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“I came once before. After I got out of the hospital. But you refused to see me. I want to apologize for my part in Bert’s accident.”
Mrs. Lewis lets out a humph. “What good will an apology do now? Except clear your conscience before you go to prison for life.”
Kristy shoots her a warning look. “Mom! Stop! You’re being rude.”
“I’ll only take a minute of your time. Bert was the best friend I’ve ever had. I miss him to this day.”
Mrs. Lewis’s face reddens, as though she’s going to bless me out. But her husband doesn’t give her the chance. “Let the boy have his say,” Mr. Lewis says, pushing his walker towards his worn brown recliner in the corner.
Not much has changed since I was last inside the house. I sit down on the same damask-covered sofa and look up at the same old cuckoo clock hanging above the mantel. The time is wrong though. My watch says it’s three fifteen. The shorthand on the cuckoo is pointed at nine and the long hand at four.
Kristy catches me looking at the clock. “It hasn’t worked since the night Bert died. It’s as though he stopped the clock as he left this earth. We can’t bring ourselves to take it down.”
Goosebumps break out on my skin as I think back to that night. Nine twenty is about the time of the accident.
I wait until everyone is seated before beginning. “Despite what you may have been told, I had not been drinking that night. I tried to get Will to go home, but he refused to leave. When I tried to force him, he came after me. We wrestled, and he crashed into the railing. The railing was rotten. It could just as easily have been me who went over.” When I hear sniffling, I look over at Kristy to see tears streaming down her cheeks.
“There are some things about that night I never told you,” she says to her parents. “Will’s telling the truth. Bert was drunk that night. Embarrassing himself and me. When Will asked me to help him get Bert to the car, I told him to buzz off. The accident is more my fault than Will’s. I was older. It was my responsibility to look after my younger brother.”
Mrs. Lewis stiffens. “Why have you never told us this?”
Kristy lowers her gaze to her lap. “I saw how you treated Will. I was afraid you’d treat me the same way. My guilt has been my prison sentence. But I can’t live like this anymore. I’m sorry if you hate me. I made a horrible mistake that night. Bert’s accident wasn’t Will’s fault. It was mine.”
The atmosphere in the room has gone from hostile to awkward. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis are devastated to learn of their daughter’s part in their son’s death. But this is a family matter. None of my concern. I doubt any of the three Lewises notice when I see myself out.
I leave the historic section and drive back through town to the cemetery. Clemmy meant for me to find my mother in my heart. But the cemetery seems like a fitting place to have this one-sided discussion.
Our family’s plot takes up a large portion of the old section of the cemetery. As children, when we came here to visit our grandparents, my siblings and I played a game to see who could find the oldest tombstone. We could never find one older than Yancy Jedidiah Merriweather, born in 1818 and died in 1867.
I haven’t been here since my mother’s funeral. Her footstone is now in place and the mound of dirt on her grave is covered in lush grass. Everything I want to say is at the forefront of my mind, and the words flow effortlessly off my tongue. An onlooker might mistake me for a lunatic, pacing around the grave, talking to myself while gesturing wildly with my hands. Fortunately, there is no one else in sight.
As a Christian, I believe in life after death, and I sense my mother’s presence. She may not have been the best mother in the world, but she didn’t deserve to go to hell. I don’t waste any time lamenting about the awful things she did to us. She knows. By now, she’s repented for her sins.
I talk mostly about Bert’s accident, and how much it hurt when she refused to believe in my innocence. When I run out of things to say, I drop to my knees and sob. I don’t feel the enormous relief I’d hoped for. But I feel as though I’ve finally made a step in the right direction.
I’ve stopped crying, and I’m looking around at the nearby headstones when Carter calls. “Where are you?”
“The cemetery. Why?”
“I have news. Stay where you are. I’m three minutes away.”
I lean against my family’s headstone and wait for the investigator to arrive.
Carter parks his silver truck and wanders over to me. “Afternoon.”
I stand to face him. “What’s the big news? Has Marlowe experienced a breakthrough in the case?”
Carter slaps my shoulder. “Not yet. But he’s working on it. I’ve just returned from Texas. As best we can tell, Julia and Conrad Beck did not exist prior to August thirty-first.”
“What do you mean they didn’t exist? And why Texas?”
“She’s not who she says she is.” He tugs a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket. “Do you recognize this woman?” On the paper is a computer-generated picture of Julia with lighter and longer hair. “That’s Julia.”
He jabs his finger at the paper. “This woman is Casey Bishop. She has a four-year-old son named Levi.” Carter shows me another picture, this one on his phone. Despite his longer hair, the child is undeniably Conrad.
I scrunch up my face in confusion. “I don’t understand. Why is Julia . . . Casey . . . pretending to be someone else?”
“She escaped from Witness Protection,” Carter says and tells me a wild tale that makes sense of what little I know about Julia.
