In the Waning Light Page 9

  She frowned, trying to read his eyes hidden by the shadow of his brim.

  “I heard you’re doing a book. On Sherry,” he added.

  “Ah,” she said. “News travels fast.”

  “Not every day we get news like that in Shelter Bay. Here, let me help you with that lock.” He took the keys from her and went up to the gate. He inserted the key, jiggled it a bit, then turned it firmly, his fingers stronger than hers. The padlock popped open. He dragged the chain through the gate, creaked it open wide and held the keys out to her.

  Her cheeks went hot as she took them from him. “You make me feel like a girl.”

  He regarded her in silence, an inscrutable look entering his features. Her smile slowly faded. “What is it, Dave?”

  “It’s not a wise idea. The book.”

  “Why not?”

  He gave a snort, glanced at the forest. “That old business cut the town apart. Messed up my dad. My mom … All of us.” He turned and his eyes bored suddenly into her. “What’s the point? Ty Mack’s dead. Your dad—mom—are gone.”

  Her jaw tightened. She held his gaze in silence for several beats. Water dripped off the brim of his hat. Wind sighed again through the trees and brushed over her face, like a touch. A warning. Again, she felt Sherry.

  “I need the truth, Dave.” And it struck her right there. This really was more now. Not just a retelling. Not just interviews. Her mother had believed something deeper had happened, that her father might have been set up. And every minute more that Meg was in town, the sense that there was something urgent locked inside her memories intensified. Whatever it was had been festering in her head for twenty-two years, and she was going to flush it out. One way or another. She was going to do this. And it was not just for Jonah.

  “Take my advice.” Dave opened his car door. “Let it be.” He paused. “And don’t you go bugging my dad about an interview, d’you hear? He retired five years ago. His heart is not good. We’d like to keep him around a while longer. He’s the grandfather to my kids now.”

  “I’m writing this story, Dave. Which means I do need to interview him.”

  “He won’t do it.”

  “Why don’t you let him tell me that himself.”

  Silence. The sound of traffic on the distant coast road reached them. And Meg felt the divide opening between them.

  “Be careful, Meg.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He held her gaze a second longer. “If those vandals come back, a woman out here on her own …” He shook his head. “You let me know, okay?”

  She watched him get into his cruiser and drive off. Her heart thumped in her ears, Blake’s words from this morning sifting into her mind.

  … it’s not going to go down well, your being here, doing this? No one is going to welcome it. Or you, because of it.

  Geoff stepped onto the deck that looked out over the sea. Far below their stilted beach house a couple jogged along the sand with two dogs. Breakers rolled in white lines to the shore. The SoCal air was soft and rounded. He dug his hand deep into his pockets. He’d always known this thing might rise up to haunt him again. It woke him in a sweat at night. The dreams had been getting worse. And now? Now this. He inhaled and blew out a heavy breath of air.

  What he craved with every molecule of his being was to come clean before his marriage, his new start in life. But in doing so he could lose everything. The irony was not lost on him.

  Between a rock and a hard place. The saying was so overused it felt trite. Between the devil and the deep blue sea. Between Scylla and Charybdis …

  “Everything okay?”

  He tensed, spun around. Nate stood in the doorway, drafting pen in hand, sleeves rolled up. His smiled faded as he saw something in Geoff’s face.

  “What did your brother want?” Nate said.

  “Just to catch up. I … I’m going home, I think.”

  Nate regarded him steadily for several beats, then said, “I could do with a break. Some wine? Out here on the deck?”

  Geoff snorted and forced a smile. “Be great.”

  They sat side by side, overlooking the ocean, glasses of chilled Sonoma pinot grigio and a plate of organic cheeses between them. The light was odd. Coppery-purple, like before a storm. Streaks of rain formed along the horizon. They could see the cloud band moving toward land. Wind began to stir, but it was warm.

  Geoff loved this place. He’d found freedom here for the first time in his life. He could be himself. But was he truly free if he couldn’t take who he was, and go anywhere? Even home? Back into the past? Was he truly free as long as this thing continued to fester black inside him? He sipped his wine, thinking of something he’d read about criminals, how sometimes they just confessed because it was so cathartic. They needed to tell someone what they’d done. It was probably the idea behind the Catholic confessional. It cleared things off the chest so that believers could begin afresh again.

