Black-Eyed Susans Read Online Free

coffins.
    Joanna is rubbing the charm between her
     fingers, like it is a holy cross.
    I suddenly realize that, in her world, it
     is.
    She is wearing a double helix made of
     gold.
    The twisted ladder of life.
    A strand of DNA.

Tessie, 1995
    One week later. Tuesday, 10 A.M. sharp. I am back on the doctor’s plump couch, with
     company. Oscar rubs his wet nose against my hand reassuringly, then settles in on the
     floor beside me, alert. He’s been mine since last week, and I will go nowhere
     without him. Not that anyone argues. Oscar, sweet and protective, makes them
     hopeful.
    “Tessie, the trial is in three months.
     Ninety days away. My most important job right now is to prepare you emotionally. I know
     the defense attorney, and he’s excellent. He’s even better when he truly
     believes he holds the life of an innocent man in his hands, which he does. Do you
     understand what that means? He will not take it easy on you.”
    This time, right down to business.
    My hands are folded primly in my lap.
     I’m wearing a short, blue-plaid pleated skirt, white lacy stockings, and black
     patent-leather boots. I’ve never been a prim girl, despite the reddish-gold hair
     and freckles my wonderfully corny grandfather claimed were fairy dust. Not then, not
     now. My best friend, Lydia, dressed me today. She burrowed into my messy drawers and
     closet, because she couldn’t stand the fact that I no longer make any effort to
     match. Lydia is one of the few friends who isn’t giving up on me. She is currently
     taking her fashion cues from the movie
Clueless,
but I haven’t seen
     it.
    “OK,” I say.
     This is, after all, one of two reasons I am sitting here. I am afraid. Ever since they
     snatched Terrell Darcy Goodwin away from his Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast in Ohio
     eleven months ago and told me I would need to testify, I have counted the days like
     terrible pills. Today, we are eighty-seven days away, not ninety, but I do not bother to
     correct him.
    “I remember nothing.” I am
     sticking with this.
    “I’m sure the prosecutor has
     told you that doesn’t matter. You’re living, breathing evidence. Innocent
     girl vs. unspeakable monster. So let’s just begin with what you do remember.
     Tessie?
Tessie?
What are you thinking right now, this second? Spit it out
     … don’t look away, OK?”
    I crane my neck around slowly, gazing at him
     out of two mossy gray pools of nothingness.
    “I remember a crow trying to peck out
     my eyes,” I say flatly. “Tell me. What exactly is the point of looking, when
     you know I can’t see you?”

Tessa, present day
    Technically, this is their third grave. The
     two Susans being exhumed tonight in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Fort Worth were his
     older kills. Dug up from their first hiding place and tossed in that field with me like
     chicken bones. Four of us in all, dumped in the same trip. I was thrown on top with a
     girl named Merry Sullivan, who the coroner determined had been dead for more than a day.
     I overheard Granddaddy mutter to my father, “The devil was cleaning out his
     closets.”
    It is midnight, and I am at least three
     hundred feet away, under a tree. I have darted under the police tape that marks off the
     site. I wonder who the hell they think is walking a cemetery at this time of night but
     ghosts. Well, I guess I am.
    They’ve erected a white tent over the
     two graves, and it glows with pale light, like a paper lantern. There are far more
     people here than I expected. Bill, of course. I recognize the district attorney from his
     picture in the paper. There’s a balding man beside him in an ill-fitting suit. At
     least five policemen, and another five human beings dressed like aliens in Tyvek suits,
     wandering in and out of the tent. I know that the medical examiner is among them.
     Careers ride on this one.
    Did the reporter who wrote Angie’s
     obituary know that his words would pry loose the rusty lever of justice? Create a