Watcher in the Woods (Rockton #4)(107)

“No,” she says, her voice hardening. “It was not.”

“You also suggested, less than an hour ago, that you have the kind of job experience that seems a little inconsistent with motherhood. And when I tried to find hints of you online as a comic book artist, I came up blank. Was anything you told me the truth?”

“All of it was.”

I look at her. “Like hell. You—”

“Let’s start with this.” She pushes aside a branch. “According to my intake record, I’m thirty-five. That may also be what I told you. I’m forty-two. I’m just blessed—or cursed—with the kind of face that can pass for younger. I think you know what that’s like. So I’ve had time to do more than you might imagine.”

She pauses and assesses a fork before swinging left. “In books and movies, people always say ‘I’m special ops.’ So let’s go with that. I was, as they call it, special ops. I won’t go into more detail. I can’t, as you might imagine. It gave me a unique skill set. In my early thirties, I decided to get out. I quit, as amicably as one quits that sort of work, and I focused on my art. Yes, I was a comic book artist, but without my real name and very, very deep digging, you wouldn’t find me. It’s the kind of career where you don’t make a name for yourself unless you’re at the top of your game, and I definitely was not. I made more of my income inking than drawing.”

“Inking?”

“Someone higher up the food chain did the art, and I filled in the colors. Bet you never even knew that was a job, huh? It is, and it paid decently, mostly because artists want to draw, not color between someone else’s lines. That’s where I met Mike, as we’ll call him. We started as friends, and that’s really what we always were. Really good friends with really good benefits. But he wanted a baby. Him, not me. I didn’t figure I was mommy material with my background. I wanted give him a baby, though, so I got pregnant, and we got married—in that order.”

She stops. Looks around, as if wondering how she got here. Then, with a shake of her head, she backtracks and finds a broken tree and turns right, heading off the path.

“The marriage ended,” she says. “Quickly. Yet while I wasn’t cut out to be a wife, I was a damned fine parent. My daughter was . . .” Her voice catches. “Everything. People talk about miracle babies, and she was—not for any trouble with her birth, but because she changed my life. Although Mike and I split, we co-parented and remained friends.”

She finds the spot and stops there, gesturing at it while still talking. “It might sound as if I left my former life behind and effortlessly moved on. I didn’t. Anders has said he saw things, as a soldier, that he didn’t agree with. So did I. It gets in your head. I drank to get it out. I remember you asked once if Anders and I ever hooked up. We haven’t. I wouldn’t, because I’m afraid I’d be one of those lovers who says yes to a hookup while hoping for a relationship. I’d be even more afraid of getting a relationship. I see too much of my past in him and his drinking, and it scares the shit out of me. Like him, I never graduated to full-blown alcoholic. Just the consumer of a troubling amount of alcohol. I didn’t drink when I was pregnant or breast feeding, though. I went cold turkey then. After Mike and I split, I never drank when she was over. Then came the day . . .”

She hunkers onto a fallen log, lacing her hands. “It was late afternoon. I’d drank three glasses of wine while I worked. It was Mike’s week with Polly. I got a call from him. He was tied up at work in an emergency meeting and the daycare needed her picked up ASAP. Could I do it?”

Her shoulders hunch. “I could have said no. I could have admitted I’d been drinking. I could have called a cab. But one thing about drinking is that it blows your judgment to hell. Three glasses in four hours meant I wasn’t even legally intoxicated. I’d be careful. I’d drive slow. On the way back, there was this truck in front of us, with a load the driver hadn’t secured. It hit a bump and pipes flew off, and I saw them coming and I . . . I reacted too slowly. It might have still been fine except . . .” Her voice goes to a whisper. “Polly wanted the top down. I had a convertible, and she loved riding with the top down and . . .”

Her arms squeeze her legs, her gaze on the ground. “I have seen things in my job, Casey. What I saw that day . . .” Her voice drops to the faintest whisper. “I never see the rest anymore. All I ever see is her. All that matters is her. It is the only truly unforgivable thing I have ever done.”

She pauses for a moment and then continues. “Mike lost his daughter, and he lost his mind. I don’t blame him—I did, too. But he had a target for his grief and rage. Me. He just . . . He could not cope, and everything that I turned inward, he turned on me. All the blame. All the hate. He became a man I’d never seen before. He told people—family, friends—that I’d never wanted a child. That’s true, but he twisted it to sound as if I might have somehow done this on purpose.”

She takes deep breaths, eyes closed, and in her face, I see the woman I saw that time in the cave, when she found Abbygail’s arm. I remember her scream, and that look, and I remember thinking there must be trauma in her past. Now I know there was. And I don’t even want to imagine what she saw that day with her daughter.

She continues. “I couldn’t go to Polly’s funeral. I didn’t dare—after what he was saying, it would be like spitting on her grave. He told everyone about my drinking. Made it sound so much worse. I tested well below the legal limit after the accident, but he told them I was a chronic alcoholic and he pretended I’d hidden it from him. Even that wasn’t enough. He went to my very conservative, very religious grandparents and told them about my girlfriends. Told them I was bisexual. Which, yes, I am, but there was no reason for me to tell them. So when I needed my family most . . .”