Here on Earth

“Geez,” Susie exclaims. “Did everyone in town know about this before I did?”

“Maybe you didn’t want to know.”

This statement from her mother brings Susie up short. Louise is right, of course. It’s simply that Susie had no idea that her mother could be so insightful.

“You seem extremely sure that March is making a mistake,” Susie says now.

They’ve brought the plates over to the table; any minute the Judge will come in from his study.

“I am.”

Again, Susie is surprised, this time by her mother’s certainty.

“For one thing,” Louise says, “he killed Belinda.”

“What?” Susie says. She tilts her head to search her mother’s expression so quickly she can feel the vertebrae in her neck pop.

Louise has gone to get a glass of club soda for the Judge, which he always takes with a slice of lemon. Susie follows on her heels.

“Do you have any proof of that?” Susie’s adrenaline is going like crazy. She is a reporter, after all, even if it’s only for The Bugle.

“If I had the proof, don’t you think I would have gone to the police?” Louise pours a glass of club soda for Susie as well. A good thing because Susie’s mouth is now parched; as dry as dust. “But I don’t need proof. I know. He did it.”

Louise’s hands are shaking badly as she returns the club soda to the refrigerator, but thankfully Susie doesn’t see. Louise has always kept her suspicions to herself, which hasn’t been easy, and which, she now realizes, was a mistake. People used to do more of that—look the other way—and Louise is as guilty as anyone else. The last time she saw Belinda was almost twelve years ago, only a few months before she died. They were both on the board of the Library Association back then, and there had been a meeting to discuss the coming year’s cultural series. It was late when the meeting finally ended—Harriet Laughton had chosen to be difficult, insisting that her son, a rather boring botanist, be asked to lecture—and people were hurrying to get home. Louise was on her way to her parked car, when she noticed Belinda headed for her truck. It was a bitter, windy night, and the shutters which framed the library windows were banging against the bricks. Belinda was carrying an armful of papers and proposals, since she was then the association secretary.

“What a meeting,” Louise said as she approached Belinda from what must have been her blind side.

Belinda was so startled that she dropped her pile of papers.

“I’m so sorry,” Louise had said.

“It’s nothing.” Belinda was always polite; she’d been carefully trained by her mother, Annabeth. Why, you could probably wake her in the middle of the night and she would say please and thank you. “I got spooked.” Belinda smiled gamely.

“Well, it’s that kind of night,” Louise had granted.

They’d both crouched down to gather the notes and proposals and that was when Belinda’s sweater was pushed up above her forearm. She quickly tugged her sleeve back down, but it was too late. Louise had seen the line of bruises.

“I need iron tablets,” Belinda had declared. “Anemia’s the problem.”

Once they’d gathered the papers, they both stood up. Louise remembers the chill she felt down her spine. Something is not right, she was thinking. She recalled seeing other bruises; although Belinda had the sort of pale, freckled skin which was susceptible to chafing and injury, there were too many instances when she’d been hurt. At a meeting the month before, Louise had noticed a mark in the shape of a butterfly on Belinda’s cheek. The little boy, Cooper, had hit her with a toy truck, by accident, or at least that had been the explanation. When she sprained her wrist, and Harriet Laughton asked how it had happened, Belinda said her horse had bumped against her, and all that summer her wrist continued to pain her as she took the minutes for the association’s meeting. Belinda had taken to wearing long-sleeved shirts in August; she had stopped looking her friends in the eye. All at once, in that parking lot, Louise was certain that she knew what the problem was, and what it had been all along. It’s him.

“Well,” Susie Justice informs Louise after hearing this story. “You have no proof whatsoever. Maybe she did need iron. Maybe she really was anemic, and bruised easily.”

“All right,” Louise says, as she goes to call the Judge in for dinner. “Fine. Think what you want to think.”

“Mom,” Susie says, following after. “You can’t know for sure.”