When We Were Sisters (39 page)

Robin didn't say anything, but what could she say?

I waited until I could speak again. My voice shook, but I pushed on. “When he didn't move for probably a minute, I stooped and felt for his pulse. I was shaking so hard, and my hands were so sweaty I thought I just wasn't feeling for it in the right place. I tried his wrist, his neck. And then I realized I must have killed him.”

“Oh, Cece...”

I had to finish. “I didn't know what to do. I knew I had to find you, and we had to get out of there. Even if I left on my own, this whole thing would blow back on you, and I couldn't let that happen. I wasn't thinking clearly, but I had a dead man at my feet, in the middle of an empty hog pen. So somehow I managed to drag and roll his body to the corner where I'd piled the straw, found a tarp in the barn and covered him. Then I forked some of the fresh straw on top of the tarp. Jud was suddenly invisible, like he had never existed. There was blood on the ground where I'd hit him, but not much, not as much as I would have expected. I managed to turn over the old straw so the blood wasn't visible. It was the best I could do.”

Robin was trembling. Even in the moonlight I could see that. “You went to look for
me
?”

“You and Betty were off somewhere in the good truck. You told me later you were at Southern States. But at that point I didn't know where you were or how much longer you would be gone. I just knew I had to do something. I was frantic. Then I remembered Jud had been in a black mood when I got home, because Lupita, his favorite waitress at the Blue Heron, was leaving town that day. He said the diner's owner had told him, and Jud was furious. That's probably why he was crueler than usual to the animals.”

“So you forged a note from Jud that he was leaving town and left it for Betty to find. And you drove the farm pickup to the crossroads and left it there, like he had gone off with that waitress. You walked back?”

I was glad I hadn't had to recount that part. “For years I've wondered how I managed to come up with any kind of plan on the spur of the moment. But I was desperate, and I didn't see any choice. The trip back from the crossroads took almost an hour. And the whole time I had to slink through woods and disappear into heavy brush if I heard a car, so nobody would see me. The whole time I was just waiting for the sheriff to roar by on his way to the ranch. I was sure Betty would figure out the truth, find Jud's body under the straw, have me arrested.... I was sure nobody would believe me when I said he'd molested me. I'd already lied about the caseworker.”

“What happened next?”

“I've never been sure. Like I said, at best I thought my plan would buy a little time. I would find you, and we would get out of there. Only by the time I got back Betty was ranting that Jud had deserted her for Lupita. Like some kind of sick miracle, she believed the whole story. Later I decided that whether my fabrication was fishy or not, Betty had realized she could finally be free, sell the ranch and get out of there, so she didn't want to look closely. I thought maybe I was going to get away with it. There was only one more thing I had to do.”

“You had to uncover his body and bury him.”

This part was almost the hardest to explain. “I couldn't get away earlier, and besides, I couldn't bury him in daylight. Betty was so worked up, and the animals had already been fed before we got them in their pens, so there were no emergency chores for me to do. I didn't leave the house until long after she went to bed.”

Robin broke in. “I remember how upset she was. She kept screaming about what a mistake she'd made marrying Jud and how she'd given him everything. At one point she went outside to check on something. You offered to do it, but she told both of us to stay inside. It was her ranch now, and she was going to take care of things. She didn't want any interference.”

Robin was probably right, although at the time I had been so horrified by it all, so unsure what I should do next, that I'd hardly heard her. All I remember was terror that Betty would find the body.

I took up the story. “When the house was finally quiet and Betty was in bed, I sneaked outside to bury him. It was all I could think of, Robin, and I was still trying to decide where to do it. But when I got to the barn, the boar was in the outside pen. Betty must have let him out when she went outside. It would have made sense, since the inside pen was so small. But by then the straw where I'd left Jud's body was strewn all over. And the body...”

It was still hard to fathom what I had found, or rather not found. There was no sign of the murder or the body. With no other explanation available, I was forced to face the truth. After Betty let him back in the pen the enraged boar had destroyed all evidence. It isn't unheard of for a boar to attack, and less likely—but again, not unheard of—for one to devour human flesh. In the years since that night I've seen morbid stories in the news and warnings to farmers to treat their boars with caution and hunters to beware of the game they stalk.

As hard as it was to believe, even the next morning when the sun came up, I couldn't find a trace. Jud Osburn had disappeared forever.

“His body was gone. The boar...” I shrugged because I couldn't say the words.

Robin reached into her pocket. She rested what she'd retrieved in her palm and held it out for me to see.

Jud's rodeo belt buckle, tarnished and filthy but still in one piece and unmistakably his, was just visible in the moonlight.

I said the only thing I could. “You
knew
what I did? All this time?”

She shook her head. “Not what
you
did, CeCe. Not until now.”

I had no idea what she meant, but she held up her hand to silence me.

“It'll be hard enough to say this once. So let me. You've told me what you know about that afternoon. Here's what I know. Betty and I came home from Southern States, and she set me to work pulling bags out of the back of the pickup and wheeling them to the garden. Afterward we were going to go inside and start dinner. I was heading back to the garden with the second load when I heard Jud yelling.”

My stomach did a free fall. Robin must have known what I was feeling, because she rested her hand on my arm for a moment to steady me. “No, you didn't kill him. He was alive when we got home.”

“You heard him? You're sure?”

“He was screaming your name. I dropped the wheelbarrow and ran to find you. I was terrified he was going to come after you for whatever you'd done, and I wanted to warn you. I had never, never heard him sound so angry.”

