“I try to take as little as I can get away with,” Lacey said. “I don’t like to be so dependent on drugs.”
“It’s important to stay on top of the pain, Lacey,” Faye said. “Don’t wait until it’s got you in its grip. We used to tell people to tough it out—which I think is what you’re trying to do—but that only makes it worse. That causes you to tense up and makes the pain harder to treat in the long run.”
Her own doctor had said the very same thing, and she’d ignored him, but maybe they both knew a bit more about this than she did. “All right,” she conceded. “I’ll try to be better about it.”
“How are you doing with your anger?”
Now Lacey was really getting irritated, so much so that she had to put her hand over Bobby’s because even his touch was starting to chafe.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“When you left Fred’s cottage, you were understandably furious. You said you’d write a scathing victim’s statement, or whatever it’s called. I was just wondering—”
“I haven’t been able to write it,” she said. “I got sidetracked by a hundred-pound dog. But I will.”
Faye hesitated, then spoke again. “I don’t know Zach anymore,” she said, sounding suddenly very tired. “I do know at one time he was a good man. I know he had some sort of terrible breakdown. I don’t know if he should get out of prison or not. I don’t have, or want to have, any say in that. But I think it’s important that you don’t base the statement that you write about Zachary on your anger toward Fred. Toward Rick. That’s not fair.”
“Faye…” Lacey felt her anger mounting. “I frankly don’t care about being fair to your ex-husband.”
“I’m not thinking about him,” Faye said. “I’m thinking about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that that anger you’re holding on to…that sense of revenge…it’s like swallowing poison and expecting someone else to die. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand it. I just don’t get why you’re saying it, though.”
“Because you’re the one that poison will ultimately hurt, Lacey. You need peace of mind to be able to heal, both physically and emotionally.”
“You sound like Rick,” Lacey said. “Forgive and forget.”
“No, never forget,” Faye said quickly. “Rick had an ulterior motive. You know that. You should never forget what happened.”
“Faye…I’m sorry, but I’m really tired,” Lacey said. “I’m going to hang up now.”
“Wait a second,” the woman said hurriedly. “I didn’t see Zachary while I was there. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I frankly have no idea if Fred’s assessment of him as rehabilitated is accurate. But I think that may be a piece of information you need to have to be able to write your statement. Don’t base your testimony on your anger, Lacey. Base it on reality. Whatever you write, make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.”
Lacey pled exhaustion once more, then handed the phone to Bobby, who rested it back in its cradle.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
Lacey looked at him. “Do you think it’s possible for someone to truly be rehabilitated?” she asked.
Bobby grinned at her. “Hey, babe,” he said, “Just look at me.”
The following morning, Lacey walked into the kitchen to find herself alone with Gina and Rani. She searched her sister-in-law’s face for some clue to her emotional state after learning that Clay might be Mackenzie’s father, but Gina only smiled at her as she set a bowl of cereal on the tray of Rani’s high chair.
“How are you this morning?” Gina asked her.
“Good,” Lacey said, taking a seat at the table. “Much better, actually.” For the first time, she did not feel as though every molecule in her body had been shredded and pasted back together. Maybe she was just getting better, or maybe it was that she’d listened to Faye’s advice and taken her medication both the night before and this morning instead of waiting for the pain to hit her first. Or maybe it was that Bobby had spent the entire night in her bed, lying next to her, just keeping her company with no demands or expectations of anything more.
“Clay’s already left for work?” Lacey asked.
“Uh-huh.” Gina poured coffee into a mug and handed it to her. “And Bobby’s driving Mackenzie to the bus stop.” And, Lacey knew, visiting Elise after he dropped Mackenzie off. Elise had fallen down on her promise to keep in touch with him, and he was worried about her.
“I go swimming today!” Rani said.
“You are?” Lacey said. “Are you getting to be a good swimmer?”
Rani nodded, plucking a piece of banana from the top of her cereal and stuffing it into her mouth.
“She’s doing great,” Gina said. “You love the water, don’t you, Rani?”
Rani nodded again, the banana making speech impossible.
“I guess the real question is, how are you this morning?” Lacey asked Gina.
Gina sat down next to Rani’s high chair. She lowered her eyes to her own coffee mug, running the tip of her finger over the handle.
“I feel sorry for Clay,” she said, lifting her gaze to meet Lacey’s. “All his mistakes are coming back to haunt him.”
Lacey nodded. She knew how upset with himself Clay was for bringing Wolf into their lives against Gina’s wishes. And now he had to face his long-ago indiscretion with Jessica Dillard, as well.
“Were you shocked?” Lacey asked.
Gina smiled, and there was something secretive about it. It was a moment before she spoke.
“He’d already told me about Jessica,” she said. “When she died, he was more upset than he let on to you, because he knew her a little better than you thought he did. Not that they had any sort of real relationship, but I think…as an adult, he looked back and saw how he’d used her. So the night after she died, he told me what he’d done—that he’d slept with her at a party when he was seventeen, that she was a sweet kid who was screwed up, and that he took advantage of that fact. In other words, he let me know that he’d been a jerk, in case I couldn’t figure it out on my own from what he was telling me.”
