The Price of Redemption

Ruth stood in Megan’s doorway, listening to the gentle breathing, and then she headed out to the garage, to her office. Three years ago she’d moved her mother into Dustin’s office, and Dustin’s office out here. Back then, for a solid week, while her mother got to know Megan, Ruth had gone through each and every one of Dustin’s notes, looking for information about the Santellises and writing everything in notebooks. She knew they were the murderers. Later, convinced there was nothing left to discover, she’d packed up his files and stored them in the crawl-space sized attic. She didn’t need them anymore; she’d started taking her own notes on the Santellises.

Now was as good a time as any to open up the files that had been gathering dust for almost a year. It looked as though Rosa needed her, but this time it seemed that Rosa’s plight had something to do with Dustin.

The last time she’d written anything down had been when she testified for Eric Santellis. Her testimony helped release him. She’d thrown up afterward.

Her mother opened the door that separated the garage from the laundry room. “Please don’t tell me it’s starting again.”

“What?”

“You, the notebooks, the search for answers, this obsession with the Santellises and the town of Broken Bones.” Carolyn gripped the door so hard, Ruth thought maybe her mother was about to faint.

“I need to know what happened.”

“But Ruthie, some things are better left alone.”

“Like what? The fact that someone moved Dustin’s body, put it in a shed, next to another body that somehow wound up there, and now the local authorities think they can blame Rosa? I have six weeks of leave. I intend to find the murderer this time.”

Her mother shook her head and slowly closed the door. How many times had Ruth seen the exact same move whenever her father was acting out? Mom had retreat down to a fine art. Not so Ruth. First, she pulled out the maps Dustin had kept of the area. He probably knew as much about the area as anyone. Some of Dustin’s earliest maps were yellow-and-brown with age and looked as if a ten-year-old had made a pencil drawing. They showed the old mines, a small town, long-eradicated tunnels and only two roads. The latest map was a few years old and was not only in color but also glossy. There were quite a few more roads.

How had Dustin’s body gotten to that shed? In the trunk of somebody’s car? In a bag? From which direction? Closing her eyes, she could see the outskirts of Broken Bones as it was almost two decades ago when she lived there. It was a brown, ugly town that smelled like hot cement and sweat. A sign at the city limits boasted a population of just over five hundred.

She spent two years of her life in Broken Bones. Years that centered around a drab house, a lonely school, a bar, a sheriff’s office and a grocery store—in that order. The house was as brown and ugly as the town. She’d attended Thomas T. Mallery Elementary School for third and fourth grades. Her one-and-only friend had been Ricky Mason. Elizabeth Winters, Doc’s wife, had been her third-grade teacher. When Ruth’s mother worked late cleaning for the Winters family, Ruth saw what a family meal looked like. It’s was Ruth’s first introduction to the prayer before meals. Doc had always said it, and Mrs. Winters’d said “Amen.”

Pictures, of the Winterses’ grown children and their children, had lined their walls. A time line of family antiques filled the shelves. Ruth knew even in fourth grade that she wanted what the Winters had.

What she didn’t want was what she had. Namely, a father who couldn’t stay out of trouble and who preferred Axel’s Bar to home. “Just going to town,” Darryl George would tell his wife many an afternoon. “I’ll pick up some milk.” Sometimes, as if to prove his story, he’d take Ruth with him. A few times, he even remembered the milk. More often than not, he forgot about his daughter sitting there, outside the bar, waiting, on the sidewalk. Sometimes she still felt like that lonely, lost girl, picking herself up off the sideway and walking home, believing in the ghosts of Broken Bones the whole way.

The jail was another establishment Ruth knew well. True, she’d visited it plenty after Dustin disappeared, but she’d known it two decades earlier, as well. It was the only two-story building in Broken Bones. Two cells were upstairs. The main floor housed offices, a waiting room, booking room, etc. All the rooms the general public expected to see. The basement had one cell and storage.

