u/whereis_L

[TW: mentions of spousal/child death/murder]

I— you can call me “L”— was only 9 when he was arrested. May 30, 2011. I still remember how loud the sirens were and the way flashes of red and blue lit up the entirety of the tiny bedroom I shared with my older brother. Then, there was the pounding on the door. A booming, raspy, “Police! Come out with your hands up!” rattled the walls. 

My brother— he was 12 at the time— sat up from bed. I’ll call him “Z” for the sake of the story. I looked to him, as I often did, for guidance on how to feel or what to do. The bewildered look he offered did little to comfort me. 

Z led me down the hall to the front door where my mother already stood. She bristled when she heard my brother’s voice. 

“Mom?” 

“Don’t look,” she pleaded, whispering my name. She told me to stay behind my brother, but my curiosity, as it often did, got the better of me. I peeked out from behind him, red ringlets falling in my face mussed up from sleep. 

When I brushed the hair out of my eyes, I saw him: my dad. On the ground. His face crushed to the lawn he’d just cut that morning. One eye already swelling, a cut over his eyes bleeding. Barrels of guns pointed at his back while officers roughly cuffed him.

Z and I had long since put our small hands down, but Mom’s remained in limbo. Her entire body shook despite the nearly seventy-five degree air outside. Mississippi summers were always unforgiving, even long after the sun disappeared from the sky. 

Ordinarily, I would’ve had a million questions. The next morning, I still hadn’t found the courage to ask them.

Mom sat at the kitchen table, clutching a coffee cup in one hand and my aunt’s hand in the other. From the look of her puffy eyes and knotty brown hair, she hadn’t slept a wink.

It was the first time I caught a glimpse of my mother without the usual polish she carried herself with. I’d give anything for her to get that poise back.

The police asked loads of questions I didn’t know how to answer. “Does your dad ever come home from work late?” “Do your mom and dad spend a lot of time together?” “Does your dad ever talk to you about someone other than your mom?” “Does your dad keep knives or guns around?” “Has your dad ever hurt you or your brother?” “Has your dad hurt your mom?”

My mom refused to tell me what happened. Z knew. She told him. He completely changed after the arrest. The once sweet, occasionally overprotective older brother I had was gone. He went quiet, cold. Hardly ever left our room for the rest of the summer. 

The house lost its shine. The creaky floorboards that once groaned underfoot while my dad hummed on his way to the kitchen in the mornings began to sound hollow. Chores started to fall to me while my mom grieved. She scarcely watched her favorite cooking shows anymore; it was rare to see the TV on at all. 

The summer of 2011 passed in a staticky haze of bike rides, coloring on the sidewalk with chalk dusting my knees, and begging my brother to play his PS2 games so I could watch. I knew better than to ask if I could play myself. He never did indulge my requests. The only warmth I felt from Z that summer was when he’d leave a plate of dinner in the microwave for me on the nights when Mom couldn’t bring herself to cook. 

Word travels fast in small towns; especially somewhere like Oblation, Mississippi. People like Mrs. Grishop, a stout woman who always wore an ill-fitting tracksuit when she walked her stout dog no matter how hot it was out, began to save their pleasantries when they saw me playing with my dolls in the front yard. The first time I tried to wave to her as usual after Dad’s arrest resulted in Mrs. Grishop shuffling away without so much as a “hello.” 

I didn’t have much better luck with the Moores, an elderly couple across the street, when they sat on their porch rocking chairs as they usually did in the evening. At least they spared me a small smile. The extension of that courtesy was short-lived; the pitiful smiles vanishing to nothing within a week. 

My mom had even started casting her eyes to the ground at Church, never again lingering in the reception hall after the sermon was over. 

I couldn’t understand how my family had started to disappear in the eyes of our community. Z never gave me a good explanation for it when I asked. Our neighborhood was close-knit. None of us came from money, and getting by most months meant cashing in a favor or two with your neighbors.

The community had long-established a barter system of sorts. If my dad built a rocking chair or fixed up an old lemon after its engine blew for the third time, he’d get a month of free meals at the deli on mainstreet or eggs from the chicken coop next door. 

Everyone loved my dad. My mom called him “a big ole teddy bear;” an apt description for the gentle giant. I always felt the safest in his arms. 

When it was finally time to go back to school, I was ecstatic. I put out at least three different outfits the night before the first day because I couldn’t decide on just one. 

My joy was quickly stamped out when I bounded up to my best friend after getting off the bus. I immediately noticed she wasn’t wearing the matching bracelets we’d made a year or so prior with our initials threaded between pastel beads. She stood with two other girls who apparently found the ground extremely interesting, barely sparing me a cursory glance over her shoulder. She acted like she had no idea who I was. 

No one spoke to me that day. Or the day after. Or ever again that school year unless they needed to for a project. I always thought it was strange they didn’t bully me, at the very least, for having a dad who’s a murderer. 

It wasn’t until I got a little older that I figured it out: I am the spitting image of my father. I have his same curly red hair, his same green eyes, his same tall stature. If I’d seen the news report back then, maybe I would’ve understood. Maybe I would’ve been afraid of my own reflection, too.