“I’m glad you two have that kind of relationship,” Lacey said, surprised that her brother had so openly confided in Gina.
“Me, too,” Gina said.
“Me, too!” Rani added, and Lacey and Gina laughed.
“Drink your juice, Rani,” Gina said, pushing the cup a little closer to the cereal bowl on Rani’s tray. Gina looked at Lacey. “Do you know that Clay and your dad are meeting with the lawyer again today?” she asked. “They’re going to go forward without a statement from you, so you don’t need to have that hanging over your head anymore.”
“Oh,” Lacey said, wondering why she felt no relief at that news.
“It must give you some peace of mind,” Gina continued. “I know how that’s been driving you crazy.”
“I think I figured something out,” Lacey said. She took a long drink of her coffee before continuing. “I haven’t been able to write it because I’ve been focusing on my mother and my family, not on the killer,” she said. “My mother’s already gone. My family’s healing. But Zachary Pointer’s the one who’ll stay in or out of prison based on what we say. He’s the one the statement should really be about.”
Gina looked confused. “What are you saying, Lace?” she asked.
“That I still want to write my statement,” she said, standing up, the coffee mug in her hand, “but there’s something else I have to do first.”
CHAPTER 50
She’d expected to have to talk to Zachary Pointer through a wall of Plexiglas, like they did in the movies, but when she arrived in the section of the prison where he was incarcerated, she was led directly to the chaplain’s office.
“Reverend McConnell’s not here today,” said the uniformed guard, his hand on the office door, “but he said Mr. Pointer and you could meet in here. Zach’s al
ready inside.”
Lacey felt unexpected fear rise up inside her. Being alone in a room with her mother’s murderer suddenly seemed comparable to being trapped in a kennel with a vicious dog. Surely, though, they wouldn’t let her meet with him if they had any doubts about her safety. Still, she hesitated before stepping inside the office.
“Go ahead in,” the guard said. “Just stop by the front to sign out when you leave.”
She opened the door and walked into a small, bare-walled waiting room containing five chairs upholstered in turquoise vinyl. Behind her, the guard closed the door and it felt as though he took all of the air in the room with him.
“Hello?” Lacey called.
She heard the sound of a chair scraping against the floor, and in a minute the man she had long despised stood in the doorway between the two rooms, wearing blue prison garb. She took an involuntary step backwards, but it was his face that turned ashen and held a look of fear.
“Annie?” he asked.
Lacey couldn’t speak. Why would he call her Annie? He hadn’t known her mother as anything other than an obstacle in his path as he tried to kill his wife. She pictured him at the battered women’s shelter, filling the doorway in his soaking-wet green peacoat. She remembered him pointing the gun, yelling “Whore!” and “Slut!” and she knew all at once it had not been Faye Collier that those words had been meant for.
“You were one of them,” she said with a calmness that belied the turmoil inside her. “You were one of my mother’s lovers.”
He seemed to shrink inside his blue uniform. His face bore deep lines and crevices that seemed to multiply at her words.
“You’re her daughter,” he said. “Lacey, is it?”
Her back was pressed against the door to the room, more for support than anything else. She was beginning to feel dizzy. “Was it actually my mother you meant to kill when you broke into the shelter?” she asked. “Was that who you were really after?”
He licked his lips, looking away from her for a moment, and she could see that he was trying to decide how to proceed. Finally, he motioned toward the interior office. “Come inside and we can talk,” he said.
“I’ll sit right here.” She lowered herself to the chair closest to the door. The vinyl made a sound like air being let out of a tire as she sat down on it.
He took a seat on the other side of the small room, and Lacey studied him. She would not have recognized him in a lineup. His dark hair had turned completely white during the past twelve years, and he was smaller, or maybe it was just the fact that he was not wearing a heavy coat or carrying a gun that made him seem diminished in size.
“I hadn’t expected…” He looked down at his hands as though he was not certain what to say. “They told me you were coming.” He smiled at her and she had to look away. The smile was too unexpectedly warm, and she did not want to be seduced by it. “I figured we’d have a little talk and I would tell you how sorry I was that your mother tried to protect my wife. But I realize now that the truth must be written all over my face.”
She couldn’t breathe. The light-headedness made her want to lean over and hang her head between her knees. Did she want to sit here and have him tell her things that were guaranteed to distress her even further, or should she simply tell him she’d made a mistake in coming and run from the room?
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to say anything bad about your mother.”
“Tell me,” she said. She had come this far. If she didn’t have this conversation with him now, not knowing what he had to say would always haunt her. “I already know she was…unfaithful to my father.”
