Page 20

"Pull up her file."

"I don't⁠—"

Silas racks the shotgun. In that small room, it sounds like a door slamming.

Marsh pulls up the file. The parish system wants two passwords, and his fingers tremble so badly he botches the second one twice. When the form finally loads, the parish seal sits at the top above my sister's name, her birth date, and the day she died.

"Read it. Aloud. Everything you typed."

His voice cracks on the first line and steadies as he goes, because the words are his and he's recited them before, and practiced lies come out smooth. Decedent found suspended from closet rod by nylon cord. Ligature consistent with self-suspension. No evidence of struggle. No defensive injuries noted. Toxicology not indicated. Decedent's family reports history of depressive episodes. Manner of death, suicide.

"Which family?"

He doesn't answer.

"I'm the only family she had left, and nobody called me. Who reported a history of depressive episodes?"

His eyes flick toward Silas, who doesn't shift his weight.

"Her aunt," Marsh mumbles. "The aunt phoned it in."

Charlotte. She's the only relative still living in Harlowe, the one who'd have been sitting by the phone when the sheriff called. Somebody had to give him an answer, and I tell myself that's all it was.

"Now the real one."

"That is the⁠—"

"Silas tells me you've kept your own records for years because you're a coward who needed something to trade." I keep my tone level. "My guess is they're in one of those cabinets. I can tear out every drawer and find them myself, or you can save me the trouble."

His gaze drifts to the snapshots. Slowly he rises, lifts a key on a chain from around his neck, and unlocks the bottom drawer of the end cabinet. It's packed with folders, every tab labeled by year. He draws one from the front and hands it over.

Inside, in small cramped script, is the examination he actually performed on my sister, alone in the old hospital basement at two in the morning with no seal anywhere on the page. Horizontal ligature mark, anterior neck, applied from behind. Fingernail abrasions both palms, consistent with defensive struggle against ligature. Petechial hemorrhage. Needle mark, left antecubital fossa. At the bottom: homicide, strangulation.

I pass it to Silas and turn back to the drawer.

"Go further back."

"Miss Price, please, you don't want⁠—"

I'm already walking my fingers through the years myself. 2019. 2015. 2011. Most years hold one folder. A few hold two. The paper yellows and goes soft as I go, until my hand stops on its own at the year I turned seven.

Two folders. My mother's name on the tab in the front.

I didn't come here for her. Delilah brought me. But my hand won't move off that tab, because seven is old enough to remember things. I remember my mother singing alto at the kitchen sink with her hair tied up in a dish towel. I remember she chewed Juicy Fruit when she was nervous and cracked it loud enough to make Delilah roll her eyes. I remember she kissed us both on the forehead one wet night in March and told us to mind Aunt Charlotte, she'd be back before the ten o'clock news.

She never came back. Her car went off Highway 1 into the Red River, and divers pulled her out the next morning. Charlotte moved into the back bedroom that same week and stayed until the night I left. After that she went home to her own house on Pecan Street and let ours fall in.

That's the story. I've carried it sixteen years without once thinking to pick it apart.

The folder smells like the inside of a closet. Clipped to the front is the official finding, typed, the one the parish filed: motor vehicle accident, drowning. Behind it, in Marsh's younger, looser hand, is what he found on his table.

Blunt force trauma, left temporal region. Depressed skull fracture, single blow. No water in lungs.

She was dead before the car ever touched the river.

"Read this one."

He can't. His mouth works around the first word and gives up, and his chin begins to shake, an old man weeping over paper in his undershirt. So I do it for him. I speak the name of the blow and the name of the bone and the four words that mean she never drowned. I read the date, and the signature, which is his, and the final line at the bottom of the page.