Forgiveness Road Read online

  Without waiting for an answer, Janelle ordered her rubbery legs to carry her to the garage. Richard’s body lay facedown on the cement floor, his briefcase at his side, two islands surrounded by the ever-widening sea of blood. She gagged back her breakfast and wrapped both arms around her middle trying to hold the world together.

  The gun lay on the grass right outside the garage next to a pair of pink plastic sandals. Why hadn’t Caroline or Bess thought to pick it up? She considered wiping Cissy’s fingerprints off the gun and throwing it out into the oat field next to the house to rid themselves of at least one piece of a horrific puzzle. Or she could tell the police she shot Richard.

  “Janelle, pull yourself together.” She spoke the words out loud, needing the sound to awaken her brain and legs. She ran toward the house, shouting for Bess to help Caroline inside. Then she changed course and headed for Cissy.

  “Child, what have you done?” She shook her granddaughter’s shoulders, but Cissy remained placid, a pitiful slackness in her face and body. “What happened?”

  “Don’t worry, Grandmother,” she whispered, and cast her vacant eyes toward the sky as if watching the clouds. “It’ll all be okay. Lily and Jessie are safe now.”

  Janelle couldn’t deal with her gibberish. “Stay put. Don’t you go anywhere.”

  “Of course not, Grandmother.” She kicked her bare feet in the dirt beneath the swing.

  Janelle ran into the house to look for Lily and Jessie. She explored the first floor, room by room, calling out their names until her voice grew raspy and inadequate. She heard nothing. Where were those babies? At least Bess had managed to stop Caroline’s screaming.

  When she reached the second-floor landing, muffled cries escaped Cissy’s room. Janelle opened the closet door to find Lily with her hand over her sister’s mouth to stifle the whimpers that had already given them away.

  “Oh, children. Come out of there this instant. Don’t be afraid.”

  Lily, only twelve but the protector, shook her head no. Janelle had offered no proof that the girl’s world was once again safe or normal, so her hesitancy was expected. Jessie, however, busted loose from her older sister’s grasp and shot out on her knees. She threw her arms around the lower part of Janelle’s legs, knocking her off-kilter. Within seconds, Lily also emerged and squeezed her stooped shoulders. The girl stood almost as tall as Janelle.

  “Bess said Cissy killed Daddy.” Lily’s tone implored her to contradict those words.

  She embraced the girls. “Well, I’ll go find out exactly what happened if you promise not to worry. Now, go to your room and wait until Bess or I come for you.” She pushed them down the hallway and waited to hear the click of the door. Then she made her way downstairs and to the phone. Someone had to call the sheriff.

  * * *

  On the phone, Sheriff Roe had promised her that he’d not make a scene, yet the first of two cruisers arrived with lights flashing. When two young deputies emerged from the first car with guns drawn, Janelle marched toward them ready to unleash a fury the likes of which they’d never seen.

  The sheriff exited the second car quickly. His booming voice instructed the men to stand down and he rushed over, taking liberties to place his arm around her shoulder. The deputies milled about uncomfortably, waiting for orders.

  “Mrs. Clayton, I’m terribly sorry. The dispatcher leaked word Richard had been murdered.” He towered over Janelle. “They ain’t seen this much action before. Getting a little too excited, I suspect.”

  “Shot,” she said. “No one said anything about murder.”

  “Ma’am, I’ll need to speak to your granddaughter. May I?” He nodded toward the swing, where Cissy waited in her limbo. Janelle shooed him over with both hands.

  At the same time, Caroline couldn’t be contained by the house or Bess, and raced about the side yard, her arms and legs out of sync. “I wish you’d never been born!” she howled, and pounded her gut as if expunging Cissy from her womb.

  Cissy’s expression never changed, a still pond not yet disturbed by a skipping stone. She nodded once, maybe twice while the sheriff spoke to her, yet seemed deaf to her mother’s anguish.

  The deputies retrieved yellow tape from the cruiser’s trunk and cordoned off the front of the garage. The men stood in front of the crime scene, awaiting instructions. Crime scene. Janelle stood, useless, listening to the hum of a horsefly and noting the brutish Mississippi humidity.

