Page 16

CHAPTER 15

August 18 th

12:12 PM

W E ARE IN the interrogation room at the sheriff’s station. I know these cold, concrete confines. I see this room in my nightmares, where I am trapped like a caged animal and I claw at the walls until blood leaks from beneath my fingernails.

Harmony stretches her hands on the table between us, her wrists bound close in handcuffs. They’re too tight on her. They were too tight on me too. By the time they free her, there will be deep, throbbing, red indentations encircled around each of her wrists, and she will keep her hands close together for hours, as if they are still chained.

“I was thinking about how the old man used to lock us in the linen closet after church. Pig.”

Her words pull me back into the moment. “I’ve spent years trying not to think about it.”

“It’s boarded off. He’s literally nailed wooden boards over that door.”

“Mostly I think we’re lucky he didn’t do that while we were in there.”

“I’ve been—” She tosses a glance over her shoulder at the unsubtle one-way mirror, where Josiah and company are no doubt observing us. She leans toward me. “I’ve been in here for hours . I’m so bored. I started to see if I could remember some of the verses he would make us recite in there, but I … you must remember some of them. You were always the best at Bible verses. All I remember is how morbid they all were.”

“‘And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

“Do you remember one about an unpardonable sin?”

I shake my head.

“I’ve been turning it over in my head, since I’ve been stuck in here for ages !” Harmony shouts at the mirror. “Is there an unpardonable sin? Is there something so horrible even God can’t forgive?”

“Blasphemy, now that I think about it.”

She rolls her eyes. She starts to make a grand gesture with her arms, but the handcuffs stop her short, chains quivering with tension. “It can’t just be blasphemy. Murder, rape, torture, animal abuse—and God picks blasphemy to be the bridge too far?”

“When are you going to tell me why you’re here? How did you even get my number?”

“I like watching you chase your tail.”

It is pointless to whisper, but I cling to our final vestige of secrecy. “You didn’t kill her.”

“You don’t know shit, Providence.”

“You expect me to believe you can’t forgive me for what I did when you did the exact same thing? Why would you still be holding it over my head all these years later?”

“I always was a hypocrite,” she says with a shrug.

“Did you get a lawyer?”

“I don’t need one. I confessed. It’s over. It’s done. Best thing you can do for me now is give me pointers for prison.”

“Why did you waste your phone call on me?”

“I called you because I need someone to go home and get my meds. I’ll start bugging out if I don’t have them. The sheriff said someone can bring them for me. I’m sure they’ll confiscate it first to make sure it’s not cyanide so I don’t Eva Braun myself.”

“Call your fianc é .”

Another eyeroll. She’s more nonchalant than Grace during her meeting with the principal, like this is all one big joke and she’s waiting for me to finally laugh. “It’d take him forever to get here from Alliance. I couldn’t call the old man because I don’t trust him to actually bring me my meds, and I couldn’t call Grace because she’s still a kid. I didn’t want to get her involved.”

Something isn’t right, but under the watchful eye of the sheriff, there is only so much prodding I can do. My gaze falls to her handcuffed wrists. “Where am I going?” I ask.

“I live in the apartments on Nilsen Road. Remember those ugly blue ones? Apartment six. Key’s in the flowerpot. My pills are on the dresser in the bedroom. Bring me the Seroquel and the Depakote.”

“Fine,” I mutter.

“And please, please , don’t talk to Grace.”

“You want her to find out on the evening news?”

“In my ideal world, she never finds out at all. I just fade out of existence and she never has to know.”

“She will find out, Harmony,” I say.

“I don’t want to her to hear it from you.”

Her eyes are earnest, waiting for me to promise my silence, but I don’t. I am not in the habit of making promises I have no intention to keep.

A dark, meaty cockroach skitters beneath the refrigerator when I turn the light on. Harmony’s apartment is dank and filthy. The curtains probably haven’t been pulled back in months. The scent of spoiled food permeates the kitchen, and I cannot tell if it is coming from the refrigerator or the mountain of dishes left in the sink. Her houseplants are all either dead or dying. A cat tree stands in the corner of the living room, its shelves occupied by heaps of dirty clothes and grease-splotched fast food bags, but there is, thank God, no trace of a cat suffering in this hellhole. Each time I turn on a light, I close my eyes and count to three so any cockroaches will be gone by the time I open them.

In the bedroom, she has left a candle burning atop a copy of a self-help tome , its bookmark scarcely ten pages in. It strikes me as odd that the police haven’t beaten me here. But then again, she confessed. They already found our mother’s body. Open and shut case. Perhaps they see no reason to turn over her apartment. Then again, the Tillman County sheriff’s department has never been lauded for its outstanding detective work. Scotland Yard they are not.

