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Prudence (or The Grave In the Woods)
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"Prudence"
by Emma Charlesbeth
"Can you tell us, Ms. Hardin, what part you played in the murder of Lauren Phillips?"
I looked into my lap, where I had folded my hands to stop them from shaking. My eyes moved to Robbie. He sat several feet away, next to his defense attorney.
"Robbie came to my house the night he killed her," I recited. "He asked me to help him. He said he had accidentally killed his girlfriend."
"And where did you go from there?"
"We went to Conner's house. Conner drove us to Robbie's house, where Robbie put the body and a shovel into the back of the car."
"Did you see Lauren then?"
"No, sir."
"When did you first see her?"
"When Conner demanded to see the body. He wanted to see what Robbie had done to Lauren."
"And what had he done?"
I gulped.
*****
I woke up to the sound of knocking. Frenzied, startling knocking that rattled the glass on my front door. I sat up on the sofa, rubbing the crust of sleep from the corners of my eyes. The food I had prepared for a party that never happened sat on the coffee table, hardly touched.
"Prudence!" a frantic voice called through the oak and glass of the door. "Are you there?"
My eyes moved up the living room wall, to the clock that hung above the decorative fireplace. It was nearly midnight. The second hand stuttered just before the three.
"Pru!" the voice called again. This time it was full of desperation. "Please open the door. I need your help."
I stumbled across the room and fumbled with the door latch. I couldn't remember which way to turn it. Not then. I was too tired. The lock clicked. The door opened. A boy fell into the room. He was my age-he had turned twenty several weeks ago. He had light hair that curled under his black baseball cap, blue eyes, and a strawberry blonde goatee. Drops of rainwater dripped from his clothes onto the beige carpet that my mother had just had cleaned.
"Robbie?" I gasped, nearly choking. "Where have you been? You were supposed to be here hours ago. I made heaps of food, and Conner brought his Ipod. Where's your girlfriend? We were looking forward to meeting her."
"Where are your parents?" the boy muttered as he peeled his wet jacket off of his body. His wide eyes wandered around the room, darting from object to object nervously.
"Why?"
Robbie turned to face me. There was no color in his cheeks, which were usually pink and rosy. Instead, he was ashen and drenched in cold sweat.
"Are they here?" His voice shook. "Are they at home?"
I shook my head. "They've gone to the cinema and out for drinks. They won't be back for hours." I gulped. "Is…something wrong?"
Robbie let out a heavy, stuttering sigh. He removed his hat and ran a trembling hand over his curly, reddish hair. His knees shook under the weight of his body until he trudged forward and collapsed on the sofa. He looked up at me, breathing heavily. His chest rose and fell as he gasped and began to cry.
"You have to help me, Pru," he moaned. "There's been an accident."
I moved forward, my footsteps muffled on the carpet. "What kind of accident?" I prodded. "What's happened?"
"I killed Lauren," Robbie confessed.
"You what?"
My throat tightened. I perched on the edge of the couch, next to Robbie's shaking form. A hundred-and-one questions raced through my mind like cold, rushing water. How did it happen? When? Have you gone to the police? But I couldn't ask a single one of them.
"You have to help me, Pru," Robbie repeated desperately. "You and Conner are the only people I can turn to. I don't want to go to prison."
I am not an accomplice to murder.
I am not an accomplice to murder.
I leaned on the back of Conner's 1987 Volvo station wagon and repeated the sentence again and again in my head. I am not an accomplice to murder.
Robbie grunted several feet away. Through the darkness, I could just make out the shape of his baseball cap peeking out of the hole he was digging. Conner stood at the edge of the road, surveying the rest of the quiet woods. His shoulders shook every now and again. I was almost sure I had heard him crying once or twice.
"We should talk to the police," I mumbled, peering through the inky darkness at the blanket that sat in the back of the Volvo, wrapped around Lauren's still body.
"Are you crazy?" Robbie choked. He tossed his shovel toward me and clambered out of the fresh, empty grave. "They'll take me in. I'll go to prison."