  A few minutes passed before Sheriff Roe took Cissy’s upper arm and pulled her from the swing. He led her back to his car, a gentle hand around her elbow. Without any instruction Cissy opened the back door herself, crawled in, and folded her lanky legs in front of her. Grasping her knees, she seemed to sway to a lullaby only she could hear.

  Sheriff Roe instructed his men to stay by the garage until the coroner arrived. He said Cissy would be detained at the county jail in a small room he used when staying overnight.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Clayton. She’ll be treated well,” the sheriff said. “I’ll see to it myself.”

  Janelle had no choice but to believe him.

  “Ma’am, you should get a lawyer for that gal right away. I can put off questioning her officially only for so long before it appears I’m not doing my job.”

  “Yes, of course you’re right.” She handed him Cissy’s sandals, although she wasn’t sure how they got into her hands.

  “I’m sure you can find yourself a good one,” he said. “Folks remember your husband fondly. Judge Clayton made more friends than anyone I’d ever seen preside over a circuit court.”

  Beau had been a good man and an even better judge. He built a fine reputation over thirty years, and the Clayton name meant something in Mississippi. Janelle also had the financial means to hire the best attorney in the state, or elsewhere for that matter, but there’d be challenges.

  “My son-in-law is . . . was a highly regarded attorney,” she told the sheriff. “He’ll garner sympathy in some circles.”

  “Don’t you be worrying about Richard.” He wiped the sweat from his brow and fanned his face with his hat. “You need to focus your energy on helping Cissy now.”

  Her granddaughter had always been an unusual child, with peculiar notions about the world that often made Janelle’s head spin or her blood boil, sometimes at the same time. She questioned authority relentlessly, but with a genuine curiosity rather than rebelliousness. Her odd behaviors caused family and strangers alike to shake their heads in wonderment. Janelle refused to believe Cissy capable of premeditated murder, yet failed to ask her the reason for changing their lives so irrevocably. And what did she mean when she said Lily and Jessie were now safe? Why hadn’t Janelle asked?

  When the sheriff started the car, she pressed a hand to the backseat window. Cissy’s enormous blue eyes, glistening and distant, revealed no clues. Her lips, upturned in a strange little smile, mouthed, “Don’t worry about me, Grandmother.”

  Janelle watched the car drive away, her eyes fixed on Cissy’s ginger curls. Her granddaughter didn’t turn around, so she returned to the house to see about Caroline and the girls.

  * * *

  “Miss Caroline, you need to tell Mrs. Clayton what your daughter told you,” Bess pleaded, but Caroline stayed mute. The three of them stood in the parlor.

  “Miss Cissy said her daddy touched her in the wrong way,” Bess said, her hand over her mouth. “Said she’d not let him do the same to her baby sisters.”

  “She’s a lying bitch,” Caroline shouted.

  Janelle hit her daughter with all the force she could muster. “Why would she lie? She’s a good girl. She’s never told a lie in her short life.”

  Janelle recalled the many rules that governed her granddaughter’s odd behaviors. Topping her list of things she vowed never to do was lying. Even as a very small child, she’d stride up to her parents and grandparents to confess any wrongdoing, even when it would have likely gone unnoticed. Once, when Cissy was just six or seven years old, Janelle
asked her why she didn’t just keep the deed to herself. Cissy had said, “If we can’t trust each other to tell the truth, Grandmother, what’s to become of us?”

  Bess stepped between them, perhaps to stop Janelle from striking Caroline again. Janelle steadied herself by placing a hand on the back of a wing chair. She shuddered to imagine Cissy speaking her horrors aloud, trusting that Caroline would believe the unthinkable of her husband.

  “How could you not know?” Janelle asked. “She’s your daughter.”

  “She’s not my daughter any longer!” Caroline spit her words. “She’s telling horrible, disgusting lies about Richard. Why are you taking her side?”

  “Because I’m her grandmother and I believe she’d never do something like this without reason.” Janelle pondered what other motive Cissy might have had if she wasn’t telling the truth about her father. Why today? She’d been so calm, sitting under the magnolia. Shouldn’t a sixteen-year-old who’d killed a person be distraught? If anything, the girl looked at peace.

