I sag against my pillow.
”Did you hear that?“ Caitlin whispers.
”I heard.“
”I can’t believe it.“
”Believe it.“
”Are you okay?“
”Yes. Go. I know you need to work.“
”Wait. Judge Minor’s going to poll the jury.“
”They always do that in capital cases. It’s over, Caitlin.“
”I’ll call you as soon as I can,“ she promises.
I let the phone drop and reach for my water glass.
I wish there were some way I could talk to Drew. Right now he’s standing at his table in shock, Quentin Avery beside him, watching Judge Minor excuse the family of the victim—Jenny Townsend and perhaps her ex-husband. Next Drew’s family will be excused. I wonder who was there for him. His parents are dead. Ellen? Probably not. Timmy is certainly not there. But after whoever is there for him has left the courtroom, Drew will be escorted straight back to the county jail. What can he be thinking? An innocent man convicted of capital murder. The realization that twelve citizens believed him capable of brutally raping and murdering a young girl will stun Drew into shock. If it wasn’t for Tim, I’d be afraid he might try to kill himself.
”Penn, are you all right?“ asks my mother.
”Yes.“
”What happened?“
”Guilty. They found Drew guilty.“
”Oh, my God. Oh, no.“
Peggy Cage takes several steps around the room, then stops, shaking her head. ”I just don’t believe it. I watched that boy grow up. He ate tuna fish sandwiches in my house every day, every summer, for years. That boy was
raised right.
There’s no way on earth he hurt that poor girl like that. No
way.
This world has turned upside down.“
”I agree with you. But twelve other people don’t.“
”Fools,“ she says conclusively. ”Poor protoplasm.“
”It was a solid case, Mom. But it doesn’t matter now. Now Drew has to look toward the appeal.“
”Did he get the death penalty?“
”That’s a separate phase of the trial. They may do that today, or they might wait until tomorrow.“
Mom walks back to my bed, her eyes worried. ”You look bad, Penn. Worse than you did two minutes ago.“
”I don’t feel too good,“ I admit.
”I’m going to get your father to give you something. Something to help you sleep.“
”I don’t need anything, Mom.“
”You let me worry about that.“
Ten minutes later, my father appears, a syringe in his hand. If only he had what Blue used to bring me…
But soon enough, I’m gone again.
”Penn?“
I groan and force myself to open my eyes.
”Who is it?“ I croak, squinting against the light.
”Me.“
”Who?“
”Ellen. Ellen Elliott. My God…are you all right?“
”It’s not as bad as it looks.“
”It’s probably worse.“
I can see her now, her skin greenish under the fluorescent lights. Ellen doesn’t look too good herself. She’s lost weight over the past two weeks. A lot of weight. Her color job is fading, the Nordic blond hair now rooted with brown and gray.
”What time is it, Ellen? Did you hear the verdict?“
She nods. ”That was two hours ago, Penn.“
”Oh. Were you in court?“
”No. I couldn’t watch. I wanted to be with Timmy.“ Ellen tries to force a smile, but the effort goes in vain. ”It’s very difficult to go out in public now. People just stare and point like I’m some circus animal. They don’t spare Timmy, either. The kids at school…they’re awful.“
”That’s what happens in these trials. I don’t blame you, Ellen. I know Drew missed you being in there for him, though.“
She gives me a mistrustful glance. ”Do you really think so?“
”I know it, no matter what’s happened between you. Today could mean the end of Drew’s life. And he’s spent most of that life with you.“
She blinks several times, and then tears begin streaming down her cheeks. ”How could they do that to him?“ She raises a shaking hand to wipe her face. ”He’s given so much to this town, to so many of those people. How could they believe Drew could do that?“
”I thought you believed it, too.“
Ellen seems not to have heard me. ”What am I supposed to do now? I have a son, Penn. What do I tell Timmy?“
”Try to explain things, I guess. Tim’s old enough to understand some of it.“
She shakes her head violently. ”No. He’s younger than you think. Emotionally, I mean.“
Ellen sits beside my bed, then stands again immediately. I can’t get a handle on her emotional state. Maybe she can’t either. As I study her face, her lips smeared with too much lipstick, it hits me that she might be deep into drug withdrawal, just like me. With Drew in jail and Kate dead, her sources for Lorcet have dried up.
