Page 42 of The Souls of Lost Lake
A shadow flitted across his face. He gave an abrupt nod. “Like you. She lived out her life—a fairly good one, as far as she seemed to portray. But the little song was made up during her trial and it stuck.”
“What if she didn’t kill her parents?” Ava mumbled. “What if’n she was like me and just ... couldn’t remember nothin’ at all?”
Noah reached out a hand in a gesture meant to encourage Ava to stand with him. She ignored his hand and stood on her own, and he quickly followed suit. “There was supposedly a lot of signs that made most people think shedidkill her parents. There was much more evidence in that case than there is here against you. What motive would you have had as a young woman? What motive would you have now to kill Matthew Hubbard? Jipsy?”
“I can’t abide Jipsy,” Ava supplied matter-of-factly.
Noah frowned. “Enough to kill her? Make her body vanish like your family’s did?”
Ava looked away. He kept coming back to the crux of the matter, and that was the worst part of it for her. She simply didn’t know. She couldn’t remember half of what she did. All she knew was thatlast night someone came to find her, and instead of taking her and turning her in, they left her with the echoing voice of the Borden rhyme, but with her own name inserted, and an unspoken threat thattheyknew. They knew the truth of it. And they intended on enacting their own sort of justice, but only after they finished making Ava suffer the mental torture of wallowing in the vague memory of her family’s blood.
“Here it is.” Noah hefted the massive tome of church records onto his desk. Dust poofed into the air. There was the distinct smell of musty paper.
Ava sidled up next to him, peering around his shoulder at the records in the hardbound ledger.
Noah held his index finger under the names of Ava’s parents. “Chester and Bertha Sparks Coons, married April fifteenth, 1905.”
“That can’t be right.” Ava bent closer to study the handwriting that had inked her parents’ marriage date into the church records.
“Why not?” Noah gave her a sideways glance.
“’Cause of my older brother—I recall them sayin’ he was fifteen when he got killed. If that was the case, then he was born in 1905. Ain’t enough time for my parents to get hitched and have a baby before it turned 1906, if’n they got married in April.”
Noah cleared his throat. Ava noticed his body tensed a bit. “Well, perhaps—perhaps he was born early.”
“Doubtful.” Ava tapped her parents’ names. “Ma always said he was a big tub of a boy even when he was born. That’s not right if’n he was early.” How she recalled something like that and not something as monumental as her family’s deaths, Ava couldn’t explain.
Noah’s face reddened.
She wondered why for a moment, and then it dawned on her. “Ohhhhhh! You think my ma might’ve already been with child when they up and married?”
Noah choked. Coughed. Cleared his throat. “It’s a possibility.”
“Well, I’ll be.” Nothing much shocked Ava, the least of which that her ma had gotten herself into a bit of a pickle. “Nice church to put my parents in this here record seein’ as they were sinners,” she observed.
Noah turned the pages toward the middle of the book where baptisms were recorded. He didn’t look at her when he replied, “My guess is, the reverend wasn’t aware of your mother’s ... condition.” He ran his finger down the length of the page, turned it, repeated the process, and continued for the next few pages. “Ah. Here.” He tapped on Ava’s brother’s name. “Arnold Chester Coons. Baptized...” His voice waned.
“Baptized Sunday, October eighth, 1905,” Ava finished.
“There you have it, I suppose,” Noah muttered.
“Ma was well on when they got married in April.” Ava looked at Noah. “Think her dress was a tad tight?”
Noah choked again, and this time his cough increased. Ava slapped him on the back a few times before he sidestepped her hand and ran his arm over his mouth. “I’m guessing—” he coughed again—“we’ll not know that detail.”
“Well, it ain’t a small one when you’re a gal getting married.” Ava rolled her eyes at the preacher. The man was a tad dumb, if she was honest. “No girl wants to be as big as a sow when she puts on her wedding dress.”
“No. I would guess not.” Noah accepted her argument and made pretense to investigate the records further. A few pages more and he found her second brother’s name. “Richard James Coons, baptized May twelfth, 1907.”
“Then there’d be a few years between Ricky and myself. So check on 1912. That’s when I was born.”
Noah did so. Every month. Ava’s name did not appear. She felt the weight of his stare. “You’re not in here.”
“I was born, though, we know that.” She attempted to shrug off the niggling hurt that apparently she hadn’t been baptized as an infant. Maybe her parents weren’t much for coming to town bythen? Made their place off in the woods and didn’t want to socialize? Maybe they’d lost faith, or tradition, or— “Well, guess I’m for sure goin’ to hell then,” Ava concluded.
Noah drew back, his expression startled and confused. “Why on earth would you make that conclusion?”
Ava tilted her head to the side and looked down her nose at him. “Think on it. Even if I didn’t do a thing to my family, I wasn’t baptized. My parents didn’t see no good reason to save me and get me all washed up in the water, so Jesus sure ain’t gonna stop when He sees me comin’.”