  “She murdered him, Mother. Murdered!”

  Anyone could understand Caroline’s anguish and her primal hope that Richard was not capable of such monstrous acts. But Cissy needed her mother more than anyone right now. She needed to be believed.

  Bess grew alarmed by their shouting and put an arm around Caroline’s shoulders.

  “You’ll frighten the little ones, Miss Caroline,” she whispered. “Please lie down. Rest a spell.”

  The wildness in Caroline’s eyes dimmed in response to the soothing tone of Bess’s instructions. Caroline curled up on the sofa. Bess touched her hair lovingly, something a mother would do; something Janelle couldn’t imagine being able to do again.

  “Bess, why don’t you go check on the girls. I need to speak to my daughter.”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you, Mother. You can believe Cissy, but I want that girl put away for good, someplace where she can’t hurt any of us ever again.”

  Bess locked eyes with Janelle. Sympathy flooded her dark features.

  “I don’t care how you treat me, Caroline, but I expect you to pull yourself together and be there for your child,” she said.

  “That’s rich coming from you,” Caroline said. “And today of all days, when I’ve lost my husband, you’re going to believe a girl who’s never been in her right mind.”

  Janelle bristled at the unfair assessment. “Don’t say that about your daughter. There’s nothing wrong with her mind.”

  “Oh, Mother, don’t try to rewrite history. You’ve told me on more than one occasion that I needed to do something about Cissy’s ‘eccentricities,’” Caroline said. “What possesses an eccentric child to retrieve her father’s loaded gun from a drawer, follow him out to his car, and kill him in cold blood?”

  “I can’t begin to understand the depth of your pain right now, but please reserve your judgment about Cissy until we know more.”

  “What more do I need to know? Isn’t a dead body enough for you?” Caroline demanded. “You know Richard was a good man. There’s no way he’d harm a child, much less his own daughter.”

  Janelle found it hard to argue with that. Over the years, he rarely attracted Janelle’s attention at all. She thought him a vain sort of man, wrapped up in his career, but harmless. If he was guilty of anything, it was neglecting his wife and family. The law appeared to be his whole world.

  “But, Caroline, why distrust Cissy? Has she given you any reason?”

  “She’s not right in the head, and Richard can’t defend himself, can he? I don’t know what’s going on, and neither do you. Now, please. Just leave me alone.” Caroline grabbed a chenille throw from the foot of the sofa and pulled it up around her head.

  Janelle had always worried that Caroline loved the idea of being a mother more than the actual responsibility. All she’d ever wanted was to marry the “right sort” of man, someone who could provide her with a large, exquisitely furnished home where she could entertain his colleagues and their wives. She’d envisioned three perfectly obedient children that others would envy. Instead, the couple never developed a close circle of friends, they never had enough money in Caroline’s opinion, and the three girls? Well, they were rambunctious and independent—nothing that Caroline expected.

  Janelle moved toward the front door, unable to summon an ounce of compassion to comfort her daughter. “I’m going to find legal counsel and then we’ll figure out where to go from here. Perhaps you’ll feel differently tomorrow.”

  * * *

  From the beginning, Janelle’s relationship with Caroline had been a rough patch of road that ceased to end. As a baby, Caroline bucked and kicked, refusing to be held by anyone but Ruth or Beau. It didn’t take long before Janelle decided she just wasn’t mother material and left the caregiving to Ruth. Of course, Ruth chastised her for not trying hard enough and pushed Caroline onto her day after day. One afternoon, they got in such a row that Beau stepped in to grab the screaming child and told the women to take their argument outside.

  “I know your mama had a vicious streak in her,” Ruth had said to Janelle more than thirty years ago. “She didn’t exactly set a good example, but you can’t go on ignoring the fact that you have a child who needs you.”

  Those words came rushing back to Janelle as she drove home from Caroline’s. Janelle had just said the same words to her daughter. Had three generations of women failed their children so completely?

