Chapter 13
“How come you know my grandma?” Caroline asked.
Dr. Burdett had turned up around six with a large Crock-Pot full of homemade chili and cornbread, and now they sat around the table eating as if they were a normal family who did this all the time. At least the food was good, and having a guest meant there were no awkward silences or snipes.
“Johnny and I met when we were about your age,” Grandma answered for him. “Back before cell phones and the internet. We met at a church dance and became friends.”
“We became more than friends, Evelyn. Don’t start changing the past to be all respectable.
By the time we were sixteen we were pretty sweet on each other, as they called it back then.
True love.” He winked at Caroline. “We were going to get married. But then your grandfather came to town and stole my Evelyn away.”
“I’m not sure it was quite like that,” Grandma said. “Was it?” She frowned, not trusting her memory.
Grandpa George had died long before Anna was born, when Mom was still a kid herself.
A quick, polite heart attack during a board meeting.
From what she’d been told, he was kind but God-fearing like Grandma, a serious man from a wealthy family.
He’d come out here for a summer after college, on his father’s instructions, to learn how a hard day’s manual work really felt before joining the family’s finance business, and went back to Boston in the fall with Grandma in tow.
Twelve years later he was dead. The money Grandma had inherited she’d looked after wisely, and after Anna’s dad disappeared in the night with no chance of alimony, Grandma might have made Mom suffer for it, but she also made sure that there was food on the table and the bills were paid.
The last of the money went on this return to Harper’s Creek and the big old ramshackle house they were all now trapped in.
Mom hadn’t wanted to move, but they couldn’t afford the city anymore, and she could get a nursing job out here that paid as much with far fewer expenses; that’s what she’d said.
And living with Grandma would be rent-free.
They could build some savings. Anna felt the weight of guilt with that.
Mom hadn’t worked for six months in the aftermath of the thing and had been losing at playing catch-up ever since.
“But we sure had some fun back then when we were young, didn’t we, Evelyn?”
“Not too much fun, Johnny Burdett. I was always a good girl and you know it.”
A good girl. Of course Grandma had been. Wouldn’t bring trouble on herself like Anna had. What would Grandma think about Lila and Bonnie? Had they brought trouble on themselves? She was definitely a well, what did she think was going to happen, dressed like that? kind of woman.
“You never married, Johnny?” Mom added more chili to her plate. “Or wanted to go to the city yourself?”
“Never met the right girl at the right time.” His eyes twinkled as he leaned on the table and sipped his beer.
“And I couldn’t leave Harper’s Creek. It’s funny how your roots settle into a place.
Mine go down too deep here to ever pull up.
Always have. I love the wide-open spaces of nature, the sound of the corn rustling in the wind in the good years, seeing the tired joy on farmers’ faces after a hard day’s work doing something that matters.
Hearing the livestock. Being able to nod hello to at least five or six folks whenever I go down Main Street.
The way people help each other out in the lean years.
Like now. I didn’t come from a farming family, my father was a foreman at the old meat-processing plant out on Schweitzer—”
“With my daddy,” Grandma added. “Your grandfather worked in the offices in accounts. Harper’s Creek Meats. I’d take his lunch in there some days when he forgot. I hated the smell of it. Still can’t stand that fresh-meat smell. A lot of slaughter.”
“It was a lot of slaughter that kept this town alive for a lot of years.” Johnny nodded.
“The plant’s closed down now, and like I said, we weren’t farming people, but you live out here long enough and the land gets into your blood and your blood gets into the land.
City folks don’t understand it. That respect.
Anyway, as soon as I finished medical school, I came back.
I’ve been the doctor here ever since. Over fifty years. ”
“Wow.” Caroline’s eyes widened, fifty years being too great a number for her to truly comprehend. “You must know everybody.”
“I sure do. A lot of the farmers were born at home and my face was the first they ever saw. Quite a thing, huh? And Sheriff Adams? When he was six years old, he fell out of a tree stealing apples from old Mrs. Cartwright. He landed so badly he shattered his leg. The doctors at the hospital said it might be better to take it off at the knee as he’d never be able to walk on it again.
