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  Clayton lit another smoke from the pack in his coat and pulled on it deep. He stood there with his back to Mike and Mark.

  “Now cut him loose and take him home. I’m not going to say it again.” He started back toward the Bronco. He walked with a limp now, overexerted and unable to hide it. “I want him dropped on his granny’s front porch. I want Coot and the Gang to know what’s waiting for them if they decide to follow in this idiot’s footsteps. Now I’m done talking about it. I’m gonna need to change clothes, and I’m late for work.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mike said, removing his ball cap again. He glanced at Mark who had already lifted JoJo’s face from the pond water, and neither of them said another word while Clayton pulled a fresh uniform shirt from a duffle bag in the Bronco. They watched him remove the silver McFalls County Sheriff’s badge from his chest and pin it to the clean shirt and then put it on.

  “Clayton,” Mike said. “The sit-down with Florida. We talked about it. Remember?”

  Clayton rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then looked out toward the three headstones in the clearing. Mike and Mark looked, too. He felt the headache coming, and he scratched at his beard.

  “Clayton?”

  “Just set it up, Mike. I’ll be there.”

  “All right, then.”

  Clayton never turned back around to face them, but he stood there staring out at those slabs of granite for another minute or so until his hands stopped shaking. Then he climbed behind the wheel of the Bronco and disappeared down the mountain.

  “Who did that remind you of?”

  Mark took off his hat and knocked a little dirt from it. “I must admit, Mike. I didn’t think he had it in him.”

  “Well, Halford did. If you ask me, I think it’s why he hated Clayton so much.”

  “Because he had just as much Gareth Burroughs in him as Hal did?’

  “No. Because he had more.”

  Mark rolled JoJo onto his back. “Well, I’ll be damned. I think I had Clayton all wrong. Come here and look at this.”

  Mike leaned down and looked into the boy’s lifeless eyes. He reached down and moved JoJo’s head from side to side, and then sank his own chin into his chest. “Well, shit.” He stood and grabbed the tape between JoJo’s ankles, and with Mark’s help, they tossed the body into the back of the truck. T-Ride looked through the window with significantly less bravado. He’d never seen a dead body before. Mark gave the kid a nod. T-Ride nodded back and tried to toughen up his expression, but couldn’t, and turned away. Mike was right. The kid wasn’t ready for all this. Mark flipped the tailgate up and immediately forgot about the dead problem lying in the back of the truck. “I still can’t believe little Kate Farris ended up house-wifin’ to a Burroughs.”

  Mike chuckled. “Kate ain’t nobody’s housewife, Mark.” He walked around to the back of the truck to tie down the corners of the tarp, and lowered his voice to keep out of earshot from T-Ride. “You heard about the Federal that came knocking last year, right? The one that gave Clayton that limp. The one that nearly punched his clock?”

  “Yeah, Agent Jolly, or some shit like that. Last I heard he was MIA.”

  “His name was Holly. Simon Holly. He was an ATF agent.”

  “Was?”

  Mike smiled.

  “You killed a Fed?”

  “No, sir. It wasn’t me. Your girl did it. She insisted she be the one.”

  Mark pulled the tarp tight. “No shit?”

  Mike cinched off the knot. “Welcome home, Mark.”

  4

  CRIPPLE CREEK ROAD

  Kate Burroughs stared out the window above the kitchen sink that looked out over a small, dried-up cornfield. The field gave way to a massive expanse of sugar maple and yellow pine, with the occasional Jiffy-Pop burst of dogwood blooms scattered wild. The pink and white flowering this time of year allowed the Georgia state tree to show its utter disregard for the autumnal equinox. Like most of the people that lived in the foothills of McFalls County, the Dogwood tree did whatever it damn well pleased, but Kate barely noticed the flowers or the dogwoods anymore. On most mornings she fixated on a jagged stump that used to be a thirty-foot magnolia tree that loomed over the far corner of the pasture. She’d loved that tree. She used to sit in the shade of its waxy green leaves for hours during the summers before Eben was born. She read almost every book she owned under that tree. She’d read in the afternoons, and then collect the pearly white blooms for centerpieces on the kitchen table. They made the house smell clean and sweet, like honeysuckle after the rain. She could still picture the clothesline tied high to the trunk that led all the way up to the front porch. She’d even talk to that stupid tree sometimes, mostly about someday becoming a mother, while she hung clean linens to dry in the breeze. She wanted to be a mother so bad back then, but now that she was, that magnolia wasn’t around anymore to see it. She cried the day she cut it down. A fungal rot had begun to cover the tree—a fuzzy gray cancer too far-spread to try and stop. At seven months pregnant, Kate spent an entire day cutting it down with a homemade pole-saw and an old rusted chainsaw she’d never even touched before that day. With every limb that fell to the ground, her heart broke a little more. That’s how it was sometimes. No massive blow from an axe, just a series of little daggers and cuts that left her a sobbing mess in the heat where there used to be shade.