  But how could he even begin to amend his past, come clean, without the risk of losing Nate? Without totally destroying someone else he’d once cared deeply for? That’s why he’d run away in the first place. Avoidance.

  And now this call, this tentacle from the past, sticky and tricky, and, yes, dangerous. Reaching into his life down here.

  “So?” Nate said, finally. “Why go home now?”

  He met Nate’s eyes. They were a soft brown, turned down slightly at the corners, giving him a sad, but kind look. When he smiled, they turned liquid and mischievous. Gentle, was his Nate. Yet rock solid. Geoff’s stomach churned in an oily roil of conflict.

  “I’d like to tell my brother about us, about the wedding. In person. Invite him and Noah.”

  Nate’s brows crooked up.

  “I want to come out in my own hometown. I’m sick of goddamn half-truths, old deceptions. I … I just need to do this. Sort some things out in my life … before the wedding.”

  Find a way to wipe clean the slate so I can move peaceably, rightfully, into my new life …

  Nate’s eyes held his. “You sure?”

  Geoff looked out over the ocean. “Yeah. I’m sure.” He blew out another chestful of air. “Besides, the last time I saw Blake and Noah was for my dad’s funeral. Noah was just six years old. And I was only there for the day—my nephew probably doesn’t even know his uncle exists. I feel kind of shit about that, about Blake trying to run that decaying old marina, a single dad.”

  Nate nodded, but concern darkened his features. He sipped his wine in silence for a few moments. The distant susurration of the ocean carried up to them on the salt breeze. Wind suddenly ducked, swirled, and darted over the dune scrub, making it ruffle as if stroked by an invisible hand. The wind chimes on the deck chinkled. Geoff felt an eerie sense of sentience, of time, snaking in, shifting a paradigm, ever so slightly.

  “Want me to come with you?”

  He smiled. “Thank you but, no. I’ll be fine. Honest. I need to do this on my own. I need to pave the way for my family to meet you.”

  Another intense silence as Nate held his eyes. In them Geoff saw a flicker of worry. Fear even. He broke the gaze, took a deep sip of wine, the sick oiliness in his stomach slithering toward his bowels—he could lose this. Nate. All of it. He could lose it by doing nothing, just sitting here waiting to see if Meg’s memory returned, or if she managed to dig up the truth with the help of his brother’s confession.

  Going back to Shelter Bay he might stand a chance … he could try and stop Meg. He could try and convince Blake to keep his silence. Or, if shit hit the fan … he had no fucking idea what he’d do if shit hit the fan.

  Meg entered Sherry’s old room. Cobwebs wafted with currents of air made by her movement. Irene had kept this room permanently locked after she’d moved in to care for Meg, and stepping into it now was stepping back two decades in time. Sherry had been into purple. Purple and green walls. Lavender bedding. Jon Bon Jovi poster on the wall, pictures of track stars. Her Doc Martens still waited for h
er in the corner, never again to move with the rhythm of Sherry’s feet.

  Meg ran her finger softly along the rows of old CD cases. Thick with dust.

  She stilled at the bed.

  This bed where she’d found her mother on May first, twenty-one years ago—spring, supposedly a time for new beginnings. Tara had been on her back, mouth agape, a slime of yellowish vomit dribbling out of the corner of her mouth. Meg’s stomach folded at the memory. She glanced at the bedside table where the pill container had been left. Empty.

  Her mother had chosen this place, of all places, to take her life, while Meg, fourteen, had slept down the hall.

  Emotion clawed at her throat. But her mouth tightened. She refused to give in to it. Refused to be the “victim” that Blake had called her. She was never a victim. He was full of crap. For a moment back at Irene’s care facility she’d conceded the self-indulgence part—she’d seen where he might have drawn the analogy. But her so-called self-indulgence, her cutting everyone out of her life, had been an act of survival, not the act of a victim. It took courage. Not cowardice.

