Dead Giveaway (Stillwater Trilogy #2)(78)
Author: Brenda Novak

"Grace?" she said, immediately lowering the lamp.

"Hi."

Allie put the lamp back on the end table and stepped into the light, feeling particularly rumpled and red-eyed. "How’d you get in?" Before they’d left last night, Kirk had hammered a few boards across the broken door. She could see that those boards were still intact and couldn’t picture Grace climbing through the window with her baby.

"I have a key to the mudroom." She nodded toward the small room just off the kitchen.

"Is something wrong?" Allie asked.

Grace gazed at her steadily, then put her sleeping baby on the floor near her feet and sat at the kitchen table. "A lot is wrong, isn’t it?" she said with a weary smile. "But I’m not here with any more bad news. I sent Kennedy over to make sure the farm was secure, and he saw your car in the driveway."

"I’m sorry. I should’ve told you I’d be here. I didn’t mean to make you come out so late at night."

"The baby was fussy, anyway. When she gets like this, I take her for a car ride." She adjusted Elizabeth’s blanket. "Puts her right to sleep."

Allie envied Grace’s sweet infant the bliss of being unaware. "I was afraid Joe might come back," she explained.

"I know."

Silence fell for several minutes. Then Grace cleared her throat. "How’s your mother?"

"She’s been better, of course."

"And you?" she asked. "Are you okay?"

Allie wished everyone would quit asking her that. She was disappointed, hurt, upset and worried–about her mother, her father and Clay. But Grace had suffered a soul-deep kind of pain, and at such a tender age. It’d been worse than anything Allie could have imagined. Yet Grace had received no friendship or support. She’d been reviled and gossiped about and judged–even accused of having hurt Barker! "No, I’m not okay," she said softly.

Grace nodded. "I’m sorry. If it had to happen, I wish it was someone else and not my mother who was involved."

Natural defensiveness made it difficult not to blame Irene for more than was probably fair.

Especially since Allie didn’t know her all that well. But in a situation like this, the fault couldn’t lie with only one person. And, after those pictures, the affair seemed less important than it otherwise would have. Allie couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to Grace and the other two girls in those photos.

"It’s not the affair that has me upset," she blurted out.

Grace’s eyes widened.

"I mean, it’s heartbreaking, but…" Allie could no longer find the words to express what she was feeling. She didn’t want to make Grace acknowledge something that had to be excruciating for her. But Clay’s defense hinged on his lawyer sister. If they were going to work together to help him, they had to be honest with each other, didn’t they? Whoever had delivered those photographs had done it for a reason. Allie wasn’t the only one to have seen them.

"Grace…" She forced the name around the lump in her throat but broke down immediately after.

Concern brought a worried frown to Grace’s elegant face as she stood and came toward her.

"What is it, Allie? Is it about Clay?"

Wishing she could gain control of her wayward emotions, Allie wiped her tears with the back of her hand. "I know, Grace," she said, forcing back the sobs. "I know what Barker did to you."

Grace turned pale and teetered on her feet as if she might collapse. Allie started to reach out to her–but Grace stepped back, straightened and tilted her chin at such a defiant angle that she appeared absolutely regal, far above anything so degrading as the obscene images in those photographs.

"How?" she asked, her voice toneless.

Allie longed to embrace her, to comfort her if possible–and to reassure herself that they were both okay, despite everything. She needed some antidote to the anger pounding through her.

She wanted to take on the world, to fight anyone who even looked at Grace wrong.

She could imagine those same emotions amplified in Clay, who loved Grace so much and had always tried to protect her. He must’ve felt like a failure when he realized; he must’ve sworn that nothing so vile would ever get past him again.

And then he must have–

Allie refused to think it. He wasn’t the only person who could’ve acted. But now she knew it had to be one of the Montgomerys. If Clay wasn’t the actual culprit, he was protecting whoever it was.

"Someone left a package in my m-mailbox. It contained–" Allie struggled with more tears

"–p-pictures," she choked out.

"Portenski." Grace swayed as if the mention of those pictures had been a physical blow.

Again, Allie wanted to touch her, to reassure her, but she suspected Clay’s sister needed the space, and that physical contact, no matter how well intentioned, would be the wrong thing to do.

"Did you say Portenski? " she asked. "You think Portenski gave them to me?"

"It had to be him," she whispered. "He must’ve found them at the church."

"When?"

"I don’t know."

"Was the camera there, too?"

"No." Grace stared at her for several long seconds, but Allie guessed she wasn’t really seeing her at all.

"Grace?" she said gently. "I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything, even though I know sorry isn’t nearly good enough."

Grace’s throat worked as she swallowed, but there were no tears in her blue eyes. "You didn’t tell Madeline…"

"Of course not."

"So what are you going to do with the pictures?"

"What do you think I should do?" Allie asked.

Grace hesitated. "If I say burn them, will you tell the police I asked you to destroy evidence?"

Allie shook her head. She wasn’t going to tell the police anything. They weren’t striving for justice, only to make the right people happy.

"Then burn them," Grace whispered vehemently.

Allie curled her fingers around Grace’s ice-cold hand. Grace didn’t respond, but she didn’t withdraw, either. "What if Portenski has more?"

"If he wanted to turn them over to the police, he would’ve done it already. He wouldn’t have given them to you."

Nodding, Allie let her breath go. That made sense. She didn’t understand why he’d entrusted her with them, but–

A thought suddenly occurred to her. "Are you sure they didn’t come from Jed?" The pictures, the note at the cabin…Maybe he knew the truth, too, and sympathized with Grace.

"I can’t see how," Grace said. "But…maybe. Maybe he found–" her voice broke "– them while he was working in the barn."