“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” He looked to Debbie. “I’ll be right back, I want to go find Maddie.”
“Of course, go ahead.” She gave Alisha a brief smile. “I offered to come to vouch for Joshua’s whereabouts in case there were any…questions.” She tried not to punctuate the sentence with a pointed look but wasn’t entirely successful.
Alisha cocked a brow. “And what were his whereabouts, dare I ask?”
“We had a revenge-seeking domestic abuser trying to gain entrance to our shelter. Joshua defended an injured security guard and wrestled a knife away from the attacker.”
Alisha sniffed and refused to comment. Debbie refrained from tacking “Take that!” onto the end of her explanation and instead said, “That’s the second time he’s been a hero to the shelter. We were on the verge of closing when I hired him, and he got us back into the black.” She smiled at Alisha, then looked past her to the room beyond where Joshua and Maddie had entered, hand in hand, followed by an older, distinguished-looking gentleman. “If he’s half as good at parenting as he is at everything else he does, then Maddie is one lucky little girl.”
I dare you to disagree with me.
Joshua rested a hand on his daughter’s head. “Maddie, remember Debbie?” Maddie shrank back a bit behind Joshua, but a smile tugged at her mouth. Alisha frowned at the child. “Madeline, greet Ms. Truman properly. You’re a big girl, don’t hide behind your father like a baby.”
Debbie didn’t bother trying to hide her rolling eyes. “Oh please. She’s not being a baby, she’s just shy. I used to do the same thing, Maddie, and when I got older I wasn’t shy anymore. Given some of the people in this world, I’d much rather a child be shy and cling to her father than to run out and greet every random person they run into.” She avoided Alisha’s indignant face and reached a hand out to the older man. “I’m Debbie Truman, by the way. You must be Joshua’s father-in-law.”
“George Michalson, nice to meet you, Debbie.” He shook her hand and tilted his head toward Joshua. “I heard about the afternoon you all had at the shelter. I’m glad to hear everyone is alright, for the most part. It certainly could have ended a lot worse. I shudder to think of this one—” he looked down to Maddie, whose eyes were still fixed on Debbie—“being orphaned.”
“She wouldn’t be, George. She would have us.” Alisha’s tone was scolding.
“Not the same, Alisha, and you know it.”
Joshua took Maddie’s hand. “We should be getting along. Thank you for picking her up. I do appreciate it.” He put a hand on Debbie’s back, steering her toward the door, and she grinned to herself. “We’ll see you later. Say good-bye, Maddie.”
“Bye Gramma! Bye Grampa!”
Debbie turned and offered them the most gracious smile she could muster. “A pleasure to meet you.”
Alisha said nothing, but George nodded. “And you. Best of luck with your organization. Put us on your mailing list the next time you do a fund-raising push.”
“Oh, Mr. Michalson—thank you very much. I’ll be sure to do that.”
“George, I don’t think—”
George gave her a look that silenced her. “We can discuss it later, Alisha.” He opened the door for them and nodded another farewell before closing it behind them.
“Wow,” Debbie said when they reached the sidewalk.
“You can say that again,” Joshua said. “You really scored with my father-in-law.”
“Who’d have thought?”
“Daddy, I’m hungry. All they gave me was graham crackers for a snack, and Gramma was making fish for dinner.” Maddie made a face that spoke volumes on her opinion of the dish.
Joshua looked to Debbie with a sheepish grin. “I think we may have to postpone our dinner tonight.”
Debbie chuckled. “Well, Maddie is hungry, and you’re in no shape to cook. How about Chuck E. Cheese—my treat.”
Maddie squealed as Joshua laughed. “Only met her once and you already know the way to her heart. All right, we’ll see you there.”
They parted ways for their own cars. Debbie slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine, then noticed the light flashing on her cell phone. Her parents’ phone number topped the missed calls list. She dialed them on the way out the gate. “Hey Mom. Sorry I missed you.”
“Did you hear my message?”
“No, I just called you back instead. What’s up?”
“We got a call from Detective Ramsey.”
Debbie’s stomach lurched at the mention of that name. Her family had met with him a few times during the investigation into Gi na’s death. They hadn’t talked to him since the case went cold years ago, but she’d never forget that name. “What? Why?”
