"William Theodore Wonka!"
"Look, Dawn, I can explain, just as soon as we get inside," Will declares, looking around paranoidly. For what? Witnesses?
He grabs my hand and begins pulling me across the sand.
"Will! You will explain yourself right now," I demand, wrenching my hand away from him.
He looks around anxiously even though there's no one here. It's early in the morning, we're on a secluded part of private beach, and no one knows we're here. I don't even think Will told our family where we went. The likelihood of someone seeing us is very low, but the way Will's acting is scaring me. My knee-jerk reaction to his relation of information was that it couldn't be true. Whatever the circumstances, Will didn't kill anyone. Now...I'm not so sure. He's acting suspicious.
Will sighs before taking both of my hands this time and pausing to look me in the eyes. "Dawn, you deserve the truth. You deserve so much more than I have given you, but now is not the time to play mule versus mule. If you come inside with me right now without causing a fuss, I will explain anything you want me to with full candor. I promise you that on my name as a chocolatier and your husband just...please come inside with me."
I open my mouth to respond with indignation, and he must have seen it on my face because he lets go of one of my hands and puts a finger against my lips.
"Don't respond. Don't argue. Don't say anything. Just..." He lets go of me completely and steps back with his hands up. "Just follow me inside as quickly and quietly as possible. Please."
This isn't like him. He's never ordered me around like this. I want to protest, but something in his eyes makes me hesitate. He doesn't necessarily look guilty, just alert and incessant. The way his head is tilted insinuates he's waiting for an answer. With Will, I know the answer can always be a 'no,' he'd never force my hand. I'm just not entirely sure what that 'no' would mean; leaving him to find other people on other parts of the beach or leaving in the glass elevator, I suppose, but I can't do that to him. Whatever he did, we'll figure it out together.
So I nod.
And I let him lead me into the house at a brisk trot.
"Ok, now get your things together," Will says, putting my jacket around my shoulders and brushing the sand off with butterfly soft flicks of his hands. "We have to go."
"What? So now you want to go home?" I back out of his reach. He promised me answers as soon as we got into the house and now he wants to rush back home.
Will runs up the stairs leaving me to trail after him yet again. He immediately goes to the suitcases, repacking what we took out like a madman.
"Will!" I shout. He finally stops and straightens to look at me. "I agree that we have to go home. But before we do that, you have to tell me everything. If not for the fact that I am your wife, so we have a story in place when I'm questioned because I will be questioned. You aren't alone in this anymore. You have a family. And your actions affect all of us. So tell me, are you going to explain yourself right now or am I going to call the coppers?"
I reach for my phone on the dresser threateningly, and Will closes the space between us in record time. He puts his hand on top of mine and pushes it back down.
"I didn't say we had to go home, did I?" He chuckles awkwardly, trying to bring some levity to the situation, but it doesn't work. And what does he mean by that? Was he planning on just going on the run with me? Did he actually kill someone? If so, who was it? The logical answer would be Nigel. The call came the day after Will "dealt" with the tosser. But the look in his eyes when he told me Nigel was still alive was so honest, I have a hard time believing it was anything but.
I don't laugh, only stare at him with a deadpan expression.
"Ok, ok." Will tightens his grip on my fingers which are still locked around my phone. "Put it down and come sit with me."
I let go of the phone, but I don't go sit down. I fold my arms and watch as he walks to the bed with a stiff gait and sits down carefully.
I can barely wait for him to sit down before exploding, "If not home, just where were we going to go?"
"Well, home eventually. But to check on a few things before that." Will clasps his hands and lets them hang loosely between his knees while avoiding my eyes.
"Check on what?" I ask, tone steely.
Will finally meets my eyes. "The body."
Nope.
I clench my jaw and spin on my heel to spring down the stairs, leaving Will in the bedroom.
He didn't kill anyone. There is no body. Will wouldn't do that. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He didn't kill anyone.
"I didn't kill anyone," Will echoes my thoughts. "But there is a body."
I'm done with his half-answers. He needs to talk straight. I hear our suitcases pounding on the stairs after Will as he drags them down behind him. I breeze through the halls and past the kitchen, to the door closest to the glass elevator. I throw open the door and run around the corner of the house to the glass elevator with Will hot on my heels.
"And just where do you think you're you going?" Will asks.
I spin around after jamming my finger into the open door button. "To the body. Come on then. Show me this body you're so set on 'checking.'"
Will drops the bags and takes my face in his hands. "I didn't mean I wanted you to check on the body. You can stay in the elevator, I just need to make sure it's still where I left it."