Ruth’s dad had always been upstairs. His crimes were enough to build his reputation as a petty criminal but not enough to warrant moving him to Florence or Perryville Prison. He’d turn over in his grave now if he knew his daughter was an officer of the law.

“You need to go to bed.” Her mother appeared again.

Ruth glanced down at the maps and at the file labeled Broken Bones. She hadn’t even opened it. She’d been lost in her own history instead of Dustin’s. “I hate Broken Bones,” she whispered.

Carolyn nodded.

“And I hate that Dustin died there. Of all places, there.”

Carolyn again nodded.

“Why did you stay with him?”

Carolyn didn’t question who “him” was. Darryl George was a topic they avoided. Three years ago, just after Dustin went missing, Carolyn moved in with Ruth. It was a blessing for both of them. Ruth had a live-in babysitter, and Carolyn felt needed. The arrangement worked until Ruth brought up her father. The merest mention of his name sent her mother out the door. At first it was to the park down the street, but then as Ruth became bolder, and asked even more pointed questions, her mother increased the time and distance of her escapes. Still, all Ruth had to do was head for one of Carolyn’s friend’s houses.

Mom’s face tightened. It was a look Ruth remembered well.

“Why did you stay with him? And why, whenever I ask you about our time spent in Broken Bones, do you leave and I have to find you?”

Carolyn started for the door.

“Don’t do it. Don’t walk out.”

For a moment, Carolyn hesitated. She almost turned, almost said something, but before she could—

“Mom!” Megan’s voice, a distant whine, interrupted whatever Carolyn might have been about to say. Ruth left her mother, the maps, the files, basically the clutter of her life, and headed for her daughter’s room.

“You okay?”

The flyaway brown hair came from Dustin, so did the brown eyes and wide lips. Size and imagination came from Ruth. Megan, like Ruth, knew there really were monsters in the closet. Ruth’s had been real. Its name had been Darryl George. With Megan, they were imaginary and had started back when Dustin stopped coming home, and Ruth took a full-time job. “It’s so quiet,” Megan complained, picking at the edge of her blanket. “I’m thinking about Daddy. And I’m alone.”

“Grandma and I are both here. We were in the garage.”

“You’re not going to work tomorrow, are you?”

“No, not for a long time.” No need to explain to a five-year-old the ins and outs of family emergency leave. Ruth was just grateful to have time to spend with her family, time to spend burying Dustin both physically and mentally.

“Will you sit in the chair?”

“Yes, I can do that.”

Years ago, when Megan was a baby, Ruth would pick her up and rock her in the pale blue rocking chair. Sitting in that chair with a precious little daughter had made the exhaustion almost pleasurable. Not like today. Putting her feet on the floor instead of on the footstool, Ruth pushed herself back and forth while listening to her daughter breathe and to the sound of the television returning to life in the next room, her mother’s room.

So, Carolyn was sticking around.

And Ruth needed to decide if she wanted to pursue this conversation on the day she buried her husband.

Some things needed to stay buried. Ruth was smart enough to believe that; she just didn’t intend to allow it to happen.

EIGHT

The aroma of breakfast pulled Ruth from a sound sleep. Good thing, too, because if she’d slept in the rocker any longer, her neck would forever tilt at an awkward angle. After making sure Megan was still asleep, Ruth stumbled from the room and joined her mother in the kitchen.

Her mom hadn’t prepared breakfast since her husband died. He’d always demanded she make him three pancakes, four slices of bacon, two pieces of toast and orange juice. For a man who didn’t bring home a regular paycheck, sometimes his demands were unrealistic. But Ruth couldn’t remember a morning her mother didn’t make the breakfast.

Sitting down at the kitchen table, Ruth picked up a fork, examined it and asked, “You ready to talk?”

“No.”

“Why are you making breakfast then?”

“Because I’m willing to change.”

“What all are you going to change?”

“I’ve not completely decided. Right now I’m just changing my morning habits. I’ve always liked breakfast. I let your father take that away from me, along with other things, and I need to get it, and them, back.”

“Talk to me, Mom.”

“I can’t today, Ruthie. I need to think.”

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