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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

All of it mattered, but only one part of it felt real.

Emmy had spent six long, fretful years awaiting the awful day of Myrna’s final transfer to a care home, and the last six weeks dreading the arrival of Gerald’s slow death.

Then suddenly, in the blink of an eye they were both gone.

Emmy was effectively an orphan. Her father would never again act as her rudder, gently steering her in the right direction.

Myrna would never again put the wind in her sails. She was on her own now.

Dylan would’ve argued the point. He had long told her that she needed to learn how to set her burdens down.

The truth was, Emmy was afraid if she set them down, she would never be able to pick them back up again.

Particularly now. Paisley Walker was counting on her.

The squad was looking to her for direction.

The town needed some kind of resolution.

There could be other vulnerable children in danger.

Emmy knew what her parents would want her to do.

Myrna would tell her to make plans, take action, do something about it.

Gerald would tell her to keep her head down and do her job.

She turned down the long driveway to Virgil and Peggy’s farm.

The couple had kept horses for as long as she could remember.

Emmy had ridden with Virgil when she was a kid, then they’d both taken Cole out on the rolling fields behind the house.

Thinking about those moments took some of the tension out of her shoulders.

It was nice to have a good memory among all the bad that was piling up on her.

Emmy did a quick turn at the end of the drive and backed her cruiser onto the parking pad.

Virgil’s truck was backed up to a horse trailer.

She could smell manure when she got out of the cruiser.

A breeze had kicked up. The clouds were growing dark.

A storm was coming. She was heading toward Virgil’s front door when she spotted him coming out of the barn.

Emmy navigated the steep hill toward the back of the property.

She could feel her feet sliding inside her boots.

She’d spent the entire three hours of sleep in Dylan’s bathtub.

Her skin was more wrinkled than Millie’s.

“Hey.” Virgil swung the door closed. He took the heavy chain off his shoulder. “Any news on Paisley?”

“Nothing.” She saw the disappointment on his face. “Thought I’d pick up those boxes Dad asked you to get from storage. Jude wants to go through the Huntsinger case back at the station, see if we missed anything.”

Virgil looked surprised. “They’re in the basement. I thought your dad didn’t want it getting out that we were reopening the case.”

“He didn’t,” Emmy said. “But I can’t think of anything else to do and Jude’s been more right on things than she’s been wrong, so here we are.”

“Sounds reasonable.” He fed the chain through the hasp on the door, then tied it into a loose knot. “Let’s see if the squirrels figure that out.”

Emmy made herself smile at the joke, if only to acknowledge he was trying.

She walked alongside Virgil back toward his house.

Cole had already told her that Jude was asking questions about Emmy.

She figured Virgil was the only person in town who would honestly answer questions about Jude.

“You knew Martha when she lived here, right?”

“I knew her as Gerald’s daughter. I was starting my own family when she went off the rails. Made me glad we had boys. Raising girls can kill a man.”

Emmy couldn’t bring herself to smile at his joke this time.

“Your sister was what we called a hell raiser. Loved a party. Loved a drink. I pulled her over on a couple of DUIs before I realized Gerald wasn’t gonna do anything about it.

” He shrugged at the look she gave him. “You could say things were different back then. DUIs weren’t that big a deal.

Plus, Gerald had his own issues with drinking, so I think he was more inclined to cut her some slack. No matter who ended up getting hurt.”

Emmy felt her eyebrows go up. She’d never heard Virgil even lightly criticize her father.

He said, “Sorry, sugar, it was a frustrating time. Martha caused a lot of problems for a lot of people.”

“You mean the car accident?”

“That was a big part of it, but everything that led up to the crash made folks want to see her punished. Martha was drunk out of her mind when she hit Bubba Rawley. He almost lost his arm. Still has nerve damage to this day. Tommy had such a bad concussion he couldn’t hardly walk straight.”

This was new information to Emmy. “Tommy was in the car accident, too?”

