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“You’re leaving? Just like that?”
I roll my head sideways to look at her. Lord, she’s something to admire. “What choice do I have? I don’t want to be here. Too many demons to face, and I’m not one for confronting evil.”
“Neither am I. But I’m also not one to run. Someone needs to keep digging, Finn. It’s either going to be you or me.”
I stare at her for a long moment, this girl who hasn’t hardly left my side since I showed up last week. I can’t find the will to stay mad about her disappearing act over the past forty-eight hours. Billi gave me space to think, and now she’s giving me the support to face this freakshow outside the window. But I draw the line at digging.
“Please don’t. I don’t have the energy to find out if any of it is—”
“True?”
“It isn’t.”
She scans my jaw, my eyes, my lips, all of which have grown so tense in the last second, that I’m surprised I don’t have a headache. Her gaze softens at what she sees, understanding drawing her eyes downward and her lower lip in. She reaches for my hand and brings it to her lap while I stare at her. I talk a big game of wanting to leave this place, but if I could stay right here and hang out with her forever, I would.
“Finn, if you’re sure she’s lying, then what are you afraid of?”
We sit with that for a long moment, her words a laser beam straight to my subconscious. Sharp and focused, burning a hole into the core of the issue. Most internal issues don’t like to be exposed.
“I’m afraid she could be right.” There. I said it. Something about my life has never quite added up, like two wrongs trying to make a right. Sometimes that works in theory, but most of the time, all the wrongs accumulate into a heap so large and unsightly that no one wants to wade through it. Impossible to ignore but just as burdensome to face.
This is burdensome. And I, for one, want to leave it alone.
“Then let’s find out.” The words aren’t a classic Billi-ism, but the way she inserts herself into the role of helper is. There’s no hesitation, no thought of overstepping a boundary. Just an offer to be there if I need her, even to be there if I don’t. Outside, seats are starting to fill with memorial attendees. Cameras are set up to roll. Reporters are on-air ready. The speaker is readying to take the stage, clipping a microphone to his lapel. I take a deep breath, resign myself to the morning ahead, reach for my legal pad, pen, and recorder, and open the car door.
“Can we talk about it after?”
“After. During. Whatever you need.”
I feel lower than the soggy grass under everyone’s feet, but her smile makes me feel better somehow.
“I’ll take you up on that.” I slide her a wink. Most women might blush, but Billi rolls her eyes.
“I’ll let you. Ready for the show ahead?” She asks, coming around the car to walk next to me. Without stopping to consider it, I reach for her hand. It’s warm in mine, a solid anchor to my wobbling insides. Grounding and real. At least three people start whispering about us before we make it to our seats.
Who is that with Billi?
Isn’t he that reporter who’s been asking questions around town?
Anyone know his story?
It’s fitting, really. The questions. Haven’t I been asking myself that very same things since yesterday afternoon?
What is my story?
It’s no easy task;sitting through a memorial service you no longer view through a sympathetic lens. It’s on par with having faith in the goodness of people right before a war breaks out and all the instigators cut and run. The moment before looting starts and prisoners are taken. You wonder how only the week before you sang “Kum Ba Yah” in a circle and took oaths to uphold the law and one another, and the next you’re burning down buildings and marching in the street.
I’d burn down a few buildings right now if I could be kept out of prison. I’d burn them for the victims, and I’d burn them for myself. I’d burn them for Sally, even though the woman is crazy.
I tell myself again just to make sure it sticks.
I sit next to Billi, her hand still in mine, showing no sign of letting go. If she’s uncomfortable with the contact, she doesn’t show it. There’s a pen in my lap, and a recorder in my briefcase, but I make no move to use either. I’ll remember every dirty word out of the speaker’s mouth. Whether he knows the words are dirty doesn’t matter. Someone hired him to do a job, and he’s doing it well. So well, that even I get sucked in and sympathetic.
“There’s a time for grief and a time to mourn. A time to reflect and a time to move on. A time for sadness and a time for what-ifs…”
There probably isn’t a time for paraphrasing Bible verses to cover up a crime, but I keep the thought to myself. Thereisa time for staying quiet and a time for blasting the ugly truth on the front page of every major newspaper in the south. Right now, it’s the time for that first one.
But the second one is coming soon.
