“This might be the year.” Dale reckons.
I nod. He doesn’t need to get specific. The last two harvests have been bad, and considering we just shoveled four rows of stalk-rotted corn into a cart, this one may be our last.
Dale laughs bitterly. “Denny, did’ya hear what Willard Towman said in English class yesterday? He said the Towman’s are gonna outlive us- that after all these years, they’re finally gonna get one up on the Brodys.”
I pretend to swoon sadly. “Ugh, such a smart strategy on the Towman’s part- run a mediocre family farm for forty years, wait until the father of the family you’re always ten steps behind dies off, and win by default! What a victory.”
Dale sighs, pitchforking one last pile of dead corn stalks into the cart. “Doesn’t matter how they won- they won.”
“I’m just saying, old Mr. Towman isn’t half the farmer Dad was. He’s getting more business because everyone lost their first choice for a family farm.”
“They didn’t have to.” His grip tightens on the pitchfork. “If we’d been more prepared to take charge, Denny-”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “No one expected Dad to go when he did, Dale. We’ve done the best we can since.”
He relaxes a bit but doesn’t respond. We stand in silence for a few moments before a voice calls out behind us.
“Dale! Denise! Got something else for you to take care of!” Up walks Mom, banging her own pitchfork against the cart as if we can’t hear her shouting.
“What ya got?” I ask. I nudge Dale, who quickly nods his own willingness.
Before she speaks, Mom dusts off her dress and apron as best she can- even after three years running this place, she can’t accept keeping clean linens is a losing battle. “Was setting the table for lunch, and I thought I saw something moving in the corn- eastward.”
“Like a racoon?” Dale asks.
“Bigger.” She says. The panic flashing across our faces is palpable, and she waves her hand. “No, not bear-big. Looked like a little kid.”
We’re both relieved. The horror stories of bears in cornfields have traumatized us- less for any danger to us and more for their danger to our already feeble harvest. But we’ve had plenty of kids mistake our field for an untraditionally dense corn maze. Find ‘em, tell ‘em you’ll call their parents, they’re gone. I doubt bears are so easy.
Dale gives a mock salute. “Don’t worry, Mom. We’ll get this kid out of here.”
Mom pauses. “Well, I was also hoping Denise could come in and help me put the finishing touches on lunch.”
I try to hide my irritation- another one of Mom’s surprise homemaking lessons. I don’t hide it from Dale, who steps forward. “I’m sure you can handle that yourself, Mom. Besides, it’s hard to find a kid in a cornfield. An extra set of eyes would make it much faster, and we’ve got other stuff to do today.”
Mom shrugs. “Alright, fine. Find that kid, then both of you come in. Turkey and swiss sandwiches, today.”
“Kid- damnit, damnit. Kid, you’re not supposed to- damnit.”
Don’t walk through a corn field at harvest time, the cobs’ll just hit you in the face. Probably why it was usually kids sneaking through the field- too low to get hit.
I see the top of Dale’s head moving a few rows down. “Found ‘em yet?” I shout.
He shakes his head. “Quiet-ass kid. And careful, too, no crushed stalks.”
When kids run through our field, they usually leave a trail of flattened plants. I’d been starting to think it was weird we hadn’t found one yet- seems like we’ve covered enough ground. “Keep looking!” I order.
“The hell’d you think I was doing…” I hear him grumble. He rustles his way east, so I veer west, closer to the road. Makes more sense for someone to wander in that way. I try to keep listening for a kid whimpering over the sound of rustling stalks and my own cursing. Surely by now they’d realize they were lost- corn fields are mazes even when not deliberately made into one.
My observation yields what I was hoping for- soft crying, just a few rows ahead. I push through, blocking my face, and try to adjust to a less frustrated tone. “Hey, kid, if you’re lost, I’ll get you out of here and back to your parents-” I make it past one more row of stalks, look down, and see the child.
But it isn’t like any child I’ve ever seen.
As I step out into the clearing between the field and the house, with the…girl, I think, hugged tightly in my arms, I call out for Dale and Mom. Mom comes quick, stomping out of the house, probably intent on disciplining this intruding girl as much as she can while still leaving some for her own parents. I can track the exact moment she realizes this “girl” probably doesn’t have parents- she stands there, dumbfounded.
