Page 89 of We Are All Guilty Here

Cole said nothing, but his shock flashed like a neon sign.

“Papa told me and Tommy about her last year.” Emmy knew she was throwing too much on him at once. She gave him a few seconds to catch up. “After your uncle Henry drowned in the river, Martha went off the rails. Started drinking and drugging. Then she started stealing things to support her habit. Eventually, she stole your great-aunt Millie’s car. Got drunk. Nearly killed somebody on the highway. The other driver is fine now, but he was in the hospital for a week. A lot of people were angry. Martha ended up leaving town in the middle of the night. Never looked back.”

Cole shook his head like he didn’t understand. “But why did Papa say she was dead?”

“Because there were people in town who wanted her charged for the car accident.” Emmy could still see his confusion. “Baby, this was over forty years ago. There was no internet. Nobody had computers. Every police report or complaint was written on a sheet of paper that could be shoved in the back of a filing cabinet or thrown away. Your great-uncle was the county prosecutor. Your other great-uncle was the circuit judge. Aunt Millie was editor in chief of theHerald. Uncle Penley was the mayor. If Gerald Clifton said his daughter died in a car accident up in Memphis, then everybody accepted that his daughter had died in a car accident up in Memphis.”

“Okay.” Cole was clearly tapping the weak spots. “What about the funeral?”

“Papa told everybody she was cremated. There wasn’t a funeral. Tommy was away at college. I was still a baby so I had no idea what was going on. Millie was furious about her car. She shut down the cousins. It didn’t take much effort. Jude had burned a lot of bridges.”

Emmy gave him another moment to think. She skipped ahead to the next question she knew he would ask. “Obviously, your grandma knew the truth. That’s one of the reasons Papa told us. Grandma kept saying Martha was still alive. Papa thought it was wrong for us to keep insisting she was dead. And I guess Papa wanted us to know, too. This was around the time he was diagnosed with lung cancer. The prognosis wasn’t good even then. He said he didn’t want his ghosts turning into our demons.”

Cole kept tapping. “Why didn’t she come home before now?”

“I can take a guess,” Emmy said. “She told Papa she wouldn’t step foot back in Clifton County until he was dead.”

Cole’s jawbone stuck out again. He’d always been protective of his grandfather. “What did Tommy say?”

“That stuff was more complicated than Papa was letting on, but he kept those complications to himself.” Emmy knew this was the least surprising part of the story. “Anyway, Papa said he made a lot of mistakes back then.”

“‘Mistakes can give you a reason to forgive.’”

He was quoting Gerald. Emmy bit her lip so that she wouldn’t tear up again.

Cole asked, “Why didn’t anybody tell me about this before?”

“Because—” Emmy knew the levers she could pull right now to shut down further lines of enquiry. They were the same levers Gerald had pulled, the same ones Tommy swung on like a monkey, and she wasn’t going to weaponize them against her son. “Because we’re all cowards who refuse to talk about things that upset us.”

Cole gave a startled bark of a laugh. “That sounds about right.”

Emmy let out another long breath. She’d reached her limit of uncowardly gestures. “Did you give your statement about Papa’s shooting to Sherry Robertson?”

He took a moment to adjust to the abrupt change in subject. “Yeah, but she keeps asking me about the gun. I told her I couldn’t see who was holding it.”

“That’s what I told her, too.” Emmy took a quick breath. “I want you to go with me to interview Carol Walker. We need to see if she’s remembered anything.”

“I’m ready.”

“Hold up. I want you to do something else first.” Emmy nodded toward the monitors. She didn’t know if she was doing this for Dylan or for herself, but at this point, it didn’t matter. “Go back to the women’s isolation block and let your aunt Hannah see you at the door. Stand at the glass, but don’t go inside. That way your face isn’t on the cameras. Then you can meet me outside and we’ll go to the Walkers’ house.”

He looked uncomfortable. “What if she tries to talk to me?”

“Just smile or wave or whatever you feel like. Then walk away. Okay?”

He clearly had questions, but her son had inherited the coward gene, too. “Okay.”

Emmy tracked his progress on the monitors as he secured his Glock in the lockers that lined the hallway, then went inside the jail complex. She started to stand, but someone was blocking the doorway.

Jude said, “He’s a nice-looking kid.”

Emmy felt her teeth grinding together. She wondered if her jawbone stuck out the same way Cole’s did. She said, “I hear you’re taking over my case.”

“I’m only here to consult, and you’re still in charge, sheriff.”

Emmy’s jaw started to ache. “I’m the chief deputy.”

“Which means you’re the acting sheriff now that Gerald is gone. You need to make sure people know that you’re in charge.”

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