The Familiar Dark(58)

The walls of the closet moved closer to me and then away, rippling like waves, and I lowered my head down between my knees. Up until this moment, some part of me had still hoped that maybe it was only the money. That whatever Cal had been involved with, however bad it was, didn’t relate directly to the girls’ deaths. But the phone changed everything. The phone was proof that the person I trusted most in the world was responsible for my daughter’s death. Now I had to figure out what I was brave enough to do about it.



* * *



? ? ?

Zach smiled when he opened his front door and saw it was me, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Hey,” he said, “Come on in.” He stood back to usher me inside. He didn’t move farther into the house, though, and his gaze darted toward the kitchen and then away. For my part, I was so jittery that I bounced up and down on my toes, my eyes swinging from him to the door, back and forth, back and forth. All I could think about was the time I was wasting. But for some reason I couldn’t even name, I felt like I owed him this chance.

“So,” he said when I’d turned down his half-hearted offer of coffee. “What’s up?”

“I know who did it,” I said. I’d meant to ease into it, not vomit it at his feet, but everything inside me was fizzing and popping, out of control.

Zach stared at me, the color draining from his face. “What?”

I flapped a hand through the air, watched it like it wasn’t actually a part of my body. “I mean, it’s possible he didn’t actually do it. But he was involved in it.”

“Who?” The question came out on a limp puff of air.

“Cal,” I said, forcing the word from my throat.

Zach’s whole face scrunched up, blank with incomprehension. “Your brother? But he’s a cop.”

“I’m aware,” I said, impatient with this part of it. I wanted to fast-forward through all the how? what? why? questions. The truth was, I didn’t have answers to any of them. And Jimmy Ray had been right. When it came down to it, I didn’t care about the why. I only cared about the who. “I’m going to talk to him. Do you want to come with me?”

“Me . . . what . . . what about the cops? The other cops. Shouldn’t we be calling Land right now?” He turned toward the kitchen, and I grabbed at his arm.

“No. We’re not telling anyone. Not yet.”

“What are you talking about?” Zach’s voice was rising with each word, and I pushed down with my hand, trying to silence him.

“Calm down,” I said. “We’ll tell them soon. But I want to talk to him first. He’s my brother. I want to hear what he has to say before Land and a bunch of lawyers get in the middle of it.”

Zach forced out a laugh, ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing up in uneven tufts. “What, you’re going to go all vigilante on his ass? Is that your big plan?”

“I didn’t say anything about going after him. I just want to talk,” I said again. “I think I’m allowed that much.”

“I don’t . . .” He sank down onto the bench near the front door. I stayed quiet, let him work through it for a second. “It seems like a really bad idea, Eve,” he said finally.

“Maybe,” I admitted. A noise in the hall caught my attention, the whisper-light sound of a footstep. But when I turned, no one was there.

“What if he hurts you?”

I turned back to Zach. “I don’t think he will.” Of course, before today I would have bet anything, risked anything, on the idea that Cal would never hurt Junie. That he’d take a bullet before he’d harm a hair on her head. So it was entirely possible that I was wrong. The thing was, I didn’t much care. “Look, I didn’t come here for your permission or your blessing. But you were her father. I thought you had a right to know, and I wanted to give you the chance to come with me.”

Zach stared into his coffee mug like the right answer might be hidden in its depths. “I don’t think so,” he said. “This isn’t me, Eve. It’s not how I handle things. I won’t say anything to Land. Or Jenny. At least not yet. But I won’t go with you, either.”

In truth, it was exactly the answer I’d been expecting. The one I wanted, really. Because it proved, after everything, that I had been right. Junie had never been his. She’d always been solely and completely mine.



* * *



? ? ?

“Well, damn,” my mama said when she pushed open her trailer door, still dressed in the same clothes as the last time I’d seen her. “Wasn’t it just yesterday that you told me to forget I had a daughter? So who the hell are you? I don’t allow strangers on my property.” She smirked at her own cleverness.

This moment was the one that would decide everything. If I crossed her doorstep, asked for her help, trusted her, there was no going back. No pretending ever again that I was anything other than my mother’s daughter. No better than her. No different.

“Let me in, Mama,” I told her. “We need to talk.”





TWENTY-THREE


I was sitting on a rock next to the river when he found me. I’d been watching the water flow past for over an hour, lost in the ripples and eddies, the occasional silver flash of a fish’s scales. I was surprised when I looked up and saw that the sun was slipping through the late-afternoon sky, its edge kissing the horizon and lighting it up with streamers of pink.