That sounds an awful lot like he killed someone. He isn't doing much to help his case with me. Anger overwhelms any other emotions like unease or trepidation. "So you're willing to cut our honeymoon at one night in order to go look at a dead body, but you don't want me joining you! Whyever not? It's the most romantic thing in the world, that! If you're going to see a body, then I'm coming too."
Will tilts his head with an unenthused, sardonic stare. "Do you really believe that's a good idea?"
"I don't even believe there is a body," I spit, stepping back into the elevator out of his reach.
There can't be a body. I refuse to believe it.
Will stares at me agape, letting his hands fall to his sides. "Ok, then. Let's go to the body."
"Ok." I step back and let him enter with our bags.
He puts them inside and comes in himself before hesitating. He looks at me with a guilty expression. "We probably won't be back here for a while. Did you want anything else?"
He gestures faintly at our bags to show that's all we have right now. I grind my teeth. "No. Now take me to this body and maybe on the way you'll explain how it became dead?"
"I didn't kill him," Will responds quickly on reflex.
"Yeah, I've got that, but you don't go to all this trouble when someone dies on their own."
Will flinches at my cutting tone. He's never heard me speak like this, it's a remnant of my life before living in the factory. You had to stand up for yourself and survive. Sometimes that takes a sharp tongue, and I've never been very good at reigning mine in even though I try to be gentle with Will.
"Fair enough." He closes the doors and takes out his magenta tablet. Instead of plugging in an address or coordinates, he pulls up a map and slides his finger across the screen until he finds whatever location he's looking for. That's interesting. He knows it by proxy, but he doesn't know it's specific address.
I slide down and Will sits down beside me tentatively as if he's afraid I'll lash out at him. I fold my arms and look down at the ground as it grows smaller and begins to whiz by.
"I can't believe I'm asking this, but are you going to tell me who's body we're going to see this fine morning?" I ask pleasantly, folding my hands in my lap in an overly casual gesture as if I check on dead bodies everyday.
Will rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. "About that...it's...your father."
My head snaps up to look at him. "My father?!"
"It was an accident! Well...not really...but I didn't do it!" Will defends, holding his hands up, palms out.
I'm not sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I hate him. On the other, he's my father. I'm definitely leading toward not caring, but nontheless, tears spring to my eyes.
"Wh...what...what happened?" I sputter as I try to wipe tears away.
He wraps an arm around my shoulders. "I'm so sorry, Dawn. It was dark, I didn't see the man in the alley until it was too late."
"What. Happened." I harden my gaze.
Will swallows and nods. "After you left the street that night, we fought more. We fought until we were half-conscious and he was limping. I almost killed him. But he kept saying your name, and...I couldn't do it. So I was going to take him into town, break a storefront window, and throw him in for the police to pick up. As we were walking along, we crossed an alley. I don't know what the man's problem was, but there was someone hiding in the dark and he had a gun and he shot it and...I buried the body."
That's...not what I expected him to say. So it was some random man in an alleyway that killed my father and my husband who buried him. Just a random man. Who would have thought he'd go like that? I always believed he'd bring about his own demise, and in a way, I guess he did. He went to the factory on his own and started the fight with Will on his own. It was just fate that finished him off.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but why didn't that man shoot you?" Fate could have as easily taken Will as well. My heart starts beating faster at the possibility that I could have lost him, and I press into his shoulder.
He frowns. "I don't know. He wasn't right in the head. I don't even know why he shot Oscar in the first place. And after, he ran off in the other direction. I couldn't do anything to save Oscar. Not that I particularly wanted to, of course."
He titters that goofy laugh before seeing the look in my eyes and cutting himself off and looking away. We're both quiet for a moment.
"Where is his body?" I ask quietly.
"The top of a hill," Will responds just as quietly. "It's nice. There's a tree."
I nod, blinking tears out of my eyes. "That's good." I wipe my nose and keep nodding. "That's good."
"Of course, now I don't know were the body is. If the manslaughter charges are for him, then they've probably dug up the body and taken it somewhere." Will picks at his trousers absentmindedly.
That's a fair point. But who else would the manslaughter charges be for? I guess we'll just have to see when we get there. I check on our progress below. Before there were buildings and towns below us, now they've started to spread out and I can see London in the distance. Instead of going home though, Will steers us to the left some where I see a patch of brilliant green.
We set down on the hill which is just as Will described. Simple. Pretty. The tree is nice and there're wildflowers spattered about in the summer grass. It's almost too nice for my father. He was dirty and rotten. A wet sewer might be more fitting for him. This hill seems like the type of place a beautiful girl would be lain, just asleep, waiting for her prince to come wake her with a kiss.
