Charlie’s voice was so loud that she heard her words echo up the hallway.
Ben said, “Rusty had him sign a confession.” He looked at Sam, not Charlie. “I found it in the safe.”
Charlie looked up at the ceiling. She let her tears fall. She would never forgive herself for making Ben find out from a piece of paper.
Mason said, “I wanted to sign the confession. I wanted to come forward. I was sick with it, the lies, the guilt.”
Sam held onto Charlie’s arm as if to keep them both rooted in place. “Why didn’t Dad turn you in?”
“He didn’t want another trial,” Mason said. “You guys were living your lives, getting past it.”
“Getting past it,” Charlie mumbled.
Mason continued, “Rusty didn’t want it dredged up again, to make you come home, to make Charlie go on the stand. He didn’t want her to have to—”
“Lie,” Sam finished.
The box, sealed for so long, placed high on the closet shelf. Rusty had not wanted to force Charlie to choose between lying under oath and opening up the box for the world to see.
The Culpepper girls.
The torture those nasty bitches had put her through—still put her through. What would they say, what would they do, if proof came out that they had been right about Daniel’s innocence all along?
They had been right.
Charlie had pointed her finger at the wrong man.
Sam asked, “Why did my father write the checks?”
Mason said, “That was one of Rusty’s stipulations. He wanted Zach to know that he knew, that somebody else could blow up the deal, cut off the money to Danny, if Zach didn’t keep his mouth shut.”
“That put a target on his back,” Charlie said. “Culpepper could’ve had him killed.”
Mason shook his head again. “Not if he wanted the checks to keep going to his son.”
“Do you think he really cared about his son?” Sam asked. “Culpepper was taunting him. Did you know that? Every month, he sent Rusty a letter telling him You owe me. Just to rub it in. To remind Rusty that he could tear apart all of our lives, rob us of our peace, our sense of safety, at any moment.”
Mason said nothing.
Sam demanded, “Do you know what kind of stress you caused our father? Lying to us. Hiding the truth. He wasn’t built for that kind of deception. He’d already lived through his wife being murdered, his daughter almost dying, Charlie being—” She shook her head. “Rusty’s heart was already weak. Did you know that? Do you know how much your lies, your guilt, your cowardice, contributed to his bad health? Maybe that’s why he drank so much, to chase away the bad taste of his own complicity. Complicity that you drew him into. He had to live with that every day, every month when he wrote that check, every time he called me—”
Sam finally broke. She took off her glasses. She pressed her fingers to her eyelids. She said, “He was protecting us all of those years because of you.”
Mason leaned his head between his knees. If he was crying again, Charlie did not care.
Ben asked, “Why are you here? Did you think you could talk them out of turning you in?”
“I came to confess,” Mason said. “To tell you I’m sorry. That I have tried every day since then to make up for what I did. I’ve got medals.” He looked up at Sam. “I’ve got combat medals, a purple heart, a—”
“I don’t care,” Sam said. “You’ve had twenty-eight years of your life to plead guilty. You could have walked into any police station, confessed, and taken your punishment, but you were afraid you would end up with life in prison, or on death row, the same as Zachariah Culpepper.”
Mason did not answer, but the truth was self-evident.
Charlie said, “You knew we never told anybody about what really happened in the woods. That’s how you got my father on your side, isn’t it? You blackmailed him. My secret for yours.”
Mason wiped blood from his mouth. He still said nothing.
Charlie said, “You sat in that kitchen where my mother was murdered, and you told my father that you would use your family’s money to fight a murder conviction, no matter who it hurt, no matter what came out during the trial. Sam would’ve been dragged back down here. I would’ve been forced to testify. You knew Daddy wouldn’t let that happen to us.”
Mason only asked, “What are you going to do now?”
“It’s what you’re going to do,” Sam said. “You’ve got exactly twenty minutes to drive to the police station and confess on the record, without a lawyer, to lying to the police and taking Kelly Wilson’s gun from the scene of a double homicide or so help me I will take your written confession to attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder straight to the chief of police. This town doesn’t forget, Mason. Your excuse that you were just standing there, that it was an accident, still constitutes felony murder. If you don’t do exactly as I say right now, you’ll end up in a cell beside Zachariah Culpepper, where you should’ve been for the last twenty-eight years.”
