“Really?” Amanda pretended to be surprised.
Will tried to let her know he wasn’t a complete idiot. There was no way a slide had been in police custody for thirty-seven years. “Archival evidence.”
“Archival evidence?” She had an infuriating smile on her lips, and he knew she was back in full dissembling mode before she even opened her mouth. “Never heard of it.”
“Cindy Murray,” he continued. Will’s caseworker, the woman who’d helped him get off the streets and into college.
“Murray?” Amanda drew out the name, finally shaking her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Captain Scott at the jail—”
She chuckled. “Remind me to tell you stories about the old jail sometime. It was awful before Holly cleaned it up.”
“Rachel Foster.” Amanda still called on the federal judge to sign off on her warrants. “I know you’re friends with her.”
“Rachel and I came up together. She worked dispatch, the night shift, so she could go to law school during the day.”
“She expunged my record when I graduated from college.”
Amanda would only say, “Rachel’s a good gal.”
Will couldn’t help himself. He had to find at least one crack. “I’ve never known you to go on another GBI recruiting trip. Not once in fifteen years. Just the one where you got me to sign up.”
“Well.” She adjusted the sling again. “No one really enjoys those trips. You talk to fifty people and half of them are illiterate.” She smiled at him. “Not that that’s a bad thing.”
“Did I get it from him?” He couldn’t look at her. Amanda knew about his dyslexia. “My problem?”
“No.” She spoke with certainty. “You saw his Bible. He was constantly reading.”
“That girl—Suzanna Ford. She saw—”
“She saw a tall man. That’s all. You’re nothing like him, Will. I knew James Ulster. I talked to him. I looked him in the eye. There’s not a drop of your father inside of you. It’s all Lucy. Everything about you comes straight from your mother. You have to believe me on that, at least. I wouldn’t waste my time on you otherwise.”
Will clasped his hands in front of him. The grass was lush beneath his feet. His mother would be fifty-six years old now. Maybe she would’ve been an academic. Her textbooks were well read. Words were underlined. Asterisks were scribbled in the margins. She might have been an engineer or mathematician or a feminist scholar.
He had spent so many hours with Angie talking about the what-ifs. What if Lucy had lived? What if Angie’s mom hadn’t taken that overdose? What if they hadn’t grown up in the home? What if they’d never met each other?
But his mother had died. So had Angie’s, though it’d taken longer. They’d both grown up in the home. They’d been connected to each other for nearly three decades. Their anger was like a magnet between them. Sometimes it pulled them together. Most times it pushed them apart.
Will had seen what it took to hold on to resentment that long. He read it in Kitty Treadwell’s emaciated body. He saw it in the arrogant tilt of his uncle Henry’s chin. And sometimes, when she didn’t think anyone was looking, he saw it flash in Amanda’s eyes.
Will couldn’t live like that. He couldn’t let the first eighteen years of his life ruin the next sixty.
He reached into his pocket. The metal of the wedding ring was cold against his fingers. He held it out to Amanda. “I want you to take this.”
“Well.” She pretended to be embarrassed as she took the ring. “This is rather sudden. Our age difference is—”
Will tried to take it back, but she wrapped her hand around his.
Amanda Wagner was not an affectionate woman. She rarely touched Will in kindness. She punched his arm. She smacked his shoulder. She’d even once pulled back the safety plate on a nail gun and feigned surprise when the nail shot through the webbing between his thumb and index finger.
But now, she held on to his hand. Her fingers were small, her wrist impossibly tiny. There was clear polish on her fingernails. Age spots dotted the back of her hand. Her shoulder leaned into his. Will gently returned the pressure. Her grip tightened for just a second before she let go.
She said, “You’re a good boy, Wilbur.”
Will didn’t trust himself to respond without his voice cracking. Normally, he would’ve made a joke about crying like a girl, but the phrase was a contradiction to the woman sitting beside him.
Amanda said, “We should go before Kitty turns the hose on us.” She dropped the ring into her purse as she stood from the bench. Instead of hefting the bag onto her shoulder, she gripped it in one hand.
Will offered, “Do you want me to carry that?”
“For God’s sakes, I’m not an invalid.” She pulled the bag onto her shoulder, as if to prove a point. “Button your collar. You weren’t raised in a barn. And don’t think we’ve had our last conversation on the subject of your hair.”
Will buttoned his collar as he walked with her to her car.
Kitty Treadwell stood at the open front door, watching them carefully. A cigarette hung from her lips. Smoke curled up into her eye.
She said, “I paid the property taxes.”
Amanda was reaching for the car door. She stopped.
“On the Techwood house.” Kitty walked down the stairs. She stopped a few feet from the car. “I paid the taxes. Worth every penny. It chapped Henry’s ass when James sold it.”
“Mine, too,” Amanda admitted. “Four million dollars is quite a profit.”
“Money’s the only thing Henry understands.” Kitty took the cigarette out of her mouth. “I thought it would go to Wilbur.”
“He doesn’t want it,” Amanda said.
“No.” Kitty smiled at Will. It gave him a cold feeling inside. “You turned out better than all of us. How on earth did that happen?”
Will couldn’t answer her. He couldn’t even bear to look at her.
Amanda asked, “Hank met Ulster at the soup kitchen?”
Kitty reluctantly turned back to Amanda. “He was looking for Lucy. He wanted to make sure she wouldn’t lay claim to their parents’ estate. It must’ve seemed like a match made in heaven.” She held the cigarette to her lips. “They struck a grand bargain. Hank gave him Lucy, no strings attached. In return, Ulster got me off the dope. Though I don’t recommend his methods.” She smiled as if this was all a joke. “I suppose James thought Lucy was a good trade. A fallen angel with no parents or family to make a stink.” She huffed out some smoke. “And besides, Mary wasn’t really doing it for him anymore.”
“Why did he kill her?”
“Mary?” Kitty shrugged. “She couldn’t be broken. Something about being pregnant changes you. At least it seems that way from the outside. Commendable, but look where it got her.”
“And Jane Delray?”
“Oh, they fought constantly about Jane. Henry wanted her out of the way. She wouldn’t shut up. She kept telling anyone who would listen about Lucy, about Mary, about me. I suppose I was lucky I didn’t meet the same end. I was constantly throwing around my father’s name.” She stuttered a laugh. “As if anyone in the ghetto gave a rat’s ass who my father was.”
“They fought about it?” Amanda echoed.
“James didn’t care who that little slut talked to. He got quite high and mighty about it, unsurprisingly. He was doing the Lord’s work, after all. He wasn’t a hired killer. God was going to protect him.”
Amanda made the obvious connection. “You were kept in the house with Lucy.”
“Yes. I was there the whole time.” She seemed to be waiting for Amanda to ask another question. “The entire time.”