God ordained two of our beautiful angels to watch over this town forever. That’s his spin. I don’t think so. I feel Odette all the time, and she’s pissed. Her wings are burning.

He makes my mind wander, like most preachers. I know a lot of nice, open-minded Baptist ministers, but there are plenty who walked right out of the pages of The Handmaid’s Tale, who preach that women should give their husbands sex seven times a week and think Jesus was whiter than snow. I don’t know for sure, but I think Odette’s uncle is one of those.

I say my own prayer. Two words. Why, God? Odette must have been so afraid that night. There was just a tiny spot of blood in the dirt. A shovel. A fence post jerry-rigged to look like a cross, and a hole dug up with nothing in it. Her pickup truck, lights blazing. A scattering of pennies, like dandelions. Her wishes, lying in dirt.

I ask forgiveness, mostly of Odette. If I hadn’t refused to say a word at Maggie’s kitchen table, if I’d nodded and said I recognized my father on her computer screen, maybe she never would have left the house.

Even though I was just a kid, even though I was scared of my father hunting me down, even though just dredging up the word dandelion felt like a cigarette in my throat, I would have gone with her if she asked. I would have recited the Emily Dickinson poem my mother loved or the whole Olive Garden menu. I would have done anything if I knew Odette was the one who was going to die.

I close my eyes one more quick time.

Watch over me as I dig.

Amen.

38

I’m guessing that a couple of people accidentally nudged the person in front of them, and it set off a chain reaction. The whole sweaty bunch of us lunges closer to the stage like we’re one ferocious animal.

I’m only 103 pounds, but I hold my ground and try not to reach under my skirt and itch the new mosquito bite on the inside of my thigh. The prayer is rolling on and on. At least half of the heads have already popped up.

The old lady beside me is talking low to her friend. She’s annoyed that Odette’s husband is engaged to someone else but won’t put the Blue House on the market and sell it to a deserving local family who would clean up the lawn. She thinks Finn is a pretentious name and heard he flat-out turned down an opportunity to speak today.

The preacher descends the podium to a smattering of hand claps. Finally. Cellphones are hiked high in the air, ready to snap whatever is hiding under the white drape. I don’t think all of these people are assholes—just that it’s way easier to see life through a screen.

A cop in jeans, a badge, sunglasses, and a cowboy hat has taken the stage. I can tell he’s from a long line of real-deal swaggerers. I quickly recognize him as Odette’s old partner because of his red hair. People call him Rusty or Wonder. The old lady refers to him as “Francine Colton’s boy.”

To me, he always seems like a reluctant spokesperson when he’s caught on TV. He was never willing to say Odette’s disappearance was linked to Trumanell’s or why he was so bad at finding them.

He’s on my list. He ordered cops to dig around that fence post for months, until the hole was as wide as a football field. I’ve seen pictures. It was like a giant leaned down and bit the earth.

“I got very little to say on the five-year anniversary of Odette’s disappearance,” he begins, “except this kind of event does nothing to help our town’s image. I wouldn’t be up here if the mayor hadn’t told me his second choice was our shithead in Congress.” He steps back from the microphone and stares off, like he’s having trouble composing himself. It’s several uncomfortable seconds before he tries again. “Odette told me over a beer, right after she saved my life from a crackhead, that whenever she died, she wanted to be cremated, poured in bullets, and shot into the sky. Most of you out there, you don’t know shit about Odette. Or give a shit about her.”

His tone is barely under control, but I don’t think he’s drunk. I rethink that when he pulls out his gun. “Put down your fucking phones,” he orders. “Now.”

Arms drop like they were sliced off. The crowd takes a big step back, but nobody around me seems to think they are personally going to get shot.

“I can’t ricochet my partner off the sky,” Rusty is saying. “I can’t grant her last wish. So let this be a warning that I’m not done.”

Only one idiot still has his phone up high, recording it all. He’s off to the side, leaning against a crumbling mausoleum. Rusty locks his eyes on him and seems to be considering whether he’s worth his time.

“I hope Francine’s boy shoots the phone right out of his hand,” the old lady declares. “He could do it. He’s a former Iraq sniper. Rumored thirty-two kills.”

Except he doesn’t. He whips around and points the gun up. Three shots rake the sky. The doves are going nuts in the cages, their wings making the squeaky warning whistle that most people think comes out of their mouths.

Rusty presses his lips to the microphone so close it vibrates in my stomach. “Unless you’ve got something to offer, stay the fuck out of my case.”

It feels like he’s talking right at me.

He gives a nod to two pretty little twin girls with his red hair.

They yank off the white sheet.

I can see just the tip of a stone wing from here. The line of people, curving around hundreds of graves, reminds me of an endless, colorful snake.

I’m lucky that the old lady’s friend was lost in the crush. She needed an extra hand on her elbow, and I was the closest thing she could grab. She knocked her cane around to maneuver us to a better place in line. When she asks, I tell her I’m Angie.

The news crews have been allowed to reposition up at the statue for close-ups of people weeping as they pay respects. That’s the first thing that’s worrying me.

I always keep my head down when cameras are around. I actually think of myself as a dove. My father has killed plenty of them, and doves are notoriously hard to kill. He always said to never shoot at the mass, always stick with your one bird. Focus on it until it falls. That’s how I imagine him hunting me, with a whole lot of patience.

A man in a lime green vest hands us each a tiny bag of wildflower seeds and says that when we reach the front, we should throw them at the statue “gently, in the manner we would a bride.” The old lady tells me that when I’m a bride, the only thing I should want thrown at me is money. She tells me that my skirt should be four inches longer and that letting the straps of my purple bra show is an open invitation for a boy to unhook it.

We move up a few feet, and she’s no longer focused on me. It’s like the waters part. I can see the whole monster thing. I read that the sculptor was provided a giant chunk of stone from the Branson field and told to free the spirits of Trumanell and Odette.

What he found is a freak show—the offspring of Daenerys Targaryen if she mated with her brother and one of her dragons. Wings are sprouting off each side. A crown of flowers is settled on a long trail of hair. There aren’t two faces, just one, and it’s polished smooth and blank.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” the old lady asks me. “The empty face representing their unfinished lives and unexplained disappearance? The crown representing Trumanell’s near-goddess status in this town and her deep love of nature? The wings representing Odette’s courage and her freedom to soar now that she no longer needs two legs?”

“It certainly is,” I lie enthusiastically. “It could be in the Louvre.”

Too much, I think. She eyes me suspiciously, and I instantly feel stripped, like she knows everything. She knows I’m lying about my name. She knows I keep jerking my head to the left to see if anything’s coming because there’s a hole on that side of my face.

She knows I lived in a trailer park where most people never even heard of the Louvre, but where there’s no faster education on earth. Take away an eye, and you get a Ph.D. Add a year in a group home with pissed-off girls who feel like thrown-away Kleenex, and it’s a study abroad on every planet in the universe.

“Most girls your age would pronounce that Loover,” she’s saying. “Whom do you belong to? Take off those sunglasses so I can see your face.”

“I’m Laura Jackson’s girl.” It stumbles out like the truth.