Sing It to Her Bones by Marcia Talley Read Free Book Online Page B

water. Under the washcloth scenes from yesterday played and replayed behind my closed eyelids. I tried to clear my mind, but images of that white, floating thing kept swimming to the surface. I flung the washcloth aside and tried to concentrate on Connie’s elaborate floral wallpaper, following the wandering vines as they snaked over the medicine cabinet and curled around the light fixtures, but even that didn’t banish the visions. So I meditated, focusing on my mantra instead.
    A knock on the bathroom door jolted me awake. “Hannah, are you all right?”
    “Sorry, Connie. I must have fallen asleep. I’ll be right out.”
    I emerged, wrapped in an oversize terry-cloth bathrobe I found hanging from a hook on the back of the bathroom door, my skin flushed with the heat. Connie sat at the kitchen table surrounded by paper cups of fresh coffee plus a box of assorted doughnuts she told me she had picked up at Ellie’s.
    I peeked inside. “Crullers!” My favorite. I took a bite and mumbled, “You are a doll.”
    Connie finished the last of a chocolate-covereddoughnut, sipped her coffee, then wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Gawd, just think of the calories!”
    “Crullers don’t have any calories,” I said. I showed her the hollow core. “See, they’re full of air.”
    “Dream on, Hannah. You might as well just paste it on your thighs.”
    Connie had purchased three newspapers and spread them out on the table. “I knew you’d be interested in seeing these.” The Washington Post didn’t mention our murder at all, at least not that we could find. The Baltimore Sun had a small article in the Maryland section, but we had made it big in the Chesapeake Times , with pictures. There it was, solidly occupying the treasured spot on the front page usually reserved for marijuana busts, boat fires, fatal traffic accidents, or farmers who had grown misshapened vegetables resembling Newt Gingrich. “Here.” Connie moved her mug aside and smoothed the paper out.
    “What does it say?” I leaned forward, still licking the sticky glaze from my fingers.
    In the Sun I was described as “a woman visiting from Annapolis,” but the Times mentioned my name and my hometown and had a small picture of me and Connie, talking to Ellie. I peered at it. “Connie, why didn’t you tell me I looked so dreadful? My wig is crooked.”
    “Don’t be silly. It’s your imagination. You look fine.”
    “Liar!” I tossed my empty cup into the trash. “Does it say anything about Chip Lambert?”
    Connie adjusted her reading glasses and leaned over the page. “Let’s see. ‘The partially calcified bodyof a young woman’ blah-de-blah-de-blah. Oh, here we are. ‘Katherine Dunbar was last seen on October 13, 1990, leaving a dance at Jonas Green High School with her date, Charles “Chip” Lambert, also sixteen. Police are awaiting a positive identification of the body before reopening the case.’ ”
    I turned the paper slightly toward me. BODY FOUND IN CISTERN , shouted the headline, and in smaller type below, FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED . Another photograph filled most of the page below the headline: Mrs. Dunbar gazed out from the window of her husband’s truck with sad, unfocused eyes. He stood outside the door, holding her hand.
    “I think that image will haunt me forever, Connie. It’s the personification of grief. Even though it’s been a long time since Emily put us through hell on earth by running off after that rock band, one doesn’t easily forget. I know exactly what is running through that poor woman’s mind.” I pushed the newspaper back toward my sister-in-law. “It could have been Emily lying down there at the bottom of that cistern.” My eyes stung with tears. “Eight years she’s been living this nightmare, Connie. Eight years.” I touched the photograph of Mrs. Dunbar. “But by the time this is all over, at least she’ll know, one way or the other.”
    While Connie did the laundry and painted, I spent the rest of