Promise Not to Tell: A Novel (15 page)

A
LL THE KIDS TOLD THE POLICE
they’d seen the star pinned to Del’s chest on the last day of school, but it wasn’t with Del’s clothes, which were found folded in a neat pile next to her body. And, of course, it wasn’t in her room, tucked away in her drawer of treasures beside the dead dove, the letters from Mute Mike, the paint sample card, and the strange necklace made out of wood, aluminum pull tops, and shotgun shells—it was well established that Del had never made it home that day.

The theory was that the killer ran into Del shortly after she left school. Maybe they’d arranged to meet in the cabin. Maybe they met by accident along the way. Maybe he even saw her walking home that day and offered her a ride. Whatever happened, the silver star was gone, and the police suspected the killer may have taken it, along with a square of skin, cut neatly from her body with that old plastic-handled knife. Trophies, the police guessed. Something to remember her by.

But now, all these years later,
I
was the one with the star, wasn’t I? Carrying this important piece of lost evidence in my pocketbook, reaching in to feel the sharp points, to run my fingers over the engraved word:
SHERIFF
.

I knew better than to hold on to it for long, though. It incriminated me. I had lied to the police, telling them I didn’t know Del well at all. My Swiss Army knife was being held as evidence in the cat-killing, and might have been used on Tori Miller. How would it look if they found out I had the sheriff ’s star?

I decided to bury it.

I chose to lay it to rest in the place where Del had shared her first secret with me—the old root cellar. I went close to midnight, long after we’d eaten our lasagna, Gabriel had gone to the big barn, and I had locked my mother in her room for the night. I brought a flashlight and a trowel with me and picked my way down the path through the woods, across the old field and pasture to the heavy door in the hillside behind the old farmhouse. With hesitation, I reached for the worn metal handle and pulled. The door swung slowly on squeaky hinges, screeching as if I were opening some movie set crypt.

Cool, moist earth. Sagging shelves. Rotting baskets once full of root vegetables that had long ago withered to dust. Canning jars forgotten: tomatoes floating like tissue samples; pears like tiny fetuses. There, in a cracked jelly jar, was the stub of a candle Del once lit and held to her chest to show me her secret.

The air was stagnant, full of the smell of damp earth and rot. It was Del’s smell. I held my breath, hurried down the worn wooden steps, picked a random spot in the dirt floor, and started to dig, with a terrible feeling that Del was right there with me the whole time. I could almost see her out of the corner of my eye.

I’ve got a secret to show you. Promise not to tell.

I buried it as deep as I could with shaking hands, stamped down the dirt, and used an old broom that hung on the wall to smooth away my tracks before leaving.

I ran back to New Hope, stumbling over tree roots and boulders, my heart pounding in my ears like someone else’s footsteps.

Catch me if you can.

When I was just past the turnoff to the cabin, I saw a light dancing along the path in front of me. I stopped dead in my tracks and watched for a minute as the light bobbed along the ground, back and forth, back and forth, moving in my direction. I tried to still my wheezing breath.

Del?

No, it couldn’t be. Del was long dead. And I didn’t believe in ghosts.

I flicked my flashlight back on and raised the beam straight ahead, in the direction of the mystery light.

To my relief, I saw that it was no ghost, no spirit orb. It was a flesh and blood person with a flashlight of his or her own. Whoever it was wore jeans and a dark hooded sweatshirt. And once my light hit my fellow explorer, he or she turned to look at me, then took off running, up the hill toward New Hope.

“Shit,” I mumbled and began sprinting uphill, my light on the runner’s back.

Now, running after some stranger in the woods where Tori Miller was killed just days ago didn’t seem like the smartest idea I’d ever had, but like it or not, I knew I had to start putting some pieces together if I was going to save my own ass. Someone was framing me. Maybe the killer, maybe not. One thing I knew for sure—you had to have a damn good reason to be out in those woods at midnight. The garden trowel in my left hand reminded me what mine had been. I wanted to know what brought my friend out at this time of night.