Dale emerges a moment later. “I swear, if it’s one of those Towman kids trying to start a fire or some sh-” He gapes at the small figure I hold.
She is a child, but she is not human. She wears a dress of crinkled green husk, has hair of flowing pale silk, and her skin is yellow, bumpy, almost gridded- kernels of corn. The girl I found among the corn plants looks for all the world like she grew off of one of them. And she is moving, blinking, breathing.
In a strange way, I find my family’s shock has regressed me back to a few minutes ago, when I found the corn girl and was too amazed to even move. None of us speak for moments, but Mom finally breaks the silence.
“Denise…what is that thing? How is…” She trails off.
“I don’t know.” I admit. I meet the girl’s gaze and she giggles back at my bafflement. “Whatever she is, she’s some kind of miracle.”
I almost take the box of Corn Flakes out of the cupboard before catching myself. I grab several other cereal boxes and scan their ingredients list before deciding this is not the best option. I turn to Dale, who’s bringing a bowl and a carton of milk to the corn girl, and shake my head. Toast, I mouth to him. He gets the message.
Five minutes and a scent of charcoal in the air later (Dale always says he’s gonna fine-tune that toaster), the three of us sit around the table, watching the corn girl quickly crunch down a slice of toast. I say watching, but I mean staring.
The girl looked like she’d be six if she were human, so as she moves onto her second slice we begin trying to talk with her.
“What are you?”
“Where did you come from?”
“Are you a demon?”
“How are you eating something?”
“Are you an angel?”
“Did those damn Towmans send you?”
“Is the toast cooked alright?”
That final question I asked almost instinctively, but that was the one that finally got a response. She looked up, crumbs dripping from her corn lips. “It’s good. A little burnt, but that’s okay.” Her voice sounds like a child’s, but a little more hollow- like her insides are a bit emptier than ours.
“Good to hear.” I say. I hustle Dale and Mom out of the room and close the door behind us. “We just got a talking corn girl. What, do we report her to scientists, the government, or-”
Dale pokes me in the forehead. “C’mon, Denny, we turn her into any of those higher-ups and she gets taken away to some facility. They’ll dissect her and use her DNA to make an army of corn zombies! If you don’t want corn zombies, then we can’t tell the government- probably can’t tell anyone!”
I disagree with some of the more specific points of Dale’s arguments, but I can see the wisdom. I turn to Mom. “Mom…what do you think we should do? Do you think we’ve even got a chance to keep this girl secret?”
Mom thinks for a second. She seems oddly calm about this whole situation. “I don’t know.” She admits. “But we can try. Dale’s right, if other people find out who knows what they’ll do to her. We’re pretty isolated and there aren’t a lot of people coming by right now, so we can keep her under wraps for a while and try to think up some better plan.”
Mom’s idea makes sense. We all shake on it, and go back into the kitchen. The corn girl is still happily chomping on her last piece of toast. She looks up expectantly at us.
Dale stammers. “Hey, uh, nice to see you again…Cornelia.”
“Cornelia?” I whisper harshly.
“If you have a better one, give it.”
I don’t.
“Nice to see you, too!” The girl responds.
Guess Cornelia is sticking.
The next few days go as well as they can, considering the walking violation of nature we’re keeping cooped up in our farmhouse. Me and Dale have a few close calls where we almost mention something in the cafeteria. I have to come up with a pretty contrived explanation when a friend asks why the hairbrush they borrowed from me has strands of corn silk stuck in it. We spend an hour refusing to answer the door for a suited man, only to discover he’s not a government agent and in fact a toaster salesman, at which point Dale chases him off promising our ten-year old toaster will work better than the one he’s selling once he’s done with it.
Despite all these problems and confusion, we find ourselves adjusting to the new normal. Me, Dale, Mom, and Cornelia. The strange little corn mutant is a part of our family now. As you may guess, I’ve taken to brushing her hair- it doesn’t break as easily as normal corn silk would. When it’s dark, Dale takes her for cautious walks around the property. When it’s darker and time for bed, Mom tucks her into her makeshift couch-bed, piled under quilts, and reads her a story.
One night, I find Mom, sitting on the coffee table, watching Cornelia drift off. I don’t even say anything before she starts speaking to me.
