“You remember where the fort is from here?” Lily asked, riding up beside him.
“Over that way, I think.” He nodded vaguely. “It’s been a while since I’ve been back this way.” Confusion mixed with defeat in his voice. It was there, too, in the slump of his shoulders. He wouldn’t meet her gaze. Whatever had brought them out here—whether intuition or impulse—it was gone now, just as Lily had begun to believe in it.
A thrust of irritation knotted her brow. Fool’s errand. The words lifted from the floor of her mind. She said, “I think you’re right about the direction.” She nudged Butternut’s flanks with her boot heels. She wasn’t at all sure, but she couldn’t face going back to the house, sitting there, waiting for the next thing and the next to happen. She didn’t care how little sense it made to continue searching—at least she was moving. At least she was doing something.
She heard the clomp of Sharkey’s hooves as her dad followed behind her. They skirted a cedar thicket, climbed a coarsely graveled incline. A clap of thunder rattled the air, muttered, faded. The birds fell silent. Lily waited to feel the rain, but it held off.
“Look.” Her dad had stopped some distance back.
She reined Butternut and turned to follow his line of sight. Across a rocky meadow, she saw a stand of oaks, ancient, thick girthed. Looking closer, some twelve feet off the ground, she could make out the rough outline of a wall. Above that, the slant of a rusted metal roof caught a storm-shot glimmer of light. She rode back to her dad’s side. “Is that it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I can’t believe it’s still here. C’mon.” The purpose was back in his voice, his posture.
She was there before him, though, and dismounting, she circled the trees, the three oaks that provided the main support for the fort, hunting for the way up, finding a ladder half the distance around.
“Sissy, wait,” her dad called. “That ladder may be rotten. It won’t hold your weight.”
“Well, it for sure won’t hold yours,” she called back, and it was in the short silence after her words died away that she heard it, a noise overhead, a light scraping followed by a knocking sound. And now—now—was that a voice? Human? Animal? Her heart hammered in her chest. She set her hand and her foot on the rungs of the ladder, and she began to climb.
“Lily! Don’t do it.”
She looked down at her dad, warning finger to her lips. She caught the serrated flash of lightning, and moments later thunder shook the tree limbs. The ladder shifted, and a squawk of alarm jammed her throat, thankfully stopping there. The scrabbling noises increased. She thought she heard panting, moaning, but it might have been the wind, her own blood in her ears. The fort was small, maybe ten feet square, and built of cedar logs. The walls were set inside a platform some eighteen inches deep, creating a narrow porch. Reaching it, she peered over its edge and saw that the door, and the windows on either side of it, were open. She ducked out of sight, and while the fresh crack of thunder startled her, she was glad for it and for the sound of the wind that kept her presence secret. Pulling herself onto the ledge, she looked at her dad, raising her thumb: so far, so good.
“Come down.” His face, pale, uptilted, he mouthed the words.
She raised her finger at him. In a minute.
He shook his head, walking in a frustrated circle.
On all fours, she crawled to the wall and, flattening herself against it, leaned around the door frame. At first she could make out nothing specific, but once her eyes adjusted to the gloom, a wave of sheer panic jolted her. What seemed like an eternity but was in fact only seconds passed before she was crawling back toward the ladder, shouting, “Dad! Oh my God, Dad, get up here!”
16
Kate was your best friend, Shea.” Dru looked over at her daughter. They were in Shea’s white Camry, parked at the curb, a block down from the Kincaids’ house. A dozen or more cars lined the street. Others were crowded into the Kincaids’ driveway. Dru recognized Joy’s Suburban and Terri’s Explorer. She didn’t know what Vanessa’s mother, Connie, drove, but she was no doubt here. Terri and Connie would have brought their daughters, Vanessa and Leigh, Shea’s two remaining bridal attendants.
Dru wondered if the coroner in Dallas had released Becca back to her mom and dad yet. She wondered if Kate would undergo forensic examination prior to her burial, too. It was so awful to contemplate. Who was next? Dru was scared for Shea, scared for anyone who had a connection to the wedding. The most joyous occasion, turned now into a horrible, twisted nightmare.
“I can’t go in there, Mom.” Shea lifted her hands from the steering wheel. That gesture, the helplessness it suggested, set Dru off.
“This isn’t about you, Shea. It’s about Charla and Kent, giving them our condolences, paying our respects. Joy and Gene, too—they need to hear from us.”
“You go, then.”
Dru looked at Shea in exasperation. “You’re going to have to face everyone at some point, like it or not.”
“Fine!” Shea barked the word. “But this is a mistake. They don’t want my condolences, trust me.” Flinging the Toyota door open, she got out of the car, marching down the sidewalk toward the Kincaids’ house.
Dru clamped down on her annoyance, a hot urge to shout, “Wait!”
Shea had rung the doorbell by the time Dru reached the front porch, and the two waited for someone to answer, standing shoulder to shoulder, grim-faced, barely breathing. Dru felt panic grip her stomach. It was almost without thinking that she reached for Shea’s hand. Her heart eased at Shea’s answering grasp.
Dru didn’t recognize the woman who answered the door. She was older, gray-haired. Grief combined with exhaustion bruised her eyes. She greeted them and introduced herself. “I’m Leona, Kent’s mother,” she said.
Dru offered her name, and Shea’s, as they followed Leona into the foyer. She said how sorry she was they were meeting under such horrible circumstances. They had paused beneath the archway that separated the foyer from the great room when Leona turned to stare at Shea. “You’re the bride.” She made it sound like an accusation.
Dru’s glance shot past Leona, taking in the crowd of mostly women. Some were gathered in a group near the fireplace; others were seated on a pair of nearby sofas.
“Why are you here?” Charla rose from a tufted leather ottoman.
Ignoring the frisson of unease that tapped up her spine, Dru extended her hands to Charla. “We came—Shea and I came to say how sorry—”
“Get out!” Charla batted at Dru’s hands. She addressed Leona. “Why did you let them in?”
“I didn’t know.”
“How dare you show yourself here.” Joy put her arm around Charla.
“Who do you think you are?” A woman whose name Dru couldn’t recall stepped into her view.
“Did you think you’d be welcome?” another one wanted to know.