Page 11 of Pretty Dead Things

“Are you her nurse?” I say to the woman in scrubs. She’s picked up the cards, swept the rest from my mother’s lap.

“Honey, don’t you recognize Melanie?” Mom says. “My goodness. You two went to school together.”

I look at the woman properly. She’s short, plump, her mousey-brown hair tied back in a limp ponytail. My mind shuffles memories like the decks of cards.

“Sheriff Ryan’s daughter,” Mom prompts.

And, oh God, Melanie.

Melon-ball Melanie.That’s what we’d called her. Kids can be so casually cruel. Melanie had tripped during gym class, going for a soccer ball, tangled up by her own clumsy feet. She had actually rolled. Dry dirt kicked up behind her.Like a big ball, Kennedy Claire said, drawing out the wordsbigandballso they bounced out and intomy ears.Melon-ball Melanie.I’d snorted a laugh. Izzy had snapped disapproving eyes at me and gone to help Melanie up. I’d felt a slither of shame. But other girls had heard. Other girls laughed too.Good try, Mel, Kennedy Claire had said, loud enough this time for even the teacher to hear. Melanie was tugging her shirt down, grass stains on the wide butt of her gym shorts, her knee skinned, and still she smiled, her cheeks burning red.Sorry, she said.Sorry, everyone.

“Melanie,” I say now. “Oh my God, it’s been forever. I wasn’t paying attention.” Now I’m the one with burning cheeks.

Melanie puts a hand to my upper arm. “It’s so good to see you.” Her whole face is pure reassurance. She cuts her eyes over to my mother. “Now, Mrs. Whitmore. I have the next few days off, but I expect my rematch when I get back. That is, if you’re not too tired of counting all those points you’re racking up against me.”

Mom laughs a pretty, tinkling laugh.

Melanie pats my arm before letting go, smiling at me with that sweet smile of hers. She was always so sweet. And that sense of old shame tightens. Even though it’s in the past, a lifetime ago, and we were just kids, I remember what we did to Melanie.

I remember what cruel really means.

CHAPTER NINEABEL SHERMAN

2000

Abel Sherman walks along the river on his property, a black trash bag in one hand and a mesquite branch in the other, using it like a makeshift trash grabber, picking up cans and potato chip bags the careless kids leave behind when they float the river. His daughter, Laurie, skips ahead, collecting twigs and flower buds and whatever else catches her eye.

It’s an unseasonably hot spring, and the Blanco River runs low. Abel likes to put on that he’s glad about it, that at least it means fewer kids swarming the banks, leaving their trash, nearly killing themselves swinging from half-assed tied rope swings. But, the truth of it is, Abel doesn’t much mind the kids. Sure, he chews out the ones he catches throwing out their beer cans or tossing rocks at the turtles.

But he likes watching them. Likes the way his land is a vital piece of the town, of everyone’s childhood. Their memories like the roots of mesquite trees searching for water, boring deep and vast, until they’re anchored solid to the ground.

He spots a scrap of bright blue fabric caught on a rock, lapping gently with the current. He stoops to pick it up, and watches it unfurl like a dead snake. He knows that it is Izzy Whitmore’s. Can see it in his mind, the fabric pulling back her long, dark hair.

Izzy, who was over at their house all the time, just as comfortable as a spoon in the sugar bowl, lounging around their living room in her pj’s, teasing Abel by snatching the hat off his head, helping Carol set the table.

Every Friday morning, Abel meets with Jim Whitmore and Sheriff Ryan for coffee to talk out the week’s problems and share their solutions, keeping their homes together and their houses in order. They’d been meeting one way or another their whole lives. Abel remembers lying belly down in Jim’s room, arguing over the stats on the backs of baseball cards. The three of them losing Preston High’s first state championship, but Anhalt still coming together and throwing the team a parade anyhow. Getting drunk the night Ryan got deputized, using his new status in the eyes of the law as a free pass to go hog wild one last time.

When Jim found out Barbara was having twins, he called Abel, wondering how he’d make ends meet. Abel showed up with two boxes ofIT’S A GIRLcigars and told him what his daddy told him—that it’ll all work out, one way or the other. It always did.

The women were close too. They didn’t talk current affairs or fixing things. Instead, Carol and Barbara would sit by the fire pit for hours, glasses of chardonnay glowing orange from the flames, and talk circles around the past, spin out imaginations for the future. Sometimes they’d let themselves imagine Ben and Izzy getting married, having babies. He’d seen Carol’s and Barbara’s eyes well with happy tears just thinking about sitting in that hospital together, waiting for the baby that would make them both a grandma. How uniquely lucky they’d be to watch their grandbabies grow up side by side.

There is a stain on the blue fabric that could be mistaken for rust-colored clay. But Abel knows better. He smears it, rubbing the blood between his fingers. He turns his head and listens upstream, listens for the sounds of kids coming on inner tubes. But he only hears the water flowing and a pair of mockingbirds scolding each other in the trees.

Then his youngest, Laurie, is suddenly beside him, and Abel is quick to shove the headband into his pocket.

“Time to head back,” he says. “Your mama’ll have supper ready soon.”

Ben was supposed to be out on a date with Izzy last night. Instead, he came home early and went straight to bed. This morning, while Carol cooked breakfast, Barbara Whitmore called the house, asking to speak to her daughter. He’d heard Carol say,Oh, the kids are out, but I’ll have her call if she shows up.

As Abel walks back to the house, he thinks about the words of his father, who never much liked churches.Life is church, he’d say.The only person you ever have to look in the mirror is yourself. If you can still do that, you’re good in God’s book.

He watches Laurie run ahead, skipping through the last of the shade, toward the home he built with his own two hands. Out in the open pasture, away from the umbrella of cypress trees that line the river, the sun needles the back of his neck. Dry blades of grass crack under his boots.

The wood creaks as Abel steps up onto his porch. He looks at Laurie’s rocking horse and the chair where he likes to sit and watch the sun go to sleep behind the rolling Texas hills. Just outside the screen door, he sees Ben’s socks and boots, covered in dried mud.

He finds his son at the kitchen table. The phone rings, and Ben jumps like a hunting dog who’d heard a stick snap, like he’d been waiting for that phone to ring all day.

Abel walks over and pulls the cord from the wall.