Mason wiped his hands on his pants. He reached for his broken phone.
Ben kicked it away. He opened the back door. “Get out.”
Mason stood up. He did not speak. He turned and walked out of the house.
Ben slammed the door so hard that a new crack spread up the window.
Sam put her glasses back on. She asked Ben, “Where is the confession?”
“On the safe by the letters.”
“Thank you.” Sam did not go to the office.
She walked into the living room.
Charlie hesitated. She didn’t know whether or not to follow Sam. What could she say to her sister that could possibly make either of them feel better? The man who had shot Sam in the head, who had buried her alive, had just walked out their back door with nothing but a threat to make him do the right thing.
Ben turned the latch on the deadbolt.
Charlie asked him, “Are you all right?”
He took off his glasses, wiped the blood from the lenses. “I’ve never been in a real fight before. Not where I managed to hit anybody.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you were upset. I’m sorry that I lied. I’m sorry that you had to read about what happened instead of me telling you myself.”
“There’s nothing in the confession about what Zachariah did to you.” Ben slid his glasses back on. “Rusty told me.”
Charlie was speechless. Rusty had never betrayed a confidence.
Ben said, “Last weekend. He didn’t tell me Mason was involved, but he told me everything else. He said that the worst sin he had ever committed against anybody in his life was making you keep it a secret.”
Charlie rubbed her arms, unable to fight off a sudden chill.
Ben said, “What happened to you—I’m sorry, but I don’t care.”
Charlie felt his disregard as an almost physical pain.
“I said that wrong.” Ben tried to explain, “I’m sorry it happened, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t care that you lied. I don’t care, Chuck.”
“It’s why—” Charlie looked down at the floor. Fittingly, Mason Huckabee had left a trail of blood on his way out of the house.
“It’s why what?” Ben was standing in front of her. He tilted up her chin. “Chuck, just say it. Holding it in is killing you.”
He already knew. He knew everything. And still, she struggled to give voice to her own failures. “The miscarriages. They were because of what happened.”
Ben rested his hands on her shoulders. He waited for her to look him in the eye, then said, “When I was nine years old, Terri kicked me in the nuts, and I peed blood for a week.”
Charlie started to speak, but he shook his head, telling her not to.
“When I was fifteen, I got punched in the junk by a jock. I was just hanging with my nerd herd, minding my own business, and he punched my balls so hard I thought they went up my asshole.”
Ben pressed his finger to her lips so she could not interrupt.
&n
bsp; “I keep my cell phone in my front pocket. I know I’m not supposed to because it scrambles your sperm, but I do it anyway. And I can’t wear boxers. You know I hate the way they bunch up. And I masturbated a lot. I mean, some now, but when I was a kid, I was Olympic-ready. I was the only member of the Starfleet Club in my school, and I collected comic books, and I played triangle in the band. No girl would look at me. Not even the ones with acne. I jerked myself off so much that my mom took me to the doctor because she was worried I would get blisters.”
“Ben.”
“Chuck, listen to me. I dressed up as red shirt ensign from Star Trek for my senior prom. There wasn’t a theme. I was the only guy who wasn’t in a tux. I thought I was being ironic.”
Charlie finally smiled.
“Obviously, I was not meant to procreate. I have no idea why I ended up with someone as hot as you, or why we couldn’t—” He didn’t say the words. “It’s just the card we drew, babe. We don’t know if it’s something that happened to me or something that happened to you or plain old natural selection, but that’s the way it is, and I am telling you that I don’t care.”
Charlie cleared her throat. “Kaylee could give you children.”
“Kaylee gave me gonorrhea.”
Charlie should have felt wounded, but the first emotion that registered was concern. Ben was allergic to penicillin. “Did you have to go to the hospital?”
“I spent the last ten days going to Ducktown so no one here would find out.”