My father, at our kitchen sink with one of the sheets from my bed, scrubbing out blood that had seeped through a bandage wrapped around my thigh.
Lola, wearing an eye patch, a plastic knife in her mouth, yelling I’m armed to the teef.
Maggie, all in white, up on the Baptist Church altar, her eleven-year-old soul getting the official OK from her father.
Me, in a grainy old news video on The Tru Story, a stick figure on crutches wobbling out of Parkland Hospital for the first time.
Rusty, leaving a slick little Beretta Nano in my desk this past Christmas with a note: Every girl with one leg needs an extra hand.
My grandmother, frowning, when I asked while we snapped beans if there were really bones of bad men my daddy and granddaddy shot buried under our porch, like the girl in my kindergarten class said.
Angel in a dusty field, blowing dandelions. Wishing. Maybe for me, even though she couldn’t imagine it.
Bits of debris and fluff flying blind down the highway.
And then I know.
I know where to dig.
As I jam my father’s old shovel into the earth, I think about how there isn’t a day I don’t live without Trumanell’s shadow hovering over me.
She’s a hummingbird with a thousand heartbeats a minute, a warplane about to crash, a cheerleader suspended in an interminable jump. Arms and legs in a V. The sprawl of a dead person in midair.
It feels like days since I left Maggie, but it’s only been hours. I’m out in the middle of Branson land, three or so miles from the house, a faint purple line of disappearing light on the horizon. The headlights of the truck, focused on my task. I have no idea if my colleagues are still at the house, finishing up, but I think it’s unlikely I will run into them.
They’ve pulled an all-nighter and more. All they want is to go home and curl up beside their families, eat a warm meal to revive, stream a bloody TV show to forget. I’ve been that tired plenty of times. I’m that tired right now, dizzy with it. How many hours have I slept in the last four days? In the last five years?
I’ve never felt more vulnerable than out here in the black nowhere, stabbing a shovel into the earth, not knowing what’s underneath my feet. I could have brought someone with me. But who would that be? Who can I trust? Who trusts me? Finn, who I’ve betrayed? Rusty, who doesn’t believe me? Wyatt, who is missing? Maggie, who I want to keep safe?
No, it’s better right now to be alone.
It’s funny the things I can’t remember until I stop trying so hard to remember them. Until I let my mind fly on its own.
The title of a book with more than four words. Somebody’s name with too many consonants. The four-digit number attached to the end of a password. The brand of expensive Gouda I tried once and always wanted to try again.
The fence post that didn’t look quite right.
Wyatt always said mending fences was his method of prayer. So I didn’t think much about the startled look on his face when I pulled up to him here a few days ago, or his reluctance when I asked him to leave this spot and show me where he found Angel, or the absence of visible tools, or even the odd way the fence was braced.
Finding him, when I feared he had run, was the only thing of importance.
There are hundreds of old posts out here, streaming along the road with the endless feel of a railroad track. I am certain this is the post where Wyatt was standing. My eyes, fighting the last orange shrieks of sun, had scavenged every inch of the fence line as I drove in.
This is the only post with an extra piece of wood hammered in place.
This is the only post that makes a cross.
Two sounds break the stillness.
The high-pitched grate of metal slicing into earth.
The inhale and exhale of my breath.
The hole is still only about a foot or so deep. I don’t know how wide I’ll need to go, if I should be on this side of the fence or the other. If something is under here, it’s been undisturbed for a while. The land owns it now and won’t want to give it up.
I thrust again, a hard knot of exertion in my chest.
I lean into the shovel, and a few of the pennies from Wyatt’s kitchen floor fall out of my pocket, glittering before they bounce off into the dark. I don’t know why I picked them up. For luck, maybe. So I can throw them into fountains one at a time and wish for everything to turn out all right.
A blister is already torn open in my hand. A drop of blood falls. A drop of sweat follows it. If this is a crime scene, I’m leaving myself behind.
Twenty minutes later, the shovel strikes something.
A rock. A bone.
Not unexpected, maybe nothing, but there is a shot of pain up my leg that takes me back to a girl in a hospital room with her whole life before her. Amputate.
I pause for breath, staring up at the only star that has decided I shouldn’t be out here alone.
How much do I want to know?
I fall to my knees and bury my hands in the hole.
Behind me, I hear a gun cock.
When I turn, I’m reminded what seventy times seven means.
FIVE YEARS LATER
Part Three
* * *
ANGEL
Tender.
Resilient.
Strong.
Resourceful.
Kind.
Empathetic.
—Six words Marshall Tucker wrote
on a piece of paper to describe
his daughter, Odette
36
I have two big secrets.
One is my eye.
The other is Odette.
If someone asks why my left eyeball goes crooked sometimes, I say it’s a trick I can do like some people can bend their elbows back. And then I do it again so they laugh and forget and my father never finds me. My disguise, intact.
If someone asks what I think of the Odette Tucker case, I act like true crime stuff doesn’t interest me. I say I’ve never heard her name, even though I dream about her all the time.
In my dreams, Odette is always at the lake with Trumanell. Both have long, flawless legs like movie stars. They throw green M&M’s into the water and dive after them, snatching them up off the bottom. It’s a challenge because the lake is bright green, too—not just on the top where it shimmers, but all the way through. It seems like it takes Odette and Trumanell forever before they finally break the surface, gasping for air. When I wake up, so am I.
If anyone hears, I say I have mild sleep apnea.
I don’t talk to people about Odette because they would think it’s weird. They’d say I’m obsessed with a woman who was only in my life for a few days. They’d want to label it. They’d call it a reaction to trauma and hand me drugs to make my dreams go away. They’d ask me if I think those green M&M’s represent my missing eye.
I say that strangers are powerful. They can mark you in twenty seconds. They can rob you at gunpoint so you never feel safe again. They can mention you’re pretty at a party when no one else ever has, and then you don’t kill yourself that day or maybe any other day. It’s like a diamond tossed out a car window you were lucky enough to catch.
Odette is my stranger. She gave me an eye and a piece of paper.
She is why I still exist, which is exactly why I need to find out why she no longer does.