With a trembling hand, Krissy opened the front door of her house, rushed inside, and clicked it shut behind her. She had the feeling of being followed, hunted, but she knew it was only the truth that was hounding her now.
Despite Jodie’s protestations, Krissy had met with Dave, but now that she had, she wasn’t so sure it had been a good idea. If everything Jace had told her in his letter had flipped Krissy’s world upside-down, Dave had exploded it wide open. She now understood just how much damage she’d done by keeping her secrets for all those years, understood how much pain and anger she’d inflicted.
She wanted—needed—to make it right.
She dumped her purse by the door and hurried to the kitchen, where they kept a pad of paper and pens. Krissy wished she could call Jace, but he’d still refused to give her his number, so she yanked out a chair and sat at the kitchen table to write to him instead. And yet, as she brought the pen to the page, she realized she didn’t know how to start, didn’t know what to say. For fifteen years, she’d ostracized her own son for a murder he didn’t commit. How could she say sorry for that in a letter? And beyond an apology, there was what she now had to explain, what she needed to tell him. It was all too much.
She inhaled a shaky breath and scribbled a short note instead:
Jace,
I’m sorry for everything. I’m going to make it right.
I just learned something about your father. He isn’t who you think he is.
I’m writing my number again below so you can call me—let’s meet up and I’ll explain everything.
I love you,
Mom
After she scrawled her cell number, she stood hastily and rummaged around their junk drawer in search of an envelope and stamp, but she couldn’t find any.
“Fuck!” she spat, slamming the drawer closed.
She strode to the table, grabbed the letter, and walked quickly back to the front door. She’d drive to Jodie’s and send it from there. She wanted to see her partner anyway, to talk through everything with her, to have someone help her decide what to do next. She slipped the letter into her purse where it stuck out like a white flag of surrender, and her chest wrenched at the sight of Jace’s name.
In fact, her chest was so tight she felt as though she were on the verge of a heart attack, but quickly recognized it for what it was. She was no stranger to the creeping hands of panic that could crawl up her neck and constrict her breathing. She needed her pills. She’d just get her pills and then she’d be gone.
Upstairs, she yanked open the bathroom cabinet and grabbed two bottles, one of Valium, one of sleeping pills. Jodie didn’t like it when Krissy relied too heavily on her medication, but she’d just have to deal with it today. Her hands were so unsteady it took her four tries to get past the child lock of the antianxiety meds, and when she did, she dumped two of the little white tablets into her palm, popped them into her mouth, and swallowed them with a handful of water from the sink.
As the tap ran, something made her start and she hastily turned it off. She thought she’d heard something—the click of a handle, the creak of a hinge. She stood still, her heart hammering as she craned her neck to listen. She stayed motionless for one, two, three long beats, but she didn’t hear anything else. The house was silent.
She met her own gaze in the mirror’s reflection and saw the toll her meeting with Dave had taken. Her face looked raw and pale, her eyes red from crying. And now, on top of all that, she was being paranoid. She splashed cold water on her face, patted it dry with a washcloth, then gripped the edges of the sink with white knuckles, forcing herself to steady her breath. And then, just as she was turning to leave, she heard it: another sound from deep in the house—footsteps.
Krissy froze, her eyes flicking to her bedside clock through the open doorway. The red numbers glowed 11:13 a.m., which meant that the person in her house couldn’t be Billy. He wasn’t due home from the convention for another hour at least. She didn’t move as she listened. She didn’t even breathe. But the old farmhouse had gone silent. Was she hearing things?
She went down the stairs fast. Hearing things or not, she wanted out of that house. At the door, she grabbed up her purse, dumped the pill bottles inside, and slung it over her shoulder, but when she reached inside for her keys, they weren’t in her purse’s side pocket. She stilled, frowning. She could have sworn she’d put them in there earlier. She rummaged around the bottom of her bag frantically, but still, she couldn’t find them, and that was when she heard a familiar voice behind her.
“Looking for these?”
A chill slid up Krissy’s spine. She spun around, her chest contracting with fear. “H-hi.” She’d been shooting for pleasantly surprised, but the word came out as a nervous stammer.
The man’s face, which had once looked so familiar to her, now looked like that of a stranger—anger was contorting it into something unrecognizable. Her eyes darted away from his, to her keys in his hand, then finally to the sitting room beyond, from where he’d clearly just emerged. In some dark part of her brain, Krissy registered that the sitting room was where they kept their guns, the one’s they’d had on display, unlocked, for years.
Krissy tried to smile, but it felt weak and wobbly. “What are you doing here?”
The man crossed the two steps that separated them and reached a hand behind him into the waistband of his pants. Krissy whirled around to open the door, but it was too late. From the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of a gun, felt the cold as it touched her temple. “You shouldn’t have lied to me,” he said, and then there was nothing but blinding white.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Margot, 2019
Staring down the barrel of her uncle’s rifle, Margot was seized by panic. It felt as if a firecracker had erupted in her chest and was shooting sparks throughout her bloodstream. The edges of her vision blurred and blackened and she couldn’t seem to get her lungs to take a breath.
“What do you want?” Luke snarled through gritted teeth.
“U-Uncle Luke?” Margot’s voice was weak and trembling. “Please. Put the gun down. It’s me. Margot. Your niece.” The only trouble was she had no idea if he was aiming a gun at her head now because he didn’t recognize her or because he did.
The terrifying possibility loomed in her mind that he’d somehow found her out, that she’d uncovered one too many of the things he’d been trying to hide. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that her uncle loved her, and yet, after everything she’d learned about him in the past twenty-four hours, she realized that she didn’t really know him at all. He’d kept his secrets from her for over two decades. She had no idea how far he’d go now in order to protect them.
“What are you doing here?” Luke snapped again. “What do you want?”
He hadn’t lowered the gun, not even an inch, and the look in his eyes sent a fresh shiver of panic through Margot. She wished for all the world that she hadn’t decided to dig into January’s case. She wished she knew nothing at all about her uncle’s connection to the little girl from across the street, wished she could unsee the photo of his face at her dance recital and the stack of programs locked away in his desk. If she’d simply come to Wakarusa and focused on helping her uncle instead of chasing answers to the twenty-five-year-old murder case, maybe she wouldn’t be here right now, on the wrong side of Luke’s gun.
Margot swallowed. “U-Uncle Luke?”