21. Ellie
— ? —
Ellie
I didn’t know it was gone.
That’s the thing I keep turning over as I drive, my hands tight on the wheel, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
Aunt June’s ring, the little gold band with the chip of emerald, the one she wore every day of her life, has been sitting in the jewelry box on my dresser for a year, and I haven’t opened that box since before Daphne came.
I packed the recipe box. I packed the quilt. I didn’t check the one drawer that mattered. I grabbed everything that mattered and I left everything else, and I never once thought to check if the ring was still there.
Sue has never called me at eight in the morning in her life. Sue waits for you to come in and then she tells you what’s what over the counter, and I drive the whole way into town with my aunt’s ring in my head and Sue’s voice in my ear, and I don’t slow down at the county road.
The diner is packed when I pull up.
Every booth, every stool, every inch of standing room along the walls. More people than Sue has chairs for, spilling out onto the sidewalk, craning their necks to see through the windows. Half the town must be here. Maybe more.
And standing near the door with her back to the wall and her arms crossed and her face white as bone is Daphne Long.
She’s trying to leave. I can see it in the way her eyes keep darting toward the door, the way her whole body is angled toward the exit. But there are too many people between her and the street, and none of them are moving to let her through.
Sue meets me at the door and takes my arm.
“Come on, honey. There’s things you need to hear.”
She leads me through the crowd, people parting to let us pass, to the window booth at the back. Mrs. Bellinger is already there, sitting straight-backed with her hands folded on the table. And beside her is Hollis, his hat on the seat beside him and his face set in hard lines.
And across from them, with red-rimmed eyes and shaking hands and a napkin twisted into shreds in her lap, is Jenna.
She won’t look at me. She’s staring at the table, her whole body vibrating with nerves, her breath coming in short little gasps. I think about the little girl in the picture on her mirror, and I sit down across from her and I don’t say anything, because I don’t know yet what I’m going to say.
“The jeweler kept the ring to appraise it,” Sue says, low enough that only our booth can hear.
“Recognized it the second she put it on the counter. He remembered it from when June used to wear it to church. He called me first thing. I called you. I called your husband and told him where his wife’s ring was and to come get it.
I called Hollis and told him to bring that girl in, because she turned up at his kitchen door the night of the storm crying and told his wife why, and this morning she said she’d say it to your face.
And then I called Jackson Long’s house and told the daughter the jeweler had her ring and was holding it for the Walkers, and if she wanted to argue that, she could come argue it with me.
” She looks at Daphne against the wall. “She came.”
She tips her head toward the door, and the bell jingles, and Jacob walks in.
He stopped at the jeweler on the way. I can see the small velvet box in his hand, dark blue, the box they keep for the good pieces.
He’s wearing clean clothes, finally, and he’s shaved, and he looks like he might have actually slept a few hours.
He doesn’t look at Daphne. Doesn’t look at anybody except me, and he crosses the room through the crowd that parts for him and stands at the end of the booth.
He stands at the end of the booth with his hands at his sides and the box in one of them and he doesn’t put a hand on my neck, and I notice that, and I notice that he wants to.
“Tell her,” Sue says to Jenna. “All of it. Right now.”
Jenna’s hands shake so hard the napkin tears in half.
“I’m so sorry.” Her voice is barely a whisper, rough from crying.
“I should have told you sooner. Days ago. Right after it happened. But Miss Long said.” She breaks off, swallowing hard.
“She said if I told anybody she’d make sure I never worked in this town again.
And I’ve got a little girl, and my mama’s sick, and I was scared.
” Tears spill down her cheeks. “I was so scared. I’m so sorry. ”
“What did she do?” I keep my voice steady. It takes everything I have. “Tell me what she did, Jenna.”
“The day of the storm.” Jenna takes a shaky breath and finally looks at me, her eyes red and swollen.
“She told me to tell you to wait in the house. To say Mr. Walker wanted you to stay inside, that somebody was coming to get you personally.” Her voice cracks.
“But that isn’t what he said. One of the hands called from the shed with his message, and the message was make sure Ellie gets to the shelter.
Ellie first. Those were his exact words.
I told Miss Long, and she said she’d handle it, and then she told me what to say to you instead. ”
The room is silent. Half the town, and not one of them is breathing.
“And at the shelter.” Jenna’s crying openly now, tears and snot running down her face, but she doesn’t stop.
“When Mr. Walker got there and asked where you were, I told him you were already inside. That I saw you go in with the others.” Her voice drops to a whisper.
“She was right behind me telling me to say it, and I said it to his face, and I knew you were still in the house. I knew, and I said it anyway.” She wipes her face with the shredded napkin.
“She wouldn’t go down without him. She made me sit with her in the equipment shed in the UTV with the siren going, twenty minutes, till she heard his truck. I sat there and I knew where you were.”
I can’t feel my hands on the edge of the table. I can’t feel anything except my heart pounding.
“And the birthday.” Barely audible now. “He called the house from the hospital. He called to tell you he wasn’t going to make it and why.
Miss Long answered. He told her to call you at Sue’s and give you the message.
” Jenna swipes at her face with her sleeve.