We said no thank you to that, and it was a long journey back, but he had the mettle for it.
I worked with him every day for nearly a year, and now you’d never know.
Walks like any other fella. I delivered the youngest of his kids too, when his wife misjudged her contractions.
And his deputy, Todd? Nearly died of whooping cough.
Has terrible asthma. But look at him now. Grown into a fine young man.”
“You make it all sound so perfect,” Anna said. “No place is like that. Bad things happen everywhere.”
“For sure, they do. When Gene Ardale murdered his wife and kid and killed himself, that shook the town. He had MS, and it had gotten real bad and his medication wasn’t good for the mind.
I knew he was down, but I hadn’t realized he was in such a bad way.
I should have. I’ll see that sight when I go to sleep for the rest of my days. ”
“Come on, this isn’t dinner conversation,” Mom cut in. “I prefer to hear about the good times.”
“And then Lila and Bonnie.” Anna talked over her mother, who kicked her under the table, but she ignored it, keeping her eyes on the doctor. “I saw some junkie putting up one of those posters on the church today. He thinks the killer’s still out there.”
“Ah, so it is Jamie Carlson. The sheriff thought it might be him doing it. Poor kid.” He saw Anna’s confused expression.
“Jamie was Lila’s boyfriend. Local rich kid.
Believe it not, star football player then.
Before the drugs got him. He lives out in the Cornerstone Motel now.
It’s closed down, but his parents own it.
He was the last person to see Lila alive, and he was the first suspect.
Turned out he had a shoulder injury, so there was no way he could have carried her or strangled her.
He never got over her death, though, as you can tell.
He’s a good kid underneath it all. A real shame what’s happened to him.
Death has ripples and waves. Poor Jamie drowned in one. ”
“It’s not a man, it’s a monster, and Anna said Farmhand three times in the mirror and he’s going to come for her next and now I can’t sleep properly.” Caroline’s exclamation was so sudden and fast, a burst of rushed fear, that they all stopped eating and stared at her.
“For god’s sake, Anna,” Mom muttered. “Why would you do that? You know what she’s like.”
“I was proving a point that it was just a bullshit story and nothing to be scared of.”
“Language.” Grandma sat up straighter, embarrassed. “Not in company. I’m sorry, Johnny, she does know better.”
Anna gritted her teeth in anger. Everyone was always apologizing for her. She was a grown woman and could curse if she wanted.
“Nothing to apologize for.” Dr. Burdett leaned forward and smiled kindly at Caroline. “And your sister is right. There is nothing to be scared of. Ghosts are…” He lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “Bullcrap.”
“Johnny!”
Anna smiled then, she couldn’t help it, and Dr. Burdett smiled back.
“You’re the spitting image of Evelyn when she was your age, do you know that? The absolute spit.”
Anna wasn’t sure who was more surprised, Grandma or herself.
Grandma must have hated hearing it. The prodigal granddaughter, so loose, so free, and look where that got her.
Grandma on the other hand was wound so tight she was in danger of snapping.
Always had been. Never seen in jeans, hair always curled.
Looked the same for twenty years. Old before her time.
She and Grandma had nothing in common except they both had black holes in their heads where some memories should be.
“Maybe,” Mom said, looking from one to the other. “I guess I’ve never seen it before.”
Uncomfortable under everyone’s gaze, Anna gathered up the plates and took them through to the kitchen, washing them under the dripping faucet before looking out the window as the sun sank, drenching the horizon in red, the fading light bleeding across the fields, making her feel a pang of something she couldn’t explain.
As if the land was calling to her with its strange kind of awful beauty.
She watched until the reds turned deep into crimson and then black, and once she was sure the others had forgotten her, she crept up to her room. It was only eight thirty, but she’d had enough of people for one day. She just wanted to lie in the quiet and sleep.