Chapter XVI. 1953
CHAPTER XVI
Three days after Vera found Mary at the tree, Robert woke to an empty bed.
He assumed Mary was already awake, downstairs making breakfast or in the nursery tending to Ada, but he went through the house room by room and could not find her.
Still, he did not panic. It was possible she’d gone for a walk.
That she’d not wanted to disturb the baby and, unable to sleep herself, wanted to tire herself out, but he walked the wooded paths near the house, his voice growing hoarse as he shouted her name, and he still couldn’t find her.
He made phone calls to their neighbors, but no one had seen Mary.
No one had any reason to think she would have run off of her own accord.
She had a new, precious baby at home. A handsome, wealthy husband who practically worshipped the ground she walked on.
What reason could she possibly have to disappear?
After a sleepless night of waiting for her to come home, he went to the police. The officer there listened to his story, a pinched expression on his face.
“Happens all the time. Either she’ll turn up, or she won’t, but I’ll bet she’ll be back in a week or two. Doesn’t take long for them to realize they’re better off at home.”
“We have a baby. Mary wouldn’t leave her,” Robert said.
The officer heaved a sigh and pulled out a pen and pad of paper from his breast pocket. “Listen, if it makes you feel any better, I can get someone out there to take a look around. What’s that address?”
Robert recited it faithfully, and the officer flipped the pad closed. “We’ll let you know if anything turns up,” he said.
“She had a friend, too. In the city. A Sharon Hutchins.”
“Lots of women have friends.”
“You’re not hearing me. They were … close.”
The officer’s jaw tightened. “I see. Could be she’s with her friend. You got a phone number for this Sharon Hutchins?”
“No. I only met her the one time. Mary never really talked about her, but apparently, they were thick as thieves.”
The officer tapped his pen against the counter. “Like I said, Mr. Shephard, we’ll take a look, but I bet dollars to doughnuts she’s back soon enough.”
Robert went home. His mother took the baby, claiming it would be easier. They would be out of his hair while he looked for Mary, and she wouldn’t have to live out of a suitcase.
Each room felt haunted. Phantom reminders of the life he’d expected slept curled in the shadowed corners he never bothered to look in.
The house was not his domain. It had never been worthy of his attention.
His focus. But he felt it now. How it bore down on him.
The teeth buried in the plaster and wood ready to take him apart piece by piece and hold him there forever.
That night he turned on every light—the house blazing in all that collected dark—and he slept in his truck.
He woke periodically through the night, his gaze drifting toward the windows where he was certain he would see a dark figure watching him, but there was nothing there in all those rooms, and when the morning finally came, he knew he would never step foot inside it again.
So, when the phone call came, it was to his mother’s house. Not from the police, but from Pastor Brighton.
“Robert, they’ve found her. I’m so sorry.”
He held himself very still. “Where?”
“It was a group of hunters that found her. In the woods. Officers are already there, but they thought it best if I was the one to call.”
He gripped the phone tighter, his hand tingling as the blood rushed from his fingers. “Where?”
“Are you at home? I’m coming to get you.”
“I want to see her.”
“I don’t think that’s wise. Given the … state they found her in.”
“She’s my wife, goddammit!” He brought his fist down on the phone table, the wood splintering.
“Stay there. I’m coming. You shouldn’t be alone when you see her. We’ll go together,” Pastor Brighton said, and the call disconnected.
It took less than ten minutes for Pastor Brighton to arrive. Another fifteen for them to trek into the woods and then the clearing where a massive black walnut tree stood.
A group of three police officers clustered around a diminished form covered in a white sheet.
“Had to have swung herself onto that branch for it to have gone through her chest the way it did. You can’t fall like that. It ain’t natural,” one of them said as he lit a cigarette and exhaled.
“Shut the hell up, Petey. That’s the husband,” one of the other officers hissed, but Robert didn’t care.
He fell to his knees in front of the draped body that had once been his wife.
He felt no shame when a hysterical laugh scraped out of him.
How absurd it was—this body before him. How reduced.
He reached for it, his fingers catching at the edge of the sheet.
“Sir, we ask you not touch the body.”
“Shut the hell up again, Petey.”
He pulled, but what lay curled beneath the sheet was not his wife. It had her face. Her hair. But it was not her. Her eyes, gone clouded, held nothing of the woman he knew. Her mouth and its ravage of sores was not the one he kissed on their wedding day and so many times after.
The hole in her chest where she ran herself through, the lovely spill of her blood across the front of her dress, somehow these were the only things he recognized of his wife. Her desperation to be away from him. Her spite.
He curved his lip in disgust, his voice dropping to a whisper he hoped she could hear in hell. “You bitch. How dare you do this to me. How dare you.” He spat, the thick wet of it landing squarely on her pallid cheek.
“That’s enough now.” Pastor Brighton put a hand under Robert’s shoulder and hauled him to his feet as the officers looked on in shocked silence. “Officers, I’m sure you’ll call once the body is released back to the family?”
“Yes, sir. I wouldn’t expect it to take long given the … nature of the death.”
“Good. That’s good. Mr. Shephard is in residence at his mother’s home. I’ll be certain you receive that information once I’ve gotten him settled. Unless you need his cooperation with something else?”
“No, sir. And our condolences, Mr. Shephard.”
Robert laughed again and again, his sides aching, as Pastor Brighton dragged him away.
HE LET HIS and Mary’s mothers handle the arrangements, let them place the obituary in the newspaper, and on the day of the funeral, he sat in the family pew, his gaze locked on the closed casket at the front of the church.
Beside him, the baby slept in his mother’s arms in her miniature mourning dress.
Another absurdity. But he’d learned to control his laughter.
Two tumblers of bourbon helped mightily with that need.
He did not hear the service—whether Pastor Brighton recited the Bible verses Mary’s mother suggested or if the final prayer included a blessing for Ada as his mother wanted. All he knew was he was grateful when it ended.
He stood at the back of the church and accepted the gentle touches on his arms, the misty-eyed condolences of the other mourners.
He nodded and thanked them and wondered why God had chosen not to smite the world a second time.
A fire rather than a flood. As the congregants left the church, he envisioned each of them burning.
The silver and gold of their jewelry melting to their skins.
Their skulls peeling away, dripping redly against the sanctuary carpet. It made him feel better.
“Is that Vera Stephens?” His mother lifted her chin toward the front of the church.
He turned and looked at the woman standing beside the casket. She held a hand to the wood, her head bowed as her shoulders shook with the force of her tears.
“Yes,” he said.
In that moment, Vera turned from the casket, her gaze locking with his. She narrowed her eyes, but her hatred was a paltry thing. Gerry stood to her right and offered her his arm, but she made no move to come down the center aisle and offer her condolences.
“Let’s go,” he said. With his daughter in his arms, they left the church.