Chapter 42
Beholding Eyes
Maryanne
“I saw her when she came for her body,” Maryanne whispered to Brooke, who now knelt beside C. W.’s body with her. “I saw just the dark whoosh of it, down through the ceiling, into the grave. C. W.’s back was to her, but I saw. And I knew... ” Maryanne’s eyes were wide as she stared at Brooke, then went wider as Connie shuffled closer.
“Did I... scare you?” Connie asked.
“Oh, no, Connie.” Maryanne stood, not even blinking at the lie. “Never you.”
Brooke stood too.
“He’s dead? Billy’s dead?” Almost disbelievingly, Connie’s words rattled forth, so slurred and sluggish now that Maryanne could barely understand her.
“He is,” Maryanne reassured her.
“Good,” Connie said. There was no remorse in her tone. Maryanne wouldn’t have expected it. “He won’t hurt anyone again. He won’t hurt me. He won’t hurt any of you. You three are my friends.”
Steeling herself, Maryanne went to her. Connie was growing weaker, not just in her voice, but in her skeletal remains. They trembled. The light in her eyes was dimming, but that was to be expected. That was to be hoped for. That Connie would find her rest.
“I’m... so, so tired,” she said. Maryanne caught Connie as she stumbled. Holding onto one bare arm bone, she didn’t flinch. Wouldn’t flinch as she supported the corpse, wrapping her hands around the cold bone. She looked into the skeletal face of Connie, into those fading eyes. And Connie looked back.
“Then rest, Connie,” Brooke said. Without hesitation, she too took one of Connie’s arms to support her. “You deserve to rest.”
“Do I?” she asked. “Do I really?”
“You saved me,” Maryanne said. Her eyes filled with tears and she just let them spill down her cheeks. “You saved me, and who knows how many other girls you saved from C. W.—Billy.”
Connie nodded. “And there... there was a little boy once, years and years ago. He almost drowned in that pond. But... but I saved him too. I pulled him out. My life... my existence. It was... ”
“It was right. It was just,” Brooke said. “Not just because you saved others. But because you saved yourself. You survived what you had to survive.”
Through crying eyes Maryanne looked at Brooke, and she could almost swear she saw tears brimming in Brooke’s eyes too. “You’re a strong one, Connie Harvell,” Maryanne said. “You always were.”
“Now,” Brooke said softly, “it’s time for you to rest.”
Connie lowered her head. “Yes. I’m ready. Say goodbye to Alex for me.” Maryanne had to lean her head closer to hear Connie now. “Tell her I love her. Love all my soaring sisters. So much.”
Maryanne watched as the light dimmed completely from Connie’s eyes. Her frame went limp and the two girls eased her to the floor. Then Maryanne and Brooke carefully lowered her back into the ground. They scrambled back up and sat beside the open grave looking down at the silent bones.
“Is she at peace?” Brooke asked. Somehow even she’d come to respect Maryanne’s feelings.
Maybe, Maryanne thought, she should respect them more herself.
Maryanne closed her eyes, let the pulse of the room pour into her. She let herself accept the intuitive feeling around her. She didn’t grab for it, but she didn’t run from it. She felt it in every last cell. And Maryanne absolutely did not dismiss it. She knew.
“Yes. She’s at peace. She did it. Connie made it back it to her body.” Maryanne blinked back tears. “And the anger and bitterness I felt before, concentrated so powerfully in her bones? It’s all dissipated now. Gone. She’s at rest.”
A full five minutes later, it was Brooke who broke the silence, articulating for both of them the next step. Another dreaded step. “We have to call the police.”
She stood, pulling her cell phone from the pocket of her jeans as she walked to the steps. She sat and she flipped the phone open. But she waited before she punched in the numbers. “I killed C. W. Stanley,” she said. “That’s what we tell the cops. We both found Connie’s body. I went upstairs... to the bedroom to grab my phone. It took me a few minutes to find it. When I came back down, C. W. was holding a gun on you and saying he was going to kill you. That’s our story, Maryanne. Our unshakable story.”
Maryanne slowly nodded. There could be no other way—the truth would be kept between them—she and the other casters, forever.
