Even though what I’m about to show him keeps me up at night, reading the same paragraph of Anna Karenina over and over, listening to every creak of the house and finger of wind, every barefoot midnight step of my daughter, every sweet sleep sound that floats out of her mouth and down the hall.
“Don’t worry.” I force lightness into my voice. “I like my men rich and less altruistic. And you know… old enough to grow facial hair. Come over here. Please.”
“Cute.” But I can hear relief. He makes it in two strides. His eyes follow my finger, out the window.
I am not pointing to the sky, but to the dirt, where a nest of black-eyed Susans is still half-alive under the windowsill, teasing me with beady black eyes.
“It is February,” I say quietly. “Black-eyed Susans only bloom like this in summer.” I pause for this to sink in. “They were planted three days ago, on my birthday. Someone grew them especially for me, and put them under the window where I sleep.”
The abandoned field on the Jenkins property was licked to death by fire about two years before the Black-Eyed Susans were dumped there. A reckless match tossed by a lost car on a lonely dirt road cost a destitute old farmer his entire wheat crop and set the stage for the thousands and thousands of yellow flowers that covered the field like a giant, rumpled quilt.
The fire also carved out our grave, an uneven, loping ditch. Black-eyed Susans sprung up and decorated it brazenly long before we arrived. The Susans are a greedy plant, often the first to thrive in scorched, devastated earth. Pretty, but competitive, like cheerleaders. They live to crowd out the others.
One lit match, one careless toss, and our nicknames were embedded in serial killer lore forever.
Bill, still in my bedroom, has shot Joanna a lengthy text, maybe because he doesn’t want to answer her questions on the phone in front of me. We meet her outside my window in time to watch her dip a vial into the black speckled dirt. The squiggly charm on her necklace, glinting in the sun, brushes a petal as she bends over. I still can’t recall the symbol’s meaning. Religious, maybe. Ancient.
“He or she used something besides the dirt in the ground,” Joanna said. “Probably a common brand of potting soil, and seeds that can be picked up at Lowe’s. But you never know. You should call the cops.”
“And tell them someone is planting pretty flowers?” I don’t want to sound sarcastic, but there it is.
“It’s trespassing,” Bill says. “Harassment. You know, this doesn’t have to be the work of the killer. It could be any crazy who reads the papers.” It is unspoken, but I know. He is uncertain of my mental state. He hopes I have more than this patch of flowers under my window to bolster a judge’s belief in Terrell. A little part of him wonders whether I planted the flowers myself.
How much do I tell him?
I suck in a breath. “Every time I call the cops, it ends up on the Internet. We get calls and letters and Facebook crazies. Presents on the doorstep. Cookies. Bags of dog poop. Cookies made of dog poop. At least I hope it’s just dog poop. Any attention makes my daughter’s life at school a living hell. After a few years of beautiful peace, the execution is stirring everything up again.” Exactly why, for years, I told Angie no and no and no. Whatever doubts crept in, I had to push away. In the end, I understood Angie, and Angie understood me. I will find another way, she had assured me.
But things were different now. Angie was dead.
He’d stood under my window.
I brush away something whispery threading its way through my hair. I vaguely wonder whether it is a traveler from Granddaddy’s basement. I remember sticking my hand blindly into that musty hole a few hours ago, and turn my anger up a notch. “The look on your faces right now? That mixture of pity and uneasiness and misplaced understanding that I still need to be treated like the traumatized sixteen-year-old girl I used to be? I’ve been getting that look since I can remember. That’s how long I’ve been protecting myself, and so far, so good. I’m happy now. I am not that girl anymore.” I wrap my long brown sweater around me a little more tightly even though the late winter sun is a warm stroke across my face. “My daughter will be home any minute, and I’d rather she doesn’t meet the two of you until I’ve explained a few things. She doesn’t know yet that I called you. I want to keep her life as normal as possible.”
“Tessa.” Joanna ventures a step toward me and stops. “I get it.”
There is such a terrible weight in her voice. I get it. Bombs dropping one two three to the bottom of the ocean.
I scan her face. Tiny lines etched by other people’s sorrow. Blue-green eyes that have flashed on more horror than I could ever fathom. Smelled it. Touched it, breathed it, as it rained down in ashes from the sky.
“Do you?” My voice is soft. “I hope so. Because I am going to be there when you excavate those two graves.”
My daddy paid for their coffins.
Joanna is rubbing the charm between her fingers, like it is a holy cross.
I suddenly realize that, in her world, it is.
She is wearing a double helix made of gold.
The twisted ladder of life.
A strand of DNA.
Tessie, 1995
One week later. Tuesday, 10 A.M. sharp. I am back on the doctor’s plump couch, with company. Oscar rubs his wet nose against my hand reassuringly, then settles in on the floor beside me, alert. He’s been mine since last week, and I will go nowhere without him. Not that anyone argues. Oscar, sweet and protective, makes them hopeful.
“Tessie, the trial is in three months. Ninety days away. My most important job right now is to prepare you emotionally. I know the defense attorney, and he’s excellent. He’s even better when he truly believes he holds the life of an innocent man in his hands, which he does. Do you understand what that means? He will not take it easy on you.”
This time, right down to business.
My hands are folded primly in my lap. I’m wearing a short, blue-plaid pleated skirt, white lacy stockings, and black patent-leather boots. I’ve never been a prim girl, despite the reddish-gold hair and freckles my wonderfully corny grandfather claimed were fairy dust. Not then, not now. My best friend, Lydia, dressed me today. She burrowed into my messy drawers and closet, because she couldn’t stand the fact that I no longer make any effort to match. Lydia is one of the few friends who isn’t giving up on me. She is currently taking her fashion cues from the movie Clueless, but I haven’t seen it.
“OK,” I say. This is, after all, one of two reasons I am sitting here. I am afraid. Ever since they snatched Terrell Darcy Goodwin away from his Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast in Ohio eleven months ago and told me I would need to testify, I have counted the days like terrible pills. Today, we are eighty-seven days away, not ninety, but I do not bother to correct him.
“I remember nothing.” I am sticking with this.
“I’m sure the prosecutor has told you that doesn’t matter. You’re living, breathing evidence. Innocent girl vs. unspeakable monster. So let’s just begin with what you do remember. Tessie? Tessie? What are you thinking right now, this second? Spit it out… don’t look away, OK?”
I crane my neck around slowly, gazing at him out of two mossy gray pools of nothingness.
“I remember a crow trying to peck out my eyes,” I say flatly. “Tell me. What exactly is the point of looking, when you know I can’t see you?”
Tessa, present day
Technically, this is their third grave. The two Susans being exhumed tonight in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Fort Worth were his older kills. Dug up from their first hiding place and tossed in that field with me like chicken bones. Four of us in all, dumped in the same trip. I was thrown on top with a girl named Merry Sullivan, who the coroner determined had been dead for more than a day. I overheard Granddaddy mutter to my father, “The devil was cleaning out his closets.”