“She hung up the phone and she looked at me and she said ‘Don’t say anything to anybody.’ And then she poured herself a glass of his wine and sat down on the couch and waited for you to come home.
She texted me from that couch. I heard his truck in the drive and thirty seconds later my phone went. Two words. Say nothing.”
I look at Daphne.
She’s still by the door, but she’s not trying to leave anymore. She’s frozen, her face chalk-white, her eyes darting around the room for an escape that doesn’t exist. Half the town is staring at her and there’s nowhere to hide.
“That’s not true.” Her voice comes out high and thin. “Jenna’s lying. She’s covering for herself. She’s the one who-”
“Jenna’s not a liar.” Mrs. Bellinger stands up.
She’s not a tall woman, barely comes up to my shoulder, but right now she fills the room.
“And we know what you are, Daphne Long. We knew it when you were eight years old making other children cry on the playground. We knew it when you cheated your way through high school and let other girls take the blame. We knew it when you ran off to the city because you thought you were too good for the rest of us.”
“You don’t know anything about-”
“I know you came back because you failed.” Mrs. Bellinger’s voice is ice, and under the ice is a woman who has watched this town for sixty years and remembers everything.
“I know about the eviction notices that got forwarded to your daddy’s house.
Three of them. I know about the man who kept you for a year and cleaned out your bank account on his way out the door.
I know about the credit cards that get declined at the gas station every time you try to buy a pack of gum. ”
Daphne’s face goes from white to red and back to white again.
“You crawled home because you had nowhere else to go,” Mrs. Bellinger continues, stepping closer, her voice carrying through the silent room.
“And then you looked around at this town you always hated and you picked the one girl who never did a single thing to you, the one who had everything you wanted, and you decided to take it.”
“I didn’t.”
“You tried to kill her.” Mrs. Bellinger’s voice cracks across the room. “You told a maid to keep her in a house during a tornado warning. You told her husband she was safe when she wasn’t. You would have let her die under that roof if it meant you could have him.”
“I didn’t know the tornado would-”
“You knew enough.”
Jacob steps forward and the room shifts, everyone pulling back to give him space. He doesn’t look at Daphne. Not yet. He looks at me, and his eyes are dark and steady and full of what I can’t name.
“You were right,” he says. His voice is quiet, but the room is quiet enough that everybody hears it.
“In the kitchen, when you said she was doing it on purpose. On your birthday, when you tried to tell me. Every time you came to me with what felt off and I told you it was nothing.” He holds my eyes.
“I called you petty in front of her, in our own kitchen. I called you paranoid in our own foyer with the roof open. I’m sorry.
I should have believed you. I should have believed you from the first day. ”
He opens the velvet box. Takes out the ring, Aunt June’s ring, the one I’ve been looking at my whole life. He closes my fingers over it with both of his hands, his skin warm and rough against mine.
The part of me that’s been standing since the storm sits down.
“This doesn’t fix everything,” I say.
“I know.”
“This doesn’t make us okay.”
“I didn’t think it would.”
I close my hand around the ring. The gold is warm from his fingers. It’s the first thing he’s put in my hand in two months that I wanted, and he didn’t buy it, and it was mine already, and I think he knows that’s the point.
I stand up.
I put the ring in my pocket and I walk the length of the diner to where she’s pressed against the wall by the door, and the room lets me through, and I stop close enough that she has to look at me.
“You called me a charity case in a hallway once,” I say.
“Loud enough for everybody to hear. I cried in a bathroom stall about it and then I went to fourth period.” My voice doesn’t shake.
I waited seven years for it not to. “You were in my house for two months. You lied to my husband and you stole from my dead aunt and you left me in a house with a tornado coming, and you never got close. Not to him. Not to me. Not to one thing in this town. You want to know why you had to hear it from your daddy? Because nobody else thought of you.”
Her mouth opens. Nothing comes out of it. It’s the first time in my life I’ve seen Daphne Long with nothing to say, and I don’t wait for her to find it. I turn my back on her and walk back to the booth, and I don’t look at her again.
Jacob turns to Daphne.
“You took it when you packed.” His voice is flat. Dangerous in a way I’ve never heard before. “I heard you down that hall, throwing things around. I told myself I didn’t care what you took because I wanted you gone.” He steps toward her and she presses back against the wall. “I should have cared.”
“Jacob.”
“Get in the truck. I’m driving you to your father’s, and you’re going to tell him what you did.”
Daphne’s chin comes up. One last flash of defiance, one last attempt at the mask she’s worn her whole life. “You can’t make me do anything.”
“I’m not making you do anything.” He takes her arm, not rough, but not gentle either. Firm. Final. “If you don’t tell him, I will. Either way, he’s going to know exactly what his daughter is.”
Hollis stands up from the booth and puts his hat on and walks to the door ahead of them and holds it, the way he held the bunker door, with his whole body.
She goes. What else can she do? The whole town is watching. Every person she grew up with, every person she looked down on, every person she thought was beneath her, they’re all standing there with judgment in their eyes and she has nowhere left to run.
At the door she turns and looks at me one last time.
There’s nothing in her eyes but hate.