Lily paused in the doorway of the tack room, thinking about it. There would have been smoke, but at night, it wasn’t likely anyone would have noticed. She was thinking that, and trying to sort out the timing, when the fire might have been set, when she noticed the bundles of cash. They were lying on the old worktable. Five rubber-banded stacks, sitting there as if they belonged among the rest of the litter, a jar of saddle soap, a couple of brushes, some kind of antibiotic ointment in a tube.
Lily crossed the room to the table to be sure that’s what she was seeing. The windows above it needed washing; the light wasn’t the best, but she knew money when she saw it, and she knew this money was from the safe in the house. The very cash her dad had reported stolen—that the local cops were certain AJ had taken. But if he had, why had he left it here? In plain view? It made no sense—unless AJ wasn’t the one who had opened the safe. She’d never believed it, or at the very least, she hadn’t wanted to believe it. But even as her heart buoyed with relief, it fell in consternation. She picked up two of the bundles, holding one in each hand, studying them.
“Dad?” she called.
He came to the doorway. “C’mon. I’ve got the crowbar and a mallet if we have to bust the glass.”
Lily held up the two bundles of cash.
His eyes flared. “What the hell?”
“It’s the money from the safe, Dad. All five thousand.”
“Why would AJ leave it here?”
“He didn’t take it.”
“Then who did?”
Lily didn’t answer.
It was possibly a full minute before he took her meaning, but she saw it happen—the flash of pained comprehension in his eyes, followed by the darker shadow of his shame. Almost instantly, though, his mouth twisted; his expression hardened, a stubborn knot of denial. “C’mon, we don’t have time to talk about it now.”
Lily followed him from the barn, wordless, needing him to be all right, praying that he was, that his mental clarity of the moment would hold.
They took the Jeep. She drove, retracing the same route she’d driven before dawn. If she hadn’t seen the rain earlier, she wouldn’t have believed any had fallen. The road was dry; the sky soared overhead, high and blue, almost laughably innocent of any blemish. Coming up to Winona’s house, she said, “There was a light on earlier.”
Her dad looked past her, through the driver’s-side window. “There’s not now,” he answered.
Once they got to the clearing and made their way to the truck, it took him several minutes, working the pry bar, to get the truck door open, and then he did what she couldn’t have—he leaned into the cab, through both doors, front and back, shoving the charred debris around, hunting for evidence of the horror neither one had put into words.
“There’s nothing here.” He straightened. He was black to his forearms. Even his face, sheened with sweat, looked dusted with charcoal.
He should have worn gloves. They should have brought water. Lily’s thoughts distracted her from the plague of her anxiety that even now was shot through with a bone-lightening sense of reprieve. “What is it, rolled up back there?”
“A tarp. I found this under it.” He held the knife, an eight-inch chef’s knife, by the silver endcap, between his thumb and index finger.
Lily’s heart bucked against her ribs. It was one of a set, a Shun chef’s starter set she had bought for AJ a year ago. She’d had his initials, AJI, engraved on the bolster.
“You recognize it?” her dad asked.
“It’s AJ’s,” she said.
Her dad locked her gaze. “That girl was stabbed.”
“Yes,” Lily answered.
“Last I heard, they hadn’t found the murder weapon.”
“No.”
Her dad bent at the waist and laid the knife carefully on the ground between them.
“What should we do?” Lily asked when he straightened.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Should we call the police?”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“I want to know AJ is safe.”
Her dad shifted his gaze. “When they hear we found his truck, the condition it’s in, burned up with a knife inside it, you know it’ll just confirm what they already suspect.”
Lily hugged her arms around herself, looking through the trees at the lake. “Do you want to wash up? There are some rags in the Jeep.” Not waiting for his answer, she went to get them. When she came back, her dad was standing at the water’s edge.
He said, “You know that day when AJ almost drowned—you know that wasn’t your fault.”
“I shouldn’t have panicked.” Squatting, she dampened a rag, wrung it out, and handed it to him. He wiped his face and neck. Taking it from him when he was done, she rinsed it, wrung it out, and handed it back to him again. They repeated the routine two more times until he’d gotten all the grime he could wiped away. Still, they didn’t leave the shore but stood together, watching the water. That was when she told him about the dream and how when she’d wakened from it, she’d known to come here.
“This was the spot? Where you and AJ were when it happened?”
“Yes,” she said. “The boat came from over there.” She pointed to her right, east, she thought.
“Well, maybe you did panic,” her dad said, “but you recovered. You did what you had to do. You got hold of your boy and got him to land. You saved him. Anybody looking at it any other way is a fool.”
Did he mean Paul had been a fool to take AJ’s care out of her hands all those years ago?
“I didn’t speak up then,” he said, “but I should have. I should have,” he repeated, and his voice caught.
“Oh, Dad,” Lily said, and she set her hand on his back.
“Are you sure you want to go to the police station with me?” Lily looked at her dad over the roof of the Jeep.
He kept her glance.
She thought he knew the direction she was going in. “They assume the safe was broken into,” she said, “that it’s AJ who took the money. We can’t let them—”
“You think it was me, that I opened the safe and don’t remember. You think my mind is slipping.” He sounded resigned, and it was almost worse, hearing that, than the angry reaction Lily had been anticipating.
“I think you should see a doctor,” she said.
He lifted his hat and ran his hand over his head, before resettling it. “Yeah,” he said. “We can talk about it, I guess.”
“There are drugs nowadays, Dad, that can help. There are things you can do with diet and exercise.”
“I’m not losing my goddamn mind.” He glared at her, but he was trembling, vulnerable in a way Lily had never seen him. Her heart broke for him even as she was seized with a fierce need to protect him.
They got into the Jeep.
“I’ll drop you at the ranch, then go into town to the police station. I want to get my car, anyway.”
“What will you tell them?”
“About the cash? I’ll say I did it, that I got out the money and forgot to tell you.”
“What about your mother’s jewelry? I’ve got no damn recollection where I—”
“We’ll find it. I’ll help you look when I get back.”
He drummed his fingers on his knees. He was sorry, he said. “For the whole damn mess.” His voice was thick.
She patted his hand. “Me, too,” she said.
He asked again if she was sure about going to the cops. “You know how it’ll look, finding that knife in AJ’s truck.”
“I can’t help how it looks. I have to know where he is, if he’s all right. That’s the only thing that matters now.”