"I didn't mean -"
"Are you pregnant?"
She stared at him, feeling an ache in the pit of her stomach. For the first time since she had met him, Lena did not want to be alone, even if it meant being here on Ethan's terms.
"Are you going to answer me?"
She finally said, "No."
"You're lying."
"I'm not," she insisted, making things up as she went along. "I started my period after we talked. It must have been the stress."
"You said you were going to take care of it if you were."
"But I'm not."
He got off the bed and walked toward her. She felt herself relax until she saw his clenched fist coming up and slamming into her stomach. Lena doubled over from the pain, and he put his hand on her back, keeping her down, whispering, "If you ever 'take care of' anything that's mine, I'll kill you."
"Oh," she cried, trying to breathe.
"Get out of here," he said, shoving her back into the hall. He slammed the door so hard that the bulletin board he kept outside crashed to the ground.
Lena reached out for the wall, trying to straighten herself. Pain shot through her gut, and she felt tears well into her eyes.
Two students were at the front of the hall by the doorway, and she walked past them, trying to keep her spine as straight as possible. She maintained her composure until she was behind the dorm, hidden in the woods where no one could see her.
She leaned against a tree, letting herself sink to the ground. The dirt was wet underneath her, but she did not care.
Her cell phone chirped as it powered up. She waited for the signal, then dialed in a number. Tears streamed down her face as she listened to the ringing on the other end.
"Hello?"
Lena opened her mouth to speak, but she could only cry.
"Hello?" Hank said, then because probably no one else called her uncle in the middle of the afternoon balling like a child, he said, "Lee? Honey, is that you?"
Lena choked back a sob. "Hank," she finally managed. "I need you."
Epilogue
Sara sat on the hood of her car, looking out at the cemetery. Nothing had changed about Deacon White's funeral home in the last decade, despite the fact that a large conglomerate had bought them out. Even the rolling green hills looked the same, the white gravestones sticking up like broken teeth.
Still, Sara thought if she never saw another grave again it would be too soon. She had attended funerals all week, mourning the men and women who had been victimized by Sonny and Eric Kendall's rampage. Marilyn Edwards had somehow survived being shot in the bathroom of the station, and it looked like she would pull through. She was strong, but she was a minority. Most of the other victims had died.
"The town looks different," Jeffrey said, and maybe to him it did. He was such a different person from the man who had brought her here the last time.
"You sure you don't want to call Possum and Nell?"
He shook his head. "I don't think I'm ready for that." He paused, probably thinking about his son, wondering yet again what he could do about Jared. "I wonder if Robert knew."
"I figured it out," she reminded him.
"Robert wasn't sleeping with me," he pointed out. "Man, I wonder what he's up to."
"You could try to find out."
"If he wanted me to know where he is, he'd tell me," Jeffrey said. "I hope wherever he ended up, he's found some peace."
Sara tried to comfort him. "You did everything you could."
"I wonder if he ever talks to Jessie?"
"She's probably been out of prison a while now," Sara said. Much as she had predicted, Jessie had served only a handful of years in jail for killing a defenseless man. Her addiction to drugs and alcohol had been a mitigating factor, but Nell's opinion had been that Robert's sexuality was the evidence that most swayed the jury. Sara hoped that things would be different if the same crime happened today, but you could never tell with small towns.
"She's back at Herd's Gap," he provided. "I got a Christmas card from her the year she got out."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"We weren't exactly speaking then," he explained, and she guessed this had happened sometime around their divorce.
He said, "Lane Kendall died three days before they came after me."
"How did you find out?" Sara asked. Sonny Kendall had refused to talk about anything to do with his family.
"The sheriff told me."
"Since when did Reggie Ray start volunteering information to you?"
He turned around, giving her a half-smile. "You didn't hear about his oldest son, Rick?"
"What?"
"He's the drama teacher over at Comer High School."
Sara laughed so hard that she had to put her hand over her mouth. Even if Rick had a wife and twelve kids, Reggie would embrace the stereotype the same as if his son was a cross-dressing hairdresser.
"Just goes to show…" Jeffrey said, giving a half-shrug that she could tell hurt his shoulder. He was not used to wearing a sling and she practically had to force him into it every morning.
He said, "I wonder what happened to the letters Eric said he sent me?"
"Maybe she didn't mail them," Sara suggested.
"Sounds like something she'd do."
"Sonny won't even talk about that?"
"No," Jeffrey said. "The military wants him when the courts are through. He was AWOL since Lane died. They probably would have overlooked it if he hadn't…"
Sara stared at the cemetery. "I forgot all about them," she confessed. "As upset as I was when we left town, I haven't given them a thought in all these years."
"Maybe I should have told Lane the truth," he said. "God, she hated me."
"She wouldn't have believed you," Sara pointed out, the same conclusion they had come to all those years ago.
Lane Kendall's life was fueled by hatred and mistrust. Nothing Jeffrey said would have changed that. Still, at the time, Sara had not completely agreed that Hoss should be allowed to take his secrets to his grave. Jeffrey's arguments had been persuasive. Sitting down with Reggie Ray and talking through Hoss's confession would have been like rolling a boulder up the mountain. Absent any hard evidence, no one would take Jeffrey at his word, especially since Robert was not there to back him up.
Sara had always believed that the real reason Jeffrey kept silent was because he could not bring himself to speak against Hoss when the other man was not around to defend himself. In the end, it was easier for him to continue to take the blame than to stir up more trouble with the truth. Jeffrey did not live in Sylacauga anymore, and there was no need to fight that battle. The people who mattered to him knew what had really happened, and the people who didn't went about living their lives much the same as before. Reggie Ray's report said that the sheriff had been cleaning his gun when it went off, and no one had questioned him. Julia Kendall's murder was still listed as unsolved.
Jeffrey tugged at the sling. "Damn, I hate this thing."
"You need to wear it," she said, making her voice stern.
"It doesn't hurt."
She brushed her fingers along the nape of his neck. "I need you to be able to use that arm."
"That right?" he said, giving her a shadow of his usual sly smile.
She wanted him okay so much that she tried to keep up the teasing. "That hand."
"You like that hand?"
"I like them both," she said.
"Do you remember," he began, "the first time you told me you loved me?"
"Umm…" She pretended to think, but she knew.
"When we got back to Grant after being here," he said. "Remember?"
"I was unpacking all my beach stuff," she said, "and I looked around and you weren't there."
"Right."
"And when you came back I asked you what you were doing, and you said -"