This isn't a fairytale though. There's no prince. There's no princess. We aren't here to wake my father, but even if we were, we wouldn't be able to. He's gone. I could see the open wound in the earth even before the elevator touched down. The dirt had been strewn carelessly around the hole and I can see that Will didn't bother digging deeper than three feet in the first place. I'd fault him for making it easier for whomever found the body, but I know he was ready to drop with exhaustion when he dug it.
We step out of the elevator together and go to stand at the edge of the empty grave. Looking down without speaking, we take it all in. Someone found the body. Someone took the body. Someone was able to connect Will to the crime. Who?
"Did you notice anyone following you?" I ask in a hushed tone as if I'm reserving some respect for the decidedly missing dead.
Even though I don't specify when, I don't have to. I can tell Will was thinking the same things I was when he answers, "No, I didn't see anyone. I was careful and the streets were empty. I even put my coat over him when I dragged him out of the city. If someone saw me, I sure as hell didn't see them."
I shrug. "You were just beaten to a pulp and half-conscious."
"That's true," Will allows.
"Someone could have just stumbled upon the body though," I say, trying to make him feel better. It's a perfectly viable explanation. Their fight happened months ago and after the winter frost melted, maybe someone curious was just on a picnic and saw the patch of newly growing grass.
He shakes his head. "If it was some random person, they wouldn't have been able to connect me to the burial. This dirt is fresh. I'm fairly sure they just dug him up yesterday, and I know for a fact that even if you rush it, you don't get forensic confirmation that fast. It wasn't DNA evidence that connected me."
"Well, why did they wait this long then?" I ask. "If it was someone who witnessed you dragging him out and burying him, then why didn't they say something before?"
"I don't know, but I do know that I never told anyone, so the only way someone would have known it was me is if they saw it happen."
I force my gaze away from the gaping maw of dirt and turn to meet his eyes. "The question now is, how much did they see?"
Will drags his hands over his face. "Obviously not the whole thing because I didn't kill him. If someone heard the gunshot and ran out to look, all they would have seen was me dragging a dead body along the street. And if they followed, they would have seen me very suspiciously digging a shallow grave."
He wrings worried hands and checks behind us in the direction of the city. There's no one. I already looked. But Will also thought there was no one before and...
"I thought I was so careful!" he shouts, raking hands through his hair. "This was never supposed to happen!"
Well, no one ever means for the dead body they buried to be found. I put gentle hands on his face. "It's going to be ok. We'll find some way to prove your innocence. Once we find out who saw you, we'll talk to them and have them testify exactly what they saw. No one can prove that you killed him because you didn't."
My heart is numb; I don't really care that my father is dead anymore. I just can't lose Will. I'll do anything to protect him and keep him out of prison. We need to figure this out.
"How are we going to do that? How are we going to find the person who tipped the cops off? And how are we going to do it before they bring me in?" he shouts, whipping frustrated hands down.
Wind whips my hair about my face, and I brush it back as the hairs on the back of my neck begin to stand up. I get a tingly feel down my spine paired with an uneasy feeling in my stomach. Something's not right about this. It feels as if we're missing something important.
"Wait..." I mutter. There's something on top of the dirt pile on the other side of the grave. I leave Will's side and slowly make my way over to get a closer look. Small white pieces of something decorate the uniformly colored clods of dirt.
"What is it?" Will stands a little straighter from the other side, trying to see what I'm looking at.
I crouch down and pick up a few of the little pieces. I stare down at them in the centre of my palm. I was wrong before, they aren't white. They're a warm tan color. They're peanut shells.
I close my hand around the little pieces and look up into the distance, trying to work it out in my head. "Will, we've been missing one very important detail here."
We've been so focused on who had seen the burial and who knew where to show the police to find the body and who had pointed them in Will's direction as the culprit. While that's a question I very much want the answer to, maybe it's not the question we should be asking.
Will was worried about the police bringing him in, but that's not a real problem for us. They knew what door to knock on, but they don't know what man to arrest. They don't know what Will looks like.
Until a couple months ago, this never would have happened. Until a couple months ago, Will never had a reason to leave the factory. Until a couple months ago, Will didn't leave the factory.
"We've been focused on who the person that saw you was." I take a deep breath and show him the peanut shells in my hand. "But I think the bigger question is, how did they know who you were?"
Thank you so much for reading this chapter and all the others. I think this story has 113k reads and that's insane!! Thank you so much for voting and commenting!
xoxo, Tilly