Chapter Thirty-Three
At Diana’s words, Jessica recoils, dropping her cigarette. Red-faced and choking, she spins around and grabs at the chain-link fence. The reflex of motherhood takes over, and Diana is at Jessica’s side, tracing circles on her back, a soothing gesture that always works for Duncan and Phoebe.
Through Jessica’s denim jacket, Diana makes out the curves of her rib cage, the unevenness of her breath, her fragility.
She rubs Jessica’s back until her hand goes numb.
Right before she stops, Jessica, as if sensing a rearrangement of Diana’s sympathies, steps away.
Diana’s arm falls, her tendons and nerves sparking with distress.
She swings her limb, and the blood rushes down, setting her fingers afire.
Jessica plucks another cigarette from the pack and lights it with trembling hands. “Yes. There’s more.”
Holding tight to her purse straps, Diana returns to the plastic crate. “Go ahead.”
“That conversation with my parents took forever. I could not get them off the phone.” Jessica exhales off to the side, away from Diana.
“When I met Tom outside the barn, he didn’t say a word.
He reached for my hand and pulled me into the woods.
He ran so fast I could barely keep up. For some reason, this made me laugh.
That’s one of my clearest memories of that night: running through the woods with Tom and not being able to stop laughing.
I was happy. Happy to be with him, to be in the woods, to have a whole night ahead of us.
“We stopped in the clearing next to the pond, and Tom fell to the ground. I thought he’d been laughing on our run to the pond, too, but really, he was crying.
Maybe because I had been on the phone with my parents, I thought Tom was upset about his mom.
I met her once when she came by the farm to drop off his lunch,” Jessica says, tapping ash onto the ground.
“I knew he was nervous about leaving her behind when he went to college, but his reaction seemed extreme for that.”
Diana hates that Jessica met Tom’s mother and she never did, that her children never did either.
Jessica remembers the pond was loud that night: Mosquitoes buzzed in her ears, and frogs croaked from their lily pads along the shoreline. The humidity was sticky and oppressive, and Jessica was considering taking off her sneakers to dip her feet into the water when Tom finally spoke.
“He was mumbling, and I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I tried to comfort him, but he pushed me away. Eventually, I heard him say, ‘It happened so fast. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t.’ I asked him what happened, and it all came out.”
Tom had been in the barn, finishing off a cigarette, when he heard a noise. It was a small sound—the clink of metal on metal—but it was wrong for the barn at that time of night.
The noise was followed by a voice calling his name. Tom turned around. In the low light, he couldn’t see Carson at first.
“Carson shouldn’t have been there, and he looked weird, with one shoulder larger than the other,” Jessica says.
“Tom stepped deeper into the barn and reached out into the shadows. When he felt leather, he understood Carson had William and Grace’s saddles thrown over his shoulder.
Carson wasn’t used to carrying tack. His grip was wrong, and the weight forced him off kilter.
“Tom remembered an earlier theft from the barn and how upset William had been. He guessed this wasn’t the first time Carson had stolen from my aunt and uncle, and he was mad.
He told Carson to put everything back. Carson wouldn’t, though.
Tom reached for the saddles and tugged. Carson shoved Tom, and Tom fell.
He crashed into a post and hurt his knee. ”
A memory comes to Diana through a stab of sorrow: Tom coaching Duncan on how to defend himself when he was picked on by another kid during the fourth grade. “Never turn away from a bully,” Tom said. “Try reasoning with him first, and if that doesn’t work, defend yourself in any way possible.”
Jessica continues, “Carson tried to distract Tom. He said he had weed in his car and a case of beer. He knew of a party they could be at in fifteen minutes. Tom said no, and he got up from the ground and hit Carson while he was still talking. Even though they were friends, Tom had a limit of how much he could take from Carson, and learning he’d been stealing from people, especially Grace and William, was too much.
“Carson hit him back, and then Tom swung again, but he lost any advantage he had when Carson put him into a headlock so tight Tom thought he’d suffocate.
He broke free by stomping on Carson’s foot.
Carson asked him to forget about all of this, but Tom didn’t let him finish.
He’d fallen next to William’s tools. He picked up the shovel and swung.
