Eighty-One
IT’S THE FIRST week of school in Cross Rivers, and I’m out for a walk a little past three in the afternoon after spending the morning in the fields with Charlie Hall, helping him hardly at all, when I see the school bus Taylor drives coming up the road.
I smile and wave and then put my thumb out.
She pulls over and opens the bus door for me, and I walk up the steps.
“You’re frankly a little old for my route,” she says.
It’s a week now since her vision returned, and she’s happily back to work.
“But you know what they’ve always said about me,” I tell her. “Young once, but immature forever.”
“Take a seat, big boy,” she says. “Got one last stop for the McGonagle sisters.”
I turn to see two girls, most definitely sisters, around eleven or twelve I’m guessing, sitting next to each other about halfway back.
It’s only a couple of miles to their house, but somehow between here and there Taylor manages to tell me what the girls’ favorite subjects are in school, what sports they play, who their homeroom teachers are at Cross Rivers Middle School, which one of them likes Taylor Swift, and even which boys in their classes they think are cute.
“You girls know who my friend is?” Taylor calls back to them.
The older sister, Mary Beth, raises a hand.
“He’s famous, is who.”
“Anything else?” Tay asks.
Her sister, Maura, says, “He’s Mr. 109.”
I smile at them. “Well, girls,” I say, “I am now giving you both A-pluses. You don’t even have to take the final.”
They giggle.
“They think I’m funny,” I say to Tay.
“So did I when I was their age.”
A half hour later, Tay and I are sitting at Scobee’s having coffee, when she asks the question she’s been waiting to ask.
“Any new leads on Burt’s murder?”
I tell her that sadly there are not, even though Helene Mayes and her people continue to grind away, and Vince and I continue to ask around, trying to find anybody who might have recognized the driver of the Ford Fairlane that day before it got to McDonald’s.
Then she wants to know more about the shooting death of Carlton Fish, and the evidence from the missing girls found at his home.
“At least they know who took them,” Tay says.
“Not necessarily,” I say. “Helene is of the belief that when things look too good to be true, they generally are, starting with Carlton being good and truly dead before she could talk to him again.”
“So Helene doesn’t think old Carlton is the one who took those girls?” Tay asks.
“She frankly thinks Roof and Lynyrd are the ones who took them, even with the victory lap they keep taking around town,” I say. “Kidnapped the girls, killed Carlton, planted that evidence.”
Taylor takes a sip of her coffee. “Can she prove any of that?”
“She cannot.”
“You think the girls are alive somewhere, Silas?”
“Helene is convinced that they are,” I say. “And that’s good enough for me.”
Taylor is looking out the window now. I’m looking at her in repose, hair pulled back into a ponytail and looking every bit the part-time college girl she is, everything that has happened to her lately more fit for a novel than a teaching textbook.
I think: She’s as tough as her husband was.
Maybe tougher.
It’s another thing I’m smart enough not to share with her as she continues to put her life back together, one small piece at a time.
“Tell me we’re going to find them,” she says, turning back to face me across the table.
I know we’re not talking about the girls any longer.
“We’re going to find the ones who shot him, yes,” I say quietly. “Unless the police find them first.”
Her eyes are locked on mine.
“I want it to be us,” she says. “That’s my dream.”
“About a nightmare.”
“Which won’t be over until we find them.”
“I think about the same thing, Tay,” I say. “All the damn time. But if there’s even a chance that it goes down that way, it needs to be me who takes them down. Or out. I would never let you anywhere near that kind of danger.”
She’s still staring at me, hard.
“Let me give you a quote from a friend of mine on that,” she says quietly. “Best friend I’ve ever had, actually, one currently letting me lean on those big shoulders of his more than I ever have.”
I wait.
“What have I got to lose?”
My only answer to that is to get up and walk over to the front register and pay our check. When I come back, I leave a stupidly big tip on the table.
But I briefly sit back down.
“I want to tell you something I haven’t told anybody else yet, not even EJ,” I say, “and I suppose now is as good a time as any.”
I take in a deep breath, then a second.
“I might be going away for a little bit.”
“Going where?” she says, her voice still low. “And to do what?”
“Play football.”
I can see the surprise on her face. In those pretty eyes, as serious as ever.
“Play football for who, Silas?”
“The Steelers,” I say.