Page 122 of Taken Away

Burke’s pen moved across the page. “You think she went after him because of Mabel?”

Mary Lou shrugged. “I think Anne liked being chosen. And Harold had already chosen.”

“And Harold?” Burke asked.

“I think Harold was young.” She stirred her coffee. “Young and trying to figure out what kind of man he was going to be.”

Burke scribbled that down.

“If they were that close, why did they stop speaking?” he asked.

Mary Lou stared into her cup. “That’s the question, isn’t it? For thirty years folks have been trying to answer it.”

“The easy answer is Harold.”

“And the hard answer?”

“I don’t know if there is one.” She hesitated.

"I think Anne spent her whole life wanting what Mabel had."

"You really believe that?" Burke asked.

Mary Lou nodded. "I don't think she ever set out to destroy anybody. I think she spent her life chasing someone else's happiness instead of building her own."

She looked down into her coffee. "People always want a villain. But sometimes everybody's hurting, and nobody knows how to fix it."

Burke closed his notebook.

He'd spent twenty-five years looking for villains.

Sometimes Mary Lou was right.

“What about Harold?” Burke asked.

“Maybe he was the spark.” She shrugged. “Or maybe he was standing there when the fire started.”

“Did they ever try to make up?”

The question seemed to catch her off guard.

“Oh, I think they wanted to.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because neither one of them could stop talking about the other.” She shook her head. “Thirty years later and they were still at it. Mabel would complain about Anne for twenty minutes, then spend the next ten wondering if she was happy.”

Burke thought about Bennett saying nearly the same thing.

“What about Anne?”

“I only saw her a handful of times after she left,” Mary Lou said. “But every single time somebody mentioned Mabel...”

“What?”

“She always wanted to know.”

Burke closed his notebook. “What about Walter?”