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My breath comes in ragged bursts.
How? Why?
I scan my memories, searching for something, anything, to make sense of what I’m seeing. Was it her father? That’s what people always assumed. But I never saw him talk to my father. He was a loner. Sat at the back of the church, left right after service, never stayed for potlucks or praise reports.
He traveled a lot, too. I remember that.
Wait.
It wasn’t her father.
It was her uncle, wasn’t it?
Is that what I heard?
How was her uncle part of my father’s sick games?
He didn’t even live in Hurricane, did he? Her uncle never came to church. Not even when he was visiting.
But the picture… the fear in her eyes… it explains everything. Why she wore long sleeves in the middle of summer. Why she flinched when anyone raised their voice. Why she took her own life.
The summer before she was supposed to start high school.
The news hits like a punch to the chest. A blow so sudden and devastating it steals the breath right out of the air. It spreads through Hurricane in whispers first, soft as secrets, before erupting like thunder.
Cindy Lewis is dead.
I’m sixteen, about to start my junior year, when the phone calls begin. That’s how word travels back then, house to house, neighbor to neighbor, voices low and strained, like speaking too loud might make it worse.
By morning, the whole town buzzes, but no one says it outright.
Gone, they murmur.
Poor Cindy Lewis… such a shame.
No one uses the real words: suicide, quarry, rope.
By noon, I hear it from Maurine, who treats grief like it’s town currency. I’m standing in line at the hardware store while my father argues over screws when she edges in beside me.
“You hear about Cindy?” she asks, voice hushed, eyes bright.
My stomach tightens.
Cindy Lewis.
Clyde’s little sister.
The quiet one who sits alone at lunch with her nose in a book.
Who wears long sleeves even when the asphalt melts beneath your shoes.
No, the Cindy we see now isn’t the Cindy who’s always been around. She’s changed.
“What about her?” I ask. My throat’s dry.
Maurine leans closer. Her perfume is thick and cloying, like syrup left out too long.
“They found her at the quarry. Hung herself. Poor thing.”
