I feel my shoulders cave. What if Sheriff’s right? What if it’s all in my head?
“Get some sleep, Clay,” he says as he leads me out the door. “We’ve all had nightmares from what happened out there. Trust me, no one wanted to believe your dad more than I did, but it’s time to move on. It’s for your own good. And you heard the man. Unless you’re going to join the council, you need to stay away from the Preservation Society, and like it or not, that includes Ali Miller now.”
In a daze, I walk back to my truck.
“And Clay?”
I turn, waiting for some last bit of wisdom, something that will help me make sense of all this.
“Who do you think’s going to win the big game tomorrow? I’ve got my money on Midland, but without you playing quarterback, it’s going to be a close call.”
I know he’s probably just trying to lighten the mood, take my mind off all this, but it feels like I just got sucker punched. Who gives a shit about football at a time like this? Without another word, I get back in my truck and tear out of there.
Gripping the steering wheel, I clamp down all the hurt and anger raging inside of me. I can’t go off the rails. Not now.
I know I should go home, pull myself together, but I find myself going to the one place I know I shouldn’t.
9
GRABBING THE flashlight from my glove box, I sneak around the side of the Preservation Society to the wall of box hedges sealing off the back. I dive through the hedges, the prickly branches scratching the hell out of my arms.
As I make my way across the lawn to the French doors lining the back of the main house, I can’t help thinking about the last time we were here as a family—Fourth of July picnic, the summer before Dad’s death. I don’t even have to close my eyes to see it … to smell it … the honeysuckle, the fresh-cut grass, and gunpowder from the cannon they kept shooting off. Noodle’s standing on Dad’s toes as he twirls her around to the music, Mom’s playing Bunco with her friends from church, and Jess … well, Jess still looks normal. And there I am, throwing the damn football, watching Tyler steal Ali right from under my nose. I wish I could go back in time. I’d do everything so different.
As I jiggle the door handle, trying to force it open, I realize the magnitude of what I’m about to do. I’m about to cross a very big line.
If I’m caught breaking in here, I could go to jail. I wouldn’t be able to finish the harvest and Noodle certainly wouldn’t be going to that private school.
But if there’s something here, if they have a secret room like Dad said, I could blow the lid off this place. Clear his name.
Taking off my cap, I drag my hand through my hair. “This is crazy,” I whisper.
I turn to go back the way I came, but I can’t do it, I can’t walk away from this. Yeah, Dad acted crazy at the end, but he was a reasonable man. A fair man. I have to believe there’s more to it than him just going insane. ’Cause if it happened to him, it can happen to me, and I’m not about to go down that road without a fight.
“Screw it,” I say as I wrap my cap around my fist and jab it into the pane of glass closest to the latch. I brace myself for an alarm to start blaring, or attack dogs to come chasing me back through the hedge, something to make me stop, slap some sense into me, but all I hear are the frogs singing over at Harmon Lake.
My adrenaline’s so high I could lift the door right off the hinges, but I don’t need to. I unlock it and it swings wide open without a hitch. Almost like it’s inviting me in.
I take in a jittery breath as I step over the threshold.
My footsteps echo off the gleaming hardwood floors, occasionally muffled by one of the rugs as I walk down a long corridor lined with old photographs and glass cases full of “artifacts”—just a bunch of rusted-out farming equipment and ledgers, but this crap is like the holy grail for people in this town.
It didn’t used to be this fancy, but ever since Mrs. Neely took over the decorating committee you’d think this was the White House, not the former town hall for a bunch of roughneck immigrants.
The front rooms are immaculate. So much so I’m afraid to touch anything. Can’t imagine there being a secret room up here. I decide to head downstairs, where the jail used to be. They keep it set up just like it was in the old days.