Whoever it was, he or she was in good shape. I’m a pretty decent runner and I had trouble catching up, much less gaining ground. But my quarry stumbled, falling to the ground, giving me precious seconds to catch up. I got to the mystery person just as he or she was rising and grabbed the back of the sweatshirt, yanking the poor soul back down to the ground with a grunt.

Had I captured the killer? Or someone playing ghost?

I held my trowel like a dagger and pointed my light at the mystery runner.

The beam hit Opal’s face and she let out a scream.

“Opal? Jesus! What are you doing out here? You scared the hell out of me.” I lowered the trowel to my side.

She started to cry. I leaned down to put my arm around her and she flung herself at me, clinging to me as hard as she could.

She’s just a kid
, I thought.
No older than Del was
.

And as she held tight to me, I thought of all the similarities between Opal and Del. They were both skinny girls with the bare beginnings of breasts hidden under boyish clothes. Their hair was the same washed-out dirty blond. And there was something else, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on—a sort of determined desperation each of them had, I guess; a desperation masquerading as charisma.

I wrapped my arms around her, desperate to protect her, and remembered the last time I’d held her like this, two years ago outside the big barn while she held her arm to her side like a bird with a broken wing.

There’s someone up there.

Opal sobbed in my arms now. “I…thought…you were the Potato Girl,” she gasped.

And I thought
you
were
.

“Easy, Opal. It’s just me. It’s Kate, sweetie. You’re safe.” I was rocking her now, back and forth, back and forth. “What on earth are you doing out here at this hour?”

“Just walking,” she said.

No
, I thought, remembering the way her light had moved across the path,
you were looking for something. But what?

“What are
you
doing out here?” she asked, pulling away from me suddenly, as if she’d just realized good old Auntie Kate might not be what she seemed. “And why do you have that?” She was pointing at the dirty garden trowel.

The last thing in the world I wanted was for Opal to be afraid of me. But I wasn’t about to tell her my reason for the midnight trip to the root cellar, either. The kid was hiding something, and until she was upfront with me I sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything to incriminate myself.

“Mushroom hunting,” I told her, realizing how totally absurd it sounded only after the words were out. A nature girl, I am not. I don’t know the difference between a chanterelle and a toadstool, and I prayed Opal wouldn’t give me a pop quiz on the fungi of New England.

By the light of my flashlight, we eyed each other skeptically, each of us fully aware that the other was lying.

“What do you say we head back?” I suggested, and she nodded, looking relieved. We began trudging uphill, side by side, both our flashlights illuminating the path. Every now and then, I had to turn and look at her, then remind myself it wasn’t Del I was walking with.

“Kate?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you mad at me? About the watch, I mean.”

“No, I’m not mad,” I said. “I was just surprised.”

“I would have given it back.”

“I know. And I would have let you borrow it if you’d asked. Do you do it a lot? Take things from people?”

She was quiet. “Once in a while,” she said.

“Opal? Did you borrow anything else from me?”

Like a red Swiss Army knife, for instance.

“No. Just the watch.”

“Promise?”

“I swear,” she said. And her next words made me turn and shine my light on her face like some dime-store novel interrogator.
Is your name really Opal? Or are you, in fact, Delores Ann Griswold, back from the dead?

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said.

M
A, YOUR PAINTING KINDA CREEPS ME OUT
,” I confessed. It was late evening, after supper, and she was in front of her easel, adding more layers by lamplight. We had spent the day together at home—no appointments, no discussion of nursing homes.

The only interruption had come earlier that afternoon when I answered a knock at the door and found Zack standing on the front steps with a bunch of flowers. He was wearing jeans, Birkenstocks, and a loose cotton shirt embroidered with mythical-looking birds under the same corduroy blazer I’d seen him in the other day.

“I brought these for Jean,” he said, leaning in to give me a hello hug around the bouquet. This time I nearly got high from the amount of pot smoke that clung to his clothes. He must have toked up in the car on the way over.

