Jeffrey asked, “Why did you send the letter to Dr. Linton?”
“I knew she’d do something about it,” Terri said, then added quickly, “Not that y’all wouldn’t, but Dr. Linton, she takes care of people. She really looks after them. I knew she’d understand.” She shrugged. “I knew she’d tell you.”
“Why not just tell her in person?” Jeffrey asked. “You saw me Monday morning at the clinic. Why didn’t you tell me then?”
She gave a humorless laugh. “Dale’d kill me if he knew I’d gotten messed up in all of this. He hates the church. He hates everything about them. It’s just…” Her voice trailed off. “When I heard what happened to Abby, I thought y’all should know he’s done it before.”
“Who’s done it before?”
Her throat worked as she struggled to say the name. “Cole.”
“He put you in a box out in the state forest?” Jeffrey asked.
She nodded, her hair falling into her eyes. “We were supposed to be camping. He took me out for a walk.” She swallowed. “He brought me to this clearing. There was this hole in the ground. A rectangle. There was a box inside.”
Lena asked, “What did you do?”
“I don’t remember,” she answered. “I don’t think I even had time to scream. He hit me real hard, pushed me in. I cut my knee open, scraped my hand. I started yelling but he got on top of me and raised his fist, like he was going to beat me.” She paused, trying to keep her composure as she told the story. “So, I just laid there. I just laid there while he put the boards on top of me, nailing them in one by one…”
Lena looked at her own hands, thinking about the nails that had been driven in, the metallic sound of the hammer hitting the metal spike, the unfathomable fear as she lay there, helpless to do anything to save herself.
“He was praying the whole time,” Terri said. “Saying stuff about God giving him the strength, that he was just a vessel for the Lord.” She closed her eyes, tears slipping out. “The next thing I know, I’m looking up at these black slats. Sunlight was coming through them, I guess, but it felt like a lighter shade of dark. It was so dark in there.” She shuddered at the memory. “I heard the dirt coming down, not fast but slow, like he had all the time in the world. And he kept praying, louder, like he wanted to make sure I could hear him.”
She stopped, and Lena asked, “What did you do?”
Again, Terri’s throat worked as she swallowed. “I started screaming, and it just echoed in the box. It hurt my ears. I couldn’t see anything. I could barely move. I still hear it sometimes,” she said. “At night, when I’m trying to sleep, I’ll hear the thud of the dirt hitting the box. The grit coming through, getting stuck in my throat.” She had started to cry harder at the memory. “He was such a bad man.”
Jeffrey said, “And that is why you left home.”
Terri seemed surprised that he asked this.
He explained, “Your mother told us what happened, Terri.”
She laughed, a hollow-sounding noise devoid of any humor. “My mother?”
“She came into the station this morning.”
More tears sprang into her eyes and her lower lip started quivering. “She told you?” she asked. “Mama told you what Cole did?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t believe me,” Terri said, her voice no more than a murmur. “I told her what he did, and she said I was making it up. She told me I was going to go to hell.” She looked around the kitchen, her life. “I guess she was right.”
Lena asked, “Where did you go when you left?”
“ Atlanta,” she answered. “I was with this boy- Adam. He was just a way to get out of here. I couldn’t stay, not with them not believing me.” She sniffed, wiping her nose with her hand. “I was so scared Cole was gonna get me again. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I just kept waiting for him to take me.”
“Why’d you come back?”
“I just…” She let her voice trail off. “I grew up here. And then I met Dale…” Again she didn’t finish the thought. “He was a good man when I met him. So sweet. He wasn’t always the way he is now. The kids being sick puts a lot of pressure on him.”
Jeffrey didn’t let her continue along that track. “How long have y’all been married?”
“Eight years,” she answered. Eight years of having the shit beaten out of her. Eight years of making excuses, covering his tracks, convincing herself that this time was different, this time he would change. Eight years of knowing deep in her gut that she was lying to herself but not being able to do anything about it.
Lena would be dead in eight years if she had to endure that.
Terri said, “When Dale met me, I was clean, but I was still messed up. Didn’t think much of myself.” Lena could hear the regret in her voice. She wasn’t wallowing in self-pity. She was looking back on her life and seeing how the hole she had dug for herself wasn’t much different from the one Cole Connolly had put her in.
Terri told them, “Before that, I was into speed, shooting up. I did some really bad things. I think Tim’s the one who’s paid for it most.” She added, “His asthma is really bad. Who knows how long those drugs stay in your system? Who knows what it does to your insides?”
He asked, “When did you clean up?”
“When I was twenty-one,” she answered. “I just stopped. I knew I wouldn’t see twenty-five if I didn’t.”
“Have you had any contact with your family since then?”
She started picking at her cuticle again. “I asked my uncle for some money a while back,” she admitted. “I needed it for…” Her throat moved again as she swallowed. Lena knew what she needed the money for. Terri didn’t have a job. Dale probably kept every dime that came into the house. She had to pay the clinic somehow, and borrowing money from her uncle had been the only way.
Terri told Jeffrey, “Dr. Linton’s been real nice, but we had to pay her something for all she’s been doing. Tim’s medication isn’t covered by his insurance.” Suddenly, she looked up, fear lighting her eyes. “Don’t tell Dale,” she pleaded, talking to Lena. “Please don’t tell him I asked for money. He’s proud. He doesn’t like me begging.”
Lena knew he would want to know where the money went. She asked, “Did you ever see Abby?”
Her lips quivered as she tried not to cry. “Yes,” she answered. “Sometimes, she used to come by during the day to check on me and the kids. She’d bring us food, candy for the kids.”
“You knew she was pregnant?”
Terri nodded, and Lena wondered if Jeffrey felt the sadness coming off her. She was probably thinking about the child she had lost, the one in Atlanta. Lena felt herself thinking the same thing. For some reason, the image of the baby upstairs came to her mind, his little feet curling in the air, the way Terri tucked the blanket under his soft chin. Lena had to look down so that Jeffrey wouldn’t see the tears stinging her eyes.
She could feel Terri looking at her. The mother had an abused woman’s sense of other people, an instinctive recognition of changing emotions that came from years of trying not to say or do the wrong thing.
Jeffrey was oblivious to all of this as he asked, “What did you say to Abby when she told you about the baby?”
“I should have known what was going to happen,” she said. “I should have warned her.”
“Warned her about what?”