“It’s incredible, Debbie. After all this time, someone confessed to Gina’s murder. Some woman just walked up to a policeman and confessed. Her name is Kim Slone.”
Kim was just finishing breakfast when a guard stopped by her cell. “You have visitors,” he said. “Debbie Truman and her family are here to see you.”
The joy she felt at Debbie’s name turned to confusion. “Her family? Why?”
The guard shrugged. “You want to see them or not?”
“Yes, absolutely.” She polished off her oatmeal in three hasty bites, then tried to smooth her hair that was still tangled from sleep. Her heart began to pound. Maybe Debbie could tell her about Anne.
The guard led her to a room filled with Plexiglas booths. She sat in a chair and watched as Debbie entered, trailed by an older couple she assumed were Debbie’s parents and a younger man who she took to be her brother. Kim picked up the phone receiver that allowed them to communicate, and Debbie sat down and did the same. “Hi Debbie! I can’t believe you came to see me.”
Debbie’s expression was difficult to read. Kim noticed how she avoided eye contact. Her embarrassment grew. She was in jail, after all. “Hey Kim. These are my parents, Roland and Ruth, and my brother Pete.”
Debbie’s voice was strained, like she was trying to talk while holding her breath. Kim waved to the people standing behind her and they waved back. She tried not to stare, but she couldn’t help trying to gauge their intentions from their faces. There was little she could pick up, however—though Ruth and Roland appeared to be in better spirits than Debbie or Pete. “Thanks for coming. I’m dying to know why you’re here. But first, have you seen Anne? Do you know what happened to her?”
Debbie briefly met her eyes. “DHS came and got her. We tried to talk the caseworker into letting us keep her at the shelter until they knew what was going to happen with you, but they didn’t go for it. I don’t know where she is, though. I’m sorry.”
Kim nibbled her lip and nodded. “I didn’t think you would, but I had to ask.”
“Of course.”
“So…” Kim shrugged. “Sorry, this is a little awkward, I’m sorry.”
Debbie took a deep breath, her shoulder hunching. “I know, and I’m sorry for springing strangers on you…but there is a reason we all came down here.” She glanced back at her mother, then finally back up and held Kim’s gaze. “We’re here because we heard about your confession. See, the girl you…” She stopped, swallowed. “The girl you killed was my sister, Gina.”
Kim’s hand gripped the receiver with white-knuckle strength. She wanted to bolt from the room, but at the same time was unable to move. She sucked in a breath and let it out in a gasp. “Debbie—I can’t even…I don’t know what to say.” Suddenly she couldn’t stop the words. “I’m sorry. I know it means nothing, but I’m so, so sorry. It was an accident, please believe me. I didn’t mean to and I didn’t want to just leave her there but I had to—”
Debbie’s mother tapped her daughter on the shoulder as Kim babbled, then sat down as Debbie stood. “Kim. Stop. It’s alright.” Her voice was soothing and held no anger or tension the way Debbie’s had. Kim choked back a sob and swiped at the hot tears that stung at her eyes. “We were all stunned at the news—Debbie especially when she realized she not only knew you but that you were not at all the kind of person we had assumed you would be. But we didn’t come down here today because we wanted to shame you, or yell at you, or anything like that. We just want to know what happened. We’ve spent eight years wondering what went on that night, and we just want to have the puzzle finally put together for us.”
Kim sniffed and took three deep breaths to regain control of herself. “Of course, of course.” She stared at the table between them, gathering her thoughts. “I had been out at a classmate’s house because we had a group project we had to work on. I was on my way back to my foster parents’ house…”
She stopped as the memories she had stuffed down deep over the years began to surface in a rush. She remembered the house of the classmate—What was her name? Sandi—and how envious she had been of the family pictures that were scattered in frames on tables and the walls. She remembered the two other students, a jock who had always intimidated Kim with his good looks and sarcasm, and a Goth-dressing girl whose lip ring made Kim feel slightly ill. Sandi and the jock kept flirting and getting involved in their own conversations, and Goth girl kept sketching fairies on her notebook and occasionally swearing at Sandi and the jock for wasting everyone’s time. Kim had felt invisible until they had begun to work in earnest, when it turned out she was the only one with any understanding at all of their assignment.
