Promise Not to Tell by Jennifer Mcmahon

Author:Jennifer Mcmahon [Mcmahon, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Murder, Literary, Mystery Fiction, Suspense Fiction, Psychological, ghost, Children, Vermont, Nurses, Cold Cases (Criminal Investigation), Alzheimer's Disease
ISBN: 9780061143311
Google: DHtPEeRFFUoC
Amazon: B000SEF4UO
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

9

Early to Mid-June, 1971

IT WAS THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL, June 16, that my great plan backfired, as the plans of unpopular fifth graders desperate to make friends are doomed to backfire. I remember the date clearly, even now, because it was later that evening that Del’s body was found. These two events—my betrayal and her murder—have become so strongly linked in my mind that it is like one could not have existed without the other. Other than her killer, I was the last person to see Del alive. And when I last saw her, she was running from me. Running as fast as her scrawny legs with their scabby kneecaps would carry her.

In those last weeks before both my fifth grade year and Del Griswold’s life ended, things at New Hope were coming to a head. Life in the tepee had been far from peaceful. Lazy Elk, it turned out, was the father of Doe’s baby, Raven. Mimi was the one to tell my mother, who—instead of tearfully, yet with quiet dignity, thanking Mimi for her honesty—immediately accused Mimi of being a meddler and rumormonger who couldn’t stand to see anyone else happy. Mimi stalked out of the tepee, with my mother shouting after her, “You don’t know anything about it!” Soon after that unhappy scene, Lazy Elk slunk through the tepee’s flap, sent, no doubt, by Mimi or even Gabriel himself. He admitted that, yes, there had been one, or perhaps three or four, indiscretions with Doe, some time ago, but they had just been having a good time you know, maybe they’d smoked a little, and it didn’t have anything to do with his feelings for his Jeanie-Bird. Jeanie-Bird wasn’t having any of it. She pummeled his chest, sobbing, saying, Liar! over and over. Then she told him to get the hell out.

There was a heated community meeting in the big barn that evening that went on past midnight. Doe’s boyfriend, Shawn, was not in attendance—apparently he had hopped into his battered El Dorado and set off for California that morning as soon as he had learned Raven wasn’t his. I was sent out after the first hour, when things began to turn nasty. I listened from time to time outside the door to the raised voices, the pointed accusations. Doe and my mother went at each other—Lazy Elk attempted to intervene, but they both turned on him. Everyone, it seemed, had some choice words for Lazy Elk. The problem, announced Gabriel again and again, was one of deception. No one was judging Lazy Elk for sleeping with Doe—after all, they were consenting adults, and nobody at New Hope bought into the patriarchal trip of obligatory monogamy, of ownership of one person’s body by another. The issue was that he had lied to everyone about it, and had insisted that Doe cooperate in the lie. It was the lying he was on trial for and, in the end, found guilty of. The decision that came near one in the morning was unanimous—Lazy Elk was no longer welcome at New Hope.

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