She’d grinned at him, thanked him for the tea, and fit her palm in his. Their fingers entwined. They smiled at each other. His looked a little shy. My brain kept tripping over how they glowed when their eyes met, how they never seemed to want to look anywhere else but at each other. Considering the danger and uncertainty facing them both, their united front of happiness struck an off chord.
Had I ever seen my mother happy before?
I knew the answer before I’d finished asking myself the question. She’d been more carefree this last year, especially once the divorce papers had been signed. She’d been happy sometimes.
However, for the period between this past Christmas and the day of my father’s death, she’d been happy all the time. I thought the culprit for her mood shift had been the planning of my wedding. Clearly, I’d been wrong. And maybe this was the real reason why I felt such discord in the face of her—their—contentment.
She’d kept him a secret.
Presently, the man paired a gentle, encouraging smile with a small head nod, and I scowled for reasons I didn’t fully understand.
Cletus and I were standing next to each other, facing Mr. Repo and my mother where they sat at the table a few feet away. Cletus must’ve been looking at me because he caught my expression and nudged me with his elbow. “You got something on your face,” he whispered.
I blinked, working to clear my features. My mother had been through enough already; despite how she looked at Mr. Repo, beneath the surface she seemed exhausted. Cletus was right, she didn’t need me scowling at her.
Masking my thoughts just in time, my mother’s gaze swung our way. She gathered a deep breath. “You mean on the night of the engagement party?”
“Yes,” Cletus answered, his tone academic and conversational. “You haven’t been able to speak freely until now. Specifically, we’re most interested in what you can tell us about the shooter. If it helps, you can start from the beginning. ”
“Yes, I think I will start from the beginning.” She nodded, her eyes lowering to her teacup. “Y’all were there for the tussle. So I guess I can skip over that. Let’s see—um—after Kip and—uh—Elena Wilkinson left, after the deputies escorted them away, I went back to the party. Then, after a while of trying to make nice and being asked about where y’all went, I sent Cletus a text. Just a few minutes later, I got a text from Jenn telling me to meet her in the bakery parking lot.”
“That wasn’t me. I didn’t have my phone,” I said, noting that so far her story matched the one she’d told the police.
“I know that now. But at the time you and Cletus were missing, weren’t you?” My mother lifted a sardonic eyebrow and sent us both a chiding look, an expression I hadn’t seen on her face in ages.
Usually this look flustered me—less now than when I’d been younger—but presently all I could do was smile, feeling relief in the face of her judgmental spirit and reprimand.
“Indeed,” Cletus conceded, sounding almost cheerful. “Then what happened?”
“Like I said, I got a text from Jenn’s phone—I don’t know who sent the text, just that it came from her phone—telling me to meet her in the bakery lot. You can read the message if you want, I still have it saved.”
“Maybe later.” Cletus dismissed her offer. “You left the party?”
“I did.”
“Did anyone see you?” I asked.
“I have no idea. I left thinking I was coming to meet you, I wasn’t worried about who might be watching. So I walked to the lot and—” her gaze dropped, she swallowed like the action was reflexive “—and I saw a man running through the parking lot, running like he was in a hurry. He stopped at a car and walked up to the driver’s side. My mind was working because I was thinking, ‘Wait, is that Kip’s BMW?’ I got mad all over again, thinking he’d come back to stir up more trouble.”
“Did you see the man? Did you get a good look at him?”
“No, not—not really.”
“What can you tell us?” Cletus looked to me and then back to my momma. “Was he tall or short? Big or small of stature? Fat or thin or neither?”
“He was tall, wore dark clothes. His back was to me most of the time, but he had big shoulders. A big frame. It could’ve been anybody.”
I twisted my lips, thinking back over the list of suspects Jackson had given Ashley. Tall, big shoulders. Kenneth Miller, Old Man Blount, Jedidiah Hill—and even Cletus—they all fit this description. Kenneth Miller was heavier set than the others, Jedidiah Hill wasn’t as tall.
“It could’ve been anyone. I was too far away and busy thinking about being mad at Kip for returning. But I did see it happen.” My momma covered her face, her voice breaking, and Cletus backed off, seeming to sense that she needed a minute. After breathing in and out several times, she sniffed and dropped her hands. “I was marching over there, and the man banged something against the rear window, banged it hard. He yelled something I couldn’t make out. Then, all of a sudden, there was a gun, and the man was pointing it at the driver’s side window. I stopped, not sure what I was seeing, or not believing my eyes. He . . . he shot into the car.” My mother’s stare seemed unfocused and entranced, like she was rewatching the events unfold.
“What was he wearing? The man with the gun.” Cletus asked, his voice just above a whisper, like he didn’t want to break her out of a trance.
“He—the man was—a—a suit, I think.”
“What color was it?”
“I don’t know, it was dark. Dark clothes. Maybe it wasn’t a suit. He had a jacket. Everything was dark. I just saw him lift his hand and shoot into a car. I was so startled, I didn’t even scream. I just fell to my knees in the grass.”
“What happened next?”
“He said something. He spoke to Kip. He said something like, ‘Time to come out’ or ‘Get out of the car.’”
“The man in the suit talked to Kip? After he shot him?” Cletus maintained his serene tone.
“I know it doesn’t make any sense, it didn’t make sense to me at the time, but he did.”
A thought occurred to me. “What about his voice? Did you recognize the man’s voice?”
Despite my attempt to mimic Cletus’s gentle cadence, she flinched, her gaze cutting to mine. “No,” she said, her voice firm.
I did my best to keep my features clear of expression because, in that moment, I got a nagging sense that this statement was a lie. So I pressed, “But you heard the words?”
“I was too far away, Jennifer. Too distressed.” Renewed anxiety entered her voice, and I got the sense she was talking to herself now. “Even if I thought I recognized the voice, there’s no way I can be certain. It could have been anyone.”
“I’m not asking you to be certain, just—Momma, who did it sound like?”
Her attention flicked to Mr. Repo, and she gathered a deep breath that sounded unsteady. “I don’t know. I honestly couldn’t say. All I know is the man with the gun told Kip to get out of the car, or that’s what I thought at first. But then someone else opened the back door of the car, the passenger side, and started running away.”