Page 2 of The Secrets We Hide
Emmy heard the sickeningthudof the casket reaching its resting place.
Father Nate asked them to bow their heads. Emmy stared out at the tall oaks clustered in the corner of the North Falls Cemetery, which was packed with almost as many Cliftons above ground as below. She was surrounded by cousins, aunts, great aunts, and distant relatives she knew by sight if not by name. Then there were the Coleman cousins from up north with their spoon faces and heavy clothes because the temperature was in the fifties when they’d flown out of Maryland last night and it was brushing up against seventy when they’d walked out of the North Falls Church of the Redeemer just before noon.
Emmy’s son shifted beside her. Cole’s head was down, his jaw clenched. He was twenty-three years old, but he had criedmore in the last few weeks than he ever had as a child. She watched Jude lean her shoulder against his, shoring him up. Emmy felt a flash of irritation with a quick chaser of gratitude, which neatly summed up her feelings about her newly returned older sister.
Tommy seemed less conflicted, but it was hard to say with her brother. He was standing on the other side of the grave with the miserable look of a man who was being held at gunpoint. More than any of them, he shared Myrna’s discomfort with open expressions of grief. His wife Celia was by his side, gray roots shining through the part in her hair. She winked when Emmy caught her eye. They both knew that Myrna had never approved of her daughter-in-law, which would’ve been a problem if Celia had actually cared about Myrna’s approval.
“Tommy?” Father Nate gestured for Tommy to speak.
Tommy wasn’t going to speak. He slowly bent down to scoop up a handful of dirt. Instead of dropping it onto the casket, he held his fist to his chest and bowed his head. Emmy couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her brother without a hat. What was left of his graying hair ringed the bald top of his head like the tonsure on a Franciscan monk. She was shocked to see the crepe of skin sag against the cuff of his button up shirt, the deep wrinkles and discolorations that reminded her of their father’s worn hands. The proof of her brother’s ageing made her heart tremble in her chest.
Jude had been long gone and Tommy was already in his second year of college when Emmy was born—she had been what her family called a surprise baby, as if no one could quite figure out how it had happened. And now, Tommy had retired from teaching a few weeks ago. He still hadn’t figured out what to do with his days. A bike accident had banged up his knee. A wrong move on the pickleball court had resulted in a sprained ankle. He was going to be in a boot for the next two months. Emmy could tell it was wearing on him. Obviously, she had always known her brother was much older, but this was the first time in her life she’d ever thought of him as old.
“All right.” Tommy nodded his head once, then turned, then started limping toward the woods with the dirt still clutched tohis chest. Celia didn’t follow. She had spent the entirety of her marriage giving various Cliftons their space.
Father Nate pivoted quickly. “Emmy?”
The request lodged a shard of glass in her throat. Delivering her father’s eulogy had nearly cut Emmy in two. Her mind raced for something to say about her mother—something positive and deep and meaningful—but then Jude stepped forward and let loose.
“‘In all my days are trances, and all my nightly dreams are where thy dark eye glances, and there thy footstep gleams—in what ethereal dances, by what eternal streams.’”
There were murmurs of confusion, but a faint smile played across Cole’s lips. He’d grown up hearing his grandmother quote Edgar Allan Poe. Jude had chosen the perfect lines for Myrna’s send-off. She gave Emmy a bittersweet smile. Emmy struggled to return it.
Irritation. Gratitude.
Father Nate offered a mumbled “amen” as he closed his Bible, and that was the end of it.
The crowd started to mingle, most of them sticking to the shade of a maple tree’s blazing red canopy that would be gone in a few weeks. Emmy saw friends from school and around town, but she lacked the ability to engage. Her cousin Taybee anxiously gripped together her hands, silently conveying her panicked thoughts. People needed to get moving. There was a spread waiting back at her farm—pies cooling on racks, meat in the smokers, cornbread to be eaten, potato salad to be judged.
Emmy turned to console her son, but Jude had already taken him aside. Her hand was resting on his arm. Cole was nodding. They practically had their own language now.
“Help me up.” Aunt Millie’s gnarled old fingers clutched at Emmy’s leg. At ninety-four, Millie was the oldest living Clifton, an honor which seemed more dubious by the day. Her skin felt like a sock sliding over bones as Emmy lifted her from the folding chair.
“The Colemans are all here, but only the Verona branch came from the Wilders, and I suppose the Gilchrists were too high-and-mighty to attend. Good riddance.”
Emmy looked around as Millie pointed out the rest, but only to appease her aunt. Spotting representatives from the leading families of North Falls at her mother’s graveside was among the things she cared about the least. There were mostly Cliftons here, though some were related by blood and some were not, which was how Taybee had ended up hyphenating her married name to Clifton-Clifton. There were poor Cliftons and rich Cliftons. City Cliftons and Farming Cliftons. Cliftons were on the school board and at the prosecutor’s office or, as with Emmy and Cole, at the Clifton County Sheriff’s Department.
She was acting sheriff now, at least until the election either made it official or gave it to Brett Temple, a man who was Emmy’s subordinate in every way. Her father had served as sheriff for sixty-three years. As deputy chief, Emmy had basically been running the squad before he’d died, but she hadn’t realized until Gerald was gone that there were other parts of the job that he’d never told her about. The glad-handing around election time. The horse trading. The way you had to look the other way on one thing so that people would look the other way on another.
She wasn’t sure she had the stomach for it.
“Is that Ace?” Aunt Millie’s voice raked up in horror. “He has some nerve showing up here.”
The relief of Millie stomping away was cancelled out by Uncle Penley approaching. As with most of the men on his side of the family, he was pinheaded and bottom-heavy, his body genetically engineered to withstand a drunken golf cart accident.
“Sad day.” Penley fished a worn leather-clad flask out of his jacket pocket. She caught the familiar whiff of Old Rip before he took a long pull. “She loved you.”
Emmy nodded, because she had never doubted it.
“We’re a little over a month away from the election.” Penley gave her a meaningful look. “You’re gonna have to bring some energy during the debate with Brett next week. Folks gotta feel like you’re not just coasting on your last name. We both know it’s what your daddy wanted.”
Emmy let her silence linger until Penley gave up and walked away. The more people reminded her that Gerald had wanted her to take his job as sheriff, the less she wanted to do it. Theonly reason she was running at all was so that Brett wouldn’t win. She’d be damned if she would answer to that jackass. And she’d be doubly damned if Cole had to. Her son had only been with the sheriff’s department for five years. If anyone was going to teach him how to be a deputy, it was Emmy.
“How you holdin’ up, lady?” Taybee looped her arm through Emmy’s, then patted her hand three times in quick succession. “Poor Kaitlynn’s sorry she can’t make it, but she’s about to pop. I told her the baby’s gonna have to call me Tay-Tay ’cause I’m too young to be a granny.”
Emmy had somehow forgotten that Taybee’s daughter was a week from her due date. Myrna had loved babies.
“I’ll tell you what,” Taybee said, “losing my mama and daddy when I was young didn’t make my life any easier, but I was lucky to have Myrna in my corner. Did you see Cousin Ace showed up? I hope he’s not here to make a fuss.”
