Chapter Ninety-Three. Melanie
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
MELANIE
The weather is absolutely gorgeous, the way it is in Texas in the spring, that itty-bitty sweet spot between the chill of winter and the unrelenting, sweat sop of summer.
Just a finger snap of blue sky and sunshine so warm you just have to tip your face to it, a breeze on your neck and wildflowers like paint strokes.
The kind of day it seems God makes just for the sake of showing off.
I’m floating the river with Kennedy Claire and the girls.
Keep your chin up, Mama always says, whenever things are bad, you never know what trick God has up His sleeve.
And she’s right, because there is no dang way I could have ever imagined this right here.
This peace on the river, this quiet hum of my mind, the sounds of the water trickling over rocks, Kennedy Claire chattering away about the benefits of Pilates, the girls laughing up ahead, even Olivia.
It makes my heart so full to hear her laughter.
The girls all room together at the University of Texas now.
I’m glad they do, so they can keep an eye on each other.
Their hair has all grown out into cute little bobs.
Hannah likes to wear it half up these days, two buns on top of her head.
The girls staying close means Kennedy Claire and I have been spending more and more time together, another surprise.
They finally closed both Izzy’s and Cat’s murder cases officially, and, though everyone was already convinced he’d done it, that final bit of paperwork has let the whole town exhale a collective sigh of relief.
“That Abel Sherman,” Kennedy Claire says, shaking her head.
She slides her sunglasses up to look at me.
“I mean what he did to you? I just get sick thinking about it.” Then she reaches her hand out across the water and takes mine.
“You know, I can’t help but feel a little responsible.
Though we never could have known, of course. ”
“Of course,” I say, patting the top of her hand. “We were kids.”
“Yeah, well that man was grown.” Kennedy Claire clucks her tongue. “A true monster.”
The fact that she feels only a little responsible scrapes in my belly, but I lay my head back on the tube and breathe in the gentle air all the same. I’m learning to let things go, to give people grace.
After I visited with Mrs. Whitmore that day, after I dropped the girls off to help with stage decorations, I made another pit stop. I climbed the rickety wooden steps and knocked on the door, and I could hear a shuffling behind it.
Don’t you shoot through this dang door, Abel Sherman. You hear me?
He let me in, making sure to put on a show of fussing and grumbling, but he ate one of my muffins with a cup of black coffee, all the same.
You taking your medicine? I asked, checking the pill bottles in his kitchen cabinet.
Nine months before, he’d come into the hospital complaining of muscle twitches and weakness in his right arm, he’d fallen down in his yard and had a mess of a time just trying to get back up to standing. He thought maybe he’d had a stroke.
An ALS diagnosis is a lengthy and complex process, and the last one you’d ever want to get.
I made the mistake of popping in on one of his doctor’s visits, and he pulled me aside and told me directly—he was dead set on keeping it from his family.
And I understood. They sent him home with a whole slew of medications to manage symptoms and slow the progression.
Why in the hell would I do that? So I can live four months longer not even able to chew my own damn food? I’d sooner die where I stand.
Whenever I paid him a visit, I attempted to tidy up, cleaning around the sink and throwing out his empty whiskey bottles, which never seemed to stop piling up.
He was always fighting that demon in the bottle, and each time I came around, he was shaking a little worse.
I tipped one of the pills into my hand and carried it over to him.
At least take this one then. It won’t make you live longer, but it’ll slow the functional decline.
He huffed but took the pill, swallowing it with a glug of coffee.
I sat on his sofa, knees pinned together and hands folded in my lap. Abel, I said. If I had a problem, you’d help me, wouldn’t you? I mean, if I had a problem that I needed to go away, you know? You could help with that sort of thing, couldn’t you?
He took a long drink of coffee before he looked at me.
He’d once been a handsome man. Now his eyes drooped in the corners, like an old basset hound, making his whole face look sad.
Still, in that moment, he was the same man, saying the same thing he’d told me twenty-five years ago.
Your business ain’t none of mine, just like my business ain’t none of yours.
