Chapter 49 Frances
Frances
Then
Frances and Milly huddled together, their arms around each other’s shoulders as they stumbled down the darkened forest path, neither of them leading the way.
Briars scratched at Frances’s legs, and Milly’s foot caught a root, pitching her off balance.
Frances steadied the both of them before they could crash to the ground. They didn’t slow their steps.
Milly wept openly, her gut-wrenching sobs chasing them through the woods.
She hardly ever cried. It shocked Frances at first, but mostly left her wondering why she herself wasn’t more upset. Why wasn’t she terrified? Or heartbroken? Or even, honestly, that worried?
If anyone should’ve been crying, it should’ve been her, right?
Shane’s hands had once roamed her body as he whispered how much he loved her, told her how smart she was and how special.
Tonight, those same hands had found their way to her throat, cutting off her oxygen.
He’d have killed her, and then her sister.
Frances had understood this the moment she registered the wild panic in his eyes.
Panicked animals were always violent. Why should he be any different?
When Frances was little, she’d stumbled across an injured indigo bunting and scooped up the little songbird in her dainty, seven-year-old palms. She’d wondered what the pitiful thing would look like without its shiny blue feathers, but the moment she began plucking them, the injured bird fought like a hawk, its beady eyes gone wild.
It scratched and pecked and beat its wings, but Frances hadn’t dropped it until Milly ran outside and yelled for Aunt Hattie to come help, assuming Frances was trying to save the injured bird.
Aunt Hattie-May had lined a shoebox with pine straw and grass, making a temporary home for the bunting while she and Milly tried to nurse it back to health.
Frances had been silently disappointed at not finishing her experiment, but somehow, even at seven, understood she couldn’t tell Milly what she’d really been doing.
That’s how Shane had looked tonight, his eyes wild and his limbs flailing like a bird caught by a girl who didn’t care if she hurt him. Only he’d been the one doing the hurting.
Frances had been humiliated when his fingers caught her throat.
Humiliated that she’d fallen for it. Because in that moment when the flash went off on Milly’s camera—the moment Shane’s response had been to hurt her—all the lies had fallen away, and Frances understood the situation for what it was.
He hadn’t loved her. Hadn’t thought she was wise beyond her years or would do great things. He hadn’t seen her for who he said she truly was, an old soul. Someone brilliant.
Lies. It had all been lies.
Lies that she’d been all too happy to believe.
He’d never seen her as anything but desperate. A little off, just like some of the older kids whispered when she walked by.
But Frances had gotten the last word, hadn’t she?
The path seemed so much longer than it ever had before.
Just when Frances was sure they’d gotten lost, it opened at the end of the abandoned logging road, where the vehicles were parked.
Their truck and Shane’s four-door family sedan.
Jesus. Men who were unhappy and planning on leaving their families to start something new didn’t drive around with decals on their back windows of stick-figure families. Daddy. Mommy. Son.
Love had blinded her. No more. The scales had fallen from her eyes, as Aunt Hattie would say.
Milly walked ahead, toward the truck, breath quickening, panic coming off her in waves.
Frances grinned at her sister’s back. She loved Milly so much. Milly had saved her. Had killed for her. Or, at least Milly thought she had, anyway, and that was good enough for Frances. She would never let anything come between them ever again. No matter what.
Frances put her hands firmly on her sister’s shoulders. “Breathe, Milly. Like this.” She inhaled deeply and out slowly.
When her sister had calmed down, Frances asked, “What’s wrong?”
Milly chomped on her bottom lip and shook her head, a fresh batch of tears sparkling in her eyes. “The camera,” she repeated. “I must’ve left it. I…I have to go back.”
“No.” Frances shook her head. “It’s okay. I’ll get it. You go ahead and start the Rust Bucket. The key’s in the cupholder.”
Milly opened her mouth to object, but Frances stopped her. “I’ll be back in two seconds. Promise.”
She darted off.
