Page 43 of Broken Bayou

Mama coughs a loud wet cough into the phone. It takes her several minutes to regroup.

“Well,” she says, “I followed him to the front door, and he unlocked it and turned off the alarm, then went to the back office. He was fiddling around with something back there when I heard a big thump. I ran back, and he was on the ground. Hit his head. Completely unconscious. And that safe was just sittin’ there, wide open.”

I inhale a long, slow breath and exhale into the phone. “So you robbed him.” Not a question.

“Willamena, that man owed me. I saw my chance to get the money I was owed, and I took it.”

Now it’s my turn to be silent.

“Willamena?”

“Why did you leave the car there?”

“Mabry wouldn’t get back in it. You know how she was. So on the walk home, I thought up the idea of the car and insurance. I really did think we could get some easy money for it.”

Easy money.Krystal Lynn’s city of Atlantis. Always talking about it. Always searching for it. Never finding it.

“And you sent me back to that office?”

“Right. For the car.”

With an unconscious man inside the—I snap off the thought. “There was no man in that office, Mama.”

“Oh. I bet he woke up and took off.”

I want to scream. I want to pound my phone into the oak tree until it shatters. And most of that anger is at myself. How could I have agreed to do what my drunk, disheveled mother said? How come I didn’t call the police when I saw her bruised face? How come I told myself all those years what I did that night was no big deal? None of it made any fucking sense. But Krystal Lynn had been out of her mind that summer. Her mania escalating to a height I’d never seen before. Any choice she made, made perfect sense to her. And I’d learned at a young age not to question her. Agree, go along, head down. That’s what worked.

Mama stays silent.

My legs feel weak, and I stare at my orange boots and wish like hell for ruby slippers that wouldn’t take me home but back to the past. But that’s the wish of a child. I can make choices now that will make up for the ones I made back then.

“And that’s the truth. I’m not lying. I’m telling you, I’m not lying. I am not lying.”

She’s lying.

“What’s on that security tape, Mama?”

“What security tape?”

“You’re not the only one who stole something from that office that night.”

“Now, you listen to me, I don’t know anything about a security tape. All I know is, I did what I had to do.” Her voice sounds younger than it has in years, hints of the fireball she’d once been. Under different circumstances, her renewed vibrancy would give me hope. Instead, it pushes a rush of hot blood through my veins.

“What does that mean?”

“It means ... none of your business.”

“Thanks to you, this is very much my business. What about your old boss?”

“What about him?”

“Where is he?”

“I have no idea where that scumbag is.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t remember.”