Page 57 of This is Why We Lied

“He ain’t allowed to drive. DUI. I think he’s gotta woman brings him up and down the mountain. Dave’s real good at talking people into doing things for him.”

Will waited for the man to suggest they speak to this woman, or consider other possible places to search, or even the fact that Dave could still drive without a license, but Biscuits seemed content to watch the rain come down.

“Whelp.” The man turned back to Will. “I should probably go in and check on Bitty. Been a hard couple of years for the poor little gal.”

Will kept his mouth shut and made himself accept the obvious. The sheriff was too close to the family. He was blinded by their same disregard for Mercy’s life. He wasn’t interested in searching for the main suspect or collecting evidence or even talking to witnesses.

Not that the possible witnesses were going to help. Two of them had already driven away in their Mercedes. Two more had refused to be interviewed. Two were acting suspicious while they walked around in their underwear. Two of the least important ones were eager to help. One was an enigma wrapped up in a duck bathrobe. The victim’s immediate family was behaving like a stranger had died. Add to that the fact that part of the murder weapon was missing. Their prime suspect was in the wind. The body had been partially submerged in water. The cabin had been burned to the ground. The rest of the crime scene was at this very moment being washed away.

Maybe Biscuits was right about Dave showing up eventually. The sheriff was clearly relying on a rural jury’s belief that cops were the good guys who only arrested people if they were guilty, but Dave wasn’t a typical defendant. He would know how to manipulate the jury. He would put on a vigorous defense. Will wasn’t going to let a man called Biscuits be the reason Dave got away with murder. Neither was he going to stand around with his thumb up his ass while he waited for the next bad thing to happen.

“Will?” Sara had opened the front door. “Jon left a note on his bed. He ran away.”

January 16, 2011

Dear Jon—

It’s probably stupid to be writing you a letter I’m not even sure you’re ever gonna read, but here I am doing it. People in AA say it’s good to put your thoughts down on paper. I started doing that when I was twelve but I stopped cause Dave got ahold of my diary and made fun. I shouldn’t of let him take that from me, but people been taking things from me my whole life. I guess what made me start back writing is I want some kind of record in case something bad ever happens to me. What I’m gonna tell you first is this. Today I filed court papers to get you back so I can start being what I should of been from the get-go. Your mama.

Delilah doesn’t have a lot of money, but she told me to my face that she would spend every last dime she had just to hold on to you. She’s got her reasons and I won’t go into them. One day you’ll learn the story of my ugly face and understand why she hates me so much. Why everybody does, I guess. And you got it written down right here that I never said it ain’t for no reason.

I’ve pretty much fucked up every day of my eighteen years on this planet except for one, and that’s the day I gave birth to you. I’m trying to unfuck my life right now by getting you back. I’m sorry for my cursing. Your grandma Bitty would be on my ass about it, but I’m talking to you like a man cause you’re not gonna read this when you’re still a boy.

I gave you up. That’s the truth. I was going through withdrawal and chained to a hospital bed cause I was under arrest for driving drunk again. Delilah was there and it don’t cost me nothing to admit I was glad to see her. The doctor wouldn’t give me any pain medication cause I was a junkie. The cop wouldn’t loosen the handcuff, that’s the kind of asshole he was. It’s not like I could run off with a baby coming out of me, but this is the world you were born into.

I guess you could say it’s a world I created for myself, and you wouldn’t be wrong. That’s why I gave you up to Delilah that day. I wasn’t thinking about you or how lonely I would be without you. I was thinking about where I was gonna get my drink on or find some pills to hold me over until I could score, and that’s the honest truth. When I was a kid, I started drinking to drown away my demons but what I did was create a prison for myself trapped with the demons inside.

But that is over for real now. I been a whole six months without anything and that’s a fact. I’ve stopped partying and I’m even going to night classes to get my GED so when you’re in school you can’t say nothing about me not finishing as an excuse for you to drop out. Your daddy’s been giving me hell for spending all that time studying when I should be taking care of him, but I’m trying to change my life. I’m trying to make things better for you cause you are worth it. He’ll see that one day. He just doesn’t know you like I do.

I guess this letter seems like I’m being hard on your daddy. I’m not gonna say anything bad about him but one thing. I know in my heart that he’s gonna take money from Delilah to turn on me in the custody case. It’s just his way because there ain’t never enough money or enough love in the world that are ever gonna be enough for him. And I’m pretty sure the rest of my family will turn on me, too, but not for money, just for making things easy on themselves. It’s not that they for real hate me. At least I don’t think so. It’s just that they all tend to go to ground when things are messy, like rabbits burrowing deep into a hole. It’s for survival, not out of spite. At least that’s what I’m holding on to, cause if I took it personal, I don’t think I’d be able to get out of bed every morning.

That’s what I’m doing now. Getting out of bed every morning. Showing up at the motel down the mountain to clean rooms. Same thing I’ve been doing at the lodge for as long as I can remember, but nobody whipping me if I do it too slow. And nobody telling me the roof over my head and food on the table is my only reward for hard work.

The motel don’t pay much, but if I manage to keep saving, it’ll be enough one day to get us a little apartment to live in. I’m not gonna raise you in your daddy’s trailer down the holler where half the world drops by every night to party. You and me are gonna live in town and you’re gonna see the world. Or at least more of the world than what I did.

This is the first time in my life I’ve had cash money in my pocket that belongs to me. I was always having to beg Papa or Bitty for change so I could buy a pack of gum or go to a movie. And then your daddy made me beg. But now I don’t have to beg nobody. I just work at the motel and they pay me and that’s a honest living. Even your daddy can’t take that away. Lord knows he tries. If he knew how much I was really making, I wouldn’t have a dime.

Like I told you, I’m not saying your daddy is a bad man, but what I will tell you is that even though he wasn’t born into us, he’s a McAlpine, sure enough. Maybe even worse, cause he’s got different skins he slips in to depending on what he needs to get out of somebody. You’ll have to decide for yourself when you’re grown up whether that’s a problem. You’re a McAlpine, too, so who knows? You might end up exactly like all the rest of them.

Baby, if that’s what happens, I will still love you. No matter what you do or if Delilah wins and I have to accept that spending two hours with you at the community center every other weekend is all I’m ever gonna get, I will always be there. I don’t even care if you end up being the worst McAlpine in the bunch. Even worse than me, a person with blood on her hands. I’m always gonna forgive you, and I’m always gonna stand up for you. I will never be a rabbit hiding in a hole. At least not where you’re concerned. The skin you see on me, even the ugly parts, maybe especially the ugly parts, is the same skin through to my heart.

I love you forever,

Mama

9

Sara read aloud from the brief note that Jon had left on his bed. “‘I need some time. Don’t come looking for me.’”

“Well, damn,” the sheriff said. “Maybe he’ll find Dave and save us the trouble.”

She watched the side of Will’s jaw jut out like a shard of glass. Sara assumed he was having as bizarre a time on the porch with the sheriff as she’d had inside the house with Mercy’s cold, calculating family. None of them seemed affected by her death. All they had talked about, screamed about, railed about, was money.

Sara asked the sheriff, “Do you think Jon went to see Mercy?”

“Didn’t mention it in his note,” the man said, as if a sixteen-year-old could be relied upon to write down his intentions. “Old truck’s still over yonder. Jon would’a passed through here if he was on foot. The trail to the bachelor cottages is way down thataway.”

Sara tried, “Does he have a girlfriend? Someone in town he might—”

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