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MAGGIE KENNEDY-O’KEEFE
Monday, June 15, 2020
I’m still processing what Nick Brady told me about Eve and Cam Harper holding hands the day she died. I know that Nick is not the most reliable of sources but if it’s true, this could change the course of the investigation. For a long time, I thought I was the only one. That Cam loved me. But as time passed I realized that this most likely wasn’t the case. If Cam Harper preyed on me, chances are there were others. The thought that Eve could have been one of them makes me want to punch a wall.
I slow the car as I come up on Bates Avenue, named after a decorated Civil War soldier from Iowa named Norman Bates. I kid you not. We learned all about him in middle school—awarded the Medal of Honor by President Johnson in 1865. Great soldier. Unfortunate name.
Bates is a narrow street that winds sinuously upward with homes appearing to lean at painful angles like crooked teeth. The street evens out at the top and comes to an abrupt dead end. There are five homes atop the bluff. Two on each side, and the Harper house at the end of the cul-de-sac. Each seemingly built in a different era.
I park in front of my childhood home and look across the street at the Knox house. Even though I visit my dad several times a week, I do my best not to stare too long at the Knoxes’ shabby two-story. It was a second home to me before Eve died and I haven’t been inside in twenty-five years.
Not that I didn’t try. Charlotte didn’t let anyone come inside except for my dad so he could give her updates about the case. It must have been too painful for Charlotte to have Eve’s friends come around. I wanted desperately to be able to go inside, up the stairs to sit in Eve’s room even for just a minute.
Decades later the siding of the house is pocked, the front lawn is overgrown and the walkway that leads to the front door is split. The cheeriest bits about the whole scene are the dandelions that sway with the weight of their furry yellow heads.
I also avoid looking at the Harpers’ house. In the years after Eve died, I would look out my bedroom and see the sprawling rambler and my face would flush with shame and hurt and regret. That faded over time, but the anger stayed. Over the years, I lost my mom, my innocence and my best friend. This street has been a graveyard to me.
I inhale deeply and step from my car. My dad is sitting in his usual spot on his front porch, his affable home health aide, Leanne, sitting next to him. “I’ll stop over in a few minutes,” I call out to him. “I have official business,” I say, pointing at the Knox house. My father looks at me blankly and continues swinging. The minute I walk away he’ll forget I was even here.
I walk up the cracked pathway and try to look through the front windows but the drapes are pulled tight. Though we are in the throes of summer, a Christmas wreath with a limp silver bow hangs on the front door. I knock. The receptionist didn’t give me many details when I called back after missing Nola out on her vet call. I’m hoping that I can catch her here.
I shift from foot to foot. The baby is pressing on my bladder and I already have to go the bathroom again. I knock over and over until the door finally opens a crack revealing one green eye.
“Nola,” I say.
“Maggie Kennedy,” she responds, not opening the door any farther.
“It’s O’Keefe now,” I say flatly. Could Nola really be that out of touch? I’ve been married for ten years. I’m guessing she knows my new name but is choosing not to use it. I’m not sure why it bugs me, but it does. “Do you have a few minutes to talk?” I ask.
“About what?” Nola asks. She’s not budging. I look around the neighborhood. Mrs. Harper has come out to her mailbox and is staring at us curiously. My brother has appeared on the front porch, a welder’s helmet tipped back atop his head and he and my dad are leaning against the front porch rail watching us. Colin must be taking a break from his art, I think. “Come on, Mags,” Nola says, using Eve’s nickname for me, “just tell me.”
“Can I come in?” I ask.
“I’ll come outside,” Nola says. As she squeezes through the small opening in the door I catch a glimpse of the living room, a slew of plastic bins and a couch piled with clothes.
“Are you moving?” I ask in surprise.
“No,” Nola says and quickly closes the door behind her. In front of me stands Eve’s little sister, slim but strong looking, nearly six feet tall, now a grown woman. Though her oversize eyeglasses have been replaced with a more fashionable pair, her green eyes are still as intense as I remember. Curls spring from her head in a pale yellow halo. Her lips are thin, her nose long, but over time Nola has grown into her features. Not beautiful like Eve was, but certainly attractive. Too bad her insides don’t match the outside.
“It’s been a long time,” I say. I can’t remember the last time I was standing this close to Nola. Maybe Eve’s funeral. While everyone else was crying over Eve’s casket, Nola stood by, dry-eyed. Through the years I’ve seen her from a distance but remarkably we never ran into each other at the bank or the grocery store. Not even at the vet clinic where Shaun and I take our cats, Skunky and Ponie.
“Has it?” Nola asks as if she hasn’t given it a thought over the years.
“Time marches on,” I say dumbly. The afternoon sun is beating down on my scalp and I’m feeling a bit light-headed.
“Why are you here?” Nola asks. She was never one for mincing words.
“Is your mom home?” I ask. “I’m here to talk to both of you.”
“She’s in the hospital,” Nola says. “Fell and broke her hip. I would have thought your dad would have told you about all the commotion over here last week.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. It doesn’t shock me that my dad didn’t tell me about Charlotte’s fall, his short-term memory being what it is. Out of sight, out of mind. “I’ll get right to it then,” I say, hating that I already sound defensive. “A new piece of evidence has been found relating to Eve’s murder.” I watch Nola’s face for a reaction and get nothing.
“How gallant of you to deliver the news,” Nola says with a barely perceptible smile. “But you’re a bit late. I already heard about it.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I wanted to tell you first. I started looking for you the minute I found out about it myself.”
“A shoe, right?” Nola asks. Normally, we wouldn’t release this information but since the Specht kid has already shown the shoe to a third of Grotto’s teen population, I don’t see the harm in confirming.