"Not if it was an accident," I reasoned. "That's manslaughter, not murder."
"If you don't go to the police, you'll only be making it worse for yourself," Conner's voice reasoned. He turned around, facing Robbie for the first time since he had parked the car. "They're going to look for her and, when they find her, you're going to be arrested. You should turn yourself in. Explain what happened."
"They won't find her," Robbie said confidently. He nudged me aside and opened the trunk of the car.
"What did happen?" Conner asked, eyeing the bulge in the striped blanket. "How did you kill her?"
Robbie leaned into the car and flipped the concealed body over his shoulder. "That's none of your business," he snapped. "It was an accident. That's all you need to know."
Conner frowned. "Let me see her," he demanded suddenly.
"Conner!" I gasped. "Don't!"
Robbie stepped backward, weaving out of Conner's reach. "Why?" he bellowed, horrified.
"Just let me see her," he pressed, stepping forward. "I want to see what you did to her."
"No."
"Come on, Robbie. Show us what you did."
"Conner!" I screamed. "Please, stop it."
Robbie stepped back again. This time, he stepped onto a rock. His ankle folded under him and he fell. Lauren's body fell with him. It bounced on the ground, rolling out of its wrappings. Robbie shouted something, but I couldn't make out the words over my own frightened scream.
Conner opened his cell phone and leaned forward. The blue light of the phone screen reflected on Lauren's ivory skin, blue eyes, and shoulder length golden hair. She looked somehow familiar, though I was sure I had never seen her before.
"She looks a lot like Prudence," Conner commented offhandedly. A single shiver ran up the length on my spine.
The square of faint light moved over Lauren's face, along the fragile line of her jaw, and toward her thin neck. Robbie slapped Conner's hand away.
"That's enough," he growled through gritted teeth. "Help me bury her and let's go home."
I didn't sleep that night. I was too afraid to close my eyes. I had seen never Robbie so frightened or so angry. It scared me more than anything I saw that night. I couldn't shake his cold, blank stare from my mind. It was burned into my skull, just like the image of Lauren's lifeless face.
I sat up in my bed and looked at the mirror across the room. It was just like looking at her. We had the same hair, the same eyes, and the same freckled skin. I was going to have to look at her for the rest of my life.
Over the next week, we stopped going to the woods, where we usually spent the time after work. We went to beach instead, or walked through the streets of the town.
It rained for days. As the thunder, wind, and lighting grew more violent, so did Robbie. He ruled over us with an iron fist-told us where to be and when, where not to go, who to speak to. We had to listen to him, he kept saying, because we were accomplices to murder. If he went to prison, so would we.
That was when I started to wonder about Lauren and what had happened to her. After all, if it was an accident, why would Robbie call it murder? I wanted to find out. I wanted to tell someone, but I was too afraid.
Who could I tell?
Robbie and Conner were my best-my only friends. I didn't know anyone else.
"Is something wrong, Pru?" my mother asked as I trudged down the stairs and into the living room.
I looked up. Our eyes met. For a moment, I considered telling her everything. About Lauren. About Robbie. About the body in the woods. But I couldn't. The words got caught behind my tonsils. My eyes tingled. I couldn't say anything, so I walked out the door.
Lauren's family-whoever they were-was probably getting worried. The police had probably been informed. Maybe they were already looking for her. Maybe they already knew that Robbie had something to do with it.
What about making a deal with them?
The thought crossed and left my mind in the same instant. If Robbie made a mistake, if it was an accident, I couldn't turn him for that. I couldn't send him to prison for playing too roughly, or giving her painkiller that reacted badly with her medicine…or whatever it was he had done.
Things like that happened every day, and they just that. Accidents.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and continued down the windy street. The icy rain soaked through my clothes and chilled my skin. My eyes wandered up toward the gray sky, following the straight path of a nearby telephone pole. I fought a shudder as Lauren caught my eye, her smiling face in the center of weatherworn 'Missing' poster.
I had to know, I decided as I looked up at what could have been my own face (if it wasn't caked in heavy makeup). I had to know if it was an accident, or if it was murder.