“You know, your father and I really wanted another kid. We were trying until he got the diagnosis. Even while he was sick, we promised we’d have another, even if we had to adopt. After he died, I thought there was no way it could happen. No way I could raise a child without him. But…Cornelia…she’s so sweet, and well-behaved, and precious. Of course I wish my sweet Douglas was still here…but I’m glad I get to have a new member of my family.”
I can’t help but smile. I sit on the coffee table beside her and hug her. We both watch Cornelia sleep as our own eyes grow heavy.
I notice something is different as soon as I wake up. Last night, Cornelia was all snuggled up under the blanket. Now, her legs are sticking out. They look a little longer. I shake Mom awake. She blinks slowly as she gathers her bearings, her gaze fixed on Cornelia. “Huh.” She pulls back the blanket, and we see it isn’t just Cornelia’s legs- her arms are longer and her face is a little less babyish. She looks eight or nine.
Mom reacts about the same way all of us have since a living girl-shaped corn cob entered our lives- with confused acceptance. “She is still corn. Corn grows faster than people, right?”
Hard to argue with that. Mom suddenly reacts with a start. “Oh!” She puts her hand on Cornelia’s blanketed back and shakes her awake. “Maybe Cornelia here’s ready to learn more about her new family!”
Shortly after we found Cornelia, Mom tried to show her our family’s scrapbook we’ve had for generations. “If she’s gonna be a Brody, she’s gotta learn what it means to be one.” Really, though, I think Mom was just eager to gush about Dad- she takes every chance she gets to talk about what a dear man he was, how he brought our farm back from the brink countless times, how it was true love at first sight when she and him first met. Cornelia was too fidgeting and uninterested then, but as I watch her rise from the couch I swear I can see a little more intelligence in her bulbous kernel eyes. Maybe now she’ll pay attention.
Mom sits down beside Cornelia, opens the book, and sure enough turns right to the most recent pictures- the ones with Dad in them. “I know you’ll never get to meet him, dear, but I still want you to know him. This is my husband, the father of this family- and you can think of him as your father, too. You grew from his field, after all.” She smiles down at Cornelia.
Due to the weird, griddish nature of Cornelia’s cobbed face, it can be hard to read her expressions sometimes. Not now, though- her yellow lips curl in disgust. “No…no, that isn’t my dad.”
Mom’s smile wavers. “Oh…well, I understand. You don’t know him like we do, but-”
“No. I do, I think.” Cornelia pulls away a bit. “Mean.”
“What?” I lean forward. “Cornelia, what do you mean, ‘mean’?”
Cornelia shrugs, seemingly unbothered by our intensive gazes. “I don’t remember. Can I go on a walk with Dale, now? It looks so nice out.”
Still surprised, Mom mutters sure. She gestures Cornelia off to find Dale. After the girl leaves, she sits there for a moment, then holds up the scrapbook to me. There are two big pictures- the more recent one, of us all as a family from several years ago at the county fair, and one from Mom and Dad’s wedding at the old church. “Denise, your dad doesn’t look mean in any of these, right?”
I shake my head. Dad always looked a little rough around the edges- most life-long farmers do- and in that newer photo he grew a big dark beard that might scare a kid a little, but nothing about him screams mean.
Mom tries to shrug it off. “Kids.” She chuckles.
Since very early on, Cornelia’s been saying she wants to go into the town. See the buildings and the people. In the past, we refused because we were worried that even if we kept her hidden in the truck, she’d raise some kind of ruckus and get noticed. However, it’s been a few weeks since that morning she snarled at Dad and she’s continued to grow. She looks about twelve, and we think we can trust her to keep quiet when we tell her to.
Mom’s busy, so it’s just me, Dale, and Cornelia that Saturday morning as we drive down Main Street. It’s a very typical Main Street- shops, restaurants, the kind of stuff designed to lure someone going somewhere else to stop here for an hour or two. It hasn’t attracted as many people as the town hoped when the area was “revitalized”, but that makes it all the easier for Cornelia to sneak peeks through the window of the town. Cornelia asks questions, and we answer quietly- don’t want the occasional waving walker to notice us speaking to the corn girl in the backseat. Most of her questions are what you’d expect- asking what the stores sell or something. One question catches us off guard, though.
“Can we drive by Reilly’s? I know we can’t go in, I just want to see.”