“Thanks. Come on in. She’s in the studio. I’m sure she’d love it if you popped your head in to say hi.” Zack followed me inside and made his way to the studio while I took the flowers to the kitchen and found an old canning jar to put them in. I was arranging them on the table when I heard a crash from the studio and went running.

I got there in time to see Zack, ashen-faced, shut the door tight behind him.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I guess she wasn’t in the mood for company,” he said. Then I noticed the left sleeve of his blazer was covered in bright red paint. He started to dab at it with a handkerchief.

“Go on in the kitchen. There’s soap, water, and a brush at the sink. I’ll be right there.”

Zack headed for the kitchen and I knocked on, then carefully opened, the door to the studio, to see my mother hard at work in front of the canvas.

“You okay, Ma?”

“Fine, Katydid.”

I shut the door quietly behind me and went into the kitchen, where Zack was scrubbing at the sleeve of his corduroy jacket.

“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “She’s not herself. There’s just no way to predict how she’ll be from minute to minute.”

I went for the lockbox and made a mental note to call Dr. Crawford in the morning. It seemed we were upping her meds every day now with little effect. She was building a tolerance awfully fast. Or was her illness worsening in some profound way?

I put a couple of pills in my pocket, planning to take them in to her as soon as Zack left.

“It’s not a problem, Kate. I shouldn’t have surprised her like that.” He smiled. “Next time, I’ll wear coveralls. And a big old bell, maybe.”

“Jeez. Why don’t you take your jacket off and we can soak it? Or I can have it dry-cleaned.”

“No need. I have to get going in a minute anyway.” He was dabbing at the stain with paper towels now. “Kate, the main reason I stopped by was to talk to you about Opal.”

“Opal?”

“Gosh. This is a little awkward. Raven came to see me in my office this morning. She was beside herself.”

“Look Zack, if this is about the cat…”

“Cat? No. She’s having a hard time with some of Opal’s recent behavior. She’s very concerned and thinks that maybe your spending time with Opal isn’t such a good idea.”

I scowled. “Raven asked you to come here to tell me this?”

“I offered. I was afraid that if she tried to talk to you in the state she was in…”

“I get the picture,” I said.

“Look, Kate, I think Raven will come around; she’s just a little crazy right now, which is to be expected. She’s a stressed-out mom just trying to do what’s right. She’s worried about Opal’s obsession with those silly Potato Girl stories and the way Opal seems to have latched on to you because of your connection with Del.”

“Opal and I had a relationship before all this interest in the Potato Girl,” I said defensively. “She latched on to me during my last visit and it had nothing whatsoever to do with Del.”

“I know, Kate,” Zack said. He put his hands up in surrender. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I understand that your connection with Opal isn’t just about Del. In fact, I imagine the truth is that you’re a positive influence on Opal. But that’s not the way Raven sees it right now.”

“Opal needs someone to talk to,” I said.

“I know she does. I’ll try to be there for her as much as I can. And Raven’s taking her to a psychiatrist next week—the grief counselor the school brought in referred her to him. He’s supposed to be the best in the area.”

“A psychiatrist is just going to spend an hour with her, if that, and introduce her to the wonderful world of psychotropic medication. She needs someone to really talk all this through with. Someone who isn’t being paid to listen. Has she told you what she’s seen? That she believes Del is out to get her?”

He took in a breath. “I know. She told me. I know she’s hurting and trying to make sense of what happened to Tori any way she can. I also think Raven’s being unreasonable by saying she doesn’t want you spending any time with Opal, and I’ll do my best to get her to come around, but it seems like, for now at least, the best thing to do is honor her wishes. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I told him with a dramatic sigh. “I should be used to being seen as the bad guy by now.”

Zack smiled, touched his Wheel of Life pendant. “We’re all just working through our karma, doing the best we can.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” I said, looking back at the pendant, at the God of Death perched on top who returned my stare with a menacing grimace.