Chapter 11
“My aunt?”
“Your mama.”
Rachel’s stomach tightened.
“Did you know my mother?”
Walt glanced around the diner.
“Better not talk here.”
Rachel studied him.
“Why?”
He nodded toward the front window.
A white Bennett Ridge pickup sat across the street.
Nobody inside appeared to be watching.
Which meant nothing.
Walt said, “Come by my place.”
“When?”
“Now would be smart.”
He left.
Rachel paid.
She followed Walt six miles to a small farmhouse bordered by apple trees.
His wife had died years earlier.
The house was clean but crowded with books, tools, photographs, and the comfortable clutter of a life nobody had staged for strangers.
Walt poured coffee.
Rachel remained standing.
“You said you knew my mother.”
“I did.”
“Was she alive in October 1996?”
Walt stopped pouring.
Coffee overflowed the cup.
He set the pot down.
“Where’d you get that date?”
“Photograph.”
“From Evelyn?”
“Her cabin.”
Walt wiped the counter.
“Then Evelyn finally decided.”
“Decided what?”
“That dead people don’t have to keep promises.”
Rachel’s voice became very quiet.
“Was my mother alive?”
Walt looked at her.
“Yes.”
The answer had no drama.
No hesitation.
That made it worse.
Rachel gripped the back of a chair.
“How long?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You just said—”
“I knew she came back. Didn’t know where she’d been before that.”
“She died in 1995.”
“You buried a coffin in 1995.”
Rachel stared.
“Was she in it?”
“I wasn’t there when they closed it.”
“My father identified her.”
Walt shook his head once.
“Your father said he did.”
Rachel sat.
Every memory of the funeral shifted sideways.
Closed casket because of injuries.
Her father refusing to let Rachel view the body.
Aunt Evelyn arguing with him behind the church.
Rachel hearing Evelyn say, “You don’t get to decide what she knows.”
Her father answering something she could not hear.
At twelve, Rachel had assumed they were discussing funeral arrangements.
“What happened?”
Walt sat across from her.
“I only know pieces.”
“Give me the pieces.”
“Your mother showed up here in September of ninety-six.”
“Alive.”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“Almost nothing. Evelyn brought her in after dark. Susan stayed mostly at the cabin.”
“Why?”
“Scared.”
“Of whom?”
Walt looked toward the window.
“That part Evelyn never told me.”
“Daniel?”
Walt actually laughed.
“Daniel would’ve been what, twenty-one?”
“Twenty-two.”
“This started before him.”
May you like
“Then why did Evelyn warn me about Daniel?”
Walt’s expression changed.
