He’d assured Madeline that it was just more of her mother’s unbalanced writing, a side effect of her “illness,” but Madeline would never forget the abject despair on her mother’s face.

  Hunter recovered the note and set it to one side as he moved closer. Then he held her hand. She thought he might prod her for answers she couldn’t give, not right now, but he didn’t. They sat in silence, their fingers interlaced.

  Unwilling to look him in the eye, she focused on his short, clean nails, his darker skin. He was a beautiful man. There was no question about that. She’d also perceived him as harsh and selfish, but just now, he seemed to be neither. He was simply there, offering her support and, more importantly, hope that the mystery that had plagued her for so long would be solved at last.

  “This is why you were reluctant to take on the job, isn’t it?” she said.

  “This?”

  “The level of emotion involved.”

  “One of the reasons,” he admitted.

  Swallowing, she stated the obvious. “It’s hard for you to do research when I can hardly talk about the past.”

  “I wasn’t worried about research.”

  She finally met his gaze. “What then?”

  “It’s not important now.”

  Rallying, she wiped her cheeks. “I’m generally not much of a crier.”

  “We all have our moments,” he said, and she wondered what his moments were like. Did they concern the woman Antoinette? What had happened to his marriage? Did he regret losing his wife?

  She was curious but knew better than to ask. He’d already let her know that he kept his personal life strictly personal.

  “This note…” he said.

  When she refused to look at it again, his fingers curled more tightly around hers. She guessed that it was partly an apology for having to push her, and partly encouragement. He’d told her there would be difficult questions. She just hadn’t expected them to revolve around her mother. That was a separate heartache—one so deep she preferred to let it lurk beneath the surface, its true dimensions unknown.

  “Were there other letters like this?” he asked.

  She watched Sophie find a comfortable spot on the couch. “What do you mean?”

  “Other cries for help?”

  The wisp of a memory encroached…her father’s voice. She didn’t mean it, Maddy. She’s not going anywhere, are you, Eliza? And her mother’s response: No, no, of course not. I’d never leave you, Maddy. Never. “That wasn’t a cry for help,” she insisted.

  “What was it then?” Hunter asked.

  “It was…more of the same. She was depressed. She—she wrote things. There were volumes…” And yet she’d retrieved this particular letter from the garbage and saved it in her diary. That alone set it apart—and made her a liar. “She loved my father.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because…even though she slept with me at night, she usually went into the bedroom or bathroom with him first.”

  “Every night?”

  “Most nights.”

  “And you think they were making love?”

  “I know they were.”

  “How?”

  “I walked in on them once. My mother was—” She cleared her throat, unable to put words to the image in her mind. “They were in an intimate position.”

  “Having intercourse?”

  Did she have to get specific? “Does it matter?”

  “It might, and it might not.”

  She sighed. It wasn’t easy talking about such private situations with this particular man. “His pants were down, and she was kneeling in front of him.”

  “I see. And that means she loved him?”

  She felt her cheeks burn. “She wouldn’t want to be with him that often if she didn’t.”

  “She could’ve felt coerced,” he said.

  “No. She’d offer. He’d ask if she really needed to sleep with me again, and she’d take him by the hand and off they’d go.”

  When he said nothing, she felt a need to fill the silence.

  “Anyway, she loved Stillwater and the people here. She wouldn’t have wanted to leave. She went out all the time, visiting friends, neighbors, fellow church members.”

  He released her hand and leaned back, stretching out his legs. “Who, specifically?”

  Her hand felt cold without his warmth. “My mother had a lot of empathy for the sick or lonely. Bonnie Ray’s husband had just had a stroke. We’d go over and spell Bonnie so she could get out for a bit, or we’d bring some groceries. And Jedidiah Fowler’s mother was getting old and losing her memory. My mother would take some bottled peaches and visit regularly, so Jed wouldn’t worry about his mother while he had to work.”

  “Who’s Jedidiah Fowler?”

  “He’s the one I mentioned to you before, the older man who was working on the tractor in the barn the night my father went missing.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “There’s not a lot to tell. He’s an old bachelor who owns a small house near the elementary school. His mother used to live with him until she passed away a few years ago. He owns the car-repair shop and the only tow truck in Stillwater.” She left out that she’d broken into that repair shop eighteen months ago, searching for evidence—evidence she hadn’t found.

  “What does he have to say about that night?”

  “That he never saw or heard a thing.”

  “Can he corroborate Clay’s alibi?”

  “He can say when Clay left and when he came back. That’s all.”

  “And he didn’t see your father.”

  “Not that night.”

  “Did your father and this Jedidiah have any argument or problem with each other?”

  “No. And no one, not Clay, Irene, Molly or Grace, heard any kind of argument or scuffle.”

  Hunter shifted the boxes around. “Maybe I’ll drop by later today, talk to Mr. Fowler.”

  “Good luck,” she muttered.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  “He doesn’t say much. I’m a journalist and even I can’t get anything out of him. For a long time, I was absolutely convinced he was the one who’d murdered my father.”

