Page 61 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“Your dad just gave me ten thousand dollars.”

“He what?”

“He thinks I’m my mother.” I wait for the nurse on her smoke break to go back inside before I continue. “He said it’s for me when I go to college. I—I can’t take it, Connor.”

His exhale crackles on the line. Water runs in the background, followed by the clinking of plates and silverware. “If he wanted you to have it, take it.”

“Not under false pretenses. I’m not too proud to turn down money, believe me, but it’s a lie. He thinks I’m going to play softball at Truman State. He thinks I’m going to be anastronaut. If he was lucid enough to remember what happened, he’d never give me thousands of dollars.”

“The man visited you in prison. He’d still give it to you. He loves you.”

“I’m practically robbing him.”

“Then think of it as a gift from me,” Connor says. “Think of it as my way for saying sorry—for the past, for being a shitty friend, everything.”

“You’re a teacher in Nebraska. Don’t act like you couldn’t use ten grand.”

“Don’t worry about me. Use it for Harmony. Get her a decent lawyer.” The water stops. “Are you going to watch the press conference?”

My heart stutters. “What press conference?”

“The sheriff,” he says. “You didn’t know?”

“Of course not. Why would anyone tell me anything?”

“Shit, I’m sorry. It’s about your mom and Harmony. I figured …”

“It’s fine,” I say, even though it isn’t. Another cold reminder that while I am a Byrd by blood, I am not a Byrd in spirit. An impenetrable pane of glass separates me from the rest of my family—usually for better, but today for worse. “Could I come to your house to watch it? I don’t think I should be alone right now.”

“Anything I can do to help,” he says quietly.

I refuse to sit on the couch when the press conference finally comes on. The camera is trained on an empty folding table. It boils my blood to think of people settling into their living rooms to consume my mother’s tragedy. They think of themselves as bystanders, but they’re fiends, nourishing themselves with someone else’s suffering. There is nothing Americans love more thanbutchered women. Nothing captures our imagination so completely.

The Crawfords’ house remains remarkably intact, as if my childhood memories have been gouged from my mind and brought to life. The furniture is lumpy and musty, the shag carpet so blue it gives me a headache. His parents’ favorite wedding picture, a candid shot of them laughing during a dance, still occupies the place of honor on the mantle. As the story went, Gil’s prosthetic started squeaking to the rhythm of the song (“You Make My Dreams,” Hall and Oates) as they danced, and after the first chorus, Marjorie dissolved into a fit of giggles. She snorted when she laughed, which in turn made Gil laugh. They were laughing too hard to finish. It was a story they loved to tell together, like comedians rehearsing their favorite skit. At the end, they would share a conspiratorial smile, the two of them the only ones in on the joke, and Gil would kiss Marjorie’s cheek.

I see ghosts like this in every corner. I see the alcove where the Christmas tree stood, teeming with so many presents they spilled out beneath Gil’s desk and atop Marjorie’s piano. I see that same piano too, and if I hold my breath, I hear “Lorena” carrying down the hallway, reverberating from the floors. I smell stargazer lilies in bloom. I feel the notch in the top of my bishop as I slide it across the chessboard, the crenellations atop my rook. The little memories are the ones that eat me alive.

On the TV, a man clears his throat. Josiah and company take their seats. He sits at the center, a deputy on either side, with Daniel relegated to the furthest chair, only half of his face in frame. His all-black uniform makes him stand out from the Nebraska deputies, all outfitted in tan. I feel sorry for him the way you do for someone who arrives at a masquerade party without knowing they needed a mask.

“He does that a lot.” I point to the screen as Josiah busies his hands with paperwork. To my disappointment, his hands are steady. No sign of nerves. “He always shuffles his paperwork, like he can’t keep still.”

The camera pans out to reveal dozens of empty chairs and only four reporters. One of them even looks asleep. Connor told me the conference was closed to the public to prepare me for the possibility of low turnout, but this is worse than I could have imagined. The universe is sending me an unmistakable message:your mother is not worth anyone’s time or resources.Had my mother been prettier, had she been richer, had she been younger, had she never used drugs, the room would be full of people demanding justice for her murder. Josiah’s face falls when he sees the low turnout. He reminds the reporters how personal my mother’s tragedy is not just to the community, but to him as well. “I’ve known the Byrd family for going on forty years now,” he says. “Our daughters went to school together.”

There is all of one high school in a thirty-mile radius, but never mind that.

“On Sunday, our pastor in Annesville shared a verse from Psalms I think we all needed to hear. ‘The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.’ ”

“Always with the Bible verses,” I mutter. “He recited one of the beatitudes to me when he was done questioning me.”

“Man of faith,” Connor says.

“Only when it suits him.”

As Josiah reconstructs the timeline of my mother’s murder and disappearance, I notice the tobacco in his lower gums, protruding like a tumor. The microphone picks up the viscid sound of him swallowing. Again and again, his mouth clots with saliva and he has nowhere to spit. He pretends to sneeze into a handkerchief as the floor opens to questions.

Connor turns to me, a question he hesitates to ask on the tip of his tongue. “Do you think she did it?”

“I don’t like stories when they’re too perfect.”

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