My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(109)

“They’ve got bigger fish to fry,” she said. Besides, Tracy thought there was merit to what DeAngelo Finn had said to her, about people not always being entitled to the answers, not when those answers could do more harm than good. She felt no guilt blaming her father. “My father would have wanted it this way,” she said.

“He had broad shoulders.” Calloway reached for a glass on a table next to his bed, took a sip of juice through a straw, and set the glass back down. “So, will you be leaving?”

“Still anxious to get rid of me, aren’t you?”

“Actually, no. It’s been too long.”

“I’ll be back to visit.”

“It won’t be easy.”

“You can’t bury the ghosts if you don’t confront them,” she said. “And now I know I don’t have to let Sarah go, or my dad, or Cedar Grove. They’ll always be a part of me.”

“Dan’s a good man,” Calloway said.

She smiled. “Like I said. I’ll take it slow.”

“So, you’re going to be okay with it, knowing?” he asked. “If you ever have a need to talk, you call me.”

“It’s going to take time,” she said.

“For all of us,” he said.



DeAngelo Finn was just as philosophical when she visited his room.

“I would have been with my Millie,” he said. “And that’s not such a bad thing, you know.”

“Where will you go?” she asked.

“I have a nephew near Portland who says he has a vegetable garden in need of weeding.”



Last on her rounds was Parker House. As she entered his hospital room, she remembered her father telling her at the trial that Parker was suffering too. She could only imagine what he was feeling now.

House had bandages on both his hands and presumably his feet, though he lay beneath a thin hospital sheet. He looked pale and gaunt, more than normal, and Tracy wondered if, in addition to the shock from his wounds, Parker was also experiencing the shock of not having a drink for several days.

“I’m sorry, Tracy,” Parker said. “I was drunk and I was scared. He wasn’t right. Edmund wasn’t right from the moment he first came to live with me, but he was my brother’s boy, and I felt responsible for him.”

“I know,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you or Dan or his dogs. I was just hoping to scare you from going forward with it. I guess I just never thought there would come a day when he might get out, and it scared me to think of what he was capable of doing. I just panicked, I guess. It was a dumb thing to do, shooting out that window.”

“I want you to know that my father never held you even the slightest bit responsible for what happened, Parker. I don’t either. Not then and not now.”

Parker nodded, his lips pressed tight. “You were a good family, Tracy. I’m sorry about what all came about, everything that happened because of him. Sometimes I think about what might have happened if he’d never come around, what Cedar Grove might have been like. You ever think about that?”

Tracy smiled. “Sometimes,” she said. “But then I try not to.”





[page]CHAPTER 73





She stayed in Cedar Grove as long as she could, but by Sunday afternoon, Tracy could not put off the inevitable any longer. She needed to get back to Seattle. Back to her job. She and Dan stood on his porch, Dan’s arms wrapped around her. His kiss lingered. When their lips parted, Dan said, “I don’t know who’s going to miss you more, me or them.” Rex and Sherlock sat beside them, looking forlorn.

Tracy punched him lightly in the chest. “It better be you.”

He released her and she rubbed the bony knob atop Rex’s head, now free of the plastic cone. The vet said he’d be as good as new. Not to be forgotten, Sherlock nuzzled her hand for attention. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to forget either of you,” she said. “I’ll be coming back to visit, and you can come see me in Seattle, although you’re going to have to wait until I get a house with a yard. And Roger’s not going to be too happy about the two of you.” She could only imagine her cat’s reaction when more than two hundred eighty-five pounds of dog invaded his sanctuary.

During the days she had spent convalescing in Dan’s home, Dan had never asked what their future held, whether she might consider staying. But as she’d told Parker House in the hospital, sometimes she couldn’t help but imagine the Cedar Grove she’d known, even when she tried not to. It was a part of her. Still, she and Dan both knew that they had separate lives and that neither could be immediately disrupted. Tracy had a job to do, and Dan had made a life again in Cedar Grove. He had Sherlock and Rex to care for. His criminal defense practice also looked like it was about to explode due to the notoriety brought by his defense of Edmund House, as well as the aftermath.

Dan and the two dogs walked Tracy to her car. “Call me when you get home,” he said, and it felt good to have someone care enough to worry about her.

She put her hands on his chest. “Thanks for understanding, Dan.”

“Take your time. We’ll be here when you’re ready, me and the boys. Just keep swinging that sledgehammer.”