A Killing in Iowa: A Daughter's Story of Love and Murder (Kindle Single) by Rachel Corbett

Author:Rachel Corbett [Corbett, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781614520184
Publisher: Byliner Inc.
Published: 2011-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

The last time I saw Scott, he showed up unannounced at our house. It had been several months since his breakup with my mother. He said he was in the area and wanted to drop off a few things he’d found while clearing out his house. He was moving, things were over with Crystal, he told her. Then, as though he’d never left, he stretched out next to me on the floor and watched TV.

Mom tucked us into bed that night, and when she closed the door, Scott was standing behind her, watching. “You’re a good mom,” he said. Then he asked if he could sleep over. “You can sleep on the couch,” she said. He took off his shoes, stretched out, and asked, “Will you hold me? I don’t mean sex. I just want you to lay with me.” But by this point she was dating someone new, so she said, “I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

She couldn’t have known it at the time, but she was the last in a string of women who’d just rejected him. Crystal had left, and his mother had recently come to town and never called. Perhaps Scott had thought that leaving my mother would make him feel alive, like a man again. But now he was sleeping on her couch and she no longer wanted him.

When she rose the next morning, May 13, she looked out her window and saw Astro in Scott’s car. He’d been there all night with the windows barely open. Now she was certain something was wrong. She asked Scott why he’d left the dog there—he could have overheated. Scott just shrugged and met her gaze with such a captive look that she longed to reach out and pull him to her, stretch her fingers across the back of his head, breathe in the smell of his neck, his hair. Kiss him one last time. Something in him had given up, and she wanted to say to him, Don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay. Instead she told him, “You don’t have to leave just yet if you don’t want to. You can have the house to yourself today.”

He shook his head and looked down at the ground. “I gotta go pack.”

“Did you decide what you’re going to do with the house?” she asked.

He shrugged again. “Guess I’ll let the bank take it back.”

As she drove down the highway to work, she passed him at the gas station. I should stop, she thought. She still wanted to give him that last kiss. But when she glanced at the clock, she realized she’d be late for work if she didn’t keep going, so she just watched him in her rearview mirror as he grew smaller and smaller and finally disappeared.

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