  “Because…”

  “He’s so different. And while there was no fallingout that I know of, he doesn’t make it much of a secret that he never liked my father. Even now.”

  “Has he ever said why?”

  “Just that this town didn’t need a preacher like him. I think he found my father’s brand of religion too puritanical. That’s all I can guess.”

  Hunter went back to thumbing through her mother’s journals. “Any other suspects I should know about? What about that other guy? The one in prison on drug-related charges?”

  “Mike Metzger. He was manufacturing meth in his basement. But I hear he’s about to get out on parole.”

  Hunter set the journals aside. “When did he go to prison?”

  “Five years ago.”

  “And what’s his connection to your father?”

  “He and his family attended our church. A week before my father went missing, he caught Mike smoking pot in the bathroom and turned him in. Mike was only a stupid teenager at the time, but he got into a lot of trouble and made a few threats.”

  “Is he the type to act on those threats?”

  “Hard to say. I’m sure he’s more dangerous now than he was then. He’s older, for one. And prison hasn’t improved him. I’ve written to him a few times over the past year, begging, cajoling, threatening, trying to find out if he had anything to do with my father’s disappearance.”

  “Did you ever get a response?”

  “Not until a few weeks ago. Then he wrote me back, but he said something that was a little disconcerting.”

  “What?”

  “The letter was only one line.”

  When she didn’t volunteer the information, he waited.

  “‘I wish I’d killed you both,’” she muttered.

  There was a weighty silence. “All because of the incident in the church bathroom?”

  She gave him a tired smile. “Not entirely. I’m the one who kept badgering the police to keep an eye on him. I thought he might confess to killing my father.”

  “And?”

  “They kept an eye on him, all right. They caught him cooking meth and sent him to prison.”

  “He blames you for that?”

  “Basically. Forget that he’s the one who was dealing drugs in the first place.”

  “Does he have an alibi for the night your father went missing?”

  “He claims he was in his room, and his parents back him up.”

  “Are they credible?”

  “Most people don’t think much of Mike, but his parents are well-liked.”

  “Where in their house was his room? Do you know?”

  “On the second story. But he could get out if he wanted.”

  “I’ll make a note of that.”

  She felt slightly better. Hunter was so much more open to her suggestions, so much more interested in examining every aspect of the case than any of the police officers she’d dealt with. His attitude made her doubly aware of how difficult it had been to overcome Stillwater’s prejudice against the Montgomerys. Maybe Hunter was expensive, but he seemed worth it. Surely, he’d find what the others had missed.

  “Did anyone think to offer him leniency in return for information on your father’s case?” he asked.

  “I begged Chief McCormick, the previous police chief, to see what he could do. They approached Mike with an offer, but he basically told them to go to hell.”

  “And this guy’s about to be released?”

  “Any day.”

  “Will he be coming back here?”

  “I doubt he has anywhere else to go.”

  Hunter made a clicking sound with his tongue. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

  “Don’t expect him to be cooperative.” She’d finally recovered enough to smile. “He certainly won’t let you read his journal.”

  He tapped the puffy plastic cover. “There’s nothing in here that’ll shock me, is there?”

  “Save it for bedtime,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m sure it will put you right to sleep.”

  Stacking the spiral notebooks, he added her journal and placed her mother’s letter carefully on top.

  “What do you want that for?” she asked.

  He frowned as he got up. “I’m not sure. I’d like to take a closer look, if that’s okay.”

  She felt strangely protective of that note. But she was paying him to ferret out the truth and needed to provide whatever he might need. “Sure. Are you ready for the police files, too?” she asked as she stood. She had to get to work, or the next issue of The Stillwater Independent would be nothing but a collection of articles pulled from the Associated Press. She generally used AP to fill in on the national news front, but she always included a good selection of local stories.

  “Not yet. I was hoping you could take me out to the farm.”

  She was planning have a shower. “Now?”

  “Why not?”

  She considered letting him march up to Clay’s front door on his own and immediately rejected the possibility. “Clay’s not really someone you want to approach too boldly,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s had to fight for everything he has, and he’s been the target of a lot of suspicion and doubt.”

  “So what are you trying to say? He’s dangerous?”

  “No! He’s just not very welcoming to strangers.”

  “He won’t talk to me?”

  She contemplated the work still to be done at the paper and concluded that the next issue would be very short. “I’m saying I’d better go along.”

  While Madeline showered in the main house, Hunter sat at the desk in his little cottage and read her mother’s journals.

  Another day. Lee working over at the church, counseling someone. I don’t know who. Me alone with my thoughts and my child. I look into Maddy’s eyes and pray that somehow I can give her a better life than I’ve known. This morning, it actually seems a possibility. I grasp at such hope. If only for the money, the chance.

