3 Madness in Christmas River (13 page)

And there would never, ever be any going back.  

I trudged through the snow to the patrol car. Owen had already gotten out and was giving Evan a hard look.

“Can you give me a ride somewhere?” I asked.

He nodded.

I dusted off my boots, opened the passenger door, and got in.

Just before I closed it, I heard Evan say something.

“Call me when you’ve thought it through,” he said. “I’ll be around for a little while yet. And I want to see you again before I leave.”   

I didn’t say anything.

Owen got in, took the car out of park, and we sped down the street.

I looked in the rearview mirror. Evan was still standing knee-deep in snow, watching us with a sad expression on his face.

Chapter 33

“Wind’s supposed to pick up soon,” he said, pulling in front of Daniel’s house. “It’s good I came across you when I did.”

I had been thinking the same thing, that I was lucky he’d come across me. But not because of the storm.

“Who was that guy you were talking to?” he asked, killing the engine.

The heater died with it.  

 “Someone from my past,” I said, quietly.

“Sounds mysterious.”

“It’s not really,” I said. “That was my ex-husband.”

I could tell that he was surprised.

“I didn’t know you were married before,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “And not just to him, either. There was a whole string of them before Daniel came along.”

His eyes bulged for half a second.

I tried to keep a serious face, but couldn’t quite manage it. I started laughing.

“I’m just joking,” I said.

He smiled a forced smile, and then laughed nervously.

He sure was uptight.

I cleared my throat.

“Listen, I’m glad you found me too, because I wanted to talk to you about the case,” I said.  

“I haven’t gotten any concrete leads on it yet,” he said. “There’s some video footage from one of the downtown security cameras of the perp busting your car up, but other than that, there’s not a lot to go on.”

I shook my head.

“I wanted to talk to you about the photos,” I said. “I think I know who the kid is.”

His eyebrows drew together in a serious expression.  

“You do?” he said.

His body suddenly shook with a wave of visible shivers. We’d been sitting too long, and the cold air was seeping into the car.

He zipped his uniform jacket up higher.

I glanced at Daniel’s house.

“Why don’t you come on in?” I said. “I’ll tell you about it over supper. How’s that?”

I didn’t know why I was suddenly being so nice to Deputy Owen McHale.

But there was something about him, I don’t know. He sometimes reminded me of a sad, moody little puppy, as silly as that sounded.

Plus, it would be nice to have some company, as long as Evan was still prowling the streets.

“Naw, I just finished a double shift and was on my way home to crash,” he said. “And I wouldn’t want to put you out.” 

“You wouldn’t be,” I said. “I was going to fix myself something to eat anyway.”

He thought about it for a second.

“Well…” he said, drawing the syllable out. “I don’t have a damn thing to eat at home. And with the power being out, it’s probably cold as hell in my apartment right now.”

“Then it’s settled,” I said, getting out of the car.

He turned the car’s headlights off and followed me inside.

“I just hope you’re not a picky eater,” I said. “I’m not sure what Daniel’s got in his cupboard these days either.”

“What’s good enough for Sheriff Brightman is good enough for me,” he said.

Chapter 34

I was up in the attic, a flashlight in my mouth, trying to organize a massive pile of boxes that had probably been sitting in the Brightman household’s storage for decades.

The inviting, homey smell of tomato stew wafted up from the living room downstairs.

I had had my doubts about pulling something together from Daniel’s meager pantry and fridge selection, and with the blackout, there wasn’t much hope of cooking something. But then I remembered the wood burning stove in the living room. And I remembered how growing up, Warren would sometimes use the stove in our old house to make stews when the power went out during winter storms.

After telling Owen about the story Sully had told me concerning the missing teen in the photo, I had employed the deputy to keep an eye on the stew while it was simmering. I was taking advantage of the spare time to do what I had initially set out to do on this trip: get some work done on the mess in the attic.

Where we were going to live when we got married was still a big issue between Daniel and me, and it seemed we were no closer to resolving it. But while we were figuring things out, I thought that I might as well start sprucing up Daniel’s house. Whether or not we were going to live there, there would be change coming to the old house. And there were parts of the cabin that seemed like they hadn’t seen the light of day since Daniel was a kid.

I started to consolidate the boxes. I wasn’t planning on throwing anything out. I just wanted to make it look a little tidier. Just in case he had to show the home to potential renters or something like that.

Standing on my tiptoes, I reached for another box off the top of the stack and accidently knocked it off balance. It came crashing down, and I yelped as all of its contents sprayed across the wooden floor.

“Everything all right up there?” Owen yelled up from downstairs.

“Yep! just fine!” I yelled back.

Except that I was making an even bigger mess of the attic.

I started collecting some of the spilled contents of the box. A few faded papers that looked like they were related to the property ownership, some old newspapers that dated back to 1987, a couple of toy trucks, a plastic box of rusted fishing tackle, and a large book.

I placed everything but the leather book back in the box and then took a seat on the cold attic floor.

I grabbed the brown photo album, and held the flashlight over it.

Jared and Daniel: Outdoorsmen of the Wild Woods
was scrawled in block letters across the front that looked like a little kid’s writing.  

I opened the faded album.

I started grinning.

The first photo was of two boys dressed in camouflage, facing each other and crossing their fishing poles like they were swords. They both looked at the camera and gritted their teeth like they were engaged in an epic battle of the ages.

I looked at the shorter, younger one, and couldn’t help but laugh at the crooked nose and smiling green eyes that I knew so well.

Daniel couldn’t have been older than 10 in these photos.  

Both of Daniel’s parents were gone, and he didn’t have much in the way of family, so I had never gotten the chance to see photos like these.

