Dead Right (Stillwater Trilogy #3)(34)
Author: Brenda Novak

It had been the damned reverend who couldn’t get enough of the real thing.

And now they’d discovered the dildo and the panties…

Ray kicked over a chair, then closed his eyes and shook his head. Even if they found his se**n on those panties, they wouldn’t be able to trace it to him. They didn’t have his DNA on record; they’d never had any reason to get a sample.

He just had to lie low and wait for it to blow over. Look at Clay Montgomery, he thought. From all indications, he’d committed murder and gotten away with it. The Stillwater Police didn’t know their heads from their asses. He’d be fine.

Grabbing his truck keys, he stalked out of the trailer and headed over to the Piggly Wiggly to buy some groceries.

Chapter Ten

The folded piece of paper that fell out of Madeline’s childhood journal made her stomach lurch. She knew instantly what it was. She’d taken that paper out of the garbage after her father had wadded it up and thrown it away. She hadn’t seen it in twenty-seven years, but every word, every line, was indelibly imprinted on her memory.

When Hunter picked it up, she didn’t stop him. She probably would have, except that she couldn’t breathe. She watched his long fingers open the sheet, watched his light blue eyes scan the contents.

After several interminable seconds, he raised his eyes. “Your mother was going to leave your father?”

Madeline’s throat burned with the difficulty of holding back her tears. She reached for the paper he held instead of trying to speak, and he relinquished it to her hands.

Dear Mom:

I can’t go on this way. Each day is darker than the last. I have to leave Lee, as soon as possible. I can’t explain, and I can’t come to you. Not yet. I need money, though. As much as you can spare. Please. Anything…

Tears blurred Madeline’s vision so she could no longer read. Blinking quickly, she pushed the note away before her emotions could completely overwhelm her. She didn’t want to see her mother’s beautiful script, to feel the poignant loss that settled so heavily on her shoulders. Would her mother have been any happier had she left Stillwater?

The jagged edge of guilt seemed to cut Madeline like a saw—destructive, powerful, tearing. She’d first found that note when she’d discovered a false bottom in her mother’s jewelry box and had been so frightened by what she’d read that she’d started to cry. Her parents, who’d been watching TV, hurried into the bedroom. Then her mother stared with wide, desperate eyes as her father took the note and read it aloud.

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.