Katie looked at her red-eyed, and smiled. “Audrey, why are you here?”
“What do you mean?”
“How did you find me?”
“Gloria Walsh.”
“Gloria Walsh,” said Katie. “Ginny broke her promise. She told her mother, and her mother told your father.”
Audrey’s heart slipped. She shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Audrey, but she did.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he came to see me.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, a few days later. I was home by myself. I saw that sheriff’s car and just about pissed my pants.”
“What did he say?”
“He wanted to know did I have anything I wanted to talk to him about, and I said no, not that I was aware of. And then he stood there for a long time just turning his hat in his hands.”
Audrey waited. Her heart pounding.
“He said, ‘Miss Goss, if you don’t tell me I can’t take any kind of action.’ I said, ‘What kind of action?’ and he said, ‘Legal action,’ and that was the end of it. I said, ‘I’m sorry, Sheriff, but I just don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And then he got back into his car and drove off.”
Audrey sat staring at the toy horses. They all seemed about to turn and run, to stampede.
Katie took a breath and sighed. “He knew, Audrey. I’m sorry, but he did.”
“But,” said Audrey. She swallowed, with difficulty, some rawness in her throat. “He didn’t know enough. If you’d told him more, if you’d come forward, then maybe…” She couldn’t say it. She could hardly bear to have it in her mind.
“Then maybe what? Maybe Holly Burke might be alive?” Katie looked at her with her red eyes. She shook her head. “No, ma’am. Nobody knows what happened that night, least of all you. A deputy sheriff runs over some girl in the park, throws her body in the river, then tries to pin it on some poor schmuck who just happens to be driving by? I never would’ve believed it even back then, when I knew what he was. And now, ten years later, Danny Young starts waving around a piece of cloth and telling this story and—what, I’m supposed to corroborate that or something? Just hop up suddenly and start yelling rape? Against a sheriff?”
“But there were others,” Audrey said. “Gloria said there were other girls.”
“Oh, really? Where are they? Why haven’t they come forward? Why aren’t they responsible? Why didn’t they say something before it happened to me?”
“They’re scared too.”
“Scared?” She spat a piff of air from her lips. “You think I’m scared? I’m taking care of one hundred old people, including my mother who doesn’t even know my name, and I’m raising my four-year-old daughter on my own. I left scared behind a long time ago.”
Audrey was silent. Staring at the toy horses on the table. When she looked up again Katie was watching her, but her eyes had gone away somewhere, and in a quieter voice she said, “He came to see me again, your dad. After they found Holly Burke.”
Audrey said nothing. Waiting.
“He wanted to know if I’d seen Danny,” Katie said. “I hadn’t. He wanted to know if Danny had called me. He hadn’t. He wanted to look at my cell phone just to be sure, and I said, ‘Don’t you need a warrant for that?’ and he said he hoped he wouldn’t need one and I said he would.”
Audrey thought about that: ten years ago… Even back then he wouldn’t have needed the phone itself; he could’ve just subpoenaed the records, same as a landline.
She said as much to Katie and Katie nodded.
“Yes, I know that now. Back then I just, you know…” She began tapping with her forefinger at something in her opposite hand.
Audrey looked up from the empty hand and into her eyes. “You deleted the call history?”
“I did,” Katie said, and said no more. As if this said everything. Then finally she added: “Danny never called me, but I called him. I called him that night and he was in the park. Chasing his dog, he said.”
Audrey’s heart was beating in her temple again. “Why did you delete the call history?”
Katie didn’t answer. She sat staring blankly at Audrey.
“Because you believed him,” Audrey said. “Or because you didn’t.”
“It didn’t matter what I believed.”
“It might have to him. It might have to my father.”
Katie shook her head. “After everything that happened…” She took a breath and let it out. “I just couldn’t do it, Audrey. I just couldn’t be a part of it. Then they let him go, and he never tried to call me again, and I never called him. We never spoke again.”
Audrey sat looking into Katie’s eyes.
“What?” said Katie.
“I just,” Audrey began, and stopped.
“You just what.”
“I just wish you’d given my father a chance, that’s all. About Moran.”
Katie reached and tucked Audrey’s fallen hair behind her ear, then returned her hand to her lap. “Sweetie, it wasn’t about that. If I’d told him, it would’ve meant telling everyone. I was eighteen years old. I just wanted to live my life. I didn’t want to be Holly Burke.”
47
“HEY, BUDDY. BUDDY…”
The shoulder twitched under the blanket and there was a low groan and Danny shook him once more, “Buddy, come on, wake up,” and at last Marky rolled over and opened his eyes and lay blinking up at him in the dark.
“Danny… what are you doing?”
“I’m waking you up. It’s like waking up a dead man.”
“What time is it?”
“Keep your voice down. It’s two o’clock.”
“Danny tomorrow is Monday.”
“It’s already Monday.”
“Danny…”
“Just—hey, Marky, come on. I gotta talk to you for a second.” He’d been sitting there awhile in the chair and he could see his brother well by the light from the farmlight where it shone through the curtains. Marky dug his knuckles into his eyes and then got himself up on his elbows. He swallowed thickly and opened his mouth to yawn.
“Here, drink some water. Your breath could strip the paint off a car.”
“Your breath could strip the paint off a car Danny.”
Marky drank the water and smacked his lips and handed back the glass. He piled his two pillows against the headboard and drew himself up into a sitting position. He wore a dark T-shirt and his biceps were white as milk. Danny poked the near one with his finger. When they were teenagers they’d had barbells in the garage—Marky so weirdly, so effortlessly strong that Danny had begun working out in the gym at school to catch up.
“You been working out, buddy?”
“No Danny just working.”
“They got you lifting cars down there, or what?”
“No we got the lifts for that.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
Danny glanced around the room, at the dark shapes of the desk and the dresser, the gleam of the picture frames on the desk, pictures mostly from long ago when they were boys and their father was still alive. Missing was the picture of the two married couples, the Youngs and the Burkes, standing before a storefront with their arms all around each other and grinning, that picture lost somehow in the move from the old house to the farmhouse, or so he’d thought until, home for Christmas two years ago and digging in Marky’s dresser for wool socks, he’d found it at the bottom of the drawer.
“You like working at the garage?” he asked Marky.
“Sure I do but not as much as the Plumbing Supply though.”
“Why not?”
“Cause you’re not there Danny.”
“Yeah. Jeff’s there, though.”
“Jeff’s there.”
“Jeff’s been a good friend, hasn’t he.”