The residents of Wakarusa, Indiana, could spin gossip faster than a spider spins its web. Each time one of their own did something they shouldn’t—when Abby Schmuckers got caught shoplifting lipstick from the dime store; when the Becker kid dropped out of the 4-H volunteer club; when Jonah Schneider fell asleep and snored in church—the Wakarusa gossip chain would flap their jaws, chewing the tidbit over so thoroughly that by the time they’d finally spat it out again, the Truth was misshapen and unrecognizable, warped into the Story. And because the people of Wakarusa were churchgoing, law-abiding, capital-G God-fearing people, the Story was always adorned with pearls of sweetness to coat its sharp edges: Bless her heart, but…I’ll be praying for them, because did you hear…? Lord have mercy on their souls.
Even before everything happened, Krissy Jacobs had understood the power of Wakarusa’s rumor mill, which is why she so stringently avoided its teeth. She went to church every Sunday, she dressed her daughter in pink and her son in blue, she wore the right shoes and made sure her husband had the right ties. It wasn’t because she believed any of it mattered; it was simply because she had so much to lose. This life—her family, their farm and house—wasn’t what she’d wanted, wasn’t even close, but it was more than she’d ever had before, and so she held on to it, hands tight.
On the day it all slipped through her fingers, Krissy got up to the sound of her alarm at 5 a.m. like she had every other morning in her life as a farmer’s wife. She slid out of bed quietly so as not to disturb Billy, even though the alarm was for him too. Then she stepped out of the darkened bedroom and made her way down the old wooden staircase to the kitchen.
She spotted the writing on the wall before she even made it down the last step, her breath kicking out of her lungs. Scrawled in blood-red oversized letters read three horrific messages: FUCK YOUR FAMILY…THAT BITCH IS GONE…THIS IS WHAT YOU GET.
Krissy’s heart pounded hard and painful against her ribs. Her first thought—bizarre and ill-fitting—was that the words looked so…intrusive here, on her old but pristine white walls, in the falling-apart-but-still-beautiful kitchen. Those nasty, violent words didn’t belong in quaint Wakarusa, Indiana, full of good, pious people. When the town got wind of this, Krissy knew, those words would taint every member of her family for the rest of their lives.
She stood on the bottom step, shaking. Though the sun was not yet up and her mind was foggy, it was clear these words were the advent of something terrible. THAT BITCH IS GONE, Krissy read again, and this time shame colored her panic. Here something was horribly, horribly wrong, and all she’d been able to think was What will the neighbors say?
