Indelible

"Glory days," Sara said. It was the same in Grant. She turned the page, looking at the other pictures. There was a black-and-white snapshot of Jared from a few years back, and she said, "He's growing up to be a handsome boy."

"You're not going to tell Jeffrey, are you?" Nell tried to smile. "Don't answer that." She put the album back under the table. "You still leaving town?"

"I don't know."

"Stick around." Nell patted her leg. "I'm making cornbread tonight."

"Where's Robert?"

"Possum took him to the store to buy him some clothes," she said. "Robert didn't want to go back to the house and God only knows what Jessie did with the stuff at her mama's."

"What about Robert?"

"He'll be okay."

"No," Sara said. "Robert. We've only been talking about Jeffrey. Did you ever think he was involved in what happened to Julia?"

Nell took her time answering. "He was always secretive."

"About what?"

"Maybe 'secretive' is the wrong word. Makes him sound shifty. He's just private. Doesn't talk about his feelings much."

"Jeffrey doesn't, either."

"No, not like that. Like he doesn't want anyone to get too close to him." She sat back on the couch, her back slumped into a C. "Everybody thought it was Possum who was on the outside, but I think it was Robert. He never seemed to fit in. Not that Jeffrey treated him that way, but it's that same thing we were talking about earlier. He always waited to see what Jeffrey did before he acted."

"That's not uncommon for teenagers."

"It was more than that," Nell said. "If Jeffrey got into trouble, Robert would take the blame. He was like Jeffrey's safety net and Jeffrey let him do it." She looked at Sara. "The minute Jeffrey left, Robert did the same thing with Hoss. He'd take a bullet for either one of them, and I'm not exaggerating."

Sara debated before telling her, "Robert is saying that he killed Julia."

Something in Nell's face shifted, though Sara could not pin down what. Her voice had changed, too. "I don't know about that."

"No," Sara said. "Me neither."

Chapter Twenty

Jeffrey found his mother's Impala parked in her usual space in front of the hospital. She could have easily walked to work and back, but May Tolliver would never add more minutes to the time it took for her to get that first drink after her shift in the hospital cafeteria ended.

As usual, she had left the windows down to keep the car from turning into an oven. Jeffrey smelled stale cigarette smoke wafting through the air as he opened the door. She always kept a spare key in the glove compartment, and he found it underneath a bunch of religious tracts and brightly colored pamphlets that must have been stuck under the windshield wiper of the car at some point. She might have been a chain-smoking drunk, but May never littered.

The engine turned over after he pumped the gas several times, and Jeffrey brushed cigarette ash off the gear console as he shifted the car into drive. The windows were foggy from nicotine, and he took out his handkerchief, wiping the windshield as he drove out of the parking lot. If his mother left the hospital before he got back with the car, she would easily put two and two together and realize that with Jeffrey in town he had probably borrowed her car. He had "borrowed" it often enough as a teenager, and May had never mentioned it to a soul. The two times Jeffrey had been pulled over by sheriff's deputies, May had insisted she had loaned the car to her son.

Jeffrey drove aimlessly through downtown, not heading in any particular direction. He felt sick in his gut, like someone had died. Maybe someone had. He was sinking back into that old feeling that his life was totally out of control. He was the eye of a storm that caused nothing but destruction.

He could not get over the fact that all these years Robert had even for a minute entertained the thought that Jeffrey had killed Julia Kendall. Back in Hoss's office, when Robert had asked the question, Jeffrey had been too shocked to show anything but anger. Even when he denied it, tried to tell Robert what had really happened, the other man had simply shaken his head, like he did not want to hear whatever yarn Jeffrey had concocted to explain his actions.

"It doesn't matter," Robert had kept saying. "I'll take the rap."

Jeffrey realized he was close to the funeral home, and he took a last-minute turn across the highway, pulling into the lot. He parked in the back, hoping Deacon White would not have the car towed. Jeffrey was sick of borrowing people's cars and shoes and whatever else he'd taken these last few days. He wanted to be in his own home in his own bed. He wanted to be alone. The cave was the closest thing he could think of that might bring him some peace.

No one came out of the building to warn him off, so Jeffrey got out of the car and walked the back way to the cemetery. He had a grandfather buried somewhere on the hill, but Jimmy Tolliver had never mentioned the man's name. Knowing how these things worked, Jeffrey guessed that Jimmy's old man had taught him everything about parenting that he knew; which was to say, not a lot. Jeffrey had never felt that genetic urge that some men feel, like they had to get a woman pregnant and pass on their heritage. Maybe nature was correcting an error. Some people were not meant to pass on their blood.

As he walked into the woods, Jeffrey could not help but think of Sara and the way she had talked to him. She obviously believed everything Lane Kendall had said, no matter the fact that the woman was lying trash. Jeffrey still felt the burn of shame Lane had brought him all those years ago, the way she had talked around town, letting everyone know that she was sure Jeffrey had raped her daughter, even though Julia's story had changed so many times even she could not keep up with it.

But what was rape? People always thought of it as something violent and vicious, some deranged psychopath forcing a woman to spread her legs under threat of harm. Julia had been with plenty of boys, and Jeffrey was certain she had not wanted any of them. She had been looking for love and acceptance, and seen sex as a way to get that. Probably most of the guys who went with her knew that, but at that age, it was hard to care. If a girl was more than half willing, you were halfway there. Being sweet to Julia before she lifted her skirt or holding her for a few minutes afterward was the price you paid to get laid. Some of the boys even joked about it, trying to guess who had done what to get in her pants. The jokes had flown the day Julia had shown up with that damn necklace, acting like she had finally convinced someone to love her. The poor fuck who'd given it to her had probably been shitting in his pants when she started showing that thing off.

Maybe some guy had felt guilty for taking advantage of her, figured out after coming in her mouth that maybe she wasn't exactly enjoying it. Of course, what man hadn't had sex with a woman who wasn't exactly into it? Drunk as he was the other night, Jeffrey had known Sara wasn't in the mood, but he had somehow managed to get her to say yes. He had been so desperate for that release, for that moment when everything seemed okay, that he had ignored the fact that she was doing him a favor.

Julia Kendall had called it doing a guy a favor. Jeffrey could still remember the way she looked at him, twirling that stupid cheap necklace around her finger, saying, "Hey, Slick, you want me to do you a favor?"

In the forest, Jeffrey stopped at the mouth of the cave. The boards had been broken away, probably where Hoss had come in to get the bones. Julia's bones. Jeffrey hesitated before going in, thinking this was a grave, no longer his boyhood hideout. Still, he went in, thinking there was no better place for him to be right now.