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Greg’s and Wendell’s words in her brain were doing what the leaves were doing around her now. Blowing round and round. Unsure where to fall and settle.
It’s hard to know who you are when you’ve been told for so long who you’re supposed to be.
Who was Violet?
I’ve tried to be the person I know I’m meant to be. Wendell’s words kicked her gut, and she twisted off the top of the bottle as a dark thought ran through her mind.
You know who you are. You can’t keep pretending you’re not your father’s daughter. And you’ll do it...you’ll push someone else. Pull a trigger. It’s going to happen. You’re safe for no one.
The swollen creek ran over sedentary stones down the bed with a whoosh. A squirrel zipped across a log that had fallen over the creek.
She grabbed a yellow leaf and traced her finger across the edges of the diamond-shaped pattern.
Footsteps approached, and without looking, she knew it was John.
Chapter Seventeen
Sunday, October 22
7:53 p.m.
“You think that’s smart?” John asked and pointed to the bottle she’d lifted from the bar.
She held it up. “Call me Slick.” But she still hadn’t taken a drink. “I don’t want to think at all, John. That’s the point.” She set the bottle down by the tree roots. “I don’t even drink. Losing my inhibition means I might do something volatile. It was impulsive.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the trunk of the tree. “Do you believe that people can change? Look at the preacher. He doesn’t want to be a mean drunk, but he can’t help himself. He tries to be a good person, but he can only fight so long and hard before he succumbs to his true nature.”
What was she fighting?
“Because if a man who claims to be a preacher of God can’t do it, seems the rest of us are without hope of being anything more than what we are. Depraved and cruel. Inhumane.”
Violet was searching for age-old answers that couldn’t be found in any of her textbooks.
“I think our base nature is dark,” he said. “We hate and murder. Lie and steal. Cheat and covet. We betray and look out for ourselves and do what feels good to us—and those things aren’t always good things. There will always be a streak of darkness in us all.”
“But?”
“But we can know light and have light live in us. Shine through us. Battle that darkness we struggle with but not alone.” He hated seeing her in inner agony. “Wendell Atwater has a streak of darkness. He battles alcohol, and he may always battle it, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a man of faith or that he won’t eventually win the war—if that’s what’s going on here.”
“It makes him a hypocrite.”
“No. A hypocrite would judge others for it and then do it in secret with no shame. What I witnessed was a man severely ashamed of his sins. Kicking himself for giving in to that temptation. And trying to hide it—not to keep indulging but from the shame, the guilt and the fear.”
She shifted, leaning her shoulder against the trunk. “You don’t think he’s the killer then?”
He suspected about every man in this holler. “I don’t know. Some killers do feel remorse for their kills. In a twisted way. It’s possible he did it and feels that heavy shame but believes in his mission. If so, he’ll do it again.”
“I killed a girl once,” she whispered.
Had she drunk some of that whiskey before he made it out here?
“You did what?”
“Well, almost. I killed her in my heart before I attempted to in reality, so I may as well have. Lynn Tavish. I hated her. I was fifteen. And I was pretty. Never hit an awkward stage. She hated that.” Her words weren’t arrogant or prideful. Simply facts. “She was vicious to me. Blocked my path on the school bus, humiliating me. I never fought her, or even spoke. Just went back up to the front of the bus. She harassed me in the halls. Spread vile rumors about me. None true. And every day, I wanted to kill her. I spent study hall daydreaming of ways I’d do it and not get caught. Then one day...I executed the plan.”
John’s stomach turned, and he wasn’t sure how to respond. His mind reeled. What was he supposed to say to this kind of confession?
“I left a note in her locker from a boy I knew she had a crush on. Said to meet him out by the lake near her house. At the gazebo at midnight. She came. I saw her walk onto the gazebo from where I stood on the dock. She saw me, but I was far enough out and dressed in dark clothing. She didn’t know I wasn’t him. And when she got to me, before she could even realize I wasn’t Terry Travis, I listened to the voice in my head that said to push her.”
John’s blood turned cold.
