“No, Mrs. Eagan. They found Jason at the back of our farm, over where the new houses are being built. Your house is over on Conway Road.”
“I lost that house long ago. After all that craziness, after the police started questioning me when Jason went away and they needed someone to blame, I lost my job. I lost my house. I got sick. I lost everything…” For a moment, her eyes seemed to cloud over, and her lips shook slightly.
“Where have you been living, then, all these years?” Lorna asked.
“Here and there, moved around for a long time. I guess I should’a gone home to my family, but I always thought Jason would come back, maybe Melinda, too. Then, a few years ago, when I got really sick, your mother let me move into that cottage out there near the grapes.” Billie glanced up and saw the look of surprise on Lorna’s face. “Oh, I guess that was something else you didn’t know.”
“No. No, she never mentioned it.”
“Maybe she thought you wouldn’t have approved,” Billie said softly.
“It was her property, her cottage. She didn’t need my approval.”
“Well, by then, you were over there near Pittsburgh and setting up your business-she was real proud of that, that you had your own business, but I’m sure you knew that-and your sister and brother had both moved away. I guess maybe she got a little lonely sometimes.”
Billie smiled for the first time since Lorna entered the room. “Or maybe it was that goodness of hers, coming through. She was such a kind soul.”
Lorna’s throat tightened unexpectedly.
“Anyway, I just wanted you to know how much I miss her. Not only the things she did for me, you know? I miss talking to her, miss having her company.” When Billie looked at Lorna this time, there were tears in the corners of her eyes. “I never knew anyone else like her.”
“Neither did I,” Lorna whispered.
The door opened, and Brad stuck his head in.
“The public defender is here to see Mrs. Eagan, Lorna. You about finished?”
“Oh. Sure. I’ll just be a minute.” Lorna nodded, then turned back to Billie after Brad closed the door. “Mrs. Eagan, I have to ask you something.”
Billie looked up, waiting.
“Did you kill Melinda?”
“No. No, I did not.” The answer was quick, and sure. “I do not know what happened to that child, I swear on her life.”
“What about Jason? Did you kill Jason?”
“No.” Billie shook her head firmly. “I thought he’d run away. I wouldn’t have blamed him for that.”
She looked Lorna directly in the eyes and told her bluntly, “I do not deny that I was harder on my kids than I should have been. There were times when I hurt them bad, and I will have to face God with that. He knows how sorry I am for any pain I caused them when I had them. I guess maybe that’s why He took them away from me. Mary Beth always said she didn’t believe that God did things like that, but still. If you don’t take care of what you have, you lose it, that’s what my momma always used to say.” She cleared her throat. “I think about the times I hurt them, and the times I had them so scared, they could hardly breathe. I was a different person back then. I drank too much and I worked too much and I slept too little. I had two jobs and I still had no money and no life. I was fifteen years old when I had Jason, twenty when Melinda was born. And their father left me here with them when she was just a year old. I was left high and dry with two small kids, barely old enough to legally buy a drink.”
Billie took a deep breath.
“I was a lousy mother, I’d be the first to admit that. But I didn’t kill my kids.” She paused, then added, “I swear it on Mary Beth’s memory. I did not kill my kids.”
Brad opened the door again, and this time stepped into the room. “Lorna, I have to ask you to-”
“Yes, yes. I’m leaving.” Lorna stood up. “May I come back to see you?”
“I don’t know where they’re going to take me from here,” Billie told her.
“I’ll find you.” Lorna turned to leave, then looked back over her shoulder. “Thank you. For… for all the things you said.”
Billie nodded, then turned her face to the door, where her lawyer stood. Lorna walked past him into the hallway.
“You were in there a long time,” Chief Walker noted as she passed. “What did you talk about?”
“A lot of things.” Lorna paused, then said, “You don’t really believe she killed Jason, do you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Did she tell you she didn’t?”
“Yes, she told me she didn’t. Didn’t she tell you the same?”
He waved his hand. “Everyone says they didn’t do whatever it is they’ve been arrested for. I never expect anyone to admit to anything anymore.”
The phone was ringing in his office, and he went in to answer it. A second later, he closed the door behind him.
“She didn’t kill him,” Lorna said to Brad when they reached the lobby.
“She convinced you of that?”
“What evidence do you have?”
He raised his eyebrows almost to his hairline. “I’m sorry, I thought that was business school you went to, not law school.”
“Is that your way of saying it’s none of my business?” she asked softly, trying not to sound as if she was challenging him, which she had no right to do.
“We know that she was physical with her kids. She didn’t deny that she’d been the cause of those broken bones he’d had. We know that she did think he killed his sister, and that she had questioned him about it on more than one occasion. She told me that. So what would stop her from trying to beat it out of him? She’d beaten him before, she said she did. Maybe that last time, things just got out of hand. I think it was an accident, I’ll give you that. I don’t think she intended to kill him, but I think she killed him, all the same.”
She started to say something, and he cut her off.
“The last time they questioned her, years ago, they felt very strongly, my dad and the DA did, that she had a hand in whatever it was that had happened to her kids. Back then, they didn’t even have a body. Now we do. It shows signs of abuse that she admits to. The night that Jason Eagan disappeared, he’d been drinking with a couple of guys out at White Marsh Park. He was dropped off at three in the morning and was seen walking up his front steps. No one has reported having seen him since that moment.”
“That doesn’t mean his mother killed him.”
“She admits she got into an argument with him that night after he came home. She admits everything, except the actual murder.” Brad folded his arms over his chest. “It’s good enough for the DA, Lorna. I’d think it would be good enough for you, especially since Melinda was your friend.”
“I don’t know, Brad. I just don’t see it.”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
His radio squawked and he responded.
“Accident out there at the intersection.” He started to the door. “It’s gonna cause a major traffic jam. You might want to take one of the back roads home.”