Brenda is the red-haired woman.
I’m both furious and confused, my hands shaking as I sit down next to my father on the sofa. I set my bottle of tea on the coffee table without opening it. What the hell is going on?
“I’m sitting in on this conversation,” Ellie says, handing one of the bottles to her brother. She doesn’t greet my father and she takes a seat in an armchair across the room, as far from him as she can get. “Have the police talked to you yet?” she asks him.
Daddy nods. He says something, but it doesn’t register in my brain. All I can think about is that the crazy woman who kidnapped my three-year-old daughter is in the kitchen. I sit on the edge of the sofa cushion as if ready to bolt. I should say something. Right now. But what?
As soon as I get out of here, I’ll call Sam.
“So have you thought any more about it, Bud?” my father asks Buddy. “Who else could have gotten my keys after I put them through that slot in your shop door?”
I think Buddy says something about racking his brain, but I really don’t know because Brenda is guiding Miss Pat into the room. Miss Pat, her thin curly hair in damp ringlets close to her scalp, seems frailer than the last time I saw her. She’s shuffling more than walking. She looks small and vulnerable. She sits down in a wooden straight-backed chair and picks up a pencil and the folded newspaper from the table next to her. I can see the square of a crossword puzzle on the paper.
Brenda lowers herself into the upholstered chair next to her. I can’t even look at her. Is she the one who littered my yard with trash? Did she toss dead squirrels into my redbud tree and steal things from Jackson’s trailer? Is she the person who didn’t want anyone to find Win’s body in my backyard? Oh no, honey, you don’t want a fence! That’s what she said to me. Of course she didn’t want me to get a fence! She didn’t want anyone digging holes in my yard.
My father catches my eye. Gives me a quizzical look. I have no idea what he just said, or what Buddy just said, or how I should be responding. My body feels like it’s buzzing.
“Are y’all still talking about that boy’s grave?” Brenda asks. “Can’t we put it to rest? I don’t see why…”
She goes on, but I’m not listening. Her sleeves are still rolled up and my eyes are drawn like a magnet to the irregular pink pattern on the inside of her forearm. She stops speaking, following my gaze to her arm, then back to my face and our eyes meet. She hurriedly rolls her sleeves down, but I can tell from her expression: she knows that I know.
I need to call Sam right now. I could excuse myself. Go outside and make the call.
As I think about what I’d say, my gaze drifts toward the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. I can see the side door, the entrance to the house that Ellie led me through that first day when she made me a cup of tea. I see the faded images of rolling pins and sacks of flour on the ancient wallpaper. I see the old wooden key rack on the wall next to the door, two sets of keys hanging from the knobs. I have a sudden thought.
“Mr. Buddy,” I say, interrupting whatever he and Daddy are discussing. My voice has a shiver in it. “Where did you keep the keys to your car shop back then?”
“In my pocket,” he says.
“Did you ever keep them on that key rack in the kitchen?”
“That ol’ rack!” Buddy lets out a laugh that turns into a coughing fit. We wait. Daddy looks at me, eyebrows raised. He’s catching on. “I made that ol’ thing in a woodworking class when I was … I dunno … fourteen, maybe?” Buddy says. “Been hangin’ there ever since.”
“Did you ever keep the car shop keys on it?” Daddy repeats my question.
“Nah, I always kept them in my pock—”
“Yes, you did, Buddy.” Ellie leans forward. “Back when I lived here you surely did. All the time.”
Buddy wrinkles his brow. Adjusts the oxygen tubing in his nose. “You might be right,” he says. “Before I got that fancy lock on the shop door, maybe I did. So long ago.”
“Who the hell cares where Buddy kept his keys a hundred years ago?” Miss Pat slaps the newspaper on the end table. “Just listen to yourselves going on and on about the ancient past! I knew as soon as Ellie showed up back here in Round Hill everything would go to hell.” She looks at her daughter. “You were a pain in the backside as a girl and you’re a pain in the backside now. You’re sixty-five years old, for heaven’s sake! When are you goin’ to grow up? You don’t see me moonin’ around over your daddy killin’ himself, do you?”
“Mama—” Ellie frowns, but her mother plows over her.
“Yes, it hurt, havin’ him shoot his damn head off,” Miss Pat says. “But I just kept goin’, didn’t I? Put one foot in front of the other.” She shakes her head at Ellie. “Why do you always think the world revolves around you? What the hell’s wrong with you that you’re so stuck in the past?” She points a trembling finger toward her daughter. “If you must know, Eleanor,” she says, “everybody was there that night. Back in the woods. Every goddamn body! Everybody was disgusted by you and that boy.” She shudders, as if sickened by the thought of her daughter and Win together. Then she turns to Brenda, who looks like a deer caught in headlights. “Even Brenda was there that night,” she says, “though she stayed in the truck, her bein’ expecting and all. Didn’t you, honey?”
“Mama…” Brenda’s voice is small, but the word sounds like a warning.
“Mama what?” Miss Pat asks, but it’s not really a question. She frowns at Brenda, who seems frozen in her chair. We’re all frozen. But then Brenda suddenly finds her voice. She looks directly at my father.
“Just admit you were driving your damn truck and get it over with, Reed,” she says. “Everybody knows it. They’ve known it for forty-five years.”
Next to me, my father stiffens. “That’s not true,” he says.
“Oh, bullshit.” Miss Pat wears a mocking smile, and for the first time, I have the tiniest sliver of doubt about my father’s innocence.
“I was not driving that truck,” Daddy says. “I had nothing to do with whatever went on in the woods.”
Ellie doesn’t seem to hear him. Her face has gone white. She’s looking across the room at Brenda. “You were my best friend,” she says. “How could you have been part of it all?”
“Mama’s not well, Ellie,” Brenda says. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.” She rests her hand on Miss Pat’s arm, but Miss Pat snatches her arm away from her.
“I’m perfectly fine,” she says. “Sane and sober.”
“Her memory is off,” Brenda continues. She looks at Miss Pat. “You know how you are, Mama. You can’t remember where you put your glasses two seconds after you take them off.”
“You’re the one with the memory problems,” Miss Pat argues.
My father leans toward me, hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right, Kayla?” he asks softly.
I don’t answer him. I glare at Brenda. “You’re the woman who took my daughter,” I say. “You were the woman in my office who tried to scare me away from Shadow Ridge.”