Tom said that when the shovel smashed into Carson’s head it made a hollow thunk, like he’d kicked a pumpkin. ”
Diana wraps her hands around her face and presses against her mouth, willing herself not to retch. She wants to respond, to say something, anything, but she can’t find words, she can’t form a sentence.
“I was,” Jessica says, “well, I don’t know what I was.
Stunned? Of course. Scared of Tom? Never.
He was provoked. He tried to protect William and Grace.
Things got out of hand.” Jessica is adamant, her voice getting louder with each word.
“You have to hear me on this: Carson attacked him. Tom never would have started a fight with anyone. He definitely wouldn’t have with Carson. They were friends.”
Jessica doesn’t know how long she and Tom stayed at the side of the pond.
“I told him we needed to call the paramedics. The police, too. We couldn’t leave Carson in the barn.
There was a chance he was still alive. Tom didn’t agree at first. I got through to him when I pointed out that if we didn’t do anything, William or Grace would find Carson. He couldn’t do that to them.”
They walked back through the woods, and Diana imagines it was so quiet the sticks and branches cracking under their feet sounded like thunder. They held hands, she thinks, Tom keeping Jessica close.
As they approached the farm, Jessica explained, a heaviness coated the air and the smell of smoke was everywhere.
Tom took off, leaving her alone in the dark.
“I caught up with him at the tree line. I got there as William ran into the barn. I couldn’t believe he went in.
The fire was so hot. And the noise. It was terrifying. ”
Jessica kept looking at the door, waiting for William to return to safety.
Instead, two horses galloped out, past where Grace stood in the yard.
Jessica remembers Grace turning to watch them as Tom slipped into the trees.
“He was talking, but I couldn’t hear him over the fire, so I got closer.
‘No, no, no,’ he kept saying. ‘No, no, no.’”
William exited the barn and fell at Grace’s feet.
Tom gripped Jessica’s arm, his fingers digging into her skin.
“I blinked and Grace was gone, into the fire. I screamed at Tom to let me go. I wanted to open the side door to the barn and help. By then I’d figured out they were trying to save the horses. ”
Diana’s hands fall into her lap. The harsh sun of the alley makes shimmering diamonds appear at the corner of her vision, and she wonders whether she’s about to faint.
She’d welcome unconsciousness, a chance to forget all this.
She closes her eyes and waits for a reprieve from Jessica’s truth-telling, but it doesn’t come.
“I tried to get away from him,” Jessica says, “but Tom was bigger than me, and I couldn’t break free.
It wasn’t until William came out carrying Grace that Tom released me and ran.
Even though I wanted to help them, I couldn’t seem to make any decision other than to follow him to his car.
He’d left it along the road, about a quarter mile from the farm.
Tom drove us to the high school and parked in a far corner, under a tree.
He left the car running, and I turned on the interior light so we could see each other while we talked.
That’s when I noticed his torn jeans and the blood splattered across his shirt. ”
Diana opens her eyes. “Why didn’t you get help?” Her throat aches from holding in the screams she needs to release.
“At first, we were both freaking out,” Jessica says.
She is crying again, her cigarette abandoned on the ground, the tip still burning.
“There was a lot of yelling. I wanted to go back to the farm. Tom kept banging the dashboard, saying, ‘It’s my fault, it’s my fault.
’” Jessica’s strangled voice reminds Diana of the howl of a dying animal, its leg caught in a cold steel trap.
“After an hour or two, Tom said he had a plan. The fire offered him a chance to avoid taking responsibility for Carson. He didn’t have to tell the police he’d killed him.
No one needed to know the truth. Except for me, and all I had to do was stay quiet. ”
“No,” Diana says. She tries to visualize this younger version of her husband who made such a terrible decision, but she’s afraid if she does, her Tom will be lost forever.
“If we were asked, we’d say we were at his house watching television. His mom would cover for us.”
“She could have gotten into serious trouble for lying like that.”
“You have kids. Wouldn’t you do the same for them? I may not be the best mother, but I’d lie for Ava. I’d do anything for her.”
Diana, too, would do anything for Duncan and Phoebe. She has more in common with Jessica than she first understood.