I was 11 when my dad was sentenced. Z was a walking corpse of a 14-year-old, always wearing too-baggy clothes and refusing to brush his dark hair. Even when he had to act as a witness for my dad’s defence, he wore a dark hoodie with his hands plunged into the pockets. Mom didn’t even have the energy to fight him about his fashion choices. 

I got dropped off at my aunt’s house for a couple days while the trial raged on. She lived alone with her cat, Timothy, a very vocal Maine Coon. 

My aunt was the one to break the news to me.

“Honey?” she’d called from the kitchen. 

“Ma’am?” I replied, not looking away from the toy I was enticing Timothy with. 

“Can you come here for a second?”

I huffed but did as I was told. 

She was bracing her arms against the counter, the silky brown hair she shared with my mom tied loosely into a ponytail beneath the crown of her head. A few tendrils shielded her downcast cheeks from my view.

“Are you… okay?” I asked, frozen in the doorway of the small galley kitchen.

She took a deep breath. “Honey… you know how your daddy had to go away for a while?”

I always hated when people treated me like a child. At that moment, I couldn’t bring myself to criticize her for it.

“He still… he still loves you very much, sport, but he’ll—” another breath shuddered from her, “he’ll be gone for quite a while.”

My shoulders slumped a little, but ultimately, I couldn’t understand what that meant. No one would talk to me; not in a way that made sense in my little head. For two years, I made up theory after theory as to what he could have done to go away for so long; none so gruesome as the harsh reality I now live in.

I was 13 when I learned the truth. My mother finally left the house for long enough periods that I felt brave enough to sneak onto the family computer. When I typed in my dad’s name and clicked on the first result, a grainy image of a redheaded man I no longer knew appeared before me. Next to the image in bold letters read, “OBLATION MAN CONVICTED OF KILLING FOUR IN MAUDE, TX.”

My stomach froze, throat catching as I kept reading. 

“A local man has been convicted of killing three of his five children and wife on the night of May 27, 2011. When the woman, [REDACTED], didn’t drop her children off to school or show up to work the next morning, concerned friends and coworkers called for a wellness check. There, Sheriff [REDACTED] of the Gleeden County Police Force found what he describes as ‘the most gruesome scene he’s ever witnessed.’ 

“Neighbors reported shouting coming from inside the home shortly before 9 PM the night of May 27 before things going quiet a half hour later. The prosecution alleged the defendant snapped under the weight of maintaining his ‘double life,’ seeing as his current wife and two children reside in Oblation, over five-hundred miles from the home of the deceased.”

I couldn’t bring myself to read more after that. 
I never told my mom or brother what I knew. I figured they thought I’d learn eventually. 

We never talked about my dad after his sentencing, even when his legal team kept filing appeals for a retrial. When his luck had finally run out, my dad went silent. I still haven’t spoken to him since his arrest.

I haven’t been back to Oblation since I graduated high school. I hadn’t heard much from Z, either, until his wife called me in a panic a few hours ago. I’ll do my best to recap our conversation here.

I didn’t even have his wife’s number saved. I know Oblation’s area code, though; it’s stained in my memory like dark ink spilled on a white carpet. 

“Hello?”

“L?” she whispered, her voice shaking. I heard her inhale like she was taking a long drag from a cigarette. 

We’ll call Z’s wife “R.” “R, what’s wrong?” I asked. “Is Z okay? Is it the kids?”

She swallowed, talking lowly into the phone like she was afraid she’d be overheard. “The kids are fine, they’re fine… He got arrested.”

My heart jumped to my throat. “What? Why?”

“They said— they said he killed…” she trailed off, her throat sounding constricted. “In Ethel. Georgia. He had another family, L… Two little boys that look just like him— Jesus Christ— he had a fucking wife—”

“Take a breath.” The air felt stale around me while I tried to maintain composure for the both of us. 

She complied, breath shuddering out of her. “I don’t understand. He was with me the night they said he killed them.”

“When did they say it happened?”

“Friday,” she replied.

I froze. They said my dad killed his other family on a Friday, too. It was Monday, and I looked at the date on the calendar hanging on the wall, just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind.

My dad was arrested on a Monday.

“Are you sure he was with you?”

I could practically hear her nodding. “Yeah, yeah, uh…” she laughed, the sound empty. “We were planning on holdin’ off on telling everyone, but… I’m pregnant. And I told him that night after the kids went to sleep. He was with me. There was no fucking way he could’ve been two states over.”

My vision blurred. “And you’re sure he never left the house?”

“Positive,” she stated firmly. “Unless he snuck out after I went to sleep. But… but that’s impossible. They said they— they died around 9:30, and he was with me. I was awake. We were watching a fuckin’ King of the Hill rerun—”

I scrubbed a hand over my eyes, telling her quickly I’d leave for Oblation in the morning. I pretty much immediately started typing this after I hung up. I’m getting a little desperate and starting to feel like I’m going crazy. I guess I’m looking for outsider perspectives? Maybe a little validation that “yeah, L, this is weird.” Because Lord knows I don’t know what to make of all this.