The Innocents Read Online Free PDF Page A

won’t tell me,” Nikki said. “Son of a bitch. I’ve known you most of my life, Milly. And I’ve never known you to act stranger.”
    It was true Milly had known Nikki since second grade, best friends since they were in eighth grade and went on that mission trip to Belize. In between smoking dope and fooling around with the pastor’s son and his best friend, they’d both finally realized the world looked a hell of a lot brighter away from Tibbehah County. And they’d never be like theirmommas, not knowing which way to cross the road. Nikki reached down and held her six-month-old son, Jon-Jon, tighter in her lap.
    “I don’t want you hurt,” Milly said. “This thing—this secret—will turn Jericho inside out.”
    “Shit,” Nikki said. “I don’t think there’s a lot that would shock this place.”
    Milly looked down at the field, the sidelines crowded with players and coaches. Everyone waiting for the coin toss in the center of the field, seeing which way things would go. A hot wind blew in from the west, smelling of burning leaves and fresh-cut grass. The summer was about over.
    “This will.”
    “What is it?”
    “Damn you,” Milly said. “Don’t you listen?”
    “Oh, come the fuck on,” Nikki said.
    “It’s not my secret,” Milly said. “It’s about Brandon.”
    And that stopped Nikki cold from opening up her mouth. Ever since Milly’s brother had blown his goddamn head off while supposedly cleaning his .308 in the woods, there hadn’t been a lot of interest in discussion. For a long while, people would walk the other way when they’d see her. What the hell do you say to the girl who had a defect for a brother? Killing yourself is a cold, hard sin to these Baptists.
    “Can you at least tell me where you’re living now since your momma tossed you out?”
    “Momma didn’t toss me out,” Milly said. “I left because I was tired of all her shit. All she does is watch
The View
and sell her essential oils to her dumb friends. I moved in with Daddy.”
    “I thought you hated your daddy.”
    “When I was dating Joshua, me and Daddy butted heads,” Millysaid. “He couldn’t wrap his thick redneck head around the fact that his little blonde angel was going with a black boy. You know what he called him?”
    “I do.”
    “But now that me and Joshua aren’t together no more, he’s not so damn pissed-off,” she said. “He takes out his shit on his new girlfriend.”
    “Did you tell him what you’re doing?” Nikki said. “This top secret writing project, filling up those little journals with your book.”
    “It’s not my story.”
    “I know.”
    “And I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “Not until things come together.”
    “And you blow the fucking roof off Jericho, Mississippi?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Why do you need this woman to help you?”
    “This isn’t the kind of thing to whisper,” Milly said. “This is something that’s gotta be told right. She’ll know what to do. She knows people. How to tell the story in the right way. I mean, do you start at the end or go back before it all happened?”
    “He was cleaning his gun,” Nikki said. “Right? That part is true.”
    “We all tell ourselves lies,” Milly said, reaching down and touching little Jon-Jon’s face. “It’s what gets us through thenight.”

4
    T here were times when Lillie Virgil wasn’t so sure she wanted to be sheriff. She’d spent Saturday morning hosing down the cell where D. J. Norwood had pissed himself, that turd not flushing quickly enough through the justice system and out of her jail. After, she hadn’t even had a chance to return a few calls and grab some breakfast when the local high school coach wanted to have a sit-down. Last night, Reggie Caruthers pulled over one of his former players hotboxing around the Square with a baggie full of pills, enough weed to choke Matthew McConaughey, and a loaded pistol on the dashboard.
    “He’s just a fine boy who made a