Alone in the Wild (Rockton #5)(76)

“I’d just like to follow him,” I say. “See if he takes a moment to find his game face before he heads back to his wife. You and Storm can come along, but I’d appreciate it if you hang back.”

He nods, and we set out. I leave the snowshoes. The forest here is dense enough that I can jog through the light snow.

Soon I see Tomas trudging along ahead. I slow to keep out of sight and follow him for about a hundred feet. After a glance, he makes a left off the trodden path. I slip after him, tracking his jacket in the fast-falling twilight. Finally, he comes to a clearing, where he sits on a fallen tree.

Tomas pulls the bracelet from his pocket and runs his fingers over the leather. Then he clears the snow, digs a shallow hole, and lays the bracelet in it. His hand touches the discarded dirt, ready to refill the hole. After a pause he takes the bracelet out and runs his thumb over it. His head drops and his shoulders shake, racked with silent sobs.

I glance over my shoulder but see no sign of Dalton and Storm. They’re there—just giving me room. I look at Tomas again. As a person, I want to leave him to his grief. As a detective, I cannot. I have a murdered woman, and now I’m looking at her secret lover … whose wife tried to hide a shotgun pellet that may have come from the murder weapon.

I step from the trees and say, “I’m going to need that bracelet back.”

Tomas jumps. I have my gun lowered, but his gaze still goes to it and his eyes widen.

“We’re alone in the forest,” I say. “I’m not about to demand murder evidence without a gun in my hand.” I put my hand out. “How about you give me that instead of burying it?”

“Burying?” Another widening of the eyes. Then he winces. “Burying the evidence. No, that wasn’t what I was doing. It’s just…”

“Maybe not evidence of a crime, but evidence of a secret. A lover’s gift.”

He nods, his gaze still down, shoulders hunched as he sits with the bracelet in his hand. “I wanted to bury it. Pretend it never happened. But that isn’t fair. It isn’t right. This was…” His hand closes around it. “Important.”

“So what were you going to do with it?”

He exhales. “I don’t know. I should talk to Nancy. That’s the right thing to do, and maybe I’m a coward, but I just…” He opens his hand again. “I shouldn’t pretend it didn’t happen. Nancy and I need to discuss why it happened. I just … I want to protect my family. Down south, I had girlfriends and lovers, and that’s all I thought there was, for a guy like me. Then I met Nancy, and she’s so much more. A friend, a partner, a lover. And now…” He takes a deep breath. “I just don’t want Nancy to think I blame her.”

“Blame your wife for you screwing around? I should hope not.”

He looks up in genuine confusion. “Screwing…?” A short laugh. “Of course that’s what you thought. That’s how these things normally go, isn’t it? I wasn’t having an affair with Ellen.”

“But you wanted to,” I say. “You gave her that.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not the one who gave it to her.”

There’s a moment where I don’t understand. As soon as I do, I feel stupid. I also feel very close-minded. My brain drew what seemed like the obvious conclusion, because it’s the one that fit the norms I was raised with, and even if I’m long past that, my mind still follows that long-carved path.

I remember Tomas’s pain on seeing the bracelet. I remember how he’d hesitated, coming into the tent with Nancy, how he’d hung back and made sure of his welcome before comforting her. It was behavior consistent with a man who’d cheated on his wife. It wasn’t, however, what I’d expect from a man who’d just discovered his wife had been cheating on him.

“You knew,” I say. “About Nancy and Ellen.”

He forces a wry smile. “I might have barely gotten my high school diploma, but I can figure some things out just fine. I knew they were more than friends. I just…” He takes a deep breath. “I thought it was a fling. That bracelet means it was more. Nancy loved her and … I didn’t expect that.”

“Finding out your wife was having a fling with a woman must have come as a shock.”

That twist of a smile again. “Such a shock that I went crazy and shot Ellen? The redneck trucker so horrified by the thought that his wife prefers women that he destroys the evidence? No. I knew what Nancy was when I married her and…”

His face screws up in pain as he rubs his hands over it. “Growing up, my friends called gay people fags and homos. Did I stop them? Hell, no. I chimed in, because that’s what we were taught—that homosexuality was wrong. When I was twenty, a bunch of us were at a bar, and my friends went after a gay guy. We beat the shit out of him, just because we were drunk and spoiling for a fight and he seemed a perfectly fine target. After I sobered up, I realized what I’d done, and I was sick. I didn’t exactly start joining gay-pride parades, though. I just stopped caring about other people’s sexual orientation. Then along came Nancy, and I still didn’t care, but in the wrong way, you know?”

“You married her knowing she preferred women.”

He nods. “That’s not acceptable here. We might be all about nature and kindness and love thy neighbor, but we must procreate, and for Nancy to say ‘Sure, I’ll have babies, but I’d rather be married to a woman’ was not an acceptable work-around. Her parents caught her with a settler girl, and they offered her in marriage to this other guy. Nancy said she’d rather marry me. I was…”