Page 86 of Where the Darkness Goes

“What are you doing here?” Will asks, moving in front of me.

Mabel’s hands go up. “I come in peace, I promise.” Her voice is soft, and my bet is she’s lying, just like her husband. She casts a look back at Frannie. “I visit your mother often.”

“Why?” That’s Will again, asking the question we both need answered.

“Francis is someone I consider a very dear friend.” She looks sad, not secretive. “Please know I pray for her every day.”

“Forgive us if that brings little comfort,” Will mutters.

Mabel eyes him with a kindness I don’t expect. “Your mother was kind to me when she didn’t have to be. When she probably shouldn’t have been.”

“What are you talking about?” Will asks.

“I shouldn’t say more. It’s her story to tell, and I truly hope someday she’ll be able to.” She picks up her bag from the back of the chair. “I’m sorry if I intruded. I’ll just go.” Her heels click across the floor, but before she reaches us, Will cuts her off.

“Does it have anything to do with what your husband did? Who he is to us?”

Mabel goes still. “What do you mean?”

“I think you know exactly what I mean,” he says.

Mabel looks at Will, then at me. “You know?”

“Guys—” I try to stop him from saying anything—we don’t know that we can trust her—but Will’s already speaking.

“We know what he is and what he’s done. We know that he hurt Britney. And so many others.”

Mabel looks down, and I know she’s going to deny it. Or worse, attack us. Pull a gun from that bag and kill us all. But when her head lifts back up, there are tears in her blue eyes. “Your mom is the one who told me. About the affairs. The kids. Being a good, little preacher’s wife, it meant I couldn’t work. My job was to stand by my husband’s side. To look pretty. To smile. To be scrutinized without complaint.” She sniffles, wiping under her nose. “Little did I know, my husband was taking advantage of so many in the congregation, convincing them he loved them, that God had told him he was meant to be with them.” Her voice goes dry and painful as she says that last part. Her cool eyes flick to Will. “He liked to do that. To convince you that whatever badthing he was doing was God’s will. I know you know something about that.”

Will doesn’t confirm it, but he doesn’t deny it either.

“For years, I prayed for understanding. To understand why I was meant to endure such pain. Why I had to stand there and smile and shake the hands of every woman who’d—” She cuts herself off. “To look at the faces of every child who carried my husband’s chin or his dimples or his eyes. Eventually, I confronted him. I wanted us to pray about it. To seek counseling, but do you know what he told me? He told me God had told him it was his job to fill this town with Godly children. Like Noah. He had to rebuild a town that was failing. To drive out the darkness and sin.”

The Noah comment reminds me eerily of what he said to Will, about the ark and the flood. I’m not religious, but I’ve heard enough about it from everyone in this town to get the picture.

“I let it gofor years.” She sniffles again, drying her silent tears as quickly as they fall. “And then when your mom told me what he’d done to you, Will, and what she suspected, I started looking for proof. Mostly, I wanted to prove her wrong. I’d done everything right. I’d been a good woman. A good wife. I didn’t believe God would test me like that. Punish me like that. Everything changed when Mr. Allen confided in me that Amber had been pregnant before she was killed. The father of the baby…” She pauses, collecting herself. “The father was a boy whose mother I know had an affair with my husband, just like Jill had. He and Amber were likely both my husband’s children. If that baby had been born, every one of Charles’s secrets could’ve been exposed.”

She drops her head forward. “If I’d had any proof, I have to believe I would’ve gone to the police, but I didn’t. Instead, I started paying more attention, and I learned more than I everwanted to. When Amber told her mom about the pregnancy, Jill confided in my husband. That was when the plan was set in motion, I think. He’s smart, you know. Get the boy to steal the thing, convince everyone it was a robbery. He even gave them all these packets of photos of the victims. Added a new picture each time he planned the next one. He told me it was so he could easily frame any one of them, if he needed to. But what he didn’t count on was friendship. You see, Amber had told Emily and Cassidy about her pregnancy before she died. They suspected the baby’s father had done it, so they’d told their mothers. The baby’s father, unfortunately, was Sheriff Ward’s son. So they felt they couldn’t tell him, and the next best person to tell was, they thought, their pastor.”

She sniffles again. “They trusted him and he killed them, too. All to cover up his sins. And when his plan for Cassidy and her mother was interrupted because Cassidy had snuck out to a party, he followed her there and saw the plan through.” She’s eerily quiet for a long time. “My husband framed Cory Thomas because he worried the police were starting to put things together. He didn’t know what rumors had made it where, and he knew he needed someone to frame in order for it to all be over. But there was no way to prove it. Even when I confronted him, and he eventually admitted it, he said—and I knew he was right—no one would ever believe me. It would be his word against mine, and we both knew who people would trust.”

Will takes a step toward Frannie’s bed, checking on her. “My mom told Tessa that Britney knew about Pastor Charles before she died.” His eyes flit across Mabel’s face, examining her. “Did he kill her, too?”

Mabel licks her lips, looking away. “Britney and I used to overlap with our visits on occasion. Never on purpose, but it was a happy coincidence when it happened. She once mentioned to Frannie that Charles should come up and say a prayer over her,but Frannie became agitated. Her heart rate accelerated, and the nurses had to sedate her. The next time I came back and Britney was here, she had a sheet of paper torn out, trying to get Frannie to spell a word.”

“Murderer.” I fill in the blank as it clicks in my mind before Mabel gets the chance. “Frannie was warning Britney about him.”

Mabel rubs a hand over her arm. “Britney was having an affair with Charles. It seems he never really stopped what he was doing, he just found the next generation.”

It’s a gut punch, and I see that written all over Will’s face.

“I told her everything, and she gave me that piece of truth. She was…she was pregnant. Justin had a vasectomy after Tilly was born, so it could only be…” She pauses, collecting herself. “It seems my husband was expecting yet another baby. She must’ve confronted Charles. I only know that she didn’t come back to visit, and I didn’t see her again until the day we got the call that she’d died.” She chokes back a sudden sob. “He didn’t even have the decency to act shocked.”

I cross the room toward Frannie, feeling suddenly protective of her. I will never agree with her staying in this town despite knowing so much. I will never be able to understand it, but this woman was a second mother to me. She is just one person, one tiny woman, who looks so fragile in this state it’s as if she could shatter with a touch, and yet she didn’t back down. She fought and she tried to stand up to a man she once loved and respected. A man she should’ve been able to trust.

Behind me, Mabel clears her throat again. When I turn around, she’s still talking to Will. “He held onto the necklace because it was the most expensive piece, and the bracelet was enough to frame Cory by itself, but I guess he finally found someone worthy of his favorite toy. The final piece of his twisted puzzle.” She shakes her head. “Whatever Britney said to him, itmade him so angry that just killing her, just taking her away from her daughters for the rest of their lives, didn’t seem like punishment enough.”

“I’m going to turn myself in,” Will says, his voice somber. “I’m going to talk to Sheriff Ward and tell him everything.”

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