  It had been a hard year. Right about the time Kate noticed the rot in her favorite tree, her husband, Clayton, was nearly shot to death while working a case involving his gangster family. By the time he’d recovered enough for Kate to bring him back home from the Trauma Center in Atlanta, Clayton was just as much a hollow husk as her sweet magnolia. When the thumb of God gets pressed into the earth, it takes everything. Not even the trees are spared.

  The saying goes, if something doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger, but the past year had taught Kate better than that. Just because something doesn’t kill you, doesn’t necessarily mean it makes you anything at all. Sometimes this world can summon up just enough meanness to beat you to the brink of death, but you don’t die. You move on, and you recover. That recovery isn’t the result of some newly imagined inner strength, it’s just the stubborn refusal to feel any more pain. What doesn’t kill you, makes you numb, was more true to the point.

  The tree was dead. She salted the stump. She moved on.

  *

  Kate opened the window and pulled in a deep breath of mountain air through her nose. She turned on the faucet and waited for the well water to run hot. The air outside was cool but not cold, and the breeze helped expand the room—pushing back the walls that seemed to be moving in closer as each day passed. She glanced around the property until her eyes settled on the empty patch of gravel next to her Jeep. Clayton was gone again before sunrise. It was getting more and more frequent, as he was better able to get around. She’d been a sheriff’s wife for nearly twelve years, but it felt like she saw less of him now than she did then—before he was injured—before he became a father.

  Sort of became a father, she almost said aloud.

  She could feel the daily twinge of resentment kicking in early, so she decided to make some coffee to combat it. Coffee could beat back anything if you drank enough of it. Using the scalding hot water from the sink, she poured it over some fresh-ground beans and let the hot liquid steep in the pot. The smell of her favorite vice mixed with the breeze and helped push back the walls even further. She drank her coffee with a heavy dollop of fresh cream from Harper’s farm down the road, and looked at the Kit-Cat clock on the wall. She had about ten minutes left before the day stopped being about her. She looked at the note Clayton had left hanging on the refrigerator door explaining that he was headed out to Pollard’s Corner for a few things they didn’t need. His latest reason for disappearing while his family slept. She sipped her coffee and covered the silver star logo of the McFalls County Sheriff’s Department with both hands. That mug had sat on Clayton’s desk in the den every day since he’d taken the o
ath. It used to mean something to him. Now it was just another cup in the kitchen.

  Clayton had defined himself as a good sheriff—a good man and husband. The only good son born of a crooked tree. Kate had defined herself as the wife of that good man. She was content with that. They were content with that, but now she wasn’t sure he was any of that—not anymore. And that blue ceramic mug in her hand did nothing but fill her with resentment.

  She took another mug from the cabinet, a plain white one, and dumped her coffee from one cup into the other. She sipped it again. It tasted better. For Kate, things were mostly that simple. If your coffee cup is the problem, pour it into another cup and move on, problem solved. There was no point in ever thinking on it again. Clayton was the exact opposite, he held onto everything. He hoarded guilt and pain the way some people did magazines and newspapers until it just became part of the everyday landscape. For over a decade she’d watched all the violence and depravity that rolled down the mountain pile up square on his back. Only now, after what had happened, he barely had the legs to stand and support the weight. She shook her head and felt guilty for being so resentful and dismissive about Clayton’s condition. She didn’t want to feel like this today. He lost a lot and she understood that, but life was moving in fast forward and the wound wasn’t healing. She was getting tired of waking up to an empty bed and a cold house, instead of a morning kiss and a sleepy smile from the man that used to adore her.

  She crossed the kitchen to the front door and picked up the walking stick she had made for Clayton after he got injured. It was a seasoned length of hickory that she hoped would make a suitable replacement for the badge, but it had stayed in the crook by the front door since the first day she’d brought it home. She had been the only one to ever touch it. It was almost part of her daily routine to pick it up from where the morning breeze caused it to slide down the wall to the hardwood floor. He said he didn’t need to walk with a cane. It made him look weak. She wanted to tell him that being a drunk made him look weak, not an old stick. She leaned it back against the wall beside the door.

  She’d thought about leaving him. She thought about that a lot lately. Especially after a good old-fashioned shouting match like the one they had last night. She’d forgotten what it was even about. It didn’t matter. It was the same fight over and over now, and it always ended the same way. She would go to bed early, but leave the door unlocked. She’d hide beneath the quilts and blankets and wait for the knob to turn, followed by an unspoken apology, and his warm breath on her neck, but more often than not, she waited in vain. While she lay alone in the dark, waiting for some elusive revelation that would miraculously transform her husband back into the man he used to be, Clayton would be purposely banging cupboards, and pacing the kitchen like a caged animal waiting for the same transformation to happen to her. Neither of them ready to admit the real damage being done to them wasn’t in the war, but in the waiting. Those hours of silence that follow the shouting is when the real madness sets in, and the devil got to get his licks in.