  She yanked back the drapes. Dust motes exploded into the air and floated softly down around her. She sneezed and opened the window. Cold, fresh air flowed in.

  Meg lowered herself onto the edge of Sherry’s bed and, hunkered in her damp coat, her mother’s journal in hand, she stared at the framed photograph of Sherry and Tommy Kessinger, taken on his dad’s yacht. Eighteen and nineteen they’d been that summer, on the cusp of the rest of their lives. Laughing. Golden. Sun browned and lean limbed and filled with zest and promise.

  Inhaling deeply, she pushed back a tangle of damp-frizzed hair, and opened the journal to the last entry. Surprise blossomed through her—it had been written April 30, the day before her mother committed suicide.

  It’s getting dark now, and from the back window I can already see the SUV parked at the end of the road again, beneath the broken streetlight, behind the cherry tree. I’m sure it’s the same one. But it’s hard to be sure in the dark and shadows. I called Ike Kovacs earlier. He said to lock the doors—he’d come around in the morning. I told him I thought I’d heard someone trying to break into the house three nights ago. He said it was probably a raccoon or a bear. They were really active right now. He said I needed to relax, that the medication I was taking for stress might be unsettling me. He was being kind. He surely meant to say paranoid, irrational, and I do feel overly anxious, my heart palpitates. My mouth is perpetually dry. But when I spoke to Dr. Armano about it, he said I was not sleeping enough. He gave me sleeping pills for the insomnia. Now I have pills for this and pills for that, and what next? The only thing that is going to put this right for me is to find the truth. Maybe then, finally, I will sleep.

  I worry that I’m not giving Meg enough attention through all this, but I have only so much energy, and I want her to live her life. I’d love to talk to her about this, but she’s too young. She took it so hard when Jack was arrested. Even harder when he was denied bail. And we still have his trial to face come December, which is why I cannot rest. I need answers before then. Whatever I can find might help ameliorate his sentence.

  Oh, my dear Jack, I only wish you would talk to me and tell me who tipped you off to Ty’s location, tell me who and what riled you so, and drove you to do this. Yes, I know that you bear the blame as yours, and yours only. And yes, possibly that person who told you where Ty Mack was hiding meant no harm, and yes, I know the knowledge won’t get you out, but it could help lead me to the missing link, to a bad, bad man who still walks free, who could kill again. Who could rape and strangle another Shelter Bay daughter, while you live out your days in a small, square cell with no sight of the sun …

  That was it. Where it ended. Her mother’s last words, as if her pen had just run out of ink. What did this mean?

  A bad, bad man who still walks free, who could kill again …

  Had her mom come to believe Tyson Mack was actually innocent? And Sherry’s killer was still out there? Had Tara Brogan closed her diary on this last entry, and locked the journal into her safe, replacing the books in front of it, then gone to bed? And what of the next day? What led to her overdose the next night? Because this sure as hell did not sound like a woman ready to give up and take her own life. It sounded like a wife and mother in love, on a fierce mission to help her husband. And she’d had a ticking-clock deadline to the December trial date.

  Meg lurched to her feet, paced the room. It didn’t make sense.

  She held the journal tight against her chest. Her mother had not forgotten her—not in the way Meg had always believed. She’d been fighting for Sherry, Dad, the family. Truth.

  She’d been doing the things I would have done, if I were in her position. Fighting for answers, not giving up …

  And what of this SUV down the road, watching the house? Her mother’s fears about someone trying to get in? Ike Kovacs brushing it off.

  Her mother was not who Meg had believed her to be at all. Emotion stung Meg’s eyes. She breathed in deep, controlling it. But in her gut a hot coal began to burn, a coalescing of will to get to the bottom of this. Shit. She was going to do this story come hell or high water now. She owed it to her mother. To Sherry. Dad.

  Herself.

  Jaw tight, she marched downstairs and out to her truck. She got her laptop, and she carried the boxes inside. She put on more lamps, wiped the dust layer off the dining room table, and started laying the files out across the table between making calls to contractors about power washing and repainting the house walls, and replacing broken windows.

