The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel)

by Loreth Anne White

  Jeb crouches slowly down in front of me. He places his hand on my knee, ever so gently. It’s warm. Solid.

  “God,” he whispers. “You look so good.” His eyes sparkle with moisture in the moonlight. “It’s been so long.” His features are hungry, devouring me. His body gaunt. Strong. He’s still as wild as these mountains and forests. And the things in them.

  Everything that drew me to Jeb in the first place, that feral magnetism, something unchained. His poetry, his deep passion for these mountains, this land. His courage, tenacity, the way he always moved to the beat of his own drum. It draws me now—my heart, my body, at war with my mind. My vision blurs and I’m overcome with a desire to lean into him, be held by him, have him make all the years and tragedy just go away.

  But then I think of Quinn. Sophia.

  “I . . . I don’t understand.”

  “I’m innocent, Rachel. I’ve come home to prove it. And when I do, I want access to my daughter. I want to tell her the truth.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Rachel’s complexion looked ashen in the moonlight, pain, fear, brightening her eyes. But Jeb saw something else too, dark and shimmering, as he crouched in front of her. He could also feel it, an electricity crackling between them, something that told him it hadn’t died. An atavistic part of Rachel still gravitated to his pull, and he to hers. It excited something deep and secret and carnal in him. And it worried him. He’d come to tell her why he was back and what he needed for Quinn’s sake, then he planned to step away from them. Something told him this was going to be far more complicated.

  “I don’t believe you. How can I believe Sophia was helping you? How can you be innocent when Amy gave birth to your child . . . Amy was brutally raped . . .” Wind blew strands of dark hair across her face. Jeb fought the urge to move the strands away, to tuck them behind her ear. To ask her about the small bandage above her eye.

  “Rachel,” he said softly. “It was consensual with Amy. It happened before she was taken and hurt. I never denied that I slept with her.”

  His words seemed to crash into her like a physical punch. She blinked sharply, pain tearing afresh over her beautiful face.

  “I was set up by those four guys. Luke, Levi, Clint, Zink—for some reason they all lied about me driving north. But I didn’t lie in court. Not once. And the last thing in my life I wanted was to cause you pain. If there’s one thing I’m guilty of, it’s that. And I am so, so sorry.”

  She drew her knees in close, hugged them tightly to her chest. She was shivering and her eyes were big, dark holes. Her lips . . . he wanted to feel those lips against his. He ached for her suddenly with every molecule of his being. Being so close again, touching her . . . he thought he’d plumbed the depths of all kinds of new emotions when he had first seen and touched Quinn. His daughter. But this was different. Raw. All-consuming. Overriding. He was almost afraid of the ferocity of his desire and love for this woman. Jeb knew that what he felt for Rachel was something he’d probably built out of all proportion during the long, lonely years in prison. He hadn’t had the occasion to even meet anyone new, someone who might displace his obsession. All he’d had was the memory of what they had once shared, and he’d dwelled on this. It had become a psychological coping tool.

  But this was reality now. This was the present. She’d lived a whole life in those nine years. He had to get—and keep—things in perspective. He had to deliver his message, then stay well clear of both Rachel and Quinn until he’d proved his innocence.

  “It was a stupid mistake,” he said. “A hotheaded, hormonal, teenage, knee-jerk reaction to our fight, after you said it was all over between us. I didn’t believe you meant it. I thought you’d sober up, get over it. Then I saw you the next night in Trey’s arms at the bonfire, him kissing you, his hand up your sweater.” He watched her.

  She swallowed.

  “Do you remember,” he said quietly, “what our fight was about?”

  She glanced up at the stars, as if the night sky might yield answers, offer escape, as if gravity might somehow stem the emotion he could see glittering in her eyes. Those deep-brown eyes so full of hurt he’d put there.

  “You wanted to make love. Have sex for the first time. I . . .” Emotion grabbed him. “God, I loved you so much. You were so drunk. I was desperate to have you, but I wanted us to wait. I wanted it to be special, because . . . because you were everything to me. I wanted you in my life forever.” He swallowed against the thickness building in his throat. “I had plans to marry you, Rach. I wanted us to have a family, a proper one. I wanted a chance to be a good father. ”

  Like my own father never was . . .

