Crowned and Moldering

When Mac finished, I elbowed Sean lightly. “You okay, Sean?”

He jerked as if I’d woken him from a deep sleep.

“Oh, wow.” He blinked and shook his head. “Sorry. I zoned out there. Maybe I should go home.”

“No way,” I said. “You haven’t finished your di

“Yeah, I’m not ready to call it a night yet,” Wade said.

Sean took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay.”

“Sorry the story got a little violent there,” Mac said.

“Hey, no problem,” Sean said, rubbing his temple. “I was just . . . remembering stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” Mac asked, not willing to let it go. Maybe it would help Sean to talk things through with Mac and the guys.

“Grim stuff,” Sean muttered. “Really ugly stuff my dad said when I got back from juvie. You know, after Lily left.” He sucked in another deep breath and his cheeks expanded as he exhaled slowly. He glanced around the table and then looked directly at me. “I think my father killed Lily.”

*   *   *

After di

It wasn’t as though Sean was betraying his father. That ship had sailed a long time ago. The man was dead and gone. And maybe it was unfair of me to say so, but good riddance.

Mac and I followed Sean home and stayed with him for moral support while he talked to Eric on speakerphone. I was surprised to hear Sean sounding cool, calm, and clear as he pointed out his reasons for believing the worst about his father. Besides his father’s violent temper and history of abuse, Sean remembered something specific that his father had said after Lily disappeared.

“When I told my dad that I wasn’t going to give up until I found Lily, he said, ‘Don’t bother. Where she’s gone, nobody will find her.’”

“Your father told you that?” Eric said, sounding shocked.

“Yeah. He was pretty drunk when he said it, and I demanded to know what he meant. But he brushed me off, just said, ‘She’s gone to hell.’”

Eric paused, and I figured he was writing it all down. “Did your father ever talk about the lighthouse mansion or say anything else about Lily’s disappearance?”

“I always had the feeling he knew something,” Sean said. “But no matter how many times I tried to bring up the subject, he refused to mention her name ever again.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Eric asked.

Sean winced and glanced at me and Mac as he spoke. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t remember until Mac was telling this story tonight about the Pashtun warriors fighting with knives.”

“Sounds interesting,” Eric murmured.

“Yeah, it was,” Sean said. “So, my father owned a really old Vietnamese knife with a sheath made from buffalo horn that he mounted on the wall like it was some kind of art piece. He said he stole it off a dead Vietcong soldier, but I didn’t know whether to believe him or not.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Sometimes he would get drunk and take the knife and just hold it. Every so often he’d sharpen it and then run his thumb along the blade until he drew blood. He always said his days in Vietnam were the best of his life, which is pretty screwed up, if you ask me.”

“Some guys miss the camaraderie or the sense of purpose,” Eric explained briefly.

“I guess,” Sean said. “So, anyway, when Mac told the story, I remembered my dad and that knife. He was holding it, stroking it, when he said those words about Lily. I’d completely blocked that memory until tonight.”

*   *   *

The next day, Eric telephoned to tell me that the medical examiner had just called to verify that it was indeed Lily’s body—or, rather, her skeleton—that we’d found in Mac’s new home, thanks to dental X-rays received from Lily’s childhood dentist.

“That was fast work,” I said.

“That’s how I like things to move,” Eric said. “By the way, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep this information to yourself. Even though Sean was fairly certain the body was Lily’s, we haven’t told him or his sister, Amy, the news yet, so I’d like to talk to them first before the whole town finds out.”

“I won’t say a word.”

I hadn’t slept well the night before and didn’t sleep well that night, either, thanks to visions of poor Lily being cooped up in the dumbwaiter all these years. And I still felt so bad for Sean, who had dedicated half his life to finding his sister, only to discover that she’d never even had the chance to leave town.

I woke up Wednesday morning feeling groggy and out of sorts. But when I remembered what day it was, I jumped out of bed, knowing I needed to be wide awake and perky, even if I had to fake it.

It was Career Day at my old high school and I would be talking to students about my job every hour from nine until three o’clock. I’d done it the past four years in a row and it was always fun. The kids were attentive and asked lots of great questions, and it always felt especially good to have some of the girls sign up for a summer job on my crew.

I just wished I were feeling a little more energetic. I’d spent the past two nights tossing and turning, continuing to relive that moment when Sean had told us that his father might have murdered his own daughter. Sean had looked so sad and I couldn’t blame him. Even though the man had been a cruel monster when he was alive, he had still been Sean’s father.

I shook off the memory and took a long shower, then poured myself two full cups of coffee to sip while I dried my hair, put on some makeup, and dressed in my usual attire of jeans, henley shirt, denim jacket, and work boots. After chowing down on my own homemade version of a breakfast burrito, I fed my furry kids and made sure their water was fresh before heading for my truck and driving to my alma mater.

Fifteen minutes later, pulling a small dolly that held my heavy-duty pink tool chest filled with all my pink tools, along with my laptop computer and briefcase, I walked into the main corridor of Lighthouse Cove High School. It was bizarre to smell the same smells, see the same colors and sights, hear the same sounds. But they weren’t really the same, were they? How could they be after fifteen years? What was definitely still the same, though, was that feeling I always got, that odd mix of nostalgia for the good old days and sheer relief that I didn’t have to repeat them.

I’d felt this way the last time I was here for Career Day. The reality was that the school hadn’t changed a bit. But I had. At first I wondered if things looked smaller because I was taller. But no, I hadn’t grown an inch since graduation. Maybe I’d just gotten used to living in a bigger world.

The decibel level was earsplitting, with kids everywhere, talking as they gathered around open lockers or whispered in corners. They walked in pairs or in groups and there was a lot of laughter, a few shrieks, some high-pitched whining. Two boys ran through, dodging in and out and around the clusters in order to make it to a class before the bell rang.

Some kids were outfitted in colorful stripes and prints; some in severe, unrelieved black; some in camouflage. Most of them carried backpacks, like my friends and I used to. Watching them, I had so many mixed emotions. It was so normal and yet so foreign. It was another world.

I made it to the classroom where I’d be spending my day. I peeked through the door’s cloudy reinforced-glass window before walking into the room and setting my pink tool chest on the floor by the front desk. There was nobody else in the room yet, so I took a minute to glance around at the green blackboards in front and the wall of corkboard along the side, almost completely covered in flyers and photos and posters of upcoming events.