“Dale, this will only make things worse for you. Kill me now and you’ll likely be facing the electric chair,” Jude said, loud, surprised at the confidence in her voice, wishing it would travel to her knees and stop their trembling. She took another step back, wincing at the crunch of leaves.
“They’ll never find you. I’ve learned a lot in my life. You’ll just be another cunt who ran off with her boyfriend.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Jude said, taking another step back. “So, there’s the first hole in your story.”
He laughed, and she cringed as the ember moved closer.
“Why did you kill your sister, Dale?” She took another step back, gentle, muffling the sound with her raised voice.
The cigarette moved up, another plume of smoke rose. Jude realized he couldn’t see her. The sound of her voice was giving him her location.
“Because I wanted to,” he spat, and his cool tone shifted. He was angry now, and not remorseful as she had hoped.
She turned and ran, zigzagging through the forest, hands in front of her in case she smacked into a tree. Her ears were a tunnel of sound: twigs and leaves crunching, the night songs, and somewhere Dale thundering through the forest behind her. She tried to circle back to the farmhouse but had lost her direction. The woods stretched on and on, she had to be getting close. Her lungs compressed, her thighs burned, and every second she expected to feel his hands on her back.
In front of her, a shape stood out in the darkness. She skidded to a stop staring at that horrible little cabin. She’d get trapped if she went inside so she ducked low, creeping to the edge of the cabin and pressing her back against the outer wall, listening.
Her breath filled the night, ragged, loud and though she strained to hear him, the blood in her ears muffled other sounds.
Breathe, breathe, breathe. She held the flashlight in her hand ready to strike out at anything that moved.
A branch snapped, too close, and she pushed harder against the wall wishing she could disappear into the crumbling logs. Something shifted above her and she stood, ready to step away from the cabin, but a hand shot from the dark window and snatched her hair.
“Ouch,” she screamed as Dale’s callused fingers plunged into her hair and wrenched her closer to the cabin. She swung the flashlight toward his arm and hit his hand.
He grunted, and she felt the flashlight tossed away. It thudded on the forest floor, and then he had one hand in her hair, the other on her arm, hauling her upward. It hurt. Searing pain raced along her skull where his hands tore at her hair. Her body scraped over the cabin’s exterior and she felt the splintered wood dig through her shirt into her flesh. She beat against his hands, his arms, but his grip was unyielding.
“No, no, no,” she wailed as her body slid up over the windowsill and he yanked her fully into the cabin. She dropped to the floor, and he kicked her in the head. The impact sent her sprawling to the side, knocking into the wall. Black spots exploded behind her eyes. On all fours, dizzy, and bleeding from the mouth, Jude hunkered lower, covering her head with her hands as he kicked her a second time. The hard toe of his boot connected with her wrist and pain streaked to her shoulder.
He squatted next to her, flipping her onto her back. She slapped at him feebly with her good hand, but he wrapped his large hands around her throat and squeezed. Pulling her knees up hard, she tried to connect with his side, a soft spot maybe, or his head, but her legs bounced off him.
Fire ravaged her throat as her lungs sought air and found only the tightening of his hands.
Chapter 32
September 20, 1965
Sophia
The house looked the same. Set far back from the road, hidden by a line of pine trees six feet taller than when she’d last seen them. The moment she slipped across the road into her overgrown yard, she fell to the ground and wept.
She had not expected lights blazing, her children running through the yard, chased by Jack in his bathrobe as he played Swamp Man - one of their favorite childhood games. Her children were no longer children and her husband was dead, but still the emptiness of her home, the abandoned air around it, made her sob until her ribs hurt. She rolled onto her back, the long grass tickling her arms and neck and stared into the night sky. Not a cloud in sight, but Sophia knew it would storm that night. The currents of electricity buzzed on the air, the hairs on her arms erect as if sensing the oncoming tempest.
She found the back door locked, but when Sophia lifted the planter on the patio, she found their old familiar key, a little silhouette of rust surrounded it. She slid it into the lock and a satisfying metallic click greeted her ears.
“Oh, thank God,” she sighed, pressing her head against the door and pushing it open.
She should have practiced caution but didn’t. She walked brazenly into her house, steadying her hand on the wall. The darkness did not unnerve her. She slid her hands along the counter opening the junk drawer to the left of the sink and fumbling out a candle and pack of matches. The match lit on her first try, and the candle cast a warm glow over the room.
The coat rack still held Jack’s wool coat, a gift from his father for his twenty-first birthday. Next to that hung Jude’s rain coat, bright pink, and then a tiny little red coat, Hattie’s Christmas coat. Sophia touched each one, leaned her face into the fabric and inhaled their scent. Shoes lay haphazard on the floor, a broken pencil next to a pair of Peter’s dirty sneakers. She moved from the mudroom into the kitchen trailing her hand over the yellow counter top, rivulets of dust floating in the slants of moon glow through the window. A little glass kitten sat on the ledge, a gift from Gram Ruth to Jude as a girl. Its tiny black eyes followed Sophia as she gazed around the kitchen, moving with heavy, stiff steps to keep from collapsing onto the wood floor in tears.
The sitting room was identical to her last memory of it, though on that night she’d sat on the sofa with Jack, their hands clasped watching the flames in the fireplace and not talking about what was to come. The next day, Ruth would whisk Sophia away to Andrew’s isolated hunting cabin. Jack and the kids would follow in a week.
They were faking Sophia’s death. It was a drastic choice, one that terrified Sophia, but Jack believed it was the only way. According to an investigator Ruth hired, the Bell’s were out for blood. Sophia would rot in prison if they didn’t run.
That night, they sat alone, the kids at Gram Ruth’s, the house creaking in her familiar way.
“Cozy in here,” Jack said, pulling off his t-shirt, so he sat bare-chested on the sofa.
Sophia smiled, tears pulling at the backs of her eyes.
“Just in case we never see it again,” she murmured. “I wanted one last fire.”
He pulled her against him.
“In Colorado, we’ll have a stone fireplace two stories high. I’ll build you a fire every night.”
“I love you, Jackson,” she told him, nuzzling her head beneath his.
“Forever,” he’d said, kissing the halo of her blonde hair as it danced in the firelight.
Ruth’s black car arrived early the next morning. It reminded Sophia of a hearse. Sophia kissed Jack goodbye, her stomach filled with wasps instead of butterflies.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” he whispered into her ear.
It had been a joke, but now, as she surveyed their abandoned home, she realized it had been true. She had died that day, and he had died as well, they just hadn’t known it yet.