Not Rusty. Not Wyatt.
Not young. He smells like sweat and decay and the town’s sweet, terrible perfume. His eyes are closed so I can’t see their color. His leg is laid out funny and crooked.
If he didn’t limp before, he will now.
I hope I didn’t kill him.
I don’t want to tell Bunny I killed a man wearing a cross.
Part Four
* * *
CONFESSION
65
On June 5, 2005, the Sunday before Trumanell died, the Reverend Rodney Tucker delivered a particularly fiery sermon on confessing your sins.
His wife and thirteen-year-old daughter, Maggie, sat in their usual pew in the first row at First Baptist. The backs of their heads were as much a fixture to the congregation as the big white cross on the altar.
Maggie’s cousin, Odette, was six rows behind. From Wyatt’s view in the balcony, he couldn’t see his girlfriend’s face—just her two lovely, perfect legs, crossing and uncrossing. His sister, Trumanell, had to keep nudging him to pay attention to the sermon.
For Maggie, it was just another Sunday morning. The same screech from her father, slightly rearranged. Devil. Repent. Sin. Hell. The man up at the pulpit in the holy robe was the same one whose holey underwear she’d folded last night on the couch.
The reverend’s wife was listening harder than usual, not so much to his words, but to the guilt and resentment eating at her. She was so tired of opening her house to drifters who dirtied her sheets and bathtub. So tired of pretending she loved her husband. She’d realized her mistake ten months after she said I do, and yet here she was, still nodding amen.
Two days later, on Tuesday, June 7, 2005, she made sure Maggie was out of the house. She prepared a dinner of pork chops, scalloped potatoes, and creamed spinach, washed the dishes, and confessed the secret to her husband that she had stuffed down for fourteen years.
The Rev. Rodney Tucker didn’t say a word. He walked to his bookshelf and pulled out a Holy Bible with a hollowed-out hiding place for his gun.
When he burst through the door of the Branson place, Wyatt was setting out the Scrabble board for a date. Trumanell was coming down the stairs, looking especially pretty, something gold and glittery holding back her hair. Frank Branson was washing his face in the downstairs bathroom after a day in the field.
The reverend held the three of them hostage in the living room with a gun and a sermon. He swore Maggie was his daughter even if his wife said she was Frank Branson’s. Deceit. Adultery. Hellfire. The Rev. Tucker was at his raving best.
When Odette’s pickup drove up, her uncle told Wyatt to get rid of her or he’d shoot them all.
The whole time, the gun was trained on Frank Branson. Except Frank Branson had his arms wrapped tight around Trumanell. She was face forward, held to him like a shield.
As soon as Odette roared off, Wyatt made a split-second decision. He threw himself at the pastor, wrestling for the gun.
There was a shot, a wild one. The reverend couldn’t remember hearing it. Wyatt said it sounded like the end of the world.
Trumanell pressed a hand to her chest, trying to hold in the blood. She stumbled out of the house, calling for Odette. She didn’t get far. She placed her hand flat on the front door, and then she sat down.
Somebody had to clean it all up. The pastor called his brother, because it had always been that way. The boys of the Blue House never let each other down even when a badge and God did.
While Wyatt rocked beside his sister’s body, the police officer and the preacher had squeezed his sixteen-year-old mind until something broke. You’re the reason she’s dead. Your prints are on the gun, too. Who do you think people will believe? A Branson or a preacher? A Branson or the town’s top cop? A Branson or the Blue House brothers? We can protect you or we can take you down.
Frank Branson observed the two men work over his son. He leaned against the porch railing and ripped off his shirt and poked his finger in the hole. The bullet had snuck its way through Trumanell’s body into his. He was bleeding out, or he was just grazed. He pretended to faint, or he really fainted.
Odette’s father hauled Frank Branson up. He grabbed his brother’s gun from his hands. To Wyatt and his brother, he said: I’m about to do you both a big favor.
Wyatt watched Odette’s father drag his across the yard. He saw them disappear into the same field where he had blown a dandelion like a trumpet.
The gunshot, when it came, sounded much quieter.
Odette’s father would forever believe that God’s price for killing Frank Branson was his daughter’s leg.
That’s because the reverend, his baby brother, told him so.
I relay all of this to the reporter in a monotone, as emotionless as possible. I can tell the story by heart at this point.
I’m not sure why a reporter needs to hear this from me. He’s read the same sworn statements that I have from Wyatt, Maggie, and the Reverend Tucker.
The reporter says it’s so he can understand everyone’s perception of the facts, to form a truthful story, like anybody cares about those anymore.
I think it’s so he can sneak in his other questions, which My Lawyer Finn is suggesting I don’t answer. How did I get so obsessed with a woman I barely knew? How did it feel when I slammed Odette’s leg into her killer? What do I think about solving Odette’s mystery—being the hero of the story—when it was meant to be the other way around?
“What do you mean by meant?” I’d spit back at him before Finn could stop me. “She is the hero of this story.”
I remind myself that Rusty trusts this reporter. He says that if I confirm facts for a major newspaper, even off the record, I’ll be helping this town heal. He has asked it as a favor, and says that, in return, he will make good on his big, fat favor regarding my father.
The reporter swears he will not use my name. He has assured me I’ll be the tough young woman who got swept up in the heart of the Odette Tucker case, not the poor little one-eyed girl found in a field.
He’s pushing the recorder closer. Asking about Maggie.
That’s tough.
Because she almost got me killed.
Maggie made her nightly 9 P.M. call to her mother in the nursing home while I sat on her couch, cuddling her children. As usual, the nurse put the call on speaker and walked out of the room.
Maggie was crying. She told her mother that Odette sent me to remind her of all the things she should have done. She wanted someone who loved her to listen, even knowing that tomorrow her mother would forget.
Maggie didn’t know someone else was listening, too. The reverend, who visited his wife often, slipped in during the middle of the call. He sat quietly in a chair. He heard Maggie talk about a girl with one eye who’d been hiding in the Blue House. He learned that Odette kept a diary.
Then he slipped out. The nurse said he smiled at her when he said good night and asked if she’d bring his wife another blanket.
There were two things in his hollowed-out Bible when he opened it up a half hour later.
A pistol, which he loaded.
And a picture, one of a series.
A picture that Odette’s father had kept locked in his drawer at the police station, the key around his neck.