We Are All the Same in the Dark - Julia Heaberlin Page 0,62
or so deep. I don’t know how wide I’ll need to go, if I should be on this side of the fence or the other. If something is under here, it’s been undisturbed for a while. The land owns it now and won’t want to give it up.
I thrust again, a hard knot of exertion in my chest.
I lean into the shovel, and a few of the pennies from Wyatt’s kitchen floor fall out of my pocket, glittering before they bounce off into the dark. I don’t know why I picked them up. For luck, maybe. So I can throw them into fountains one at a time and wish for everything to turn out all right.
A blister is already torn open in my hand. A drop of blood falls. A drop of sweat follows it. If this is a crime scene, I’m leaving myself behind.
Twenty minutes later, the shovel strikes something.
A rock. A bone.
Not unexpected, maybe nothing, but there is a shot of pain up my leg that takes me back to a girl in a hospital room with her whole life before her. Amputate.
I pause for breath, staring up at the only star that has decided I shouldn’t be out here alone.
How much do I want to know?
I fall to my knees and bury my hands in the hole.
Behind me, I hear a gun cock.
When I turn, I’m reminded what seventy times seven means.
FIVE YEARS LATER
Part Three
* * *
ANGEL
Tender.
Resilient.
Strong.
Resourceful.
Kind.
Empathetic.
—Six words Marshall Tucker wrote
on a piece of paper to describe
his daughter, Odette
36
I have two big secrets.
One is my eye.
The other is Odette.
If someone asks why my left eyeball goes crooked sometimes, I say it’s a trick I can do like some people can bend their elbows back. And then I do it again so they laugh and forget and my father never finds me. My disguise, intact.
If someone asks what I think of the Odette Tucker case, I act like true crime stuff doesn’t interest me. I say I’ve never heard her name, even though I dream about her all the time.
In my dreams, Odette is always at the lake with Trumanell. Both have long, flawless legs like movie stars. They throw green M&M’s into the water and dive after them, snatching them up off the bottom. It’s a challenge because the lake is bright green, too—not just on the top where it shimmers, but all the way through. It seems like it takes Odette and Trumanell forever before they finally break the surface, gasping for air. When I wake up, so am I.
If anyone hears, I say I have mild sleep apnea.
I don’t talk to people about Odette because they would think it’s weird. They’d say I’m obsessed with a woman who was only in my life for a few days. They’d want to label it. They’d call it a reaction to trauma and hand me drugs to make my dreams go away. They’d ask me if I think those green M&M’s represent my missing eye.
I say that strangers are powerful. They can mark you in twenty seconds. They can rob you at gunpoint so you never feel safe again. They can mention you’re pretty at a party when no one else ever has, and then you don’t kill yourself that day or maybe any other day. It’s like a diamond tossed out a car window you were lucky enough to catch.
Odette is my stranger. She gave me an eye and a piece of paper.
She is why I still exist, which is exactly why I need to find out why she no longer does.
37
A man with a big belly and an orange volunteer vest waves my rental car into a parking place on the grass. I’m a half hour early, and the lot is packed, vehicles spilling off the concrete.
I hop out and toss the man a smile with lots of teeth when I pass by. Oklahoma girls are raised to do that like we are all pageant material, but we’re also prepared to stab you in the gut.
The man in the orange vest probably thinks I’m just another teenager out here with her cellphone camera, drawn like a fly to dead things.
I’m thinking that he could be the killer.
It could be anybody in this creepy little hot pocket of a town.
For once, the living might be outnumbering the dead in this cemetery. I’m guessing at least five hundred showed up to witness this. Six television stations that I can count. I love crowds because I can slip around