He stared at her, licking his lips again. “I met her in the little shop I used to work in,” he said. “A little sundries store in Kill Devil Hills, over by…well, it doesn’t matter. I’m not even sure if it’s still there. She came in one time to buy a pair of sandals she saw in our window, and we started talking. She started coming in then, almost every day, just to talk, and to make a long story short, I fell in love with her. I had a bipolar disorder, although I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew that I’d go on these jags of having loads of energy and feeling like the world was a pretty terrific place to be, and then, without warning, I’d plummet. Drop lower than low. But I could always manage to hide what was going on inside of me—to stay in control of it—as long as my life was on an even keel.” He looked down at his hands. They were folded in his lap, and he was rubbing one of the thumbs over the other. “I was in a manic phase when I met your mother,” he said. “A long one. And at first it was great.”
“Did she take you to the keeper’s house?”
He looked surprised. “You know about that?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Yes, that’s where we’d meet.” He looked apologetic. “I don’t like talking to you about this.”
“Go on.” She was picturing her father at the animal hospital, working hard as he always did, making money to support his family, while his wife was taking men to the keeper’s house without a thought to how she was hurting her family.
“I didn’t feel right about what I was doing,” he said, “but I was so driven. It’s hard to explain the effect she had on me.”
“She had it on a lot of men,” she said, wanting to take some of the wind out of his sails.
“Yes, I know that,” he said. “Not at the time, though. I thought we were so much in love that it somehow legitimized the infidelity. I convinced myself that it was all right.” He studied his hands again, the movement of his thumbs the only clue that he was nervous. “But as I said, I didn’t do well under stress and my mood started to go south. I wasn’t much fun for her anymore, I guess, and she wanted to end the affair. I couldn’t bear the thought of being without her, and I was so…so ill at the time, that I threatened to kill both her and myself if she left me. If I couldn’t have her, I didn’t want anyone else to have her, either. I was selfish and crazy and self-absorbed,” he said. “I think what happened was that Annie—your mother—became afraid that I might hurt my wife and son, so she made up some cock-and-bull story about getting a call from one of my friends or a neighbor or someone and got them into the battered women’s shelter where she worked. Of course, I knew where the place was because she’d told me all about it back when things were good between us. When I went there, Lacey, I was out of my mind. I intended to kill all three of them and then myself, but you’re right, that first bullet was meant for your mother.”
“And she knew it,” Lacey said. “She had to know that if she stepped in front of your wife, you were going to kill her.”
He drew in a long breath. “I believe—and will believe to my dying day—that she thought that if I shot her first, I would never get around to killing my wife and son. That they’d be able to escape before I could get to them. Everybody said she was trying to save their lives by stepping in front of Faye—my wife—and they were right. They just didn’t know what Annie knew—that I was there to kill her as well as them, one way or another. Once I shot her, it was like something snapped in me and I realized what an insane thing I was doing. That’s why I didn’t hurt anyone else.” He lifted his head to look at her and there were tears in his eyes. “Oh, Lacey,” he said. “I’m so sorry. The truth is, I’ve grown in here. I’m not just a healthier person, I’m a better person, and this place…” He waved his hand through the air. “The doctors and the chaplain…I don’t know what would have become of me if I hadn’t landed in here. But I would give anything…anything if I could bring your mother back and erase everything that happened between us and return her whole and unharmed to you and your family.”
She did not want to believe him or to trust his sincerity. He was, after all, Rick’s father. But there was something in his eyes that convinced her he was telling the truth, that he was done with lies.
“It took a long time,” he said, “with a lot of shrinks trying me on a lot of different medications, but finally, they hit the right one. T
hat was when I truly realized what I’d done. That I’d taken a life. That I’d ruined many other lives. I wanted to die. I tried to kill myself, but they make that hard to do in prison.” He offered her a rueful smile. “It was the Reverend McConnell who got me through it all. You probably don’t need to hear that,” he said. “That I got through it. Your mother’s story ended, and mine continued. I know how unfair that must seem to you.”
“What will you do if you get out on parole?” she asked.
“I want to enter the seminary,” he said, then smiled his apology again. “Does that sound like a line to you?”
She looked away. It would have sounded like a line if she hadn’t heard about it from his son first. “I’m not sure,” she said.
“I’d like to be a prison chaplain,” he said. “And if I don’t get out, it truly doesn’t matter, because I’ve been able to work here. Maybe I have even more credibility on the inside than I would on the outside. There are a lot of people in here in need of spiritual guidance. My son wants me out so badly. He thinks I can only do what I want to do if I’m released. He doesn’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“That I’m every bit as free in here as I would be out there,” he said. “I’ll have peace in my heart no matter where I am.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “And what about you, Lacey?” he asked. “How is your heart these days?”
Lacey couldn’t hold it together any longer. Lowering her head, she started to cry.
CHAPTER 51
Victim’s Impact Statement
by Lacey O’Neill
People called my mother Saint Anne. She was probably better loved and better known in the area than anyone else. She loved animals and children and nature. She was generous in the extreme to her friends and neighbors, treasured everyone she met, and she tried to help make the world a better place in an enormous variety of ways, most of which you have probably heard about in the other statements you’ve received.