Groaning, I adjusted my grip on the shovel and smashed it into the dirt. I flung two, three, four more mounds aside … and that’s when I heard a thud. The metal shovel connecting with something…
I’d expected metal—the metallic clank of a knife, or weapon, evidence of Jack’s crime buried below … but as I scraped loose dirt from the surface, I recognized it immediately: the deep brown leather, the old-fashioned brass plates … here it is: my brother’s trunk.
I’d only dug enough to uncover the top third of it. Exhilarated that I’d found it, I grabbed the shovel and began, moving ten times faster than before.
A deafening blast of thunder shook so hard, I could feel it deep in my bones. But I didn’t let it deter me … I kept on, determined to get the trunk loose and see what was inside it.
I was shocked to discover I was crying—or was that sweat? No, it was tears, dirty black rows of them streaming down my cheeks.
I lifted the shovel and spent the next few minutes clearing the dirt completely.
Oh, Jack. What were you hiding?
Maybe there was a part of me—a small, unforgivable sliver—that already knew it was bad. Once you find out, you can’t un-know it.
Pretty truths or ugly lies, which one do you choose?
With the dingy old trunk uncovered, I selected a hammer from my father’s wall of tools. The rotted old padlock broke off with one steady tap.
I choose…truth. Always, truth.
I lifted the heavy lid, holding my breath.
At first, all I saw were cobwebs. A nest of them, thin and wiry. Silver like the moon.
But under that wiry wisp of gray, the rotting hair was attached to a rotting scalp … and the shrunken dead face of my mother stared up at me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rotting bits of blue fabric clung to her chest. Her skeletal legs were bent—she’d obviously been folded and placed inside it.
The fabric on her body had decayed, but I could still pick out the pattern … one I’d seen a thousand times. My brother’s old Star Wars blanket. The very same blanket I puked on the morning I saw Jenny’s bloated body, rotting in the sun, through my brother’s binoculars.
My mother’s hair was all that was left, the flesh on her face rotted away, but those teeth … that face … and the heart shaped locket at her neck … there was no doubt: this crate was my long-lost mother’s grave.
I moaned with grief, stumbling away from my gruesome discovery.
I needed to feel something, to cry … to scream … but, once again, in that scary moment, I was frozen in time. My brain playing catch-up with its reality.
I took my cell phone out of my back pocket and dialed my Great Aunt Lane with shaky fingers.
As I stared into my mother’s makeshift grave, eyes blurring with tears, I listened to the phone on the other end ring and ring and ring. Just as I was about to give up, I heard a thick cough on the other end and Lane’s unmistakable husky smoker’s voice: “Hello!”
“You. Fucking. Lied.” I said, through clenched teeth, gripping the phone until my knuckles turned white.
Lane sighed noisily on the other end, as though she already knew what I was about to say. Well, of course she did, I realized. She’s known the truth all along.
“What do you mean?” she asked, quietly.
The tremor was uncontrollable now, my entire body quivering. I tried to muster up the right words for my liar of an aunt.
“My mother hasn’t been to visit you. There were no letters. No post cards … no fucking birthday cards…”
“What? Of course there were,” Lane said, half-heartedly. But I could already hear the defeated tone of her voice…
“I know you’re lying. Want to know how I know? Because I’m standing next to her dead body. And it’s a skeleton, Lane! She’s been here a long time…”
I heard Lane on the other line, taking in a sharp breath.
“Why did you cover for him, huh? How long have you known the truth?” I demanded, gripping the phone till my knuckles went numb. “Hell, maybe you even helped him. You always hated my mother.”
I could remember hearing my mother say it: that my dad’s family never liked her. But Lane had always been my father’s favorite aunt. He talked about her so fondly that there were times I often wondered why we didn’t go see her more often … but as I grew older, I understood. Mom didn’t feel welcome.
“Listen, Natalie. Your mama…”
“My mama what?” I shrieked, defensively.
“She killed that girl. The one in the field.”
My heart lurched in my chest. “Excuse me?”
“Listen here. She did it to protect your brother. That Jenny girl was crazy, nuts … claiming your brother had raped her.”
I gasped, for the first time connecting it with Chrissy’s version of events. She didn’t want to steal Jack, she wanted to destroy him…
“The night your daddy called me, asking me to take in Jack for a while … I never questioned it. Not then, and not later either … I knew something was up, especially after I saw what happened in the papers … but I wasn’t sure which one of them did it. I didn’t know it was her. And your brother, when he finally found out the truth, about what your mama did … I guess he thought she had to pay for it. I was the only one he told, you know. I’m the only one he could trust.”
“Yeah, because you lied for him!” I screamed over the roaring of the storm outside, and the one deep in my chest.
“You know your father … he couldn’t handle that sort of thing. I don’t think he wanted to know the truth, honestly. He skirted around it. Told me to tell you that your mother was fine to make