The pictures were pasted in the book unevenly, and I knew that the boys must have made the album together.

As I flipped through it, I found more photos of the two boys fishing, building forts in the woods, skipping stones across the lake and making slingshots.  

Looking at the pictures, I could almost smell the fresh pine of the woods in the summer. Earthy and warm and full of promise.

It must have been a magical summer.

I got to the last page, a photo of both of them, their arms over each other’s shoulders. Bunny ears over both of their heads, grinning at the camera.

Happy as two clams.

I looked at Jared, Daniel’s brother. He had those same green eyes that Daniel did, but his nose was different and he had a sharper chin. Even though it was just a photo and he was just a kid, I could tell he had an infectious smile. I imagined he had been one of those special souls who could brighten up any room he walked into.

My heart swelled with sorrow as I looked at him.

Poor Jared.

I never got a chance to know him. He died in his 20s after getting shot by a robber holding up a convenience store. It wrecked Daniel, and he’d spent years trying to move past his brother’s death.

I wished that I had gotten a chance to know Jared, to see that smile of his in real life.

But I would never know him beyond what few photographs were left of him.

I looked at both of the boy’s expressions again. They were so full of hope for the future, of the full lives they both planned on living, not knowing what sadness awaited them around the corner.

The attic door suddenly opened. Owen peeked his head in and shined a flashlight in my direction.

“I think the stew’s ready,” he said.

I closed the album and stood up, tucking it under my arm.

“I’ll be right down.”

“Hey, are you okay?” he asked, shining the light in my face.

I sniveled.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s just the dust up here.”

I started climbing down the ladder, gripping the photo album as I descended.

Poor Jared, I thought.

Poor Daniel.

Chapter 35

“So how long were you married for?” Owen asked.

I didn’t know why, but the question took me by surprise. It was abrupt. We had just been talking about his grandmother and how she used to make an Irish cabbage stew every Sunday that all the kids in his family loathed.

And then, all of a sudden, we were talking about my failed marriage.

I grabbed his empty bowl and stacked it on top of mine. He poured the last of the wine bottle into his glass.

Maybe his abruptness had something to do with the amount of wine he’d had. 

“We were married too long,” I said.

“What happened?” he asked.

I gave him a sharp look.

“I mean, if that’s not too personal,” he said.

I took the bowls to the kitchen and then sat back down at the table.

“I’m surprised you don’t already know this story,” I said. “My marriage was just about all anyone in this town could talk about for a while.”

“Well, I haven’t heard it,” he said, taking a drink from his glass.

I let out a long sigh.

“We were high school sweethearts,” I said. “And then one day, I found out that he was having an affair with a friend of mine. And that’s pretty much where the story ends.”

I went over to the stove in the living room and fed it another log from the woodpile. It crackled happily. I stood by it, enjoying the warmth.

“That must have been really hard,” he finally said.

I sighed. 

“You just never think it’s a possibility,” I said. “You spend years and years with somebody, and you think that you know them like the back of your hand. Then something like that happens, and you realize that you never knew the first thing about him.”

“And that maybe they never knew the first thing about you.”

I glanced over at him, surprised.

His words lingered for a while. We both listened to the sound of the wind howling outside and the fire breaking down the wood. 

“Sounds like you know a little something about it,” I said.

He started to say something, but then stopped.

“It’s all a bunch of bullshit anyway,” he said, shaking his head.  

“What is?”

“Love,” he said. “All you do is sacrifice, and for what? For someone who ends up hurting you more than you ever thought anyone could. And the joke of it is that you gave them the knives to do it. You told them where you’re weaknesses are. You told them where it hurts the most.”

I was taken aback.  

It’s funny how you look at someone and judge them. Looking at Owen, I would have thought he didn’t know the meaning of heartache. That in fact, he was the one to dole it out. Maybe it was his good looks, or the way he acted. But he just didn’t seem to me like someone who loved very deeply, or who hurt very deeply either.

But I suddenly realized that I had been dead wrong about him.

And realized that most people in this town were probably wrong about him.

I thought about asking about the details of what happened to him, about the woman who hurt him, but I thought better of it.

I knew from experience that rehashing those memories didn’t help a thing.

It just dragged out the pain, making it hurt all over again.   

I cleared my throat.

“It gets better, you know,” I said. “Sometimes it’s just about finding the right person.”

He got up and went over to the counter, grabbing Daniel’s three-quarters full bottle of Jim Beam.

“May I?” he asked, holding it up.

I nodded.

“You want any?”

I shook my head.

He twisted the top off, pouring himself a large glass. Then he went back to the table.

“You think Sheriff Brightman’s the right person for you?” he said.

“I know that I love him with everything I have,” I said. “And that’s enough for me.”

He rubbed his face.

“What’s any of it good for anyway?”

He downed the whiskey at an alarming speed.

It had been the most I’d ever seen him drink, and I could tell it was starting to take effect. His cheeks were turning a deep shade of candy apple red.  

“I came all the way across the country to get away from her, you know, thinking that it’d help if I moved to a small town in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “But it’s just as bad as it was back there. I might as well have stayed in Pittsburg.”

He poured himself another drink.

“I would have done anything for that girl,” he said. “Anything. Jump off a cliff or in front of a train. I would have given her anything she wanted. But it wasn’t enough. Not enough to keep her.”

He stared into nothing, his eyes clouded with memories, no doubt.

I sighed.

There was no easy answer to heartbreak sometimes.    

“Maybe you just need someone to take your mind off of her,” I said. “It wouldn’t be hard in this town. What about that Haley girl you were talking about?”

He scoffed.

“Haley’s a
Play Misty for Me
type, if you know what I mean,” he said. “I’d end up with a knife in my back at the end of our first date.”