Conner leaned on the back of the Volvo and watched as I dug through the hard, cold forest floor. A thick carpet of autumn leaves crunched around me. The rain pelted me. It felt like ice as it hit the top of my head and trickled through my hair.
"Does Robbie know you're doing this?" Conner asked.
"No," I grunted over the sound of my shoveling. "I'm not stupid."
He nodded. He crossed his arms over his chest and shivered in the wind that whipped around the trees.
"I'm kind of glad you decided to do this," he commented airily. "I've been thinking about her since we buried her."
"It's impossible not to." I put my shovel aside and leaned on the wall of the little grave. I blinked up at Conner, his outline barely visible past the flashlight that shone in my direction. "Does Robbie think about her?" I questioned.
Conner's silhouette shrugged. "If he does, he doesn't talk about it," he sighed. "Sometimes, I wish he would just so I knew I wasn't alone."
"Yeah…" I pulled my jacket tighter around me and turned the handle of the shovel idly in my hand. "Well, you're not."
I heard another sigh from Conner's direction. "He totally freaked out when I tried to look at her before," he recalled. "I mean, I've never seen him like that. What's he going to do when he finds out you dug her up?"
"I don't know," I admitted with a shrug. "But I have to find out for sure if this was an accident."
"If it wasn't…" Conner began. He swallowed hard. "I mean, if he did murder her, he could kill us, too. He might."
I forced a nervous chuckle. "Me maybe," I joked. "I don't think he could take you."
"We are right for doubting Robbie, aren't we? I mean, killing his girlfriend… That's a steep accusation."
"Well…" I frowned, considering the question carefully. "I think we need to know, don't we? We helped bury her. We need to know what we're hiding and why. And we need to know if we can trust Robbie."
"Good point." Conner jumped into grave. "Let me dig," he said, holding out his hand.
"Are you sure?"
He shrugged. "I haven't done anything useful yet."
I nodded, handed off the shovel, and climbed out of the hole. I took Conner's place at the back of the Volvo. It was still warm from the heat of his body. The wind picked up again. It roared in my ears, over my thoughts. My teeth chattered.
I didn't know what I was going to do after we dug up the body. Accident or not, I would have to tell someone. Otherwise, the burning memory of Lauren's face-my face-was going to drive me insane. I knew that I was going to end up in prison, but I was ready for it. I was sure Conner was, too.
We were doing the right thing, weren't we? Yes, we were preparing to turn our friend and ourselves over to the police for manslaughter-potentially murder-and tampering with evidence in a crime. But Lauren's family and friends deserved to know what happened to her. Whatever that was…
"Prudence…" Conner's voice cracked, nearly drowned out by the sound of the wind. "I think you were right. I don't think this was an accident."
"What?" I croaked. A feeling of fear gripped me. "How do you know?"
No answer. I crept closer to the flashlight-illuminated hole and peered over its edge. The body was there, half-covered in dirt and fallen leaves, still half-wrapped in Robbie's guestroom blankets. I kneeled at the side of the hole and squinted down at Lauren's face. Her blue eyes were still open. I guessed that, in his haste, Robbie hadn't had the decency to close them. Her thick black eye makeup ran down her cheeks and made her resemble a crying raccoon.
I gulped. "What makes you think it wasn't an accident?" I squeaked.
Conner pulled his shirt over his nose and bent down. He pulled the blanket away from Lauren's thin neck, where she wore a set of hand-shaped bruises like a necklace.
"Shit…" I muttered. My eyes widened. "He strangled her. You can't do that by accident."
Conner's face twisted in discomfort. "I think I'm going to be sick," he muttered. "Let's just cover her back up."
"What?" I choked. "We can't just cover her up. We have to tell someone. We have to do something."
"Are you crazy?" Conner jumped out of the hole, violently casting his shovel to the ground. "If we turn Robbie in, we'll be turning ourselves in too."
"It's the right thing to do," I pressed.
