“Are you going home before your flight?” Grace asked.
Paul shook his head. He was flying back to California tomorrow—or, technically, it was today, he thought as he glanced at the clock on his desk. “I need to be at the airport in three hours. I’ll just finish up my paperwork here and then go. I’ve got my luggage in the car.”
“Are you excited to see your family?” she asked.
“It’s always good to go back home,” he said, and he knew she heard the noncommittal tone in his voice because even he could hear it.
He winced mentally. He tried hard not to be on edge around Grace. She was a truly loyal friend, an amazing FBI agent, and a vital addition to his team. But what made her so important to the team also gave her the ability to see through people like they were glass. She had an agreement with the team that she wouldn’t profile them . . . at least to their faces. But sometimes that extraordinary brain of hers just couldn’t stop turning and ferreting out truths.
He waited for her to say something about his confession to Harry. He wondered briefly if she had figured this out about him already—that he had an alcoholic father. It was likely, he thought with resigned humor. She’d probably respected his privacy too much to mention it.
Sometimes, he let himself wonder if she’d figured out the real truth. The one that had shaped him. That had put him on this path.
He didn’t share that with anyone. Not even Maggie, the woman he’d planned on marrying before her own past had torn them apart. He had loved Maggie, but he hadn’t been able to share the dark piece of his past that had formed his whole future—his whole self.
As his trip back home loomed closer, he had been thinking about it a lot lately. He’d been thinking about her. Cass. It was still hard to even think her name, let alone speak it, even though it had been fifteen years now.
“. . . need another?”
“What?” Paul jerked out of his reverie to find Grace’s eyebrows knit together as she stared at him with concern.
“An espresso. Do you need another?” she repeated. “Seems like you do. Are you sure you’re okay to drive to the airport? I can call you a car. Or drive you myself.”
“I’m fine,” he assured her. “I don’t need more coffee. I’m just thinking about going home. It’s been a few years.”
Grace’s face shifted from concern to sympathy. “Of course,” she said. “I understand. I’m sure your father’s memorial brings up a lot of stuff.”
He nodded. It was a half-truth. His father had been gone for five years now, and every year, the Harrison clan gathered on his birthday at the orchard house that had been in their family for generations, to pay tribute. He had missed the last two years because of cases—something his family understood—but he had heard the hopeful note in his mother’s voice when she’d called about this year. And he’d been determined to go, for her.
“I’ll let you get to your paperwork,” Grace said, getting to her feet and heading to the door.
“Try not to let Zooey burn the place down while I’m gone,” he said.
“That was one time!” Grace protested. “It was a tiny fire that was quickly contained. And I wasn’t even in charge while you were at that conference. Gavin was!”
He laughed. “That’s why I put you in charge this time,” he said.
Grace smiled smugly in response. “Have a good time with your family.”
“I will. And thank you for taking the helm while I’m gone.”
“All in a day’s work,” Grace said. “Have a safe flight.”
Once he was alone again, he turned back to his paperwork. This time, he was unable to push his thoughts of home—and of the past, away.
The Cass in his mind was beautiful and bright, an eternal seventeen, a tangle of brown hair, sweet words, and fuzzy laughter he couldn’t quite remember right. She was also a white marble headstone, the tears down Mrs. Martin’s face, and why weren’t you with her that night, Paul?
He sighed, his heart aching in his chest as he thought of home, of the rows of almond and olive trees for as far as the eye could see, and of a girl who was taken much too soon and who had shaped his life without ever knowing it.
Chapter 5
Abby got back to the farmhouse late—it was nearly 2:00 a.m. before she pulled her battered Chevy truck in front of the fading rust-red barn, its tin roof glinting in the beam of the headlights.
The house was quiet when she let herself in. Roscoe, the ancient Great Pyrenees who’d grown up guarding the goat flock that used to live in the north field, barked once, but upon seeing her, started wagging his tail instead.
“Hey, boy,” she said, scratching his ears. He was a big white beast that looked like he had more in common with a polar bear than a dog.
Roscoe was much too old to guard any livestock now. These days he spent his time dozing in whatever doorway he deemed vital to guard that day. He was a sweet-natured boy who still wandered out to the north field from time to time, looking confused, like he was wondering where his herd went.
When her father had been diagnosed with colon cancer, she had sold the goats, unable to take care of an entire herd and the orchard and her father. Sometimes she thought about getting a new herd—her orchard manager had been making noises about wanting goats to help clear some of the neglected meadows. It would surely cheer Roscoe.
She knew she should sleep, but the years of being an insomniac added to the years of nursing her father, and she had some hardwired night-owl habits. Plus, her mind was still working a mile a minute, going over every second of her meeting with Wells.
She’d thought of nothing else on the long drive back home. She prided herself on the fact that she had to pull over to throw up only once, dizzy from the adrenaline, the fear, the sick realization that Cass’s real killer was still loose, that he’d been free and out there walking around this whole time, churning hot in her stomach.
She checked Roscoe’s water bowl and food, as well as the corkboard in the mudroom where her staff left her notes when they couldn’t reach her on the phone. After toeing off her shoes and shoving her feet into her rubber boots, she was almost ready.
“You want to go for a nighttime walk, boy?” she asked Roscoe, who wagged his tail enthusiastically at the word walk.
On her way out of the house, she grabbed one of her grandmother’s crocheted shawls and wrapped it around her shoulders. With a lantern in one hand and Roscoe’s leash in the other, they ventured out into the night.
The Winthrop Orchard was 150 acres of almond trees, fifty acres of olive trees, and ten acres of grapes that never quite made good wine, so they made small batches of good vinegar from the grape must. These 210 acres were her family history. Generations of Winthrops had put their blood, sweat, and tears into this place.
In her youth, this place had felt like a cage. She’d been desperate to leave Castella Rock, to explore other places, to meet other people. She’d felt stifled by the expectations of her father—he’d wanted her to stay. And maybe, if things had been different, she would have.
But Cass . . . her death changed everything.
Abby opened the orchard gate, letting Roscoe go first, tugging at his leash as she closed the gate behind them. The trees spread in neat rows ahead of her, lines and lines of old trees, good trees.
There are strong roots here, Abby, her father used to say to her. Your roots.
When she was a child, she used to play hide-and-seek between the rows of trees. When she was a teenager, she used to go out here with boys. She remembered letting herself be pressed against the trunk by eager but inexperienced hands, laughing giddily against a clumsy but eager mouth, not quite in love, but near it and everything so new and marvelous.