Back at The Hollow, back when we were just kids and Kennedy Claire was only “a little responsible” for me ending up in that cave, shivering cold, day turning into night, a shadow fell over the entrance to the cave, and Abel Sherman found me, wearing nothing but what the good God gave me.
Good Lord, he’d said then, taking off his hunting jacket and draping it over me. Are you hurt?
I shook my head without looking up at him, clutching the jacket tight around me.
Well, then, let’s go. And he turned and walked right back out.
I followed him to his truck, and he drove me home.
As he idled at the curb of my house, I could see the warm lights in the windows behind the curtains.
Could see the shape of my father and mother in the kitchen, and my belly felt so sick with shame.
I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone knowing what Iggy had done to me, stripping me, humiliating me. Please don’t tell anyone, I told Abel.
Darling, he said, your business ain’t none of mine, just like my business ain’t none of yours.
Abel didn’t want nothing from you. And he didn’t owe you nothing in return. That’s how he lived his life. A balance of the scales. So when I asked him for help, he didn’t want to be involved, and I had to accept that.
He was a good man, after all.
Kennedy Claire sips from a canned sugar-free chardonnay. “I know Cat and I had our differences, but she deserved better than that. You were a good friend to her. She was lucky to have you in her life. I hope you know that.”
As we float below a giant cypress that arches out over the river, its roots stretched out like fingers drinking up the water, I spot a cardinal landing in its branches, red as a valentine heart against the hot blue-white of the sky.
Mama always says that cardinals are loved ones paying you a visit from the other side.
I hope it’s Cat, and I hope she feels light as a bird now.
“Well, we had our ups and downs too,” I admit, “but I really loved her.”
Before the snowstorm came in, my phone rang, Cat’s name lighting the screen, and, just like I’d done so many times before, I answered right away.
I was standing at the kitchen sink, scrubbing crusted pasta sauce off my good Dutch oven, but I set the heavy pot down as soon as I heard her voice, felt a cool wire pull my spine tight, despite the steam still rising up from the running water.
She was crying on the other end of the line, words indecipherable.
I was already stepping into my sneakers, and pulling my purse onto my shoulder, by the time I said, I’ll be right there.
Cat answered the door as soon as she heard my boots on the porch.
I saw the champagne bottle set out on the island first.
No, I said, my heart a thing stepped on too many times. What did you go and do? But the bottle was still corked, and for that moment, I felt such a pulse of relief.
Mel, she said. I can’t do this anymore.
I know. I laid my palm along her cheek, and she reached up to put her hand over mine.
But you were right to call me. You’ve been good.
You hear me. You’ve been good. Don’t undo all that.
The look in her eyes was so miserable, so helpless, pleading, pleading, always pleading.
Always needing more. Here I was, playing nurse for her again, propping her up, talking her down from the ledge, and I’d keep on doing it.
I would need to keep on doing it. Forever.
I gave her a hopeful smile, then turned to tackle the kitchen, to make Cat a cup of tea, wash the dishes, take out the trash.
But as soon as I’d stepped away, Cat said, No, Mel. I mean I can’t keep this secret inside anymore. It’s eating me alive.
When I told Cat about Iggy stealing my clothes at the river, about the hours I spent naked in The Hollow, she’d said, That bitch is gonna pay.
I’d been afraid to tell her, afraid that if anyone knew, the first thing they’d think would be, Why the hell were you stupid enough to fall for their trap?
But Cat brushed past that and hadn’t blamed me at all, validating the fact that I had done nothing wrong.
Only that I had been wronged. Deeply. I thought she was just blustering about making Iggy pay.
But then one day, while we were working on pageant sets, she presented me with a plan: Iggy’s allergic to tree nuts, did you know that?
Together, the afternoon before the pageant, we rubbed almond oil onto the lipstick Iggy kept in her assigned vanity.
The one in the dressing area curtained off at the back of the stage.
Her face will get all puffy right when she steps out in front of that audience, Cat explained. She’ll be humiliated.
Just like she humiliated me.