Dale and I look at each other, then at her, then Dale quickly returns his eyes to the road. “Reilly’s?” He asks, incredulously. Reilly’s is a bar just off Main Street- one of the oldest businesses in town, opened back in the sixties. We’ve never mentioned it to Cornelia- why would she be interested in seeing it? Hell, in seeing any bar?
Cornelia is insistent, though, and it’s not far, so we oblige her. We drive by the front slowly, and Cornelia looks at the place. Then we drive away.
We sit in awkward silence for a minute. I try to get Cornelia’s thoughts. “So, what did you think?”
“It’s different.” She muses. “New paint, and the windows look cleaner. It used to be a lot seedier. I liked it like that, but I get why it changed.”
“Cornelia.” Dale’s grip tightens on the wheel. “Reilly’s been painted like that for a decade. You couldn’t have seen it before.”
Cornelia nods slowly. “I guess it doesn’t make sense. But I know I’ve been there, a lot of times. And there was this last time…” She trails off, seemingly unable to recall what she was about to talk about.
Soon after, we get home. Cornelia clambers out of the truck, a little less her happy self. Maybe it’s whatever she was on the edge of recalling, or just how Reilly’s is different, despite the impossibility of her knowing that. Before Dale follows, I grab his shoulder.
“Dale, I know we all just wanted to accept Cornelia as some miracle, but I’m starting to think there’s more to her. She’s talking like she lived another life before we found her.”
Dale snorts. “Reincarnation? Like some Buddha shit?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. But maybe we can figure it out. It seems like she’s remembering more things.”
“She could just be making it up.” Dale argues. “Denny, I don’t see why you think you need to dig into this.” He leaves the truck and heads inside.
He can’t understand. He didn’t see the look on her face, the disgust and discomfort when she called Dad Mean. It didn’t feel right coming out of a kid, like it came from somewhere deeper, and I’m starting to think I have no choice but to dig.
Again and again, we try to tell Cornelia Dad’s story. Mom digs up old home videos of birthdays and Christmases and Fourth of Julys. Dad usually filmed those, but he also always talked. Each time his voice comes on, I see fourteen-ish Cornelia squirm. She always gives a big fake smile for Mom, though- I think she just wants this to be over.
Dale brings stories of his own too- Dad cheering him as he hit his first home run, and the fishing trips where Dad was the only one who ever caught something, but never put Dale down for it. The more stories Dale tells, the more I feel obliged to share one of my own. To my own confusion, I don’t have that many, at least many that are just mine. Thinking about it now, it feels like Dad gave a lot more attention to Dale then me- to his son rather than his daughter.
It’s during one day, where I’m trying to come up with some kind of story, something that shows off the Dad I think I know. Mom and Dale are out of the house, on some errand in town, and have left me to watch over Cornelia- even as she gets older and older, they still don’t trust her to take care of herself. It’s then, when it’s just us, and I’m thinking, that Cornelia speaks.
“Can you please stop trying to sell me on your dad?” She asks. She’s clearly trying to hide her unease beneath boredom. “I don’t care to know him.”
I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Cornelia, I don’t get this. You haven’t given us one rational reason why you hate him. If you don’t like him, you gotta tell me why.”
She’s silent for a few moments. I assume she isn’t going to respond. I go back to trying to think of a story.
“He wouldn’t leave me alone. And he wouldn’t let go, no matter how much I did to him.”
I freeze. “Cornelia.” I say slowly. “What does that mean?
She frowns. “I’m not sure. But I know it’s true.”
We don’t talk much more. Any chance I had of fishing up a story to share is gone- now my mind is racing. There’s something in her past- a past so long ago it shouldn’t even exist- and it has something to do with my Dad. I have to get to the bottom of this.
I drive the truck home from the town library. It isn’t too far, but it feels like a million miles. Maybe it’s just the scrap of yellowed newspaper I hold- every part of me wants to drive back to the town archives in the basement and put it back where I found it. But I can’t. I spent almost a month of afternoons there searching for it…no matter much I wished I didn’t have to.
By the time I pull back into the farm, there’s heavy gray clouds in the sky. Rain soon, good. Wet ground may make what I’m going to do soon easier. But first I have to talk to Cornelia. It isn’t hard to find her- just follow the shouting. Her and Mom have been arguing a lot lately. I find them, right between the cornfield and the house.
“Jesus, cut me some slack.” Cornelia groans. She’s grown up a lot- looks maybe eighteen. Not only that, but her clothes have changed. Her dress looks different- maybe a little more skimpy, and, for lack of a better term, specific. “No one saw me, I was careful.”