  I’m afraid to breathe for fear I’ll miss some cue. I have to get away. That’s the only answer. I’ve known it all along, ever since then. But how and when? Satan will follow me. He’ll come for me. I hear my name. He comes for me now.

  This entry made Eliza sound almost normal. But some of the others. They were so cryptic—especially the poems and journal entries that had survived Eliza’s penchant for burning. It was almost as if she was talking in riddles.

  What was missing in her life? What cues was she watching for? And that part about having to leave. Was she talking about leaving the world? If not for her subsequent suicide, Hunter would’ve interpreted that line as leaving her husband. In light of the note Madeline had found in the secret compartment of her jewelry box, he still wondered.

  I’ve known it all along, ever since then…

  Since when?

  He turned a few more pages.

  There’s a worm in my apple. More than one. Worms everywhere. Maggots. Eating the flesh, revealing the rotten core. I pray to awaken from the nightmare, but this nightmare is my life. Ironically, a life my friends envy.

  On the same page, Eliza had taped a newspaper clipping of a young girl who’d lost her life in a hit-and-run accident. Madeline’s mother seemed particularly distraught by this tragedy. She knew the girl, which would’ve made it painful. But she wrote about her for the next two years. Almost as if there was a personal connection, and yet the girl’s name hadn’t appeared in her journals before.

  Katie Swanson, who’d been fifteen years old. A runaway.

  “I’ll do it for her,” Eliza wrote more than once. She’d do what? And was “her” Katie or Madeline? There were times Eliza seemed to get them mixed up.

  Hunter read Katie’s obituary, which was taped onto the page following the article.

  She’d been born in Stillwater and raised by her mother. There was no mention of any surviving siblings. The funeral had been held at the Purity Church of Christ—Madeline’s father’s church. Reverend Barker delivered the eulogy.

  Sliding the second box toward him, Hunter began to flip through the reverend’s large collection of sermons. Lee Barker seemed to admire his own work enough to save every sheet and to file each sermon meticulously by date.

  Hunter was hoping he’d find the preacher’s notes for Katie’s funeral. But the only reference to the girl was a brief passage in the sermon the next Sunday.

  May God strike the man or woman who took our innocent Katie from us. She was a beautiful girl, so full of life and so ready to do God’s will. I don’t know what I will do without her angelic service to me and this church.

  The preacher had known her, too. And he’d apparently liked her. Hunter allowed himself a sardonic smile. Angelic by Barker’s standards must’ve been good indeed.

  The next week’s sermon was on tithes and offerings, but Hunter saw no mention of her. It was in Eliza’s journals that her name appeared again and again. Madeline’s mother couldn’t seem to get over the tragedy of the girl’s death. She also referred to another loss—the suicide of a sixteen-year-old girl.

  Had I spoken, I could’ve saved her. I tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t see. They thought I was crazy. That’s what he tells everyone.

  Was Barker the “he”? And how could Eliza have helped? Because she could identify with the girl’s mental anguish?

  According to what Hunter could piece together—there was no obituary or article that he could find—Rose Lee Harper had overdosed on sleeping pills.

  “Wait…” he muttered, skimming a different section in which he spotted the girl’s name. She’d been found naked on the floor of her bedroom.

  Naked? That struck Hunter as odd. He didn’t know of one other suicide in which the person had first stripped down. Especially not someone only sixteen years old.

  The way Eliza had written the word naked was unusual, too. She generally wrote with a pretty, flowing script, as neat as he imagined her house would be. But NAKED stood out because it was printed and traced again and again until it made such a deep impression in the paper he could’ve read the word from the other side of the page.

  He ran his finger over the engraved letters.

  How well had Eliza known this girl?

  He searched through the other journals but, unlike Katie, he could find no previous mention of Rose Lee.

  It was possible she’d been on the pages that were missing. There were quite a few.

  A knock at the door interrupted him. “You haven’t showered yet?” Madeline asked when he answered.

  “I got involved in reading these journals.”

  “What about the farm?”

  “I’ll go as I am, and shower when my clothes come.” He glanced over his shoulder at the materials spread out on the desk. “What do you know about Rose Lee Harper?”

  “Rose?” she asked. “Where did you read that name?”

  “Your mother mentions her quite often.”

  “Oh.” She straightened the strap of her purse. “I guess that doesn’t surprise me. My mother was really empathetic. And what happened to Rose was so sad.”

  He stepped out and shut the door behind him. “It said she committed suicide.”

  “She did. But it was her whole life that was sad, you know?” They rounded the truck Hunter had seen the night before, the one Madeline’s brother had dropped off for her to use, and approached the car. When they reached it, she tossed him the keys.

  “I’m driving?” he asked.

  “It’ll help you learn your way around town.”

  “How was Rose’s life sad?” he asked as he climbed behind the wheel.

  Madeline got in on the passenger side. “Her mother left her to be raised by her father when she was little and went to live in some other state with another man. And Ray Harper didn’t start out as the best dad.” She pulled an elastic tie from her purse as he backed out of the drive.