  When she pulled into her own driveway and killed the ignition, Janelle had no memory of her route or speed. Ruth stood on the front porch, wringing her hands. She managed a tired nod.

  All Janelle wanted was her wicker rocker. She sank down into the cushions long faded by summer sun and winter rains, feeling the heartache pressed against her chest. Looking over at Beau’s empty chair magnified the ache, and Janelle reached over to touch the arm of his rocker. She slipped off her shoes and waved Ruth away, wanting nothing more than to disappear into the muggy June night.

  “Beau, how I wish you were still alive,” she whispered.

  A familiar sense of abandonment overtook her. Many evenings she’d sit on this porch, imagining her husband next to her. She usually spoke of mundane matters—the peach trees that needed pruning, the leak under the kitchen sink, the drought ravaging the crops tended by the tenant farmers. Tonight, she talked instead of their family torn apart; how she needed him here, now, with her.

  Janelle closed her eyes and tried to fathom the depth of Caroline’s loss. A heart attack had claimed Beau at age seventy. Caroline’s Richard had only been forty-four. Her grief bubbled up memories of the long and full life Beau and she had enjoyed, and of the resolute bond that held them together for half a century. Caroline’s grief would be divided between the overwhelming sadness of a loved one wrenched away too soon and the agony over how Richard had died, why he had died. Caroline’s memories would be rewritten, never to be accurate or comforting again.

  Sleep nipped at the edge of Janelle’s consciousness but never took hold. Her waking nightmare would not allow respite. She couldn’t help but think how they’d all serve a sentence for Cissy’s crime.

  In the early morning, Ruth found her in the same spot, covered in mosquito bites and joints protesting the night spent upright in a chair. Her hand was still around a tumbler of Old Grand-Dad. Knowing Janelle rarely took to the drink, Ruth gave her wide berth. Around seven, she set out toast and black coffee on the wicker table next to Janelle’s rocker.

  “Are you all right?” Ruth asked, sitting down.

  “None of us will ever be all right again.”

  “Lord knows that’s the truth,” Ruth said. “Bess called and told me why Cissy done what she did. My heart is torn open for that girl and her sisters, for Miss Caroline.”

  “Did Bess also tell you that Caroline doesn’t believe her own daughter?”

  “But you believe Cissy?” Ruth asked.

  Janelle leaned forward. “Why shouldn’t I? She’s a child. Why would
a child concoct such a horrific tale? Where would she even get those ideas?”

  “You can settle back down, Mrs. Clayton. I believe her, too. I just know this must be about the worst thing that will ever happen to Miss Caroline in her entire life.”

  “She worshipped that man,” Janelle said. “If Beau or I said anything the slightest bit negative about him, Caroline would start listing his many virtues and how lucky we were that he was our son-in-law. It almost drove Beau to drink more.”

  “Mr. Beau liked that boy,” Ruth reminded her. “Thought he came from a fine family, that he was smart and educated and could take care of his little girl. He seemed relieved she’d found such a man. You seemed relieved.”

  “But why did Caroline turn a blind eye?”

  “A person capable of the things Mr. Pickering did . . . well, you get good at keeping secrets. The fact that Miss Caroline didn’t recognize that in a man she thought she knew so well . . . it’s probably driving her mad. She won’t be in her right mind for a long time.”

  Janelle couldn’t worry about Caroline’s state of mind now. Her greater fear was that no one would believe Cissy or, like Caroline, they would just assume she’d gone mad.

  Janelle may have failed her daughter, but she wouldn’t fail Cissy.

  Chapter 3

  The metal fan and open window did nothing to ease the stifling heat in the dank, paneled cave Charles Whitney called his office. Janelle should have known by his address he’d be in an older building without air-conditioning.

  The lawyer melted before her eyes, perspiration sliding off his high forehead and nose, and landing on his paper desk blotter, his dress shirt pasted against his undershirt. Janelle fanned herself with a folded newspaper, trying to ignore the smell of cigarettes and mold. She’d had some dizzy spells lately, a crippling vertigo that demanded she sit down or risk a fall. She hoped she wouldn’t faint and end up facedown on the matted shag carpeting.