I tiptoe around the room like it’s an active crime scene, touching as little as possible. As promised, the pills are on the dresser. They stand beside a picture of Harmony and a man who must be the mystery fianc é —a man I am, quite frankly, surprised to discover exists. They share a kiss in front of a tent and campfire, Harmony’s left hand presenting her ring to the camera. There is a tear near the bottom of the picture, like she started to cut him out one day but thought better of it.

Her pill dispenser catches my attention next. Today is Monday, but her pills from Thursday onward are untouched. The oblong pills stare back at me from their clear pockets, a beast with two white eyes and one pink. She has too many pills left in the bottles too. She can’t be in her right mind if she’s taking her medication this sporadically. One missed antidepressant is enough to make me spiral, give me brain zaps, but these are the heavy hitters of psychiatric medication. I was on Seroquel once upon a time. The psychiatrist thought it might remedy my sleep disturbances. You don’t quit an antipsychotic cold turkey unless you want a weekend at an inpatient treatment center. I might know that one from experience.

I sit on the unmade bed before I can worry about bedbugs. I can’t make it add up. Say she killed our mother. Say she did so during a psychotic episode, maybe withdrawal-induced, maybe not. Why confess without a lawyer? Why wouldn’t she capitalize on the one mitigating factor she has? It isn’t like Harmony to fall on her sword out of some warped sense of honor.

Maybe I should let her.

If I really want this to be the end, it can be. This can be my closure. Deep down, I will know it’s a lie, but you learn to live with the lies that help you sleep at night. Sometimes peace is more valuable than truth.

Not this time. No. I have to find out what really happened.

I won’t let this be the end.

“Box Butte Fire Department.”

I strip Harmony’s bed as I talk. I have too much latent energy in my body to sit still. “Hi, this is—I’m looking for my sister’s fianc é . I think he works with your fire department.”

“Name?”

“My sister is Harmony Byrd.”

“You’re looking for Cal?”

“Sure.”

“Hang on a minute.”

We have very different definitions of how long a minute is. By the time someone returns to the phone, I’ve chewed flecks of skin from four of my knuckles. I wipe the blood on my bare thighs. “You’re calling about Harmony?”

“I am.”

“Which sister are you?”

“The one who tried to kill our mother.”

“Hmm. Heard about you.”

I lower myself onto the bed again. “Listen, I’m just calling because I’m worried about Harmony. I don’t think she’s been taking her medication, and I wanted to see if—”

“Hey, hold on a second. For God’s sake, Mark, I’m on the phone! Sorry, go on.”

“Does she do this a lot? Stop taking her meds?”

Cal’s sigh hangs in the air like a storm cloud saturated with rain. “I see she hasn’t told you. I … Harmony and I aren’t together anymore. Haven’t been for six months or so.”

“She still wears her ring.”

“It was my mother’s and she won’t give it back.”

“Sounds like her.”

“All due respect, miss, your sister has some real problems. I hope she gets the help she needs, but until then, I don’t want nothing to do with her.”

“Did she ever talk about our mother?” I ask.

“I don’t really want—”

“She’s in trouble. I’m trying to help her, and I don’t have a lot of options. Believe me, I was mortified to even call you.”

My admission of vulnerability is enough for him to let his guard down, just a little. The background noise on his end of the line ebbs and flows. “Mostly she talked about your dad. Your mom came up once in a blue moon. Good things, usually. Only thing I really remember is whenever she was working, she’d make a point to send money to your mom every month. Then, of course, she’d inevitably screw up whatever job she was at after a few months and whine about not having any savings, eventually find a new job, cycle would repeat. She was terrible with money. Blew hundreds of bucks on cigarettes every month. I tried giving her a vape to save her some cash and she threw it away, said it wasn’t the same thing. Stubborn. The only person she ever paid reliably was your mom.”

“Did she always do that when you were together?”

“All three years.”

“Long time to be with someone you said has real problems .”

“I did love your sister,” Cal says. “When she was good, she was good. Nobody’s ever made me laugh like Harmony. But she has a lot more bad days than good days. And the meds? She never took ’em regularly.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, before you go? Could you try getting the ring for me? I wouldn’t care if it was some dumb ring I bought, but my mom gave it to me before she died. She wanted me to have it for the right girl.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I say.

“For all the nasty things Harmony said about you, you don’t seem so terrible.”

“I have more bad days than good days.”