Page 8 of Deeper Than the Dead

“But ...” Vera hesitated still. The Bent she remembered was a heavy drinker—possibly an alcoholic. At sixteen all she’d cared about was the idea that this gorgeous guy made her feel better. Didn’t matter that he was twenty-one and had been seen with most of the women his age or older in town at one point or another. How many husbands had sworn to shoot him on sight for messing around with their wives?

Forever ago. All of it ... felt like a different life. Yet somehow, that distant past was suddenly bursting its way into her present.

“He’s not the same guy you remember,” Eve said, while Vera continued to struggle for a reasonable response.

“You mean,” she said, unable or unwilling to fully rein in the bitterness, “the womanizing alcoholic?”

Eve made a face. “He still drinks. He’s just smarter about it these days. He said the military taught him how to be patient ... to use restraint in all things. Once in a while he even comes to the AA meetings I lead. He sits in the back and says nothing, but he’s there. I asked him one time why he came, and he said just to prove he could.”

Didn’t sound as if he’d changed much to Vera. “Why wouldn’t you tell me this?”

“Why would I?” Eve leveled a pointed gaze on Vera. “You almost never come back home anyway, and the few times you have, you left so fast no one knew you were ever here. Didn’t seem relevant. Or maybe I just didn’t want to deal with this.”

Vera supposed she deserved that one. “You’re right. Besides, what Bent did or does is completely irrelevant to me, unless it’s related to this Sheree situation.”

For all she knew he could have a string of former wives and neglected children.

“He never married,” Eve said as if Vera had made the statement aloud.

“I’m sure he found the idea of having just one partner too boring.” Vera stared out the window once more to prevent her sister from seeing the surprise in her eyes. Not that his marital status affected Vera one way or the other. She could not care less.

“No idea. But he’s a damned good sheriff. Everybody likes him now that he’s proven himself. Except some of the former deputies. They give him a little trouble now and then. But he handles it well.”

Sounded as if her sister was a fan. “You talk to him often?”

“Sure. He asks me about the bodies sometimes.”

Vera’s instincts stirred. “About the bodies?”

She nodded. “The bodies from crimes—victims. He asks, you know, my thoughts on the matter.”

The memory of her sister sitting next to the bathtub after having found their mother plowed into Vera’s brain. Vera had been on the phone with one of her friends. The only phone in the house had been in the living room. She glanced around. In this very room. There was an extension in the kitchen now, but that hadn’t been added until later. Her gaze settled on the landline that sat on the end table next to the sofa. She’d been deep in conversation when she heard Eve calling for their mom. By the time Vera realized something was wrong, ended the call, and got up the stairs to the bathroom, her sister was weeping frantically. Her best friend Suri was attempting to comfort her.

Their mother was dead in the bathtub. The doctor had warned days before that it wouldn’t be long. That day, they checked on her first thing when they arrived home from school. Then, while Vera was busy on the phone, Eve and Suri helped her into the tub. She wanted a bath, Eve explained later. Evelyn urged her and her friend to go to Eve’s room and play. She would let Eve know when she was ready to get out. A little while later, after Evelyn called for Eve, she went to the bathroom and found her unresponsive. Eve had never said, but Vera suspected she hadn’t gone immediately when their mother called. It was a question she never intended to ask. Their mother was dying. A minute one way or the other was not the reason she died, and Vera would never say or do anything to make Eve feel in any way responsible or guilty.

But the part that stood out most in Vera’s mind was the way Eve had insisted that their mother couldn’t be dead because she had told Eve not to cry and that everything was all right after Eve found her. No matter how many times Vera asked her, Eve said the same thing. She came into the bathroom, found their mother unresponsive, and started to cry. Only eleven at the time, Eve recognized their mother was dead. Once she’d started crying, Eve claimed their mother opened her eyes, smiled at her, and told her not to cry. Suri didn’t come into the room until after that part, so she hadn’t been able to say one way or another.

Looking back, Vera understood that her sister had been traumatized and wasn’t thinking rationally. But there had been other instances. Folks in small communities tended not to miss paying their respects when a neighbor or friend passed. It just wasn’t done. Vera and Eve’s parents had taken them to viewings and funerals dozens of times during their childhood. On several occasions Eve whispered to Vera and asked why the person in the coffin was looking at her. Since the corpse’s eyes were closed, that was impossible. After the first time, Vera asked her mother about it. She suggested that Eve had a vivid imagination and said not to worry about it.

Vera moistened her lips, giving herself time to carefully choose her words now. “What sort of thoughts does Bent want to know?”

Eve’s gaze narrowed. “You know I get these feelings about people who’ve died. Instincts, I suppose you’d call them.”

She had stopped mentioning that dead people looked at her or spoke to her after the last time, when their father insisted on taking Eve to see a psychologist. Vera had figured the whole thing was Eve’s way of punishing their father for remarrying so quickly after their mother’s death. Two months. He’d married only two months after she was buried. And he’d been dating Sheree weeks before that obviously, since Luna came only six months into the union. Worse, he’d married a woman who had just turned thirty, and he had been fifty-two. It happened. As an adult Vera thought nothing of those sorts of age differences. But as a fifteen-year-old who’d recently lost her mother, the whole thing had been disgusting.

“I remember,” Vera said, careful not to sound judgmental.

Eve stared out the window once more. “Did Daddy ever tell you about what happened to me?”

Vera tensed and felt a frown tugging across her brow. “What’re you talking about?”

“He didn’t tell me either until I was thirty-two. Just before he started forgetting my name.”

Dementia did that. “What did he tell you?”

“When I was five, we were all at old man McCallister’s funeral.”

Vera smiled. “The drugstore owner. He always gave us cherry colas from the soda fountain.”

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