River Bodies (Northampton County #1)(18)

Becca called the clinic that morning from her old bedroom, her hair damp from a shower. She explained the sudden family emergency.

“Take care of Maggie, and call me if anything changes,” she said. “I’m just over the bridge. I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, but don’t worry. Mags will be fine,” Vicky reassured her.

“And call me with any questions or if there’s a surgery one of the others isn’t comfortable doing.”

Vicky was silent.

“Vick?”

“I will. I promise.”

“Okay, I know,” she said.

“I’m really sorry about your dad,” Vicky said. “Why didn’t you ever say anything about it before?”

“My dad and I aren’t exactly close. We kind of lost touch in the last few years.”

“A falling out?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, you’re there now,” Vicky said. “Maybe you could look at it as an opportunity.”

“I don’t know. Maybe some things are better left alone.” It was what her mother might’ve said at one time had she been asked the same question. It used to be her mother’s way, to keep the peace and not upset the balance of things, but was it Becca’s way? She thought it was. Besides, she didn’t want to have the conversation she was too afraid to have with him. She didn’t want to hear the answers to the questions she couldn’t bring herself to ask him.

Becca hung up the phone. She rubbed her forehead. Last night when she’d blurted out that she was going home, it wasn’t something she’d thought through. And now that she was here, she felt trapped, a sink-or-swim situation.

Romy nudged her hand with her wet nose. “Do you want to go for a walk?” She scratched behind the dog’s ear.

Becca opened the bedroom door, and the dog raced out of the room.

“Becca,” Jackie called. “Is that you?”

She dropped her head, resigned to answer. She took a moment before replying, “Hey,” and peeked into her father’s bedroom. Jackie was sitting on the bed with him, her arm around his thin shoulders. They were watching the news.

“Come in,” Jackie said. She was wearing another small shirt, the V-neck pulled tight across her chest. She leaned over to whisper into Becca’s father’s ear. “She decided to stay,” she said and squeezed his shoulder.

Becca averted her eyes, uncomfortable with their closeness, their touching each other, although it wasn’t the first time she’d seen him cozy with another woman who wasn’t her mother. She suddenly wished she hadn’t come home at all. But she crossed the room to where he lay in bed with his lady friend. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

He cleared his throat as a way of answering. Jackie motioned for her to sit in the chair next to him. His once-large hand was a fist of bulging knuckles and veins. He held his wrist at a bent angle. The stroke had twisted his joints into arthritic formations. He stared at the small television.

A headline flashed on the screen: Breaking News. A local reporter Becca didn’t recognize was standing next to Paul, the owner of the antique store Becca used to explore with her mother when she’d been a kid. The reporter asked Paul questions. A small boy clung to Paul’s leg.

Jackie turned the volume up.

“We saw the body down there.” Paul pointed toward the riverbank where the yellow crime scene tape had blocked off the area. “He was caught against one of the cement columns, facedown. I could tell by the way he was laying there in the water, you know, it wasn’t a rescue we needed to be concerned about. I mean I knew he wasn’t . . .” He looked away from the camera.

“You’re saying you could tell the man was already dead from where you were standing on the riverbank?”

“Yes, ma’am. There was no question in my mind.” He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “Now I told you everything I know. I’ve got nothing more to say.” He backed away from the camera, looking over his shoulder, taking his grandson with him.

The dread Becca had felt the night before when she’d crossed the bridge to home swarmed her chest. She remembered seeing something herself in the river yesterday. Her father reached toward the TV, pointing with his crooked finger. He started shaking.

“Dad, what is it?”

Jackie was on her feet. “Is it the pain?”

He clutched the sheet in his fist, the crease between his eyebrows deepening into the angry face Becca remembered from when she’d been a teenager, the same face he’d made on the occasion she’d come home after curfew. But it hadn’t been anger emanating from his coiled muscles that had frightened her. His wrath had never been more than a lot of hollering and the threat of punishment. Her father had done a lot of things, but he’d never hit her.

So no, it wasn’t seeing her father angry that she found so unnerving. It was the thread of fear she saw behind his eyes.

“Okay,” Jackie said and held up a needle, the morphine squirting from the syringe and into the air. She stuck his arm, but not before taking a moment to glance at Becca.

Once they had him calm again, Jackie said, “That came on sudden. It usually doesn’t happen like that so quickly.” She smoothed her frizzy hair away from her face.