“But I... I was gone. I wasn't there when you and Betty got home, because I was driving the pickup to the crossroads to leave it by—”

“I realized I had to find out what was going on at the barn so the moment I found
you
, I could warn you. I got there and saw Betty...” She took a long breath. “Jud was staggering toward the fence. His head was bleeding, and he was holding it and stumbling. The boar was slamming his body against that gate he had rigged up, making such an awful racket it was hard to understand everything Jud was saying. He kept screaming that you would get yours when he got hold of you.... That this was your fault.”

Now she clasped both hands in front of her, almost as if she was praying. “At the time it all seemed obvious. I thought the boar must have attacked when Jud was trying to get him in the pen. It wouldn't have been the first time. Maybe Jud accidentally dropped the prod, or maybe it just wasn't working. But for some reason he blamed you for his injury. Maybe you were supposed to help with the boar, but you didn't? I didn't know, but he kept saying it was your fault.”

I started to interrupt, but Robin shook her head. “Then he said he was going to teach you a lesson you would never forget. And that's when Betty started screaming back. She said he had already taught you too much, and she wasn't going to stand by this time.”

I felt that like a blow. Betty
had
known. How long before that afternoon had she guessed the truth? How long had she
allowed
her husband to molest me without saying a word? Had she been afraid of him, or had she been relieved that Jud was taking his pleasure and inflicting pain elsewhere?

Robin went on quickly, as if she had to get the story out before she thought better of it. “He shouted that when he found you, Betty was just going to shut up and let him deal with you, the way he always did. And that's when she picked up the cattle prod.”

“Betty had the prod?”

“It was lying on the ground in a gap under the fence. She stooped and grabbed it, and when he got there she shocked him. Not a quick shock, like he used with the animals. She held it against his chest until he collapsed to the ground. I couldn't watch. I was screaming, and she told me to stop. Then, when he revived enough to try to get up again, she climbed over the fence, and she held it against his chest until he convulsed, and then his head rolled to one side and he didn't move again.”

“She killed him?”

Robin was silent.

“Betty
killed
him because he threatened me?”

“I'm not sure that was the reason she went after him, CeCe. Maybe that, plus years of hating him and not being able to walk away because his name was on the deed. Fear of what he might do to us, or just as likely the price she would have to pay if you reported them. But I'm not a hundred percent sure she was the one who killed him.”

“You think he got up after that and walked away? What about this?” I lifted her hand, the belt buckle still riding on her palm.

Robin had tears in her eyes, although I had no idea why she was crying. “Betty and I stood there staring down at him. He wasn't moving. His eyes had rolled back in his head, his tongue was protruding. I didn't know what death looked like, but I was pretty sure that was it. I knew he had a heart condition, and the shocks had probably stopped it once and for all. But I remember thinking,
what if he isn't dead? What if he's just unconscious?

“Betty finally climbed out of the pen, grabbed my shoulders and shook me so hard my teeth snapped together. Then she said if I ever told
anybody
what I had seen, she would testify that
you
murdered him. She claimed she knew things that would make her story believable, things that had happened that gave you a reason. Nobody would believe my version, because everybody knew I would lie to save you.”

“Robin.” I hugged her, and she hugged me back.

She finished without moving away. “I knew I had to do something to make her believe I would never, never tell what I'd seen. So I did the only thing I could. By that time the boar was beyond enraged. Animals pick up on human emotions. We both know it's true. He kept throwing himself against the gate, and I was in a panic. But I climbed into the pen and onto the gate, and unhooked the rope that was looped over one post while he threw himself against the gate and me. I rode the gate as he broke through and headed for Jud.” She gave a little sob. “Then I leaped into the barn and took off for the creek.”

I couldn't imagine this. Robin, who was terrified of the boar even when he wasn't angry, had risked her own safety, even her life, to let him into the pen.

“I don't know what happened after or to...the remains,” she said. “All these years I thought Betty was the one who concocted that story about the waitress. I thought
she
was the one who drove the truck to the crossroads. It wasn't until you told me how well you learned to forge Jud's name that I even began to wonder if somehow you had been involved.”

Robin hadn't suspected just how much I'd been involved, but Betty had known. Jud had probably screamed the truth before Robin got there. And when she found the forged note and learned the old truck was down by the crossroads, Betty had known that I believed I'd killed her husband.

She had let me go on believing it. And she had tried to make sure Robin would never tell anyone what she had seen.

We held each other, and I tried to imagine how things had gone so wrong. A man had died, and all these years Robin and I had carefully hidden the truth about our parts in his death from each other. As close as we were, neither of us had ever breathed a word of what we knew.

She finally moved away and finished her story. “I think Betty came outside when she told us to stay in, or maybe after we went to bed that night, and took care of...everything. But at the time I didn't know that, and the next morning before dawn I made myself go out to see. I was afraid someone would find him. I was afraid you would be blamed. That's when I found the buckle. It had been kicked under the fence, and I guess Betty must have missed it. Back then there were shreds of leather attached, but I guess they rotted away in the ground. The dirt under the compost heaps was soft, and I dug as deep as I could and buried the buckle. Then I flipped the compost from the other bin into the one that was here.”

“And after all these years you knew exactly where to find it.”

An indrawn breath ended on a sob. “Some things are hard to forget, but you know that. Better than anybody.”

“All these years I thought I killed a man.”

“Maybe
I
did. We'll never know. I'm not a doctor, and I can't say for sure Jud was dead when I opened that gate. That was part of the reason I had to do it. Betty needed to be sure I would stay silent. By involving myself, she had something to hold over me, something to keep me quiet forever in addition to her threats against you. Those Christmas cards? Her annual reminder.”

“We were all responsible.”

She made a noise low in her throat, but I shook my head. “Or maybe none of us were. We'll never know when his heart stopped, but I do know the real cause of death. Jud Osburn died because of all the things he was and did to every one of us.”