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“I’ve got a bad ticker.” He explained before I responded. “That’s why, if it’s all the same to you, I’m fixin’ to stay in the truck with the bought air.” He motioned to the air vent that was blowing from the console before patting the side of the driver’s side truck. “Patty, here, always takes such good care of me. Has ever since I was seventeen and won her in a poker game, she’s been my good luck charm. Truth is, Doc wasn’t even sure I’d survive the trip. But I’m here. I needed to do this face to face. Man to man.”
As much as I wanted to tell Jerry that he’d wasted his trip, I couldn’t bring myself to do that to a dying man.
“Okay.”
“I don’t know how to tell you this…”
I stood taller, preparing myself.
“Your mama wasn’t alone in that car.”
I stared at him, sure that he must’ve misspoke. I’d seen the police report. The redacted one, but still. She was the sole occupant and driver.
“I know that it probably comes as a shock, but she wasn’t.”
My first thought was this man had lost it. He was delusional.
“She was running away with Wayne Lemont.”
“The car salesman?” I asked. I remembered seeing his commercials running all the time when I was a kid.
Jerry nodded. “She planned on gettin’ settled and then coming back for you youngins.”
She was going to come back for us. So she hadn’t killed herself?
“And that’s not all. She was in the family way.”
“Wait…” I held up my hand needing immediate clarification. “She was pregnant?”
“Yeah, but I’m afraid it wasn’t your daddy’s, it was Wayne’s.”
“Wayne’s?” I repeated.
“’Fraid so, son.”
“He was in the car with her and she was pregnant with his baby. I don’t understand. How is it possible that I’m just hearing about this now?” Firefly was not the sort of town that secrets were actually kept. They were exposed either at the hair salon or even at church as thinly veiled prayer requests. This was exactly the sort of scandal that would have spread like wildfire.
“The first responder on the scene was Wayne’s uncle, you remember Sheriff Lemont?”
When I was growing up there’d been posters of him up everywhere because it always seemed like he was up for reelection, but I didn’t know the man directly.
“The good Sheriff didn’t think the scandal in the family would be good for his political career, so he paid off old Mason, who drove the tow truck and me after I found out that she wasn’t the one driving.”
“She wasn’t driving?”
“No, son. She wasn’t.”
I felt numb, like everything I’d ever known was a lie. “Why do you think she wasn’t the one driving?”
He blew out a breath, leaned back in his seat and hooked his thumbs in his suspenders. “Your mama was five-two on a good day. The seat was back to accommodate someone well over six feet.”
It was so much information that I couldn’t wrap my mind around it but I was trying to understand it. “Maybe the paramedics moved it back.”
Jerry shook his head. “Son, she was thrown clear through the windshield. That was the other reason I knew she wasn’t drivin’. The glass was shattered on the passenger side. I started asking questions and then I got a visit from Lamont. He wrote me a check and I kept my mouth shut. Then, a few months back, there were some people snoopin’ around and I got this letter in the mail.” He handed me an envelope that had coffee stains on it and looked like it had seen better days. “It had your mama’s necklace in it. I was going to send it to you, but you never called me back. So I priority mailed it to Clyde and he set it on your mama’s grave.”
Well, that explained that mystery. It wasn’t a sign. It was Clyde the ringleader of the three “wise men”. I wondered if the other stooges had known about it and why they hadn’t said anything.
I read the letter from Wayne Lamont. It said that he’d kept my mom’s necklace after the crash and he wanted to return it to her family. He apologized to my dad and to us and told us that he was sorry for the pain he’d caused. He said that he’d never forgiven himself and that the accident was his fault.
