Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
THE VARIABLES
Shelbi Wescott
Copyright © 2014 Shelbi Wescott
All rights reserved.
Books One and Two of this trilogy were dedicated to my amazing, creative, funny, intelligent, joyful, sensitive, and freaking fabulous children. So, I asked them who they wanted me to dedicate Book Three to, and here is what they said:
Elliott said:
Toni — “She’ll just love it! Because she loves books and reading and Virulent…”
Ike said:
“I choose mommy.”
I replied, “Mommy isn’t going to dedicate this book to herself.”
He thoughtfully responded, “Okay. Then…Mike.”
So this book is dedicated to:
Toni and Mike
PROLOGUE
25 Years before The Release
Blair walked forward, the plastic on the store-bought bouquet crinkling against her green and white polka-dotted dress. She was wearing a scratchy petticoat underneath like she was dressed for Easter Sunday service. Her polished saddle shoes collected dew, and blades of grass clung to the heel; her socks were folded perfectly against her thin ankles. At her mother’s command, she placed the collection of pink daisies, yellow mums, blue zinnias, and orange lilies at the base of the pearl white granite headstone.
Josephine Truman had labored over whether or not she wanted rose vines or ivy sculpted across the top of the cemetery marker (she went with ivy) and the exact color of the etching (deep gray against the light colored stone). Still, though, Josephine had often wondered if Kymberlin would have approved of the extravagance. Their oldest child: forever stuck at nineteen. Toothy, thick blonde hair, a light café au lait birthmark on her right arm—impetuous, sensitive, brilliant. Trusting. She was now relegated to a list of adjectives and memories. And even those were fading daily.
What did she smell like as a baby? Could anyone remember her giggle? Her first crush was a neighbor boy named James Striklin; she used to ask for a dog at least four times a week and whistle “Oh, Suzanna” while doing chores. She cried when she received a failing grade on her first high school essay. Her favorite present was a small metal microscope and a box of glass slides.
These were the things they would remember forever.
Blair ran back and tucked herself between her dad’s legs. She clung to him, grimly aware, even at three years old, that something was different about today. Huck reached down and mussed her hair, but Josephine tsked and smoothed the fine blonde strands back into place.
“The cameras—” she complained.
Huck bent to the ground and ran his hand across the grass. A chill ran up his spine and he drew in a quick breath. It had been nearly four years since they had buried his oldest daughter and yet the grass still remained a different shade of green in a perfect rectangle. Like a beacon announcing: this is where we dug a hole. This is where we put her in the ground. He hated those slight variants of color, hated how it helped him imagine her beneath him.
“To hell with the cameras,” he said to his wife.
Gordy kicked his toe against the earth and wandered away from his family. Huck opened his mouth as if he wanted to stop him, but Josephine waved him away.
“Let him go. Boys should wander. It’s their right.”
“How can you say that?” Huck asked. He reached down and pulled up Blair into him. He gave her a tight squeeze. “After everything...”
“We’ll lose him one way or another,” Josephine sighed, and she watched as her twenty-one year-old son disappeared out of sight behind a collection of trees and shrubs. “Girls you get to hold on to. It’s the boys you raise to lose.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Huck continued, but Josephine shot him a silencing glare. “Your negativity is an issue, Jo. Good thoughts. Positivity. Today, of all days, can you please hold yourself together?”
Their conversations had become clichéd and terse. They strung along words and phrases that vacillated between trying to help and trying to hurt when their own pain didn’t feel sharp enough.
Blair trembled against her father, her eyes shifting between her parents. “I’m cold,” the child said and Huck rubbed her arms over the growing goose bumps.
“They didn’t look at us,” Josephine whispered. “Once. When they filed out. But I saw that one...the woman, with the red streak in her hair, always taking notes. I saw her look at him and smile, a soft smile. Warm. A warm smile, Huck! To him! When Kymmy’s friends took the stand? That man...the big one, in the back? He rolled his eyes. I saw it. I saw it! They’ve made up their minds, Huck, and when you figure that out, it will be too late. Our girl is gone and there’s no justice in this world. None. Throw away your empty optimism and embrace the fact that we have lost...seeing your disappointment will be too hard to bear.”
Huck spun, the bright flowers in his periphery. “Shut up,” he spat. “Don’t you dare...don’t you dare poison this with your toxicity.”
Josephine took a bold step forward and stuck her finger in Huck’s face. Her arm was shaking. She opened and closed her mouth like a fish while she contemplated her response, her chest rising and falling in anger. Then she let her hand fall to her side and her shoulders slouch forward.
“She’s never coming back.”
“I can still want justice,” Huck said. He bent down and picked up his youngest child and held her in his arms. Blair rested her head on her father’s shoulder. She brought a hand up and ran it through his dark hair greying at the temples. His body had aged a decade in the past four years. From the moment Kymberlin’s body was discovered, naked in the woods, covered loosely with dried leaves, her skin and fingernails scrubbed clean, her eyes left open, Huck watched his own eyes set deeper in his sockets and deep lines etch in broad strokes across his forehead.