Page 32

CHAPTER EIGHT

Emmy Clifton sat at the kitchen table staring at the front page of the North Falls Herald on her phone. The photo showed Adam Huntsinger walking out of the courthouse with his fist raised in triumph. A crowd had gathered to cheer him on. The headline felt like it was stabbing her in the face.

brOKEN ANGELS KILLER FREED

She couldn’t read the article. Didn’t need to.

The chain of events that had led to this horrible moment was seared into her brain.

Instead of torturing herself with the past, she studied the photo.

Death row hadn’t taken Adam’s life, but it had clearly taken something.

At sixty-one years old, he looked like every moment of the last twelve years had shaved a layer off his soul.

He was smiling, but his expression was haggard.

His acne-scarred skin looked dry and flaky.

His dark hair had turned completely gray.

His cheeks were sunken. His eyes had a haunted look behind thick prison-issue glasses.

There were probably people looking at this same photograph right now who felt sorry for him.

Or worse, they were one of the mindless hordes who’d listened to Jack Whitlock’s Misguided Angel podcast and felt the elation of a fan whose team had just won the game.

Mr. Pocket Pussy himself was beaming with pride as he stood behind the man he’d identified as the Perv twelve years ago.

Everyone in the crowd was looking at Adam as if he was a hero.

What Emmy saw was a monster who had gotten away with a double murder.

A man who’d probably spent the last twelve years reliving the sexual pleasure he’d derived from his heinous crimes.

A pedophile who was without a doubt going to hurt another child again.

She zoomed in on Adam’s upraised fist. The snake tattoo wrapping around his forearm had faded from black to blue.

His body had turned thin and ropey from having endless amounts of time for push-ups, crunches and jumping jacks while he was caged inside a seven-by-thirteen foot cell for nearly twenty-four hours a day.

The veins seemed to pulse beneath his skin.

If only the executioner’s needle had pierced one of them.

Emmy made herself put the phone face-down on the kitchen table.

She held her coffee mug in her hands, let the steam rise into her face.

The last time she had seen Cheyenne and Madison’s killer was from the witness stand.

Her testimony had been pivotal because she’d been there at every twist and turn of the case.

Emmy was the last known person to talk to Madison at the park.

She’d seen all of the evidence on the soccer pitch.

She’d been the one who’d gotten the information from Aunt Millie.

She’d examined the damaged Jetta in the Huntsinger driveway.

She had spotted Cheyenne’s necklace in the grass near Adam’s basement apartment.

Most importantly, she had pulled both girls from the pond.

Her eyes closed and she was back in the water. Cupping her hand to Madison’s face. Staring at the beams of light shooting around Cheyenne’s head. Emmy’s dreams had been haunted by both girls since that fateful afternoon. There was no before in her mind, only the terrible things that had come after.

“Hello?” Myrna called from the top of the stairs. “Is there coffee?”

Tension clenched every muscle in Emmy’s body. “Yes, ma’am. Do you need help?”

“No, I don’t need any of your damn help.”

Emmy felt her teeth grit. Myrna’s labored movements sounded like a sidewinder slapping its way down the stairs.

Emmy didn’t have to turn around to see what she was doing.

Her mother would be gripping the railing with both hands, one foot down, then the other foot on the same stair, then down, then over and over again until she either fell the rest of the way or managed to make it on her own.

There was no use trying to stop her. Or asking her to use a cane.

Or suggesting they turn the den into a downstairs bedroom.

A screaming argument would not make any difference to the outcome.

Myrna would sit on the stairs like a toddler until you gave up and left her alone.

The specialist in Atlanta claimed this stubbornness was nearly universal in late-stage Alzheimer’s patients, but Emmy knew from personal experience that her mother’s irritating intransigence was the one characteristic that could not be blamed on her diagnosis.

“Well, I made it down in one piece.” Myrna pressed a heavy hand on Emmy’s chair as she passed behind her. “Despite what you were rooting for.”

Emmy slowly let out the air that had been trapped inside her lungs.

Her body felt shaky. She’d spent most of the night trying to recover from another bout of Myrna’s night terrors.

The bloodcurdling screams had been bad, but the hallucinations had gone on for hours.

