The Bad Daughter(60)

Robin covered his hand with her own.

There was a knock on the door. Robin spun around to see Melanie in the doorway.

“Sorry to interrupt, but…” Melanie took a deep breath.

Robin rose slowly to her feet. “What’s the matter?”

“Alec is gone.”

“What do you mean, he’s gone?”

“I mean he stole your fiancé’s car and took off.”

“Please tell me this is your sick idea of a joke.”

“Sorry, little sister,” Melanie said solemnly. “Looks like the joke is on us.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


They waited until almost midnight before giving up on Alec and going to bed.

“Why would he do such a stupid thing?” Robin had lost track of how many times she’d asked that question. “What the hell was he thinking?”

“Obviously he wasn’t.” Melanie stood up from the kitchen table, where the three of them had been lingering since dinner. No one had had much of an appetite except Landon, who’d wolfed down two hot dogs and three helpings of beans before retreating to his room and resuming his rocking. “But at least the sheriff hasn’t called to say they picked him up, which means they probably don’t know he’s gone. So maybe he’ll get smart and come back before it’s too late.”

Sheriff Prescott would no doubt be checking in with them in the morning. It wouldn’t take long for him to realize that Alec had gone AWOL. It would take even less time for a warrant to be issued for their brother’s arrest.

“Unless, of course, he’s guilty,” Melanie said.

“He isn’t,” Robin insisted.

“There’s also the little matter of your fiancé’s car.”

“Looks like your brother’s going to need a good criminal attorney sooner than we thought,” Blake said.

“Do you know anyone?” Robin asked him.

“Not from around here.”

“I hear Jeff McAllister’s pretty good,” Melanie said. “I’ll phone him in the morning. Anyway, I’m calling it a night, and I suggest you do the same. Tomorrow is shaping up to be a very eventful day.”

Robin listened to her sister’s footsteps as they retreated up the stairs. “Do you think she could be right?” she asked Blake, reluctant to accept the possibility that Melanie could be right about anything.

“I don’t know,” Blake said honestly. “But if he doesn’t come back by morning, then I’m going to have to report my car stolen or risk being charged as an accomplice after the fact.”

“I know.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about. This is Alec’s fault. Not yours.”

They went upstairs and lay down on top of the bed, not bothering to change out of their street clothes or climb under the covers. Robin felt the weight of Blake’s arm as it wrapped around her waist, his breath steady and reassuring on the back of her neck. Thank God you’re here, she thought. Then, Where the hell is my brother? Why isn’t he answering his phone? Is he, at this very minute, barreling down a distant, dark highway, headed for the Canadian border?

Did you do it, Alec? Did you shoot our father and Cassidy? Did you murder Tara?

She tried picturing her brother with a gun in his hand, a ski mask covering his thin face and full mouth, hiding everything but his beautiful gray eyes.

Did you do it, Alec? Were you so consumed with bitterness, even after all this time, that you murdered one person and tried to kill two more, including your own father? Did you hate them that much?

Her father and Alec had always had a contentious relationship, even before Greg’s marriage to Tara. Alec had never lived up to their father’s stereotypical expectations of what a man should be, what a son of his should be.

“Do you have to be so hard on him?” she remembered her mother asking repeatedly throughout Alec’s childhood.

“Do you have to be so soft?” had been her father’s automatic response. “You have to stop babying him. He needs to toughen up. You want the kids at school to walk all over him?”

But who needs outsiders when your own father’s footprints are already imprinted on your back?

It was even worse the few times Alec had tried standing up to him.

Robin recalled her father’s indignation when Alec refused his advice regarding a school project. The first-grade class had been told to design a park, and Alec had come home full of enthusiasm. He’d been…how old…six, maybe seven? His park would consist of a swing set and a sandbox made out of construction paper, he’d announced, as well as a Lego boy hanging from a set of monkey bars constructed from straws. There would be two cardboard trees.

“Two trees?” their father had bellowed. “What kind of park has only two trees? You need more goddamn trees.”

Alec had stared at his father. “Whose project is this?” he’d asked. “Yours or mine?”

Their mother had glowed with quiet pride, but Greg Davis had stormed angrily out of the room, viewing his son’s legitimate question as a threat to his authority and vowing never to help him again. His anger had resurfaced when Alec came home a week later, beaming with delight at the B-plus he’d received. “I bet all the other kids got an A,” his father said dismissively. “It was the damn trees. I told you. What kind of stupid park has only two goddamn trees?”