River Bodies (Northampton County #1)(58)

“I can’t do that, Chief,” he said and snatched the file on his way out the door.





CHAPTER THIRTY

Becca sat in the chair next to her father’s bed. Her back was sore, and her neck was stiff from craning it forward, staring, waiting for him to open his eyes. Wake up, she pleaded silently. Why did Parker want to talk with you?

The last time she’d checked, Matt had been in the backyard, pacing back and forth, stomping the crabgrass and weeds. He’d been on his cell phone with a client, a call he had to take, he’d explained to both her and Jackie over an hour ago.

Becca rubbed the back of her neck and stood to look out the window again. She arched her spine and twisted from side to side. Matt had stopped pacing. He was bent over, scratching Romy behind her ears. Normally, the sight of the two of them together would’ve filled Becca with . . . what? Affection? Yes, she would say it was affection she was feeling, fondness. Whenever anyone showed kindness to an animal, her heart lifted. But this was Matt, the man she had lived with for the better part of five years; the emotion she should be feeling was love.

Romy lay down, hoping to get her belly scratched, but Matt ignored her at this point, distracted by his phone call.

“Becca,” her father said.

She spun around and returned to his bedside. “I’m here,” she said.

He touched his throat. She picked up the Styrofoam cup filled with water, angled the straw to his lips. He wouldn’t drink. She was struggling to accept he was getting weaker with each passing hour, so much weaker than when she’d first arrived a few short days ago. She was keenly aware she was running out of time.

“We need to talk,” she said, looking down at the Styrofoam cup in her hand. “It’s important. It can’t wait.”

He blinked. She wasn’t sure he understood, but she pressed on.

“There are things I’m starting to remember. Things I don’t think you want me to remember.” She paused. She wasn’t being clear. She could be talking about any number of things she wished she could forget, not just the things he wanted her to forget. I knew about the other women. Mom and I both knew. She wanted to shake him. How could you do that to us? To me?

Now that she was older, she understood the cracks in her parents’ marriage, the holes, weren’t about her. And maybe they weren’t about her mother either. There were flaws inside of her father, weaknesses, and she and her mother just happened to be the collateral damage. But somehow, she couldn’t say these things to him. Sometimes the pain was still too raw. Although she was beginning to understand how infidelities happened, how under the right circumstances, it could be almost impossible to stop them.

She took a deep breath and continued. “There was something that happened when I was a little kid.” She’d blocked it from her mind, or rather it had been eclipsed by another tragedy that had occurred a few short days later when her father had brought the other woman into their home.

“Do you know what I’m talking about?” she asked.

His eyes were no longer focused on her, his gaze vacant.

“I think it might have something to do with the body they pulled from the river. I know it doesn’t make sense, but . . .” I might know something about it, Dad. I’m not sure. I think I might be involved. Help me to remember. The memory was there, and it was getting closer, but each time she reached for it, clinging to the threads of a frayed childhood, the images faded, becoming blurrier, until they slipped away.

His head rolled to the side.

“Dad.” She touched his shoulder, then put her hand in front of his mouth to check he was breathing. She pressed her middle and index fingers to his carotid artery. She felt a pulse. Thank goodness. She sat back in the chair. It had taken all the courage she could muster to bring up her childhood, where the dark corners of the past lurked.

Where all she had to do was look.



Becca’s father’s eyes had closed and stayed that way. Outside, a lawn mower started. She went back to the window and found Matt riding her father’s John Deere. She didn’t even know he knew how to drive a riding mower. It was so out of character that she was stunned into watching him complete the neat little rows one after the other, the bag collecting the cuttings and the fallen autumn leaves. If she squinted, blurred her vision a little, it could’ve been her father sitting in the yellow bucket seat. They were more alike, her father and Matt, than she’d ever wanted to believe. How could she not have noticed this before? She backed away from the window, found herself rushing out of the room.

Jackie was in the kitchen on the phone. There was a stack of medical bills in front of her. She smiled when she saw Becca and motioned to the backyard, where Matt was cutting the grass. She gave Becca the thumbs-up and continued talking to whoever was on the other end of the line.

Becca slipped past her, not knowing where she could go to get away from everyone in the house, a place she could go to be alone, sort through the mess in her mind. She paused next to the basement door, deciding it was as good a place as any, and quietly opened it. She hit the light at the top of the steps, looked down the narrow staircase.

When she’d been a child, the basement had been off-limits. It had been where her father had escaped on the rare nights he’d been home, the place he’d gone to get away from Becca and her mother. She’d been curious about what had kept him away from them, what he’d been doing in the damp cold below. And she hadn’t forgotten the scolding she’d taken for the one time she had ventured down to his cave, as he’d referred to it, how he’d grabbed her arms, fearing she’d cut herself on his fishing lures or accidently ingested poison.