Page 86 of Snake

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~oOo~

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The woman who’d been in Cox’s mother’s house, who had discovered the body, was Natalie ‘Call Me Tally’ Baker. Tally lived across the street with her young son, Colton, and was, as she tearily described it, “Just ‘bout a daughter to Mizz Elaine, and her a mom to me.”

Autumn and Tally stood in the front yard while Colton played at their feet. He was curious about the commotion but too young to be bothered by what it meant.

About an hour had passed since Autumn had crouched before Cox’s distraught form and tried to offer enough comfort to ease a grief bigger than she’d ever known herself. In that time, Cox had ... not pulled himself together, but calmed enough to function at a basic level. He’d reverted to torpid silence and would not leave the living room, but he was sufficiently responsive that Autumn and Tally had been able to handle the first steps in ways he either wanted or accepted.

When she asked whom she should call first, he opened his phone and handed it to her with the word “Badge.” So she called the Horde president—and that one step set off a cascade of activity. Now, an hour later, most of the Horde were on the property, as were several of their old ladies, and five minutes ago a long black van with a discreet logo for Kellogg & Son Memorial Services had backed onto the sparkling gravel drive.

In all that quiet bustle, Autumn had found herself displaced from Cox’s side, then from the living room, and finally the house itself. Not because anyone had explicitly said she wasn’t wanted but because people who knew Cox and his mother better, who had more knowledge about how to handle things and whom to call, or who had specific things to do, all moved between her and Cox by simple virtue of being able to contribute more than she could.

Now she was out here with Tally, hearing again the story the woman had already told at least three times: Cox’s mother was chronically and severely depressed and had been for many years, but she’d been doing better the past few months—so much so that Tally, a licensed practical nurse who worked at a hospital in Rolla, had started to think maybe ‘Mizz Elaine’ was finally pulling herself into the sunshine.

Then the past couple days, she’d been extra busy—deep cleaning, watering the garden after years of barely leaving the house or even opening the curtains, bringing small gifts over for Tally and Colton, things she’d found in her closets or drawers she said she’d forgotten about and thought they might like.

“It was that made me worried. I mean, I been worried over Mizz Elaine a long time, but I worked three years on the psych ward, and the patients who attempted suicide, a lot of ‘em, their folks said they’d been doin’ much better right before they did it. It’s a thing—for some folks, it’s because they know they’re done trying to stay and they’re happier in the last hours or days because the struggle’s almost over. For some, they want things to be as nice as they can make it before they do it, so it’s easier on the folks they leave. A lot of women—especially older moms—do that. So when she came bringin’ her little treasures, I figured somethin’ was up. I called Danny, but he was glad she was better and didn’t wanna hear it could mean anythin’ else—and I get that. S’hard to hear a good thing could be a bad thing, and Danny ... he’s heard enough bad things for a lifetime. So I tried to pay extra attention myself, but I had a double yes’day. I came over to check on her first thing when I got home, before I even collected Colton from the sitter. But I was too late.” She began to cry again.

Autumn stood quietly beside her and offered no trite words of empty comfort. She was still reeling to learn that Elaine Cox had mixed pills and gin to kill herself—and to now know, because Tally had told her, the reason Cox’s mother had been so desperately depressed for so many years: she’d lost her husband and her eldest son to the same war, ten years apart.

Tally blew her nose into a tissue she kept tucked in her bra and sighed sadly. “She held up well enough after the soldiers came and told her about Mr. Will, but when they came again about Billy, she just curled up and stopped. She barely moved after that. Didn’t really have any good days since.”

“How long ago did Billy die?”

“Twenty years this spring.” Tally turned to study the front door of the house Cox had grown up in. “And thirty since Mr. Will. I guess this is all the life she could live without ‘em.”

But she had a son still here! She could have lived for him. She should have lived for him.

Thirty years of sorrow. Twenty years of inertia. How old was Cox? She couldn’t remember that detail from her research, but he seemed her own age, maybe a few years older. No more than forty, certainly. He’d lived steeped in grief for virtually his whole life, and had been all but abandoned by—no, had had to become the parent of—his own mother when he was either still a child himself or barely an adult.

She didn’t need to ask him why he didn’t like to be called by his first name. He was Daniel William Cox. His father had been William Daniel Cox, Sr., and his brother William Daniel Cox, Jr. To call him Daniel was to summon the ghosts of the family he’d lost.

This was too, too big and too far from her own experience; she didn’t know what to do, how to help. The reason she’d been shuffled back from Cox and all the way out of the house was that she had nothing more to contribute.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said aloud, though not really speaking to anyone.

Tally gave her an estimating look. “I know you’re that city lady who bought Keyes, and I saw how you was with Danny. Feels like I don’t got all the pieces to the puzzle, but what I saw says you matter to him. Never saw him like that with nobody, and just you bringin’ him here says he trusts you. So I’ll just say, do what he wants you to do. Danny don’t like feelin’ anything, so this is gonna hurt him double.”

An eddy of jealousy swirled in Autumn’s stomach to hear Tally call Cox by the name he wouldn’t use. Tally had known him since before so much pain attached to that name, and she was apparently close enough to Cox that he hadn’t stopped her using it. An intimacy Autumn could never have.

“Mama, I gotta potty,” Colton said.

Tally swung the boy into her ample arms. “Okay, big man. Let’s go potty.” To Autumn she said, “I say stick with Danny. Do what he needs. If he doesn’t know, Badger will.”

With that, Tally walked across the street to her own humble bungalow.

Autumn stood alone on the lawn. All around her, people were moving about. Lilli Lunden stood at the end of the driveway with her daughter, Gia, both on their phones, clearly delivering instructions or making arrangements. Isaac Lunden stood on the porch with a cluster of Horde, talking seriously. Other men in leather were moving around; Darwin Forrester and Thumper Allen were taking the screen door off its hinges.

Acutely, Autumn felt out of place. For the past day or so, she’d been floating in a bubble outside of time or reality, following her instincts and urges, letting herself play in a little fantasy where she could be with a man like Cox and live a life among the Horde. But it was nothing more than a fantasy. Signal Bend was not her home, she did not belong here, a truth highlighted by her total invisibility in this time of crisis.

She should leave. Figure out a way to get a ride to the nearest car rental place and get herself back to the airport, and then back to her actual life.

Yet that thought felt wrong, too. She didn’t want to slink away and pretend this time with Cox had never happened. She wanted to go back into the house and find him, to help him, to tell him he wasn’t alone.

That was another thing she’d come to understand: for all this activity, for the veritable army of people who’d charged in to help him the very second they’d heard he needed it, Cox thought he was alone in the world. He thought it was true because he thought he wanted it to be true. He had taken all the loss he could stand, so he meant to hold all other connections off at a sufficient distance that he wouldn’t feel the loss of them.

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