Mom points a shaking finger at her. “It was too big of a risk. You think if anyone else found you, they’d accept you like we have? They’d think you were a freak!”
I could only assume Cornelia had been roaming the edges of our land during the day despite Mom’s warnings. She’s been getting more rebellious lately, wanting to go further and without Dale, who stands by Mom’s side. He looks uncomfortable with the escalation of the argument, but his allegiance is clear.
As I get close, I stuff the newspaper in my pocket, just as Mom notices me. “Denise! This young lady is becoming a real handful, could you please help us talk some sense into her?”
I perform frustration. “Really, Cornelia, after everything we’ve talked about?” I gesture Mom and Dale into the house. “You two, go inside. Maybe she’ll get it if we talk about it, girl to girl.”
Mom sighs. “Alright, if you think so. C’mon, Dale.” Dale follows, relieved to be out of the argument. They go into the house and shut the door behind them.
As soon as they do, I fish around in my pocket and pull out the newspaper scrap. I shove it into Cornelia’s hands. “Read.” I beg.
HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR DISAPPEARS DURING NIGHT OUT
Brendan Hanes, Staff Reporter
On Friday, May 23rd, high school senior Sally Dent went out for a night on the town celebrating her impending graduation. She never returned home, and foul play is suspected.
Friends of Dent who accompanied her on her revelry explain they went on a crawl through several bars in town. Monica Yang, a fellow senior, stated “The last bar we went to was Reilly’s. I felt nervous with how rough that place can be, especially since we were all pretty drunk by then, but I never thought anything like this could happen.”
It was about 11:30 PM when Dent’s friends noticed she was no longer in the bar. Yang claims she saw a man about Dent’s age talking to her shortly before she disappeared, but admits she doesn’t trust her own judgement to be sure, and couldn’t identify the man if she was.
There’s more, but from the growing familiarity on her face as she reads I know she doesn’t need it, especially after her eyes lock on the photo that accompanies the story. Several girls in colorful party dresses, the caption stating the photo had been taken right before they went out. The one at the center, eyes closed and laughing, wore a green dress- one Cornelia’s dress was growing to better resemble.
She looks up at me. “This was in-”
“1986.” I confirm. It hadn’t specified the year in the article itself, but it was obviously printed at the top of the paper. “From all of Mom’s family history lessons, I know that was the year after my Da- Douglas graduated.”
Her gaze drifts down again. I can see her mind racing.
“I don’t want to believe he could do something like this.” I admit. “But you disappeared that night, I know he was still in town, and you sprouted right out of our cornfield. I don’t think I found you exactly where you grew, but do you think you could find the exact spot?”
She doesn’t meet my eyes, but she manages to nod.
“Alright. Help me find a shovel.”
I thought I had felt weighed down on the walk back from the library. But the walk back to the farmhouse is so much worse. My limbs are all weak and I’m trying not to vomit. Rain is pouring down- my clothes are getting damp and my shoes are filled with mud and I can’t bring myself to care about the discomfort. At least she’s supporting me- I can’t believe how well she’s taking this, although maybe she’s just better at hiding it.
Finally we make it. She pushes open the creaky wooden door, drawing the attention of Mom and Dale, who are setting the table. Mom walks over to us, fists on hips. “Girls, what took you so long?”
Wordlessly I pull the newspaper article from my pocket- a bit wet around the edges but mostly intact. As Mom’s eyes begin darting over it, I pull out another scrap- this a scrap of fabric, the color faded and stained but unmistakably green.
“Sally Dent was buried in our field.” I blurt. “She was mostly rotted, but the dress was unmistakable. There were bloodstains on the dress, and it looked like some of her bones were broken. It was Douglas- Douglas killed her and buried her.” I point at ‘Cornelia’. “But somehow, after all this time, Sally came back. She wanted us to learn the truth.”
Dale, who had been drawn to the commotion, gasps, eyes bugging out. Mom’s gaze remains locked on the dress scrap. I can see the working of the gears in their brains- Douglas Brody, dad and farmer and husband, had killed a girl, who’d been reborn from the field she was hidden in. Even with my bracing, I had spent a few minutes kneeling over the remains of Sally, too shocked to move. Broken bones sunken and swallowed by dirt and roots, scraps of fabric dark and wet- those images still flashed through my head. I had almost avoided vomiting until I remembered how much corn I’d eaten from this field over the years. I hope that my family takes time to process this, just so I can recover more. Far quicker than I expect or want, Mom responds.