They had worked for an hour, at which point Sandi’s parents had come to check on them and bid them good night. A few minutes later Sandi had assured them her parents were in bed for good, and then offered everyone a beer.
The jock and Goth girl accepted without so much as a snicker of rule-breaking glee. When she looked to Kim for her answer, she said “Yes, please,” which made the others laugh, though she didn’t know why. The others chugged down their first swallows as though parched, despite the two liters of soda they had already consumed over the course of the evening. She took a sip and nearly gagged at the taste. She forced another sip, then a third, only because she didn’t want Sandi to ask at the end of the night why she hadn’t had any of it. By the time they had finished their work, the jock’s and Goth girl’s cans were empty, but Kim’s was still half full.
Her stomach roiled with the foul drink, and she wasn’t sure if her vision was truly skewed or if she was imagining it. It was the first time she’d ever had alcohol, and she had no concept of how long it took to feel the effects or how much was needed to really make a difference. When it was time to go home she was terrified to drive, and chose a route that would take her along less-traveled streets so there was less chance of getting into an accident.
She was driving down Sunset when a cyclist a few feet ahead looked back at her twice, and then veered sharply to the left, bringing herself directly in front of Kim’s car. Kim slammed on the brakes with a scream, but there was no avoiding the rider.
Ruth’s eyes sparkled with tears, but her voice remained calm and controlled. “Was she trying to avoid an animal? Maybe dodge something in the gutter?”
Kim shook her head. “I didn’t see anything. I don’t know. But she wasn’t just swerving out of the way of something. It was like she
wanted
to get in front of me.”
The receiver Ruth held picked up Debbie’s voice as she murmured, “Suicide.” The other Trumans looked to her, shock clear on their faces. “It makes sense,” Kim could hear her say. “She was running away, she’d been betrayed by her boyfriend, and no one was giving her the support she needed. And she was…she was Gina: a drama queen, everything overdone and melodramatic. She was probably running on emotion and just wanted her misery to end. It wasn’t premeditated, just done in the heat of the moment.”
Kim’s breaths came fast as her heart began to pound. All these years she had blamed herself for going five miles over the speed limit, blamed her reflexes, blamed the beer for slowing her down. But if Gina had meant to do it…Well, it didn’t change the fact that her actions caused someone to die, but it lessened her pain ever so slightly to know someone else was also at fault.
Ruth looked back to Kim. “What happened after that?”
“I got out to see if…you know…I took her pulse and it was really slow. She didn’t move; she was barely breathing. I didn’t know what to do, and then she just let out this sigh and…”
Kim had felt again for a pulse, squinted up close to her face searching for her breath in the cold autumn night air. Then she’d scrambled back when it hit her the girl was dead.
She’d almost hyperventilated with panic. She’d been drinking, speeding a little—the fact that the girl had basically jumped in front of her wouldn’t matter much to the police in the face of these issues, especially without witnesses.
That’s when she realized—there were no witnesses. The windows of the houses along her right were dark, and to the left was a cemetery. She jumped back into the car, made a U-turn, and headed back in the other direction.
She’d inspected the car when she got home. The chrome grille was bent and one headlight was smashed. She’d woken her foster mother, telling her through her sobs that she’d hit a deer. Saundra had comforted her, shared her own story of animal encounters while driving, assured her that sometimes there was nothing you could do.
She’d heard nothing at school about a student dying. She avoided the television when the news was on, afraid hearing about the story might cause her to do something that would give away her guilt.
“She was in college. A freshman,” Ruth said.
“No wonder I never heard anything. I wondered why no one was talking about it.”
Everyone was silent. Kim finally offered the only thing she could. “I know it doesn’t help. But I’m so sorry. You don’t know how much this has haunted me, how often I’ve wished I could go back and change everything I did that night.”
Debbie gave her a small smile. “I do know, actually. You told me in counseling.”
Kim let out a strangled chuckle. “Do you understand now? Why I let Rick do what he did?”
Debbie nodded. Her mother looked between the two of them. “What do you mean?”
“Kim—I won’t if you don’t want me to, but if it’s alright with you I’d like to tell my family what you’ve been through.”
