Tessa, present day
Charlie and I are playing an old game on the front porch swing. Rain drills steadily on the roof.
We’re pretending to be tiny dolls rocking to and fro. A little girl is pushing our swing with her finger. She’s locked up her big yellow cat, so he can’t paw at us. She’s baking a tiny plastic cake for us in the oven, and she’s made all the beds and arranged all the tiny dishes in the cabinet. She’s used a toothbrush to sweep the carpet. There are no monsters in the closet, because there are no closets.
For just this moment, everything is perfect. Nothing can get to us. We are in the dollhouse.
My daughter’s head is warm in my lap. She lies sideways on the front porch swing with me, her knees bent because she isn’t three years old anymore with room to spare. I’ve covered her bare legs with my jacket for when the wind shifts and spits at us between the brick columns.
She wiggles into a more comfortable position and turns her face up to me. Her violet eyes are rimmed with black eyeliner, which makes them even bigger and lovelier, but so much more cynical. Two silver studs are punched in each ear, one slightly smaller than the other.
The eye makeup can be washed off; the extra holes will close up. I try not to get too worked up about these things. She’d just point out the tattoo on my right hip, a butterfly among the scars.
When Charlie’s braces come off in three months, that’s when I’ll worry. “Mom, you seemed a little crazy last night at Miss Effie’s. Like, I know you were worried, but still. I’d never seen you like that. Is it because you’re afraid you can’t stop that guy from getting executed?”
“Partly.” I fiddle with a lock of her hair, and she allows it. “Charlie, we’ve never talked much about what happened to me.”
“You never want to.” A statement, not a reproach.
“I’ve just never wanted you to be a part of it.” Never wanted her innocence disturbed with more than the straight facts, and a sanitized version of those.
“So you still think about… those girls?” Tentative. “I dreamed about one of them once. Merry. She had a cool name. Someone taped a People magazine story to my bike a while back. It was about her mom. She said she wants a front row seat to Terrell Goodwin’s execution. Have you decided for sure he didn’t do it?”
I will myself to stay put instead of leaping up, to keep my foot pushing firmly and steadily against the concrete floor. A stranger left Charlie a gift. A Susan crept from my head into hers. Worse, she is just telling me about this now. I don’t want to think that Charlie carries these secrets around because she is afraid to bring them up, and yet I know that is exactly why.
“Yes,” I say. “Of course I think about those girls. About how they died, and who hurts for them. Especially right now. The forensic scientist I told you about has extracted DNA from the girls’ bones. It’s a long shot, and involves a lot of luck, but if their families are still looking, maybe we can find out who they are.”
“You would still be looking for me. You would never give up.”
I blink back tears. “Never, never. Honey, do you mind telling me what your dream was about? The one with Su-Merry?”
“We took a walk on this island. She never said anything. It was nice. Not scary.”
Thank you, Merry.
“So you’re sure Terrell’s innocent?” she asks again.
“Yes, I’m pretty sure. The physical evidence isn’t there.” I leave out the seventeen-year trail of black-eyed Susans. The voices in my head, amplifying my doubts.
“Whoever the real killer is, he’s not coming back, Mom.” She says it earnestly. “He was smart enough not to get caught the first time. He isn’t going to risk it. And if he was going to do anything, it would have happened years ago. Maybe he’s in prison for another crime. I’ve heard that happens all the time.”
My daughter’s clearly given this a lot of thought. How could I be so stupid to think her teen-age brain wasn’t as wired as Lydia’s and mine? I don’t tell her one of Jo’s shocking statistics-that of 300 active serial killers roaming the United States, most of them will never be caught.
“Listen to me, Charlie. More than anything, I want to give you a normal life. I don’t want you to live in fear, but I need you to be very careful right now, until we know what’s happening to… Terrell. My job is to protect you, and you need to give in and let me for a while.”
Charlie pushes herself up. “We’re, like, more normal than half the people I know. Melissa Childers’s mom drove the cheerleaders around one Saturday night and they stuck raw chicken inside mailboxes of these girls they don’t like. Like, her mom’s mug shot is on Facebook. And Anna’s mom didn’t get sick the other night when she was supposed to pick us up. She was drunk. Anna says she puts vodka in that Big Gulp Diet Coke in her car cup holder. Kids know things, Mom. You can’t hide stuff.” A rare, unfettered stream of information.
“I’m not going to ride with Anna’s mom anymore,” Charlie announces.
The swing. Hypnotic. Keep talking.
Her phone starts to blare a song I don’t recognize. Instantly, Charlie stretches for it.
“Can I spend the night with Marley?”
She’s already edging off the swing, away from me.
“I love this place. Nothing like Saturday night at the Flying Fish.” Jo is lifting a giant frosty schooner of beer to her lips. She’s sporting old Levi’s and a red Oklahoma Sooners T-shirt and the gold DNA charm at her neck that goes with everything.
Bill has just returned from the counter with a basket of fried oysters and hush puppies for us to share. He’s loose, in old jeans, more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him. His shirt is untucked. He needs a haircut. He scoots across a giant schooner of St. Pauli Girl for me. His fingers linger longer than they need to, which I decide to chalk up to the beer. This schooner is going to make my drive home a little tricky.
“One size fits all.” He grins and slips in beside Jo on the opposite side of the booth, right below a crowded bulletin board with a photograph of a guy brandishing a fish on steroids.
“Is that for real?” I point at the sea monster, about as long as Charlie.
“It’s the Liar’s Wall.” Bill pops a hush puppy in his mouth without turning around. “I’ve been pushing for one of those in the DA’s office for years.”
“That’s really not fair,” Jo says, frowning. “For example, for at least ten years, Dallas County has been a machine at exonerating more people through DNA than just about anyone else.” An echo of Charlie.
“Ah, Jo, you’re always getting mired in optimism,” Bill says. “If I get Terrell a new hearing, then we’ll talk.”
The restaurant’s picnic tables and booths are loud and packed. A line snakes by us on the way to the counter, a cowboyand baseball-hat crowd with a Texas fetish for crispy crusts on everything. The state’s collective orgasm occurs at the state fair, where even Nutella, Twinkies, and butter get dunked in the fryers.
Almost as soon as Charlie bounced out the door for her sleepover, Bill had texted, asking if I’d join the two of them here for a beer. He didn’t say why.
So I hesitated, but not for long. It was either that or a sleepover with the Susans and a bottle of merlot while the thunder rumbled and lightning transformed every tree and bush into a human silhouette. I yanked my rainy day frizz into a ponytail, threw on an old jean jacket, and shot over here in my Jeep, windshield wipers slashing all the way.
Bill and Jo were at least one beer in and engaged in a heated exchange about the Sooners’ quarterback when I showed up looking like I’d been making out under a waterfall. Jo tossed me the roll of paper towels on the table to dry my head and wipe off a mascara smudge she pointed out under my left eye. The conversation drifted not toward Terrell but to one of Jo’s new cases, the bones of a three-or four-year-old girl that had been discovered in a field in Ohio, and then to me.