  Kate sipped at her improved coffee again and looked out at the empty gravel space in front of the house. “Okay, Kate. Stop,” she said. “That’s enough.” This wasn’t going to be the kind of day she saw it becoming. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone. She closed her eyes, and shook her head defiantly, as if she could physically shake the melancholy off her like a heavy blanket, and then she spent the next few minutes heating up Eben’s bottle under the still-running hot water. Fifteen years together wasn’t about to unravel because of the last one. They’d get through this. They had to. She had to believe it because it wasn’t just about the two of them anymore. And as if on cue, Kate heard the first sounds of rustling from Eben’s room. Seconds later she heard her son’s first cry of the day. She smiled, and all the resentment she’d spent the morning building up vanished—just like that.

  *

  Kate and Clayton had been trying to become parents for nearly half their marriage and had almost given up. Hell, they had given up. Babies don’t come easy to forty-year-old couples, and they both knew it. Eben, being conceived and born on this mountain, was living proof that miracles can still happen even in a place that doesn’t deserve them. That rosy-cheeked baby boy, now lying on his back in the den like a turtle trying his best to figure out the mystery of his feet, kept Kate from dwelling on any single regret or bad decision in her life. If the past year had been a tragic disaster movie, then Eben Burroughs was the happy Hollywood ending. She wished Clayton would figure that out. The key to a happy ending was knowing when to roll the credits before the next tragedy struck, but how many miracles was she allowed? Two would have to be enough.

  She finished warming the bottle of milk under the hot water from the faucet and sprayed a warm stream on her wrist to test the temperature.

  “You ready to eat, little boy?”

  Eben grunted, and Kate melted. That’s about all it took.

  She scooped the infant up off the floor and wrapped him in a red wool blanket she’d crocheted while she was pregnant. She carried the baby outside to the porch swing and stood for a moment in the warming sunlight before settling down on the pine slats of the swing to feed her son. From the porch, the mountain was beautiful—all greens and blues, with an ever-present halo of clouds that made the summit both ominous and majestic. She used to love this place, but these days it felt more and more like just a cold rock. Eben was indifferent. He made for the bottle. He was cranky and ready to eat. He reminded her of his father right then, and she was surprised by the disgust she felt.

  “Men,” she whispered. So needy. So obtuse. She was projecting. Clayton might have been lost, but Eben was right here. He still had her. She eased back and forth on the swing and stared absently into the cornfield. A songbird was nesting in the head of a scarecrow. Eben greedily sucked at his bottle, spilling warm milk down his chin and soaking the red wool. The mama bird was feeding her babies as well. Kate had seen that bird a few times before. She watched the fledglings and listened to them squawking. It was as loud as thunder, spoiling the serenity of the moment. She wrapped her own blanket a little tighter around her shoulders, and wondered what else could rob her of the morning. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes—right before the phone rang.

  Of course.

  She gently pulled the bottle from the boy’s tiny sucking lips and hushed away his distress. “Sorry, buddy. We got to go find out what new reason your father has for not coming home.” She knew it would be Clayton, calling to explain why he wasn’t coming back any time soon. She was sure it would be something foolish and irrelevant. It always was, but it didn’t matter to Kate if the world was on fire. Nothing was more important than the boy in her lap waiting to touch his father’s face, or tug on his beard. With Eben balanced on her hip, she made her way back to the kitchen and picked up the phone.

  “Husband.”

  “Hey, baby. Listen...”

  “I know,” she said. “You got to work and decided they could do without you and you’re headed straight home.” She regretted voicing that fantasy as it rolled out of her mouth because of the coming letdown.

  “Well, no.”

  You asked for it, Kate.

  “I had a little business out by Burnt Hickory this morning, but I’m headed in now.”

  “A little business,” she repeated flatly.

  “Yeah, nothing to it. Just wanted you to know I was out there.” He paused.

  “Kate.”

  “You don’t need my permission to keep beating yourself up.”

  “Kate, I’m not trying—”

  “No, Clayton, you’re not. You’re not trying.”

  “C’mon, Kate.”

  “C’mon, Kate, what? How many times do I have to do this? I’m not having this conversation again. You want to go get drunk, and wallow in your own self-pity? Go. Just don’t bother me with it. I just don’t have it in me today to care.”

  “I’m not drinking.”

  “I don’t care.�
��

  “What the fuck, Kate?”

  He was drinking. He never cussed her without whiskey in his blood. He said something else, but Kate was already tuning out. She looked at the Kit-Cat clock hanging on the wall by the dining room table. She counted ten clicks of its pendulum tail, and shook her head in disgust. She closed her eyes, and leaned her head back against the wall. She wanted to scream, but this tired argument had scabbed over months ago, and at this point they were just picking at the scar, and then it just came out. “I love you, Clayton, but maybe you and I should take some time.” She lifted her head up off the wall, surprised at herself for saying something like that so easily—something so finite—so casually cold and honest.

  “What the hell does that mean, Kate?”

  “You’re the detective, Clayton. Figure it out.”

  “Let me get this straight.”

  Here we go, Kate thought, and shifted Eben to her other hip.

  “I call you to tell you my whereabouts, like you insist that I do, and you tell me you need time? I can’t catch a break. I don’t call and I’m an asshole. I do call and I’m an asshole. I can’t win with you.”

  “There’s isn’t supposed to be a winner when it comes to your family, Clayton. Why is that so hard for you to understand?”