“Goddamnit, Denise, you should’ve left this alone.”
I stop. “What?” I say, genuinely not understanding her response.
She takes a cautious step towards me and Cornel- no, Sally, the newborn Sally. She holds her hand out, in a slow-down gesture. “We’re all human, Denise. We all make mistakes. You didn’t have to dig up Douglas’ worst one. It was already in the past.”
“Mistake? In the past?” Sally snaps.
“Wait.” Dale whispers. He looks at Mom. “You knew about this?”
My world seems to split in two, and Mom begins to explain.
“Douglas didn’t kill her. You should know that, he didn’t have a violent bone in his body. But he had his vices, he could be tempted. And if you had seen how…she acted around him, you’d understand she was trying to tempt him.” She hisses as Sally. “Even after he got with me, she wanted him.”
My ears are ringing. I can barely hear her, and I can barely hear Sally respond. “I didn’t want him. He was the one who kept coming back to me.”
Mom laughs bitterly. “Are you kidding? Look at how you’re dressed, and God knows that you had worse outfits. Maybe you didn’t want him, but you wanted someone, and Douglas fell into your trap. You were slutting out for him that last night, at least.”
“I was drunk. I asked him to go away.” Sally tries to pull away- she sounds scared, desperate.
“You got in the truck, shotgun. You saw us around town, you knew that’s where I sat.” Mom turns to me, maybe spotting the horror on my face. “You don’t get it, Denise. When they got close to the house, she started freaking out, tried to get hold of the steering wheel. Ended up plowing them straight into the cornfield.”
“He wouldn’t let me out! He- he grabbed at my- I had to do something.” Sally cries.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t want it!” Mom shouts. “Douglas and me were supposed to meet that night. I came by the house when he never picked me up, and what do I see but his truck turned over in the field and him dragging this tramp out. So you see, Denise? Sally killed herself.”
I manage to speak, trembling. “He…kidnapped her. And then you helped him hide it.”
Mom nods. “You should’ve seen him. One look in those eyes and I knew he had already repented. He was still young, his bad choice and Sally’s recklessness shouldn’t have ruined his life. So yeah, I helped him hide it.”
My nails dig into my palms. They might draw blood. “How could you cover this up?!” I motion desperately at Dale. “Dale, c’mon, tell her how fucked that is!”
Dale is quivering, eyes darting between us.
Mom gives me a smile- a small, solemn one, but a smile. “Dear, I want you to think about this. If people learned about all that, we never would have been able to start this family. You and Dale wouldn’t even exist. I wish it hadn’t happened at all, but there was no undoing that. All we could do is move forward from there- and we did.”
She turns to Sally. “And you can move forward too, dear. You considered that the reason you were sent back was to get another chance at life? I don’t think you’re a bad person at your heart, you just made a lot of mistakes.” She grabs Sally’s shoulders, her corn kernel skin warping beneath her grip. “I’ve done my best to raise you right, like any of my kids, and I know you can grow up to be someone better than you used to be. And as for that person you used to be- I forgive you, Cornelia. I forgive you for everything.”
There’s the sound of the rain outside and the sound of my heart beating in my ears and the sound of Dale breathing heavily and the sound of Sally rearing her arm back and the sound of her fist slamming into Mom’s mouth and the sound of Mom screaming a spray of blood and the sound of a tooth hitting our hardwood and the sound of corn feet slapping against the floor a few times before they hit wooden steps then the muddy path outside. “Bring her back!” Mom shrieks and I run out the door.
I’m the clumsiest, dirtiest skater as I try to move down the path. In the last few minutes the dirt road has made a lot of progress towards river, and I keep finding myself sliding uncontrollably for a moment or two. By some miracle my face never meets the mud, though my shoes and the bottoms of my jeans aren’t so lucky. But I can’t slow down. I see her, just a few seconds ahead.
“Sally!” I shout. “I don’t want to hurt you!”
She yells back to me, not slowing down. “You’re gonna bring me back to that bitch! The one who hid me, who said I didn’t matter! I ain’t gonna be a part of your fucking family!”