  She was going to take this diary, all these files, transcripts, crime scene photos, and go through it with a fine-tooth comb, retracing every inch of her mother’s steps.

  And Dave Kovacs be damned. His father was right at the top of her list—she was going to grill retired Sheriff Ike Kovacs, gimpy heart or not.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Noah, would you like to tell your dad what you did yesterday?” said Ellie Sweet with a touchy-feely tone that made Blake’s skin itch. She’d phoned and asked him and Noah to meet with her after school today. Blake was now seated beside Noah on a kid-size chair at a blue table in Miss Sweet’s happy, shiny, yellow-walled classroom. He looked down at his pale son, his little head bent forward. He’d driven Noah to school himself this morning, and arrived to pick him up. Ellie Sweet eyed his kid over the top of her fashionable plastic-framed specs, and Blake felt himself siding instantly with his boy no matter what he might have done.

  “It’s okay, champ,” he said gently. “You can tell me.”

  Noah glowered at some groove in the table.

  “Noah?” he coaxed.

  Silence.

  A spark of irritation spat through Blake.

  “You hit Alex with your backpack, didn’t you, Noah?” Miss Sweet said.

  Noah’s mouth tightened. His knee started to jiggle.

  “Is that right, champ?”

  He cast a sideways glance up at his dad.

  “Why’d you do that?” Blake said.

  His son returned his attention to the table groove. His knee jiggled faster.

  “I tell you what, how about you go wait in the truck for me. I want a word with Miss Sweet, alone.”

  Noah looked up sharply, a range of expressions chasing through his face, from fear, to anger, then hope. Blake’s chest crunched.

  “Go on,” he said gently. “Here are the keys.”

  He waited until the door had closed behind his son.

  Blake said to Miss Sweet, “There must have been some provocation. Noah is not an aggressive child. He’s the opposite. Empathetic to a fault. So much so that I worry about him.”

  “No matter the reason, we cannot condone violence of any kind, Mr. Sutton. Our students need to understand that there are better avenues to resolve conflict—discussion. Arbitration. And this is not the first time we’ve had one of his classmates report a physical outburst from Noah.”

  “D
id you see what happened?”

  “No, but—”

  “So, some kid snitches on him, and you take it at face value? Did you happen to notice that he also has a cut on his head? Maybe this boy hit him first. Why aren’t we talking to this Alex kid and his parents, too?”

  “Her.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Alex is a girl.”

  “He hit a girl?”

  “You need to speak with your son, Mr. Sutton. I’ve already spoken to Ryan and Peggy Millar, Alex’s parents. Possibly she did provoke Noah, but violence as a response is not tenable. We will not stand for another incident like this.” She paused. “It’ll be the principal you’re speaking to next time. And the consequences … well, let’s not go there, shall we.” She smiled. Sweetly.

  Blake cleared his throat, feeling a sudden and surprising affinity with his own father, and the struggles Bull had with Geoff. Noah was sensitive, artistic, like his uncle. Like his mom. He also harbored the dark and secret places of an imaginative introvert. “Look, he’s struggling with the loss of his mother—”

  “I know.” Ellie Sweet bowed her head slightly. “We understand. We understand that both of you might be having a rough time coping. But it’s been a full year since Noah lost his mother, Mr. Sutton.” She hesitated, color rising prettily into her cheeks. “Have you and Noah perhaps considered talking to a therapist? We could provide you with some recommendations that—”

  Blake surged abruptly to his feet. “I’ll speak to him. I’ll handle it. Thank you.”

  He shoved out of the school doors, hot with adrenaline and burning with emotions he had yet to articulate. A fine Pacific Northwest rain kissed his face as he crossed the parking lot. He saw Noah’s little shape in the passenger seat of his truck, and he clenched his jaw, turning all the fire inside him toward thoughts of Ryan Millar. He’d never liked that guy, not even in elementary school—never trusted him. Not one bit. He’d clobbered Ryan once or twice in his life, and had been clobbered back twice as hard.

  Oh, the vagaries of a small-town life, he thought as he reached his vehicle. The old patterns of behavior, the family grudges just kept cycling back.