He grabbed my wrist. "We have lives, Pru," he told me hotly. "If we hadn't helped cover this up, I would go to the police…but we did. We helped hide a murder. If we go to the police now, we throw everything away. Don't you understand that?"
"Yes, I do."
Conner shook his head. "You'll never get married, or have kids," he went on, his voice filled with urgency. "You'll never see your friends or your parents again. You'll never get a Christmas card or a birthday gift. Our faces will be front page news."
"So will Lauren's," I cried, nearly sobbing. "She deserves justice. We owe her that much, don't we?"
"We don't know her." Conner shrugged. "We don't owe her anything."
He moved toward the discarded shovel, his eyes set and jaw locked. I watched him for a moment, wondering what had changed in to few minutes since he had taken up digging for the body. I thought he was on my side. I thought I could trust him. But I was wrong. I hurried forward, putting myself between Conner and the shovel.
"I won't let you cover this up," I told him, pointing a warning finger at the center of his chest. "If you fill that grave, I'll still go to the police. If you move her, I'll just bring them to Robbie's doorstep."
Conner's frown deepened. "I refuse to go to jail for something I didn't do," he hissed.
"But we helped. We're just as bad as he is."
He shook his head. "If I go to prison, it'll be for something I did," he said, snatching my wrist. "Not something I helped to hide."
He tugged me forward and flung me into the makeshift grave, then picked up the shovel.
"I won't let you screw this up," he told me with a hint of sadness in his voice. "I've got plans. I'm going to go to film school. I don't deserve to have that all ripped away."
"We can make a deal with the police," I offered frantically. "They can help us."
"That never works," Conner grunted. His eyes narrowed.
I blinked up at him, but said nothing. I didn't want to waste my breath or my energy. I had to get away. I had to get help.
Conner sighed. He walked away from the hole and came back with a heavy metal cross wrench.
"What's that for?" I asked, eyeing the tool in his hand.
He didn't answer. He reached into the grave, twisted his hand into my hair, and pulled me to ground-level.
"I really don't want to be a part of this," he assured me. "I don't want to hurt either of my friends. Then again, if you and Robbie were really my friends, you wouldn't drag me into something like this."
"I didn't ask for this either," I reminded Conner. "I was dragged into it too."
"I know." He looked at his feet. "And I'm sorry for that. You're a sweet girl and a good friend, Pru. You just don't know when to mind your own business."
He stepped forward, adjusting his grip on the cross wrench. I stepped back. My eyes moved over the clearing, the trees, the grave. I noticed the shovel leaning on the Volvo. Conner moved forward again, his eyes fastened on my head. I matched his movements in reverse, resisting the urge to turn my back and run.
Keep your eyes on him, I told myself firmly. Don't turn your back.
I kept moving backward until my body was pressed against the Volvo. Conner grinned.
"There's nowhere else to go," he told me.
I nodded. My right hand wandered through the dark, groping for the splintered handle of the shovel. I found it and held back a cry of triumph. The cross wrench swung through the air, whistling as it moved toward my head. I stepped away, simultaneously swinging the shovel like a baseball bat. It collided with the side of his head and face and knocked him to the ground.
"Holy shit!" his voice cried as I dashed around the car and climbed into the driver's seat.
He was okay, I assured myself and I fumbled to turn the key that had been left in the ignition. The engine sprung to life and I put my foot to the gas pedal, swerving through the trees between the car and the road.
*****
I chewed on my lip and waited for the jury's decision. The rest of the courtroom shifted in their seats. My eyes wandered to Lauren's family and lingered on them for several long moments.
Lauren looked like her mother, who looked a lot like my mother. She turned to look at me and forced a small smile. Tears ran down her cheeks.
"We the jury find the defendant, Robert Dean, guilty of murder and tampering with physical evidence," someone announced several feet away.
I blinked back tears. Not tears of happiness or sadness. Just tears. It was over. Lauren was dead, but everything else was fine. Robbie and Conner were going to prison, a fate I had avoided by making a deal with the prosecution.
Everything was okay.
The grave in the woods had been filled in.
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