“I’m not gonna bring you back to them, I want to help you get away!” I pull the truck keys out of my pocket and shake them. They jingle, grabbing her attention. “Sally, I didn’t know that Mom-” No. Douglas lost that, she did too. “What Irene did. I’m sorry. But I still want to help you. I parked just a little from here. I’ll drive you away, as far as you want, and I’ll deal with what I have to deal with when I get back. I promise, Sally.”
The use of her name- her real name, not the mockery of what she’s been reborn as- doesn’t go unnoticed. She turns, her kernel eyes wet with tears and rain. Her bare legs are covered in mud like mine- they remind me of cobs that fall off the plant during a storm. Or her own corpse.
“It’s not fair.” She cries, collapsing on to her knees. “I never got to say goodbye to my parents. Or Eloise, or Monica, or anyone…and I had a scholarship for State! I’ll never be able to do any of that…Look at me! Do you think I can have a life now?!” She hugs herself, unable to raise her head.
I want to comfort her, but I don’t know how. I hear squishy footsteps from behind, and whirl around to see Dale.
“Oh.” He says flatly. “You, uh, got her to stop running. Good job, Denny.”
I take a deep breath. “You’re not taking her back, Dale.”
Dale sighs. “We…we have to, Denny. Mom’s kind of right. What happened was terrible- and I don’t even really think it was Sally’s fault, really!” He adds, defensively. “But we can’t let this get out. Besides, I caught a bit of what she was saying.” He points at Sally. “She’s right too. If she leaves us, she’ll really have nothing.”
“After everything our family has done to her…” I snarl. “You really think she wants to stay?”
“We can make up for that. I mean, Mom was willing to forgive Sally for what she did with Dad-”
“She didn’t do anything! And even if she had, you can’t compare those two things.”
“I didn’t say they were exactly the same, but…” His hands are balled into trembling fists. “Denise, it’ll break Mom’s heart if we take Sally’s side over hers. She already lost Dad, do you really want her to lose us, too?”
I can’t meet his eyes. “She’d only be losing us because of what she did. And she- she wouldn’t even be losing us, really. If you didn’t hear, I said I’d come back after getting Sally as far away as she wants.”
A few seconds pass, then Dale speaks softly. “I don’t think you will. You doing all of this shows you care about the truth more than this family. And now that the truth is out, I don’t think you’ll be able to stay.” I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult. Whatever it is, the adrenaline is wearing off and I’m starting to realize he might be right.
Another minute passes in silence. Dale’s fists are still clenched. Is he gonna try to fight us? His eyes narrow, then shut, then he raises them heavenward.
“Ugh.” He mutters, slackening a little. “Just- just go.”
“Really?” I ask cautiously.
“Do what you have to do. Get Sally away. I’ll tell Mom I couldn’t catch up with you.”
I purse my lips. “So you aren’t coming with.”
Dale turns his back to me. “Someone has to stay. I can’t leave her all alone here.”
I want to say a million things. Remind Dale that Irene would be responsible for being left alone. Ask if he’ll ever be comfortable around her again. Beg him to come with. Have all the conversations I thought I would get to have with my brother throughout the rest of my life, that I’m now realizing I won’t. But he’s already walking back to the house.
“Goodbye, Dale!” I shout, my voice shaky.
Without even turning his head, he raises his arm and waves. “Bye, Denise. Good luck.” And then my brother is gone.
I walk over to Sally. “Sally, we gotta go. We can talk more when we’re on the road but we gotta go now.”
“Right.” She says dully. She manages to stand, and just like before, we support each other as we cross the final stretch to the truck.
Maybe it’s just because I have to focus a lot harder on the road than usual what with the storm, but neither of us speak until we’re about a mile out of town. I break the silence. “You have any idea where you want to get off, or…”
Sally’s looking out the window. There are cornfields lining this road, much bigger than ours. They stretch all the way to the horizon. “Can we drive for a while longer?” She eventually answers. “I don’t care where, just…away.”
I was hoping she would say that. “Yeah, of course.”
More time passes. “Hey.” Sally speaks up again. “Thank you. For helping me figure out who I was. If any of you were real family, it was you.”
“Thanks.” I whisper.
The rain is starting to let up a little. Up ahead, I see a shaft of sunlight breaking through the dark storm clouds.
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