My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite, #1)(12)

“He won’t come over. Not with that brat here.”

“Don’t call your sister a brat.” She pulled the brush through a final time. “Okay, bed.” Tracy slid under the covers, feeling the lingering warmth of Sarah’s body. She adjusted a pillow behind her back, and her mother bent and kissed her forehead. “Good night.” Her mother picked up the wet bath towel from the floor and closed the door halfway, then leaned back in. “And Tracy?”

“Yeah?”

Her mother belted out the song lyrics.

Tracy groaned. When the door shut, she climbed from bed, closed the door to the bathroom, and looked for a better hiding place for her diary. Finally, she slipped it beneath her sweaters on the top shelf of her closet, where Sarah couldn’t easily reach. Back beneath the covers, she opened Dickens.

She’d been reading for nearly half an hour, and had just flipped forward to find the end of the chapter, when she heard the bathroom door creak open. “Go to bed,” she said.

Sarah swung from the door handle into Tracy’s peripheral vision. “Tracy?”

“I said, go to bed.”

“I’m scared.”

“Too bad.”

Sarah stepped to the edge of the bed. She’d dressed in one of Tracy’s flannel nightgowns. The hem dragged on the floor. “Can I sleep with you?”

“No.”

“But it’s scary in my room.”

Tracy pretended to continue reading. “How can you be scared in your room and not scared hiding under covers?”

“I don’t know. I just am.”

Tracy shook her head.

“Please,” Sarah pleaded.

Tracy sighed. “Fine.”

Sarah leaped onto the bed and climbed over her, scurrying under the covers. Settled, she asked, “What was it like?”

Tracy looked down from her book. Sarah lay staring up at the ceiling. “What was what like?”

“Kissing Jack Frates.”

“Go to sleep.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever kiss a boy.”

“How do you plan on getting married if you never kiss a boy?”

“I’m not going to get married. I’m going to live with you.”

“What if I get married?”

Sarah’s face scrunched in thought. “Could I live with you?”

“I’ll have a husband.”

Sarah bit at a fingernail. “Could we still see each other every day?”

Tracy lifted her arm. Sarah slid closer. “Of course we will. You’re my favorite sister, even if you are a brat.”

“I’m your only sister.”

“Go to sleep.”

“I can’t.”

Tracy put Dickens on the nightstand and slid beneath the covers. She reached overhead for the power switch to her lamp. “Okay, close your eyes.”

Sarah did so.

“Now take a deep breath and let it out.” When Sarah exhaled, Tracy said, “Ready?”

“Ready.”

“I am not . . .”

“I am not . . . ,” Sarah repeated.

“I am not afraid . . .”

“I am not afraid . . .”

“I am not afraid of the dark,” they said in unison, and Tracy clicked off the light.





[page]CHAPTER 10





As a younger man, Roy Calloway had liked telling people he was “tougher than a two-dollar steak.” He could go for days on just a few hours of sleep and hadn’t taken a sick day in thirty-plus years. At sixty-two, it was getting harder to keep those kinds of hours, or to convince himself that he wanted to. He’d been knocked down by the flu twice the last year, the first time for a week, the second for three days. Finlay had served as the acting sheriff, and Calloway’s wife had been quick to point out that the town hadn’t burned to the ground or suffered a crime wave without him.

Calloway hung his coat on the hook behind the door and took a moment to admire the rainbow trout he’d caught on the Yakima River the previous October. The fish was a beauty, twenty-three inches and just under four pounds, with a colorful underbelly. Nora had had it stuffed and hung it on his office wall when Calloway had been out. Lately, she’d been after him hard to retire; the fish was meant to serve as a daily reminder there were more to catch. Subtle his wife was not. Calloway had told her the town still needed him, that Finlay wasn’t ready. What he hadn’t said was that he still needed the town, and the job. A man could only fish and golf so much, and he’d never been much for travelling. He couldn’t stand the thought of becoming one of “those guys” wearing the white, soft-soled orthotics, standing on the deck of a cruise ship pretending to have something in common with everyone besides being one step from the grave.

“Chief?” The voice came through the phone speaker.

“I’m here,” he said.

“Thought I saw you sneak in. Vance Clark’s here to see you.”

Calloway looked up at the clock: 6:37 p.m. He wasn’t the only one working late. He’d been expecting a visit from Cedar Grove’s Prosecuting Attorney, but had thought it would not be until the morning.

“Chief?”

“Send him back.”