Page 78 of This is Why We Lied

It was the look on his face that struck me most, cause there was no expression. Just a few minutes before, he was sobbing and all emotional threatening to kill himself, and then he went to nothing. Absolutely nothing. And it come to me that this was maybe the first time I’ve really seen him for who he is. That the crying Dave or the laughing Dave or the high Dave or the angry Dave or even the Dave who pretends he loves me ain’t the Dave that he is at all.

The real Dave is empty inside.

I don’t know what all those foster parents took from him, or the PE teacher who abused him, but they dug down so deep into his soul that there was nothing else left. Sure as shit nothing was left for me. Being honest, I don’t even know if he’s got anything in there for you.

I’m gonna be real with you, it shook me seeing him like that. More so than losing my breath, which was something I’ve been terrified of since I was little. And that made me wonder what else Dave’s been hiding.

God knows he loves your grandma Bitty something fierce, but did he ever really love me? Did he ever care? In his own way, he gave me time to figure it out. He’s in jail now on account of getting into another bar fight after he finished with me. Which is what he deserves, but still I’m worried about him. Jail is a hard place for men like your daddy. He has a habit of pissing people off. And I’m really scared of him getting out if you want to know the whole truth. I’m scared of that empty man who was looking down at me like a fly he’d just pulled the wings off of.

And all that makes me worry about you, baby. You know there’s nothing you could do that I wouldn’t forgive, but your daddy ain’t happy being the way he is. Nobody could be happy with that. He’s so empty the only thing that fills him up is getting emotions off other people. Sometimes that’s good when he’s buying rounds and being the big man around town. Sometimes that’s bad when he’s smoking meth and tearing up his trailer. And sometimes it’s really bad when he’s choking me so hard that I’m thinking I’m gonna die. And then I’m looking at his face and what I’m seeing is that the only thing he has ever enjoyed in his life is shifting his misery onto other people.

Lord, this is a dark tale of a man. Maybe you will never see that side of him. I hope that you never do, because it’s like staring into the mouth of hell. Your daddy can do whatever he wants to me, but he ain’t never, ever, gonna raise a hand to you. But I’m not gonna be the kind of ex-wife who turns her child against his father, neither. If you end up thinking he’s a bad man, it’s gonna be because you saw it for yourself with your own two eyes.

So I’m gonna end this letter by telling you three good things about your daddy.

One is, I know this is gross and I’ve been saying from the beginning that it ain’t true, but your daddy is family to me. He ain’t like your uncle Fish in that he’s like a brother, but he’s close to that, and I’m not gonna deny it to you of all people.

Two is, he can still make me laugh. That might not sound like a lot, but I haven’t had much joy in my life, which is why it’s so hard for me to let him go. Me and Dave didn’t start out like this. There was a time when your daddy was everything to me. It was him I ran to when Papa came after me. It was him I confided in. Him I wanted to please. He was so much older than me and had been through so much bad shit that I felt like he understood me. I never even really wanted him. I just wanted him to want me. But don’t go feeling sorry for your daddy. He knew what was up and he was fine with it. Even happy with it. I hope you don’t ever have to feel that for yourself, where you’re in a situation where you’d rather be tolerated than loved.

Anyway, that’s enough about that.

Three is, your daddy saved my life when I got into that car accident. I know that sounds dramatic, but he really did save me. Visited me in the hospital. Held my hand. Told me I was still pretty when we both knew that wasn’t never gonna be the truth. Said it wasn’t my fault when we both knew that wasn’t true, either. I’ve only ever seen him treat one other person that gentle, and that’s Bitty. Honestly, I think I’ve been chasing that version of Dave ever since. Anyway, I don’t want to dig too far into that part in my misery, but let’s just say your daddy stepped up.

So that’s what I want you to know about him, especially that third thing. And that’s probably why a part of me will always love him, even though I’m pretty sure that one day he’s gonna kill me.

I love you forever,

Mama

11

Faith Mitchell stared at the clock on the wall.

5:54 in the morning.

Exhaustion had slammed into her body like a tank that was on fire. She had been fueled by a sense of urgency as she’d battled her way through horrendous traffic to get here, but all of that had come to a screeching halt inside the waiting room of the Dillon County Sheriff’s Office.

The front door had been unlocked, but no one was at reception. No one had answered her knock on the locked glass partition or appeared when she rang the bell. No cruisers were parked in the empty lot. No one was answering the phone.

For the millionth time, she looked at her watch, which was twenty-two seconds ahead of the clock on the wall. Faith stood on the chair to move the second hand forward. If someone was watching her through the security camera in the corner, she hoped that they would call the police.

No such luck.

Douglas “Biscuits” Hartshorne had told Faith to meet him at the station, but that had been twenty-three minutes ago. He hadn’t returned multiple calls and texts. Will’s phone was either out of range or his battery had died. Sara’s went straight to voicemail. No one was answering the phone at the McAlpine Family Lodge. According to their website, the only way into the place was to hike up a mountain, which sounded like a punishment that was meted out to the Von Trapp children before Maria showed up with her guitar.

All that Faith could do was pace back and forth across the room. She wasn’t actually sure what her job was at the moment. Her one phone call with Will had been staticky because of the torrential downpour, but he’d given her enough information to know that a bad thing had happened because of a bad guy. Faith had listened to the audio files he’d texted her during the never-ending drive up to the mountains, and from what Faith could tell, it sounded like Will had pretty much wrapped up the case.

The first recording was like backstory for the worst episode of Full House ever. Delilah had offered the rundown on Mercy McAlpine’s shitty relations, from her abusive father to her cold mother to her weird brother to her brother’s even weirder friend. Then there was the gross stuff about Dave and Mercy, which wasn’t exactly incest but wasn’t exactly not incest. Then Sheriff Biscuits had ambled in after the commercial break expressing zero fucks about a brutally murdered woman and her missing teenaged son. The only pertinent information Faith had learned from the entire conversation was Will’s very thorough rundown of how exactly he’d come across the body of Mercy McAlpine. And ended up with a knife in his hand for his trouble.

The second recording was like an episode of 24, but as if Jack Bauer was actually required to follow the Constitution he had sworn to protect. It started with Will reading Dave McAlpine his Miranda Rights, then Dave admitting to strangling his wife earlier in the day, then a stand-off that led to a scuffle wherein—if Faith knew her partner—Will had kicked Dave so hard in the nuts that the man had projectile vomited.

A warning on this last part would’ve been nice. Faith had heard it in Dolby digital surround sound from the speakers inside her Mini. She’d been stuck in traffic in the middle of nowhere in the pitch dark in the pissing rain and had to open her door so that she could dry heave onto the pavement.

She looked at the clock again.

5:55.

One more minute down. There couldn’t be that many more to go. She dug around in her purse for some trail mix. Her head was aching like she had a low-grade hangover, which made sense considering a handful of hours ago, she had been blissfully living the life of a woman who was not expected to participate in any form of adulting.

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