River Bodies (Northampton County #1)(42)

“I hate you!” Becca screamed, pushing past her mother, racing up the stairs to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

She heard her mother say, “Don’t you think you’re overreacting? So she came home on John’s motorcycle.”

“You don’t understand,” her father said.

“Then explain it to me.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both. She’s leaving tomorrow. End of discussion.”



Becca didn’t speak to her father during the two-hour drive to Philadelphia. She still didn’t talk to him after her bags were unpacked from the car and sitting on the floor in her new room, a suite that she’d share with two other girls at the start of her senior year of high school. He didn’t make eye contact with her or her mother. He left them alone while he went to talk with one of the school officials, the one he’d made a deal with, called in a favor, in order to get his daughter enrolled on such short notice, a month before classes would officially begin.

“It doesn’t seem so bad,” her mother said, looking around the flat, the sparse furniture, the beige cement walls. “Think of it as a fresh start. A new beginning.” She almost sounded envious.

“I don’t ever want to see or speak to him again,” Becca said about her father.

“I know you feel that way right now, but I’m sure your father has a very good reason for doing what he did.”

“Yeah? And what is that?” She kicked a box, plopped onto the mattress, crossed her arms.

Her mother shook her head. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t understand why he does the things he does sometimes.”

“I hate him,” she said.

Becca’s mother joined her on the bed, wrapped her arms around her. “Sometimes I feel that way about him too.”



After hanging up with Vicky, Becca emerged from the woods and walked up the yard, one shaky step after another. She leaned against the outside wall of the garage. Her legs were weak, her insides hollowed out. It happened on occasion, mornings she pushed her legs too hard, running on an empty stomach without any fuel. There were times when she would have to stop and throw up the water she’d drunk that was sloshing around her gut. But this wasn’t one of those times. Overexerting herself wasn’t causing her to be nauseous.

“Becca,” Jackie called and stuck her head out the garage door.

“Over here.” She pushed off the wall, wiping her lips with the back of her arm. Her mouth tasted vile and dry. Her tongue burned with the remnants of stomach bile that had never quite made it all the way out.

“I checked your room earlier, but you’d already gone.” Jackie was wearing a light-blue terry cloth warm-up suit without a bra. She looked Becca up and down.

“I went for a run,” Becca said, explaining her ragged appearance.

“Your dad has been asking for you.”

“Okay,” she said, with the understanding it was her turn to sit by his side. “I’ll go up in a minute.” She walked into the kitchen. Romy raced ahead. She poured fresh water into the dog’s water dish, set it on the floor along with a bowl of food. Romy dove in.

Becca drank greedily from her own glass of water. Jackie sat at the table picking at her cuticle, inspecting her long fingers and clipped nails.

Becca’s father coughed. Both Becca and Jackie looked toward the ceiling to his room upstairs.

“I’m going,” Becca said, leaving Jackie and Romy in the kitchen. Slowly, she made her way up the steps and down the hall. The bedroom door was wide open.

“Jackie,” he called.

“No, Dad, it’s me.” She sat in the chair beside him.

He nodded, closed his eyes. She thought he was going to sleep and she would only be expected to sit by his bedside, relieved not to have to talk. She needed time to think things through about John, about what she’d seen at the river. But he opened his eyes, poked his finger to his chest.

“What is it, Dad?”

His lashes were wet. His bottom lip trembled. He turned his head away as though he couldn’t bear for her to see him cry.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Wait here,” Russell said.

He left with a rifle in his hand, walking in the direction of the woods, taking the path near the stream, the one that ran north away from town and eventually connected to the Appalachian Trail. John waited a few minutes before setting out to follow him. He was sure-footed and comfortable in the woods, as silent as a predator stalking its prey. If his father knew he was tracking him, he never let on.

Russell drifted off the path and away from the trickling stream. John kept close, hiding in the brush, ducking behind trees. He was so quiet he startled a deer that had crossed in front of his path. Russell jumped and swung around, the rifle aimed and ready to fire. When his father saw the small doe, he lowered his weapon. Russell was a good hunter, and the doe would’ve been an easy kill, but John’s father respected two things—one was nature. You never shot and killed an animal for sport. You did it to survive, to eat the meat and take your place inside the food chain.

The only other rules his father lived by were those of the club, the Harley-Davidson manual his bible. If you listened to Russell explain it, he was a man of principles, and he wasn’t above killing another man if that man went against the very things that Russell believed in.