“Riding shotgun when Martha smashed head-on into Bubba’s truck.” Virgil put his hand under her elbow to help her up the steepest part of the slope. “The crash happened a little while after Henry died. Tommy was trying to fill his brother’s shoes, but he couldn’t keep up with Martha. Nobody could.”

Emmy had no doubt that Tommy had tried. She said, “They never told me what happened to Henry, just that he drowned in the Flint.”

“Back then, kids liked to go drinking up at the Falls. Sound familiar?”

He waited for Emmy to smile again, because kids until the end of time would drink up at the Falls.

“Martha and Henry sneaked out of the house real late. Got drunk. She passed out. Henry either went for a swim or fell into the water. He was a good swimmer, but his blood alcohol was off the charts. Had some coke in his system, too. But you probably know the next part. Took six long days before they found his body. Tore your parents apart. Myrna was on fire. Gerald was knee-walking drunk every second of the day. But I wasn’t surprised that they blamed Martha.

Henry was a good kid until he wasn’t. Martha was always a bad seed.

If you’d asked me back then, I would’ve said she would end up dead or in prison or both. ”

Emmy heard an edge of bitterness. She couldn’t square the girl who’d lost her brother with the woman who’d spent most of her career trying to bring children home to their parents. Then again, it was hard to see Gerald as the type of man who would turn his back on his own daughter.

She asked, “What was Dad like when he was drinking?”

“Tommy never told you?”

Emmy’s laugh was genuine this time. “No, Tommy never told me.”

“Well,” Virgil sighed out the word. “I’ll tell you the same thing I said to your daddy when we talked about it. Back when he was drinking, Gerald Clifton could be the meanest son of a bitch you ever met.”

Emmy felt taken aback. She had never heard anyone speak so negatively about Gerald. Even Myrna, who could find fault with everything, had never been so blunt.

“Some men, it’s easier for them to look at the bottom of a bottle rather than look somebody else in the eye.

Gerald earned a hell of a lot of respect from me changing his life around the way he did.

I would’ve followed him through fire. It was the honor of my life serving under him.

” They had reached the driveway. Virgil lifted his foot and rested it on the back of the trailer.

“You can’t put a person in one box, Emmy Lou, especially when they get older.

You’ve gotta judge them by the totality of their lives.

You do bad shit when you’re young that you regret.

You do good shit when you’re old that you hope makes up for it.

In the end, Gerald was a good man who did some bad things.

He learned from his mistakes. He didn’t make the same ones with you. ”

She remembered telling her father twelve years ago that she couldn’t imagine him making mistakes. Now, she gave Virgil the same response Gerald had given her. “I’m glad.”

“Me, too.”

Emmy was even more glad to let the conversation drop.

She followed Virgil to the back of the house, a brick ranch with a walk-out basement.

She’d spent countless hours in Peggy’s salon reading books while Myrna got her hair done.

Emmy knew that Peggy had gotten new equipment when she’d set up shop in town, but it felt strange seeing the old stuff pushed up against the wall.

The beehive hair dryers and the two barber’s chairs with their cracked vinyl seats.

Even the old first aid kit was still hanging on the wall.

Rust had chipped away at the red cross on the door.

Emmy could still remember Peggy getting a Band-Aid from the box when she’d accidentally cut her finger on the scissors.

“Peggy was gonna sell all that stuff on eBay, but then she got too busy to deal with it.” Virgil reached above the doorjamb and found the key.

He had to kick the door at the bottom to make it open.

“I tell clients they can get a case solved here, but if they need a perm, they’ll have to go into town. ”

Emmy forced another smile as Virgil pulled back the curtains on the door and the two large windows that overlooked the backyard.

She switched on the fluorescent lights. His desk and two folding chairs were on the left-hand side where the rinse sinks used to be.

Several file boxes were stacked at the back of the room beside a set of metal storage shelves.

Emmy counted a total of twenty-one. They were sealed with Clifton County Sheriff’s Department tape.

She recognized her own handwriting on the labels.

DALRYMPLE, M.

BAKER, C.

HUNTSINGER, A.

LOUDERMILK, D.