River Bodies (Northampton County #1)(86)

“It’s over,” she said. “We broke up.”

“Really? That’s too bad.”

She noticed he didn’t bother trying to hide his smile, and this in turn made her smile too. His phone went off. He checked the message, stared at the screen.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I’m getting a partner,” he said.





EPILOGUE

Becca stuffed a dog bone inside the front of her coat and zipped up. She grabbed a shovel from the garage and headed to the backyard. The rain overnight had made the ground soft and moist. Digging should be easy despite the chill in the air. The temperatures had been unseasonably warm the last two days, although the weatherman warned winter would return as early as tomorrow.

Romy ran ahead and doubled back, sniffing the ground, following the scent of a rabbit or quite possibly a squirrel. Who knew, really? She trotted to Becca’s side, jumping, nudging Becca’s coat with her nose where the bone was hidden inside.

“I’m going to have to show you where to dig if we’re going to be staying here for a while. You can’t be digging up his yard,” she said with a smile. She planned to live in her father’s house through the winter months at least. Come spring, well, she just didn’t know.

Romy ran circles around her until they reached the edge of the woods. Becca spotted the oak tree where she’d spied Russell and her father making their fateful deal, the same tree not far from where she’d buried Sheba’s toys. She stood at the base of the trunk, and instead of going right to bury the bone where she’d hidden all of the other dog toys before, she counted twelve steps to her left.

Late last night, she’d woken to the sound of thunder and a bad dream that hadn’t been a dream at all but a suppressed memory, the one that had brought her here to this spot. It had all been fuzzy, the edges of her recollection dull and blurry, a feverish consciousness entwined with the kind of fear she hadn’t felt since she’d been a kid.

Her therapist had warned her that there might be more memories from her childhood that she’d repressed. She’d tried to prepare Becca for all the ways trauma could have an impact on an individual, especially one who had been so young.

After taking the twelfth step, she stopped. The rock was there, the one she’d carried in dreamland. It had felt so real; her arms had shaken with exertion when she’d sat up in bed. She put the shovel down, gripped the stone with her hands. It wasn’t as big as she remembered. Everything seemed so much larger when you were a child. She braced herself with her legs and pushed. She shoved it off to the side inch by inch. When she was satisfied she’d moved it far enough out of the way, she picked up the shovel and started digging. Romy sniffed the pile of dirt that was accumulating, the twigs and leaves and debris.

Becca dug until the blade of the shovel hit what could’ve been a rock, but it wasn’t. It was metal. She dropped to her knees.



Ten-year-old Becca listened for any noise coming from downstairs. All was quiet. She double-checked her bedroom door was locked. When she thought it was safe, she reached under the bed, wincing from the pain where her father had gripped her arms, leaving them sore and bruised. She pulled out the shirt she’d rolled like a sausage, hiding it in a place where not even her mother would look. Her mother didn’t clean underneath the bed—not on a regular basis anyway.

Becca paused, listening again. Not hearing anything, she unrolled the shirt, revealing the knife she’d tucked inside. She’d returned home with it the day the Doberman had attacked Sheba. She hadn’t meant to leave with it. She’d only wanted to take it out of John’s hand. And then she’d panicked, not knowing what she should do with it, how much trouble she’d be in. So she’d hidden it.

Later, when she’d tried to tell her father, he wouldn’t listen, no matter how much she’d begged. Tell no one, not even me, he’d made her promise.

The blood had dried on the blade and handle. So much blood.

What was she supposed to do now? This was the stuff of grown-ups, the kind of thing her father should take care of. But he wanted no part of it, no part of her. She rubbed her eye. Sheba jumped onto the bed, sniffed the shirt, the knife. Quivering, she took a small step back. The dog gave Becca an idea.

She wrapped the knife up again and tucked it under her arm. She snuck through the house as best she could with Sheba nipping at her heels. Her mother was in the kitchen. The small TV on the countertop was turned on to a late-afternoon talk show.

Becca slipped into the garage and grabbed her father’s shovel. She picked up one of Sheba’s old bones that was lying in the driveway, then made her way across the backyard to the edge of the woods. If her mother happened to see Becca, she would assume she was burying one of Sheba’s toys, a method to train the dog to dig in one spot rather than all over her father’s yard.

She counted twelve steps to the left from the base of an oak tree, not to the right where the dog was expected to dig. She pushed the blade of the shovel into the ground, removing the dirt until enough of it was piled high off to the side and the hole was deep. She looked over her shoulder toward the house. When she was certain no one was watching, she dropped the shirt along with the knife into the hole and quickly covered it. She tossed leaves and sticks on top to make the spot blend into the surrounding area as best she could. It wasn’t good enough. Not far from the tree was a large rock. It was too big for her to carry, so she pushed with all her strength, rolling it on top of the packed earth. That was better. Less conspicuous. In time, she’d never notice it at all.