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“I’ll bring you some next time,” Paul said, his words muffled with embarrassment.
“Okay.” Sally dove back under the water, spending only a precious few seconds scrubbing her skin with sand and pebbles. Still, she couldn’t help a smile.
Paul really did take care of her. It was nice to have someone on her side. Someone who didn’t think she was dirty.
Someone determined not to let her stay that way.
13
October 1998
Finn
“So, you and Sally were friends,” Billi says it like a statement, but I hear the question her mind is asking. Sally had friends? What happened to them? What happened toher?
“Wearefriends,” Paul corrects her, “even though I haven’t spoken to her in more than seven years.” I’m not sure how one can consider something a friendship for that many years without at least a spoken word or two, but Paul quickly sets me straight. “When a friendship lives in your soul, you don’t need many words. Seven years to us is like seven days to other people.”
His words strike me as a profound statement Billi might make, one that will stay with me a while. And while I don’t have any experience with a soul friendship, or with a friendship with any woman at all, suddenly I hope to one day. Billi floods my thoughts, and I glance at her. Must be something in the tea we’re drinking.
“Does Sally know you’re still friends or is this more of a one-sided thing?” Billi sounds cynical, but I let her take the reins. We can’t both bombard the guy with questions, not when he seems to be our only link to Sally.
Paul nods. “She knows we’re friends in the same way she knows I would do anything for her. She’s always known that.”
I want to ask how his wife felt about that, but I keep my mouth shut and glance back over my notes. I’m not an expert on long-term relationships.
“So, if you’ve known each other since Sally was seven—”
“Since she was three. I met her when she and her ma and pa moved into the house next door.” House is a broad term for the structure Sally lives in, but again, not my place to judge.
“Her mother was in the picture at that point?”
“Yes, but she died the very next year.”
“Do you know how she died?”
There’s a stillness to Paul that makes me uncomfortable. “You asking me if I think her pa murdered her mother? Because he didn’t. She got stung by a wasp on her neck, and no one knew she was allergic. By the time the doctor showed up, it was too late to save her.”
A wasp? It seems too simplistic to be real. “Then why did people claim Sally’s dad killed her?”
Paul looks me in the eye. “Why wouldn’t they? He was a smart but simple man who wouldn’t conform to the way things are done in this town. More specifically, he wouldn’t bow to the leaders. He went so far as to file a complaint against the hospital before the fire. In a town the size of Silver Bell, where everyone has lived here forever, that’s enough to get you blackballed.” Paul plays with the button on his shirt sleeve. “Sally’s pa was…different. An outsider. Considered slow. People don’t like different, especially here. One day her mama was alive and well. The next she was dead and buried with no funeral. People drew conclusions. False ones, but no one ever cared about that.”
“And you know that to be true because…”
“Because I saw it happen. One minute I was pulling weeds in the garden with my mama, and the next, we heard Sally scream from all the way over there.” Paul points in the direction of Sally’s house, and I can’t help but follow his hand. There’s a family portrait of a much younger Paul with his wife and child hanging on the wall next to a tarnished wall sconce with a turnkey gas starter on the side. Both look to be a few decades old.
I turn back around to focus on my notes, still baffled at the image of six-year-old Sally that Paul had just painted. “Why wasn’t there a funeral?”
“Who would come? They didn’t have any friends. We lived in the house next door, and even my parents wouldn’t have anything to do with them.”
Stupid question asked and answered. Next to me, Billi shifts in place. Sally’s family situation seemed lonely at best and bleak at worst, and this whole town was intent on keeping it that way.
“Since you’ve known Sally since she was three, you must know more about her father than most people. Can you tell me a little about him?”
“I can tell you a lot about him. You just need to tell me what you’d like to know.”
I barely contain a longsuffering sigh. This guy is clearly fiercely protective of Sally and isn’t going to make this interview easy. I try another more direct tactic.
“Was he an alcoholic?”
