, things I regretted.” She paused once more as her eyes filled with fresh tears. “And then she was gone, too.”
After she composed herself, Archer looked around and said, “So where’s the Royal typewriter?”
She glanced up and said quietly, “I…I have a little room in the back of the house.”
“For your scribblings?”
“She’s working on a novel, Archer,” said Jackie. “I’ve read parts of it. It’s really good.”
“‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,’” said Archer, quoting Virginia Woolf.
“Y-yes,” said Ernestine. “So I believe, too.”
“Maybe you can take everything you had to endure in life and put it on those pages, Ernestine. And I think you’ll have a fine book. Because sometimes, you just have to be rid of it, and move on.”
A few moments of silence passed.
And then Jackie took a letter from her pocket and held it up. “You wrote to me here and asked me to come back and testify.”
“And if you did, I said everything would be okay, for both of you, and me. I gave you my word.”
“But why was that so important? You had Marjorie Pittleman dead to rights with that recording. And my father, too. He confessed to killing Hank and Sid Duckett. You didn’t need me to win your freedom.”
“It wasn’t about my freedom, Jackie. It was about yours.”
He took out the onionskin carbon copy and handed it to her. “I found this curled up inside your father’s Remington. I don’t think this went through Desiree Lankford, or else she would have told you.”
She read quickly through it and then looked up at him in shock. “My father was accusing me of killing my mother. He said he had evidence and he wanted Brooks to prosecute me for murder. He wanted to see me hang.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Even after everything he did, he still wasn’t done hurting me.” She handed back the letter and said quietly, “I don’t know why I’m surprised.”
“You left home because of what he did,” said Archer.
“I wanted to kill him. I wanted to throw him on that corn picker. But he just laughed at me. Said I was just a girl, no one would believe me.”
“He tried to make out to me that you were the crazy, violent one.”
She gazed at him with wide, probing eyes. “I guess with how I acted around you, you might have been justified in believing that.”
“You wear your heart on your sleeve, Jackie. I could see that. Nothing devious there. Your father, on the other hand, he was way too manipulative. Way too slick. Those are the ones you have to watch out for.”
“I guess your reading all those detective novels came in handy,” interjected Ernestine.
Archer said, “I wanted to put you on the stand and show Brooks that you didn’t kill your mother. I didn’t want you to have to worry about that ever again. And now you don’t. I confirmed that with him.”
Jackie looked shaken by this news and said, “Thank you, Archer. That was very kind of you.”
“But you didn’t know that was my reason. I didn’t put that in my letter to you.”
“And so I didn’t have to come back.”
“But you did, Jackie. Why’s that? It was risky for you. You had to trust me.” He paused. “And for a few seconds in the courtroom, I’m not sure you did.”
She looked away for a moment before focusing on him. “Remember I was asking you how it was in the war?”
He frowned. “You mean the killing part?”
“No, about being part of something bigger than yourself. Well, I guess that bigger something was you, Archer. I…I couldn’t leave you to fight that battle alone. That’s why I came back.”
Ernestine leaned forward and said, “We had no idea you were going to be implicated in what happened. With the evidence from the safe in the Nash and all. I had already left town, and Jackie soon followed. But we never meant to hurt you, Archer, never.”
“I believe you,” he said simply.
Jackie said, “When I was on the witness stand, my trust in you did waver at one point.”
“But?” said Archer.
“But in the end, I figured I had to count on a man at some point in my life. And