Holding Brooke’s steadfast stare, Maryanne picked up where Brooke left off as if they were talking to the police already. “Billy... I mean, C. W.—came down the stairs and found me by Connie’s grave. While Brooke was up looking for her phone, he confessed to having attacked Alex the other night. And that this was his step-sister’s grave. He killed Connie Harvell long ago—he and his father. Thank goodness Brooke came back when she did. She snuck up on C. W. and clocked him with the shovel. He had a gun. He would have killed me if she hadn’t done it.”
Brooke chewed her lip a moment. “But how... how did we know to dig for a body?”
“We found an old diary.”
“Who found an old diary?”
“You and me. Only you and me.”
“Where?” Brooke asked. “Not the attic. The less people snoop around up there, the better.”
Maryanne lowered her head into her hand for a moment, then looked up with the sudden answer. “Buried in an old tin can, out by the old oak by the river, way back in September. The ground is frozen over now. We read, and found out that the diary belonged to Connie Harvell. Connie wrote that she knew they were coming to murder her—Billy and her stepfather. We just thought they may have buried her in the basement since they killed her in the depths of winter. We decided to see if we were right. And we just... just found the body.”
“The first place we dug?”
“Yeah,” she gulped. “Lucky us.”
Brooke wet her lips, but she nodded her approval.
Maryanne didn’t know how she could do it—remain so calm. So... Brooke-like!
“Where’s the diary now?” Brooke asked, continuing the practice cross-examination.
“C. W. found it,” Maryanne said. “He told me he found it. We... you and I... hid it in our room and he found it there a week ago. He used those keys to search the rooms.” She pointed to the key box on the wall. “But he told me he burned the diary to get rid of all the evidence of Connie’s confinement and torture at his hands.”
Brooke had one final question. “And if the police don’t believe us?”
“They will,” Maryanne answered shakily. “They’ll have to believe us when we tell them about Connie’s baby. Lily Michelle must be buried here too. They’ll dig up the whole damn basement—find that skeleton too. And C. W.’s prints will be on the gun.”
“Yeah, along with mine.” Brooke grimaced.
“Well of course you picked up the gun! Before we knew he was actually dead. But his prints will be on there too.”
“And he bit Alex,” Brooke said. “The police will be able to match that bite, and whatever other forensic evidence the bastard left behind.”
“Right,” Maryanne said. “So... so we’ve got this covered?” Oh, God, she wanted desperately to cast out. Just for a few minutes, just to fortify herself against what was about to happen. Just one quick cast! But there was no time. John Smith could be here any minute. And any more delay would look suspicious.
“We’ve got it covered.” Brooke drew a shaky breath, forced a smile. She looked down at her phone. “We’ll be okay, Maryanne. We just... we just have to get through this. Stick to the story, no matter what, and just get through it.”
“I know.” Maryanne bit out one last question. One she simply had to ask and simply had to ask now. “What about you, Brooke?”
She looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone in Mansbridge will know that you killed Mr. Stanley. Even if it was to save me, you’ll have his blood on your hands. You know how eve
ryone around here will look at you. How everyone will talk about you. Stories take on a life of their own in Mansbridge—you know that as well as I do. As far as this town is concerned, Brooke, you’ll be the girl who killed a man. Who bashed his brains in with a shovel. You’ll be—”
“I’ll be a legend in this town.” Brooke’s eyes shone with the promise. “Yeah, I’ll be a damned legend! In every way imaginable. And I’m quite all right with that.”
Maryanne stared at Brooke as she dialed.
“Come quickly,” Brooke sobbed into the phone. “Something horrible’s happened at Harvell House!” With that she snapped the phone shut, and smiled at Maryanne. Within a minute they heard the sirens.
“It’s going to be okay,” Brooke reassured again as the doors to the house flew open. She ran to Maryanne and held her close, as if they’d been consoling each other. “It’ll be over soon.”
In one way it would be over soon. But Maryanne knew, bone deep, that the soaring sister who held her now, would be a legend in this Mansbridge town. In every way imaginable, and then some.
It had only just begun.
“Down here!” Brooke called.
The basement door burst open, and a police officer, gun drawn, came cautiously down.