”Did you come just to visit me?“ I ask. ”Or is there something I can do for you?“
She sucks in her lips and knits her brow. Then she shakes her head several times, as though having a silent conversation with herself.
”Ellen?“
”I want you to know something, Penn. I don’t…don’t know who else to tell.“
”You can tell me. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s all right.“
”No, it’s not.“ Her red eyes burn into mine. ”I killed Kate, Penn.“
It takes a moment for the words to register. It’s as though Ellen said, ”I just arrived from the planet Tralfamadore.“ But she didn’t say that. She said,
I killed Kate.
And she meant it.
”Tell me what you’re talking about, Ellen. Are you speaking figuratively?“
”I’m afraid not. No, I killed her.“ She holds up her hands. ”I killed her with these…my own two hands.“
For a moment I wonder if I’m hallucinating. But Dad is giving me sedatives, not LSD. Then it hits me:
Ellen is lying. She’s trying to save Drew’s life.
”How did you kill her, Ellen?“
”I choked her.“
”I thought you were with your sister when Kate died.“
She shakes her head again.
”Your sister lied to protect you?“
”Yes. Don’t blame Jackie, though.“
My pulse is returning to normal. Overcome with guilt about her past behavior in the marriage, Ellen is trying to save Drew by sacrificing herself. ”Why don’t you tell me what happened? Just sit down in that chair and let it out.“
She looks at the chair with disdain. ”I don’t need to sit. It’s simple really. The day it happened, I was supposed to be shopping with Jackie. But before I met her, I stopped by Drew’s office. I wanted to show him some paint samples I’d gotten from Sherwin-Williams, for the living room.“
”Did Drew know you were coming?“
”No. Anyway, when I got to his office, I happened to walk past his car. The Volvo. I saw a piece of paper taped to his window, and something made me stop. Probably because it didn’t look like an advertisement. It looked like a note. Like, ’I backed into your car by accident, here’s my phone number‘—that kind of thing.“ Confusion enters Ellen’s face. ”But it wasn’t. It was a note from Kate.“
Fresh anxiety wakes in my gut. ”What did it say?“
”’I need to see you. Meet me at the creek.‘ “
”That’s it?“
”Yes.“
”Did she sign it?“
”No.“
”How did you know it was from Kate?“
Ellen’s eyes crinkle at the corners. ”I didn’t really. Not for sure. But Kate worked for us two summers. I’d seen her handwriting lots of times. So when I saw the note, I think…on some level I recognized it.“
”Keep going. Tell me sequentially.“
”I drove back home and walked down to the creek.“
”Did you leave the note on Drew’s car?“
”No. I took it with me.“
”Why?“
Ellen touches her forefinger to her chin and taps it softly. ”I don’t know.“
”Go on.“
”I took the path I used to take when I walked Henry.“ Henry was their black Lab, now dead. ”There’s only a couple down there anyway. I wasn’t sure I was headed to the right spot, and yet…it was like the handwriting. I had the same instinct. If Kate had written the note, then I was going the right way.“
”I understand.“
”I walked down to this place about halfway between our two neighborhoods.“ Ellen’s gaze drops, and she speaks like someone under hypnosis. ”She was sitting on a log when I saw her. She looked upset. When I was about thirty feet away, she looked up. She didn’t see me, because I was under the trees. Then I stepped into the sunlight. The look on her face…I can’t describe it.“
My fists are tight under the covers. ”Tell me.“
”She was afraid, of course. But there was something else.“
”What?“
”Relief. That the truth was finally out, I guess. She must have been holding in so much for so long.“
Ellen actually sounds sympathetic. But her feelings had to be much different on the day these events transpired. ”What happened then?“
”I called out her name. Like a question. ’Kate?‘ She stood up then, as though my words had brought her to life. God, she was a beautiful girl.“ Ellen suddenly fixes me with a furious glare. ”I hate Drew for what he did. Not to me—though it’s almost destroyed me—but to
her.