Myrna had finally settled around five o’clock, but Emmy hadn’t bothered going back to bed since she had to wake up in an hour anyway.

Now, she watched her mother move around the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee, taking out eggs and bacon from the fridge, then finding the bread in the pantry.

She was wearing a house dress, her ghostly gray hair down past her shoulders.

As she moved in and out of the sunlight, her face took on different masks.

One angle had her looking old and grouchy, the next angle washed away the years, then yet another angle showed the slack-jawed confusion as she tried to remember how to turn on the stove.

Myrna’s hands fumbled at one knob, then the next, the labels clearly not making sense. She gave the last one a violent twist. Nothing happened. No lights came on. No clicking of the starter, whoosh of the gas igniting.

She told Emmy, “The stove isn’t working.”

The stove had been disconnected last October when Myrna had almost burned down the house. “I’ll get Cleet to come fix it.”

“Tell him I need an exact time. I don’t have all day to wait around.”

Cleet had died fifteen years ago, but Emmy picked up her phone anyway. “I’ll text him right now.”

She mimed her thumb moving across the screen, but all she saw was Adam Huntsinger’s pinched features.

Emmy swiped right, and the previous page loaded with a close-up of another haggard face, this one in profile.

The woman was sitting in a church pew with her head turned up toward the cross. The caption read:

Barbara Jericho, the Real Broken Angel.

A text notification came through. Then another.

Then another. Emmy suppressed a groan she would never be able to explain to her mother.

Taybee had put out a call to the girl cousins to organize a baby shower for her daughter Kaitlynn.

One cousin had already complained about not being able to bring her husband.

Another had privately texted Emmy about how tacky it was to put an 800-dollar stroller on your wish list. Yet another had darkly joked about bringing a clothes hanger and a bottle of gin.

“Lordy, my arthritis is bad today.” Myrna flexed her hand, ignoring the angry red scar tracing down the back of her thumb. She had no memory of putting her fist through a window last month and almost slicing a tendon. “I hate when you’re on that thing when I’m trying to talk to you.”

Emmy put her phone down again. She knew better than to take the admonishment as a sign that Myrna had somehow managed to anchor herself in the present. “What do you want to talk about, Mom?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not your mother,” Myrna huffed. “Who’s in the driveway?”

Emmy was about to chalk up the question to her mother’s paranoia, but then she heard car wheels crunching gravel.

She went to look out of the kitchen window.

Kaitlynn was early today. Millie was already launching herself out of the red Mercedes.

She slammed the door, then staggered across the driveway with a determined scowl on her granny-apple face.

At ninety-two, she had taken the title of Oldest Living Clifton and was in no hurry to relinquish the crown.

Emmy told her mother, “Aunt Millie is here.”

“I don’t know that I’m up for talking this morning.”

Emmy didn’t think Kaitlynn was either. The engine revved as the Mercedes screeched out of the driveway. The girl had followed in her mother’s footsteps at UGA and had been practicing law for the last two years, a fact that made Emmy feel exactly eleventy billion years old.

“Millie Clifton!” Millie announced, banging open the screen door before Emmy could get to it. Millie tossed a paper sack in her direction. Emmy said a silent prayer of thanks to Taybee for sending breakfast.

“Well don’t help me or nothing,” Millie complained.

Emmy couldn’t win with these old women today.

She passed her mother the paper sack as she helped Millie to the table.

The tote bag was so heavy that Millie’s skin had sagged into a puddle around the straps.

Library books pressed sharp creases into the corners along with a copy of the 1978 North Falls Whitepages.

The books were just for show. Myrna couldn’t follow a story anymore.

They would spend the morning reading down the alphabetical list of names, Millie gossiping and laughing about people who were either dead or just as good as, none of whom Myrna could remember anymore.

“Did you see this garbage?” Millie grabbed a rolled-up newspaper from the tote and brandished it like she was threatening a dog. “The Perv on the front page. The whole town’s in an uproar. Got people calling me night and day. They’re ready to go out there and take matters into their own hands.”

“Tell them to calm down.” Emmy busied herself putting away the eggs and bacon. “Adam’s not gonna be out of prison for long.”