Paranoid(15)

Had she done it?

Made a mistake and killed the half brother she’d looked up to?

Cade wasn’t certain, but as the sprawling, ramshackle building disappeared in his rearview he wondered if some of the rumors had been true, the most damning being that Rachel’s father, a detective who’d been the first responder, had hidden evidence or at the very least had been negligent at the scene in an effort to save his daughter.

A mystery, to be sure.

And one never completely solved.

He thought of the article in the paper, written by a woman who had been at the crime scene that night. Why would she dredge it all up again? Was it just a case of bringing a sensational crime back into the spotlight?

A sensational, unsolved crime.

That wasn’t exactly true, he thought, flipping his wipers to a higher speed as the storm increased. Though the case hadn’t been officially closed, it wasn’t exactly open, either. Maybe cold was the right way to describe it. Ice cold.

*

On the way to school, Rachel brought up the reunion meeting.

Surprisingly her son actually heard her. “Wait . . . we have to go?” he asked from the back seat. For the first time he showed some interest in the conversation and pulled one earbud from his ear.

“Yeah. It’s at Lila’s house.” Even after all these years she could not refer to Lila as her kids’ grandmother. It just felt wrong.

“Stepgrandmama,” Harper said, needling her mother. Then, “Will Lucas be there?” Harper was gazing out the passenger-side window, running her finger along the glass.

“I don’t know. Probably.” Lucas had yet to move out of the historic house on the hill owned by his stepfather, the home where Cade and his brothers had grown up. The place where their mother had died.

“Good.” Lately Harper had taken more of an interest in her older cousin. They’d been closer as younger kids, drifted apart during Harper’s time in junior high, but now, with Lucas attending the local community college, and Harper in high school, they had connected again, which Rachel saw as a good thing. Harper, starting at the end of her sophomore year, had started drifting. Her grades had slipped, but just a little, and her circle of friends had changed. Lately it seemed as if she’d been harboring secrets and that was a worry. As for Dylan . . . who knew? He’d become a mystery to Rachel.

As she’d become to her own parents at that age.

“I thought we were goin’ to Dad’s,” Harper said, cutting into her thoughts as Dylan plugged in again, out of the conversation once more.

Rachel explained, “You are, but he’ll be home late.”

“Can’t he pick us up?”

“Look, this is just easier. For me. So go with it. I’ll drop you off after the meeting. Okay?”

No response.

Rachel added, “So when you get home from school, pack whatever you want to take to his place.”

“You won’t be there?”

“Maybe not.” She didn’t elaborate.

Harper let out a sound of disgust. “Great.”

“That a problem?”

“I, um, I have plans tonight.”

“With whom?”

“Does it matter? If I have to go to Dad’s?” She pulled a face that looked as if she’d just sucked on a lemon.

“Take it up with him,” Rachel said, though it kind of killed her, giving up control of the kids. Just didn’t seem right. And Harper, at seventeen, was on the cusp of danger, just as Rachel had been at that very age. Harper was “old” for her class, just missing the cutoff because of an October birth date. At the time Rachel thought it would be a blessing and allow her daughter to be the most mature in her class. Now she wasn’t so sure. Harper seemed bored with school and interested in God only knew what.

“He never lets me do anything,” her daughter grumbled. Radiating disappointment, she leaned her head against the passenger window.

Not true, Rachel thought. At least not all the time. Despite the fact that Cade was a cop, he could be a lot less strict than she was. It all depended on the situation. He seemed to trust the kids’ instincts more, allowed them to make mistakes on their own while she’d spent most of her adult life ensuring their safety, making certain they didn’t get hurt, probably, she admitted grudgingly to herself, to the point that she did clip their wings or make them less confident.

One more thing to work on. Great.

“You know, Harper, it wouldn’t kill you to lighten up.”

“How would you know?”

That hit home.

“At least I try.”

“Do you?” her daughter asked and rolled her eyes before turning her gaze past the window to the sidewalks of the small town, where pedestrians, shoppers, dog walkers, and skateboarders milled in front of storefronts.

The rain had started again, and Rachel flipped on her wipers as she stopped at the one light between her home and the high school, the same brick-and-mortar two-storied building she’d attended twenty years earlier. A new gym and science wing had been added about five years ago, and there had been work to earthquake-proof it retroactively, but otherwise the building, constructed between the two world wars, hadn’t changed much.

Just like the rest of the town that had been booming after the Second World War. Logging camps, sawmills, and the fish cannery had been working around the clock, she’d heard from her grandparents. And then in the late seventies things had begun slowing down, the bustling town no longer growing, but stagnant.