Back Roads Page 31

  At least Betty hasn’t turned her back on me like Church’s mom. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t be so hard on her for that reason alone. And to tell the TRUTH, if I’m going to be mad at her for the whole Amber mess I should be mad at Elvis too.

  TRUE, Betty was the one who went to the sheriff’s department when she heard about my arrest and told them I had been at her office until almost midnight the night before and I couldn’t have done it; but on its own, that really wouldn’t have meant anything. I still would have had time to kill Callie. I didn’t show up at the police station until almost 2A .M.

  She asked them if they had talked to my sister, but that wouldn’t have meant anything either. They already had my signed confession.

  They decided to go out to the house anyway and the way the sheriff explained it to me was no one was there except for a big shepherd mutt lying on an old, burnt-up couch chewing on a pair of girl’s cutoffs spattered in blood.

  Amber wasn’t any better at burying than she was at aiming.

  I was upset all over again when I heard Uncle Mike had really gone through with it and just left Elvis there. Betty wouldn’t take him either. I came pretty close to begging. I even asked the sheriff and a couple of the deputies to take him.

  Betty did end up finding a home for him though. She told me he’s living with a nice family. They live in town so he doesn’t have as much space as he’s used to but he’s still very happy.

  Bullshit, I told her. He wakes up every day and looks around him and wonders what terrible thing he did that would make the one person in his life who was supposed to love him unconditionally turn his back on him. That’s what he thinks, I told her. I don’t care that he’s only a dog.

  I do a lot of thinking myself these days but only on select topics. I guess that’s the way I’ve always been. My new shrink says that’s okay. He says that’s not my biggest problem. He says my biggest problem is when I accidentally start thinking about things I don’t want to think about, I can’t COPE.

  EARTH-CROSSERS. I told him that’s what I call them. He loved that. He told me it was a brilliant analogy. He’s always lying his head off like that. I asked him once if he’s got a book with a chapter in it called “Compliment Psychos and They Will Be Your Friends.” He laughed and told me I’m very witty and perceptive. I said I was being serious.

  I guess some of what he says is TRUE though. I still can’t think about Misty without screaming. I can’t think about what has become of little Zack and Esme Mercer’s lives. I can’t think about Jody’s notes. I can’t think about Callie’s six seconds.

  I’ve always figured when a mother sees the big one coming and the sky light up like a thousand suns, she sees her children’s faces in every one of them. Callie would have thought about her kids as she faced down Amber. She wouldn’t have thought about herself. Not her boyish, banker husband or the grandfather who gave her the hills she loved. Not me or the God she was on her way to see. She would have thought about her kids and how they were going to wake up in the middle of the night, for years to come, calling for her, and she wouldn’t be able to get to them.

  She’s going to hear them too. No matter where she ends up. Heaven. Hell. Or some netherworld in between. She’s going to hear them call to her. That’s the worst part about the whole thing. Damning Callie and her kids to that fate. They deserved better. Them and Elvis.

  The biggest surprise is I CAN think about Amber now. Not everything. But some of it. I try to think positively when I think about her future. It would be nice if she had one of those trials like O.J.’s where everybody knows she did it, but they let her go anyway because they don’t like the prosecutor’s hairstyle. But that shit only happens on TV.

  I can think about our childhood again, and I can even think about her snuggled up against my back in bed at night and how that may have been the only calm she will ever feel in her entire life.

  My new shrink says that particular memory isn’t healthy for me because I’m only remembering part of it. I’m not remembering the whole TRUTH and he knows how hung up I am on the TRUTH. He’s seen my room.

  I guess I see TRUTH in the air a lot. I’ve written it down about a hundred times and taped it to my wall.

  “Those who know the TRUTH are not equal to those who love it.” Confucius said that. I’ve written that down too.

  I guess I always thought I was someone who loved the TRUTH but constantly had it hidden from me. Now I realize I’ve always had a lot of TRUTH staring me in the face, but I’ve ignored it on purpose because I don’t love it.

  The TRUTH is the TRUTH sucks sometimes. People are the only ones who care about that. The only thing separating me from Elvis isn’t my ability to face or deal with or deny it. It’s that I let it bother me. I’m trying really hard to stop. Because the TRUTH is I’ve already wasted so much of my life lying to myself.

  The TRUTH is all those times Skip tried to kill his brother, Donny, I thought he was being a real asshole.