Her gaze dropping, Kim shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
Debbie recounted Kim’s time with Rick and the reasons she let him hit her. Kim averted her eyes, feeling awkward under this microscope. When Debbie finished, Ruth turned back to Kim with a look in her eyes she couldn’t decipher.
“You poor child.” It was not what Kim had expected to hear. “I can’t believe what you’ve gone through.”
The sentiment tugged at her heart. She was sure Ruth meant to be compassionate, but instead she felt even worse than she had before. “What
I’ve
gone through? It’s nothing compared to what you had to go through—losing your daughter, not knowing what happened, having to live with that mystery all these years.”
Ruth shook her head. “Loss is a part of life. Losing a child rips your heart in two, I won’t deny that—and from what I understand you’re experiencing that yourself.” Kim ducked her head to hide the strain on her features caused by holding in the sudden sob that tried to escape. “But we know we’ll see Gina again in heaven. We miss her now, we grieved for the future with her that we lost, but God’s peace and comfort got us through, and his Word assured us we’d see her again.”
The weight of Kim’s emotions bent her double. She wept, dropping her head onto her arms on the table. Ruth murmured words of comfort into the receiver that lay on the table beside her. When her tears ran out she sat up, feeling lighter in her spirit than she ever had. “Thank you,” she said to Ruth. “I can’t tell you how much better I feel, having told you face-to-face what happened. And your—your grace towards me…” She shook her head. “I almost can’t believe you’re for real. Thank you.” She looked to the rest of the family and was struck by the look on Debbie’s face. All the others looked at her with compassion—even Pete, whose posture had been defensive from the start. But Debbie just looked mad.
D
EBBIE FUMED ALL THE WAY
back to her parents’ house. She hadn’t expected to feel this way when she’d agreed to take her family down to the station, but seeing Kim look so unburdened and free had stirred her anger. She didn’t care what her mother said about knowing the whole story—it didn’t bring Gina back, and it didn’t make her feel any better.
She let the door slam behind her when she entered the house. Her mother was alone in the kitchen, putting the kettle on the stove. “Tea?”
Debbie sat on a barstool and propped her chin in her hands. “Only if you don’t have any ice cream.”
“All out, sorry.” Ruth pulled two mugs from the cabinet and ripped open the tea bags. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Okay.”
She stared at the fire beneath the kettle, watching it lap the metal. “You’re happy, then?”
Ruth set the sugar bowl on the island in front of Debbie. “Happy? No. My daughter might have killed herself. What does that say about the relationship she and I had, that she didn’t feel like she could come to me? I’m relieved, however, to know the whole story. I’m relieved to know she most likely felt no pain. I’m glad to know, though I’m not sure why, that someone else was there when she passed, that she wasn’t alone in the middle of the road.” She sat beside Debbie. “But knowing that she felt so alone that she wanted to die? Knowing she was in love with someone, and that he not only broke her heart but tried to actually harm her? That doesn’t make me happy at all.”
She dragged a spoon through the sugar, making patterns in the crystals. “And it breaks my heart to know that another girl her age had to go through that experience alone—had to go through her entire life alone, really, or at least without a real family, and then felt it necessary to submit herself to abuse just to make up for something that wasn’t really her fault.” She shook her head. “Such a broken world. Come, Jesus, come.”
Debbie stared at the sugar, watching the spoon write Gina’s initials and then scrape them away, over and over. Then the vision blurred with tears that fell unchecked to her cheeks. “It was supposed to be some drunk, some drunk jerk who I would be justified in hating. Not a kid who can hardly be blamed.” Her mother’s hand rested on her back and smoothed circles on her blouse. “Now I have no one to put my anger on but myself.”
“Lay it down, Debbie. Hate and anger do you no good, doesn’t matter where you direct them. Neither does guilt, and I know you’ve dealt with plenty of that too.”
Debbie buried her face in her folded arms and let herself cry harder than she had in a long time. When she finally raised her head, a cup of tea sat steaming in front of her along with a box of tissues.
“It’s time for you to take the advice you gave Kim,” her mother said. “You keep saying you’ve forgiven yourself, that you’ve made your peace, but obviously you haven’t. It’s time to do it for good and move on.”