Twenty minutes ago, when Jennifer had kissed him goodbye in the hotel room, her hard belly tight against him, she’d said, “Remember one thing while you’re out there. You’re a decent person because your mom raised decent people. No matter where her body is, she’s still there with you, keeping you good, keeping you decent. You’ll never lose that, because that’s her best gift, her deepest gift, and nothing can take it away. Not even death.”
He’d held her close, kissed her hair, and thought, I want to marry you. Exactly like the day before, on the plane.
His baby boy, and Jennifer.
Loving someone deeply gives you courage.
He felt everybody shrink back when their father opened the door and stood there behind the screen. Everybody except him. His muscles bunched like he was coming off the line, except that he’d never been the tackler. Never the aggressor. He stayed out on the edges, floating free, out of the trenches.
Except now.
His dad said, “Come inside.”
They’d talked about this. Harlan said, “No. We’ll do it on the back patio.” Going inside had been a bridge too far for all of them. Like you’d be sucked into the vortex.
His dad’s chin jutted out like he wanted to order them inside, but he said “Fine. Suit yourself.”
They sat at the old redwood picnic table. It was gray now, but Harlan remembered when it was new. When they’d have lemonade and hamburgers out here on warm summer nights, on those long, late evenings when you’d still be running, playing tag, catching lightning bugs, enjoying the almost-scariness of it, after nine-thirty at night. “Magic nights,” their mom had called them, watching the evening star rise.
Now, the four of them sat on one side of the table, and their father sat on the other, directly across from Harlan. Harlan looked him in the eye until his dad looked down, then said, “You wanted to tell us something. Tell us now.”
His dad had been going to work all this time. Still selling farm equipment. Still telling everybody it was all a terrible mistake, and how broken up he’d been to discover what had happened to his wife. How he was frantic to find the real killer. Harlan had no idea how many people had believed him.
He wouldn’t be selling any more tractors now, but his hair was still neat, and so were his clothes. He still looked the same.
His dad said, “I didn’t mean it to happen. None of it.”
Beside Harlan, Annabelle tensed. He took her hand under the table and said, “Where did you kill her?”
Not “where did it happen.” It hadn’t just happened. He’d killed her.
His father sighed. “At the lot. She came in right at closing time and said she needed to talk to me, and I took her back to the office. She was upset, but I thought it was just some hysterical thing, like usual.”
Harlan willed himself still, but he could feel the tension vibrating through his sisters like they were sheet metal. His dad went on, “She told me she wanted a divorce. Asked me to move out. Told me she couldn’t live with me anymore. I was just trying to … to convince her. To hold her.”
“By the neck,” Harlan said flatly.
“I was just shaking her!” his dad said. “Trying to get some sense into her! How could I know she’d die?”
Alison made a little noise of protest. Vanessa, on Annabelle’s other side, said, “You son of a bitch.” She was up, halfway across the table, reaching for their dad, who reared back.
Harlan jumped backward over the bench and grabbed Vanessa from behind, pinning her arms. “Whoa,” he said. “Whoa. We can’t.” The others had scrambled up, too, and come to stand with the two of them. Not wanting to be that close to their father.
Harlan was still holding Vanessa with one arm. With the other, he shoved Annabelle behind him. He could feel her shaking, and she needed a shield. He said, “You didn’t mean to kill her. And yet your first thought when she, what? Fell down? Wasn’t to get her help. Your first thought was to bury her.”
“No,” their dad said. “I checked her pulse. I tried to slap her, you know, to wake her up. I walked around the office for half an hour, hoping she’d wake up, not knowing what to do. The worst half-hour of my life. I loved her. You have to understand that. I loved her.” He was crying now.
This rage. This rage.
“You walked around instead of calling 911?” That was Alison.
“How could I?” their father said. “How could I have explained that it was an accident? How could I take care of you all from jail? How would it have been for you to know your mom was dead? I was just trying to protect you!”
Harlan had thought that he was here to protect his sisters. At this moment, he realized that his sisters were here to protect him, because they were the only reason he wasn’t lunging at their father and beating him half to death. Them, and Jennifer and the baby.
You can’t do it. You can’t. He held himself back with the effort of his life and asked the others, “Anything you want to say?”
Alison was trembling. Shaking. Annabelle was all the way behind him, holding onto his belt the same way she’d held onto the sleeve of their mom’s coat as a little girl.
Silence, and then Vanessa said, “When you die, I’ll spit on your grave.”
“Nessa,” their father said. “You have to understand. I did it for you. I did it for all of you, so you wouldn’t suffer. You were always my girl!”
“No,” she said. “No.” She was nearly blind with rage, and Harlan grabbed her hand again, just in case.
“I have one more thing to ask,” he said. “Was she pregnant?”
He didn’t want to know. It was the last thing he wanted to know. But he had to know.
Their father said, “No. Why would you think that?”
The relief nearly sent Harlan to his knees. He said, “I think we’re done. Are we done?’
“Yes.” It was Alison, her voice shaking.
“You don’t get it,” their father said. “You don’t understand what it’s like. The pressure. The kids. The bills. You don’t know what it does to a man.”
“You’re wrong,” Harlan said. “We all get it. Alison has kids. I’m going to have a son. We all have pressure. But we were raised by a woman who loved us. That’s why we know how to do it right. And that’s how she wins. She’s stronger even in death than you’ll ever be. Because love wins.”
Jennifer hadn’t been able to sit. She’d paced the room for half an hour while Dyma watched her and didn’t say anything, and then they’d gone to the lobby and she’d paced there. She was sure she looked half-crazy, and she didn’t care.
She should have gone with them. She could have waited in the car.
Alison’s husband had the kids in the pool, but after a while, they came out to wait, too. He didn’t say much, but at least he looked like he got it. Finally.
Jennifer sensed them before she saw them. She didn’t even know how, but she was out the hissing double doors and into the humidity, feeling the heat rise off the sidewalk and into her body.
Harlan was holding Annabelle’s hand, striding through the parking lot with a look on his face that made Jennifer’s heart stop.