He had no right to alter Kate’s life like that. He disrupted the natural order of things. She had so much to offer, she was so fresh, and he
stole
that from her. Her whole future.“
”Please go on, Ellen. What happened next?“
”I showed her the note.“
I close my eyes briefly. ”And?“
”I asked her to explain it to me. I think at that point I was still hoping for some sort of innocent explanation. I know that sounds pathetic, but it’s true. Kate got very upset, but she didn’t even try to lie. She told me she was in love with Drew, and that he loved her back. It was a wife’s worst nightmare, really. I just…I couldn’t process it, you know? But when I finally got what she was trying to tell me, I saw red. I couldn’t believe she’d deceived me that way. I couldn’t believe that this
child
had made such a fool of me. How stupid I’d been! And she wasn’t talking about sex, oh, no. She was talking about
love.
She lost her embarrassment very quickly. She was almost crowing, really. Or I felt that she was.“
”What did you do, Ellen?“
”I told Kate she was a fool, that Drew was lost in a midlife crisis, that she was giving up her youth for an affair that would come to nothing. I told her Drew would never leave Tim. And—that’s when it happened.“
”What?“
”Kate got this serene smile on her face. She told me they were running away together.“ Ellen is staring at the wall as though she can still see Kate before her. ”I told her she was crazy. Nuts. But she just kept smiling. Then she said, ’I’m pregnant, Ellen. Drew and I are going to have a baby.‘ “ Ellen’s mouth hangs slack for a few moments, as though she’s still in shock. ”I don’t think I was functioning normally from that point on.“
”Go on.“
”I screamed at her. I called her a slut and a liar. She just laughed. That made me so furious. I couldn’t stand it! I got right up in her face and slapped her.
Hard.
She started screaming then. Cruel things…terrible things. She told me I could never make Drew happy, that he was miserable, that I was killing him. Then she told me why. And…she was right about a lot of it.“
”Ellen, you don’t have to go there. Just—“
”Let me finish. I have to tell it all. Kate knew all about my drug problem. That hurt me so badly, that he’d told her about that. She said she’d been getting me my Lorcet to keep Drew from losing his medical license. She acted like I was some kind of pathetic monster. And she was
right.
But that only made me angrier. I wanted her to shut up, Penn. I had to make her shut up. I slapped her five or six times, yelling,
’Shut up! Shut up!‘
But she wouldn’t. She just laughed like a maniac. That’s when I grabbed her. I got my hands around her throat and squeezed as hard as I could. She knew then how angry I was. Her eyes almost bugged out of her head. She tried to push me off, but she didn’t have a chance. Kate could beat me at tennis, but that was touch, not strength.“ Ellen shakes her head slowly, remembering. ”She went out so quickly, I couldn’t believe it.“
I nod. ”It only takes seven seconds without direct blood flow to the brain to cause unconsciousness. Did she fall?“
”Into the water,“ Ellen says distantly. ”But her head hit something. A rusty wheel rim, half buried in the sand. The sound was awful, like hearing a kid’s ACL pop on the basketball court. The sound did something to me. It snapped me out of whatever trance I was in. I dragged Kate’s head and shoulders onto the bank and started trying to revive her. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. Thirty seconds before, I’d looked at her like a ruthless home wrecker. Now all I could see was the little girl who’d sold me lemonade on the corner when she was six. I was crying, hyperventilating…I was losing it, Penn.“
”Did you have a cell phone?“
”No. It was in my purse, back up at the house.“
Watching Ellen now—telling her story with almost the same stunned detachment that Drew exhibited when describing his discovery of Kate’s body—I realize that she’s telling the truth. Ellen
did
kill Kate. Only she did it without meaning to. With this realization comes a memory of Ellen lingering behind at Kate’s burial to offer her condolences to Jenny Townsend. My God, the torment she must have been going through.
What the hell am I going to do now?
I wonder.
What will Quentin say about this? And what about Drew?
”What did you do then?“ I ask.
”I couldn’t wake her up. There was no respiration. I realized then that she was probably dead.“
”Why didn’t you report it, Ellen?“
Her eyes lock onto mine, silently begging for understanding.
”As terrible as it was, I just can’t imagine you not reporting what happened.“
”I know. I feel exactly the same way. It’s like it wasn’t me, Penn. Kate and Drew had turned me into a different person. But more than that…I just didn’t have time to think.“
”What do you mean?“
”While I was kneeling there, staring at her in disbelief, I heard something. At first I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me. But then I heard it for real—someone coming through the woods. And instinct just took over. I couldn’t sit there and wait to be caught. I can’t explain it. It was a primitive reaction—fight or flight.“