Frances couldn’t remember her older sister ever taking orders from her, but she couldn’t ever remember her sister this upset, either. She’d always suspected Milly wasn’t as hard as she pretended to be, that the stony, strong face she gave to the rest of the world was fake.
Milly had hit Shane in the head once, twice, then froze. Frances had tried to yell at her to keep swinging, but she’d been unable to get the words out. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because Milly got a dazed look on her face and kind of disappeared into herself.
The decision occupied only a split second, but that second seemed to reach for eternity.
Frances looked from Milly to Shane, who cradled the side of his bleeding head, yelling obscenities.
It was her chance—maybe her only chance—so she’d taken it.
Frances wrenched the shovel from her sister’s hands and swung, landing a third blow.
The shovel’s blade crunched against Shane’s temple.
He fell. She swung again.
Again.
Then again.
His blood sprayed shockingly red, like the time Aunt Ruth had dropped a jar of canned tomatoes and they’d exploded over the kitchen cabinets.
Except this wasn’t tomatoes. This was the stuff that gave Shane life.
God, had she ever felt so alive? So important? Milly had been the judge, her sentence given with those first swings, but it was Frances who was the executioner.
Once Shane stopped moving, Frances tossed the shovel to the ground and shook her sister.
She’d read about going into shock in her health textbook last year and was starting to wonder how she’d get Milly out of the forest when her sister came to.
It was like flipping through static radio stations in their ancient truck before landing on something clear.
Milly blinked. She puked.
She looked at Shane. At the shovel. At her sister.
Frances watched as Milly mentally put the puzzle together, then remained silent when Milly broke into tears and began apologizing.
They fell into each other’s arms and crumpled to the ground.
Milly thought she’d been the one to kill Shane.
The secret part of Frances warned her not to correct her sister now.
The evening light had faded from scalding pink to cool almost-purple by the time Frances made it back to the clearing where they’d left Shane’s body.
A bright moon was already rising, pouring toward the forest floor from a cloudless sky that would later be shot through with stars.
Frances didn’t worry about the encroaching night, even though she’d dropped her flashlight when Shane had kissed her.
Frances wasn’t afraid of the dark. If you asked her, and she was honest, she’d admit she wasn’t truly afraid of anything. She didn’t really understand fear.
Frances marched toward where they’d left the body. It didn’t take long to find the camera. It was in the same place where it had landed when Milly had tossed it to deliver the first blow.
Shane, however, was not in the same place.
He’d rolled to his belly. Frances thought she heard a whistling intake of breath over the crickets chirping and the katydids singing their night song. She picked up the camera and stuffed it into the pocket of her athletic shorts, then walked to where Shane lay.
She watched as his back seemed to rise and fall, but it was probably a trick of the shadows.
Then he gasped.
“Help me.” It was raspy and sounded wet.
Frances squatted next to him and placed her palm on what was once a handsome cheek, but now was pulpy like the potted meat Aunt Hattie scraped onto saltines for a midnight snack.
Beneath the slick of his blood, his skin was still warm. What was the right thing to do?
Once, when Frances was a girl, the day her mama had taken their daddy’s gun and changed the trajectory of their lives forever, her sister had sat next to her on the bench outside the principal’s office at St. Mary’s Academy in Lundinville, Alabama.
Milly had put her bony arm around her and whispered in her ear.
“Frances, I promise everything will be okay.”
Milly hadn’t known it, but it had been a lie. Nothing from that moment forward had ever been okay.
Frances petted Shane’s slick hair.
Frances stood and cocked back her foot but changed her mind. It had taken her months to save up enough buy her Converse. Right now, they could still be salvaged. But if she kicked Shane’s potted-meat head? There’d be no hope.
Instead, with one hand, she squeezed his nostrils closed, and with the other, tightly covered his swollen lips. She stayed there until her legs burned and her arms felt heavy. He twitched only a little. When Frances stood back up, he was dead.
Good.
Carefully, she rolled him onto his back.
Then.
Frances smiled as she walked away.