  “You were leaving for Europe to train for the Olympics, and I was so afraid you’d be gone to me forever if we didn’t sort things out before you left. I came to find you at the gravel pit that night. I knew what drugs would be there. I knew what every guy there wanted. I came to take you home, to keep you safe . . . and there you were, on a blanket with Trey Somerland. Do you remember what he said to me that night?”

  She met his gaze, her pulse fluttering at her neck.

  “Trey called me a halfbreed and you laughed. You broke me in two that night.”

  She cast her eyes down. Wind ruffled her long hair. “I was drunk,” she said softly.

  “I know. That’s why I came to take you home.”

  A shudder wracked her body. “The prosecutors said you went on a rampage because of me, that you also started getting wasted.” She said the words so quietly he could barely hear. Jeb leaned closer, touched her knee again. She didn’t pull away, didn’t flinch. He could detect her scent. Fresh soap. Shampoo. Alcohol. His gut tightened.

  She looked up, right into his eyes. “They said you turned violent because of the drinking, because you weren’t used to it, and that you took Amy and Merilee to hurt them because you really wanted to hurt me. I saw them get into your car, Jeb. I saw you leave the pit with them.”

  “I’d already had consensual sex with Amy by then,” he said, very quietly. “I was taking her home. She was out of it. We both were at that point. Merilee wanted a ride, too. But they both got out of my car at the Green River rail crossing. They’d seen some people across the clearing, and the girls ran over to them. I didn’t see who they ran over to meet. I only discovered in court that it was Levi, Clint, Luke, and Zink. That’s the first time I heard those four guys claim they all saw me going north on the highway with the girls.

  “There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t run through my memories of that night, Rachel, trying to see faces, trying to see exactly where those guys were sitting under those trees. But my brain was spinning at the time. I was fired up, drunk . . . I have gaps. But I do know I was being eaten up by what I’d just done with Amy. I was so consumed with self-recrimination I didn’t even look back to see where the girls went after they got out of my car. I just drove straight home. I did not turn north with them in my car. Those four guys who said I did—Levi, Clint, Zink, Luke—they perjured themselves in court. I want to know why they lied for each other. Did one of them do it? All of them? Or are they protecting someone else? Whatever it is, I’m going to find out.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she searched his face, looking for a way to measure the truth of his words. Deciding how much to trust him. She was warring within herself. She opened her mouth.

  But before she could speak, Jeb raised two fingers, almost touching her lips.

  “I know,” he whispered. “The evidence all told another story. I’m not going to try and convince you right here, tonight, after all these years, that the prosecution’s story was a lie. That I was set up.” He paused. “I’m going to show you. I’m going to show all of them. That’s the reason I’m back. To prove my innocence, to find out who did this. To find Merilee’s body. And to see that justice—real justice—is finally done. It’s not revenge I want, but restitution. I have a right to th
at. To my daughter. To my home.”

  He watched her face, the myriad of emotions chasing through her features. Believing him now would mean tipping everything else onto its head, ripping apart beliefs she’d held for almost a decade.

  “If you didn’t do it . . .” Her words faded.

  “I know; it’s hard to swallow. If you believe in my innocence, you must believe someone else attacked Amy and Merilee and left them to die. Maybe even a person you consider a friend. It means there’s been a conspiracy of silence for almost a decade to protect that guilty party. It means someone in this town knows where Merilee’s body is, someone who could give closure to the Zukanov family, someone who was prepared to let an innocent man rot in max security for something he didn’t do.”

  Rachel’s gaze jerked suddenly up toward the second-story windows of her house, and Jeb detected a stiffening in her posture.

  “Yes,” he said, reading her thought process. “Once I’ve done this, I do want access to my daughter.”

  “Jeb—”

  “It was Sophia’s and Peter’s promise to me, and mine to them. That when I proved my innocence without a doubt, they’d welcome me into their lives. They’d grant me access to Quinn. It was why Sophia started working with me after she began to believe I might be innocent, after she’d met Piper Smith. That docudrama, it all started there, five years ago, things coming out. Sophia knew she’d have to tell Quinn one day about her adoption, and that Quinn would ask about her birth parents. Or perhaps even go searching herself. Sophia didn’t want Quinn for one moment to believe she’d been conceived in violence, that the blood of a killer and brutal rapist ran through her veins. Once this was over, Sophia planned to let Quinn know I was her birth father, and we’d all work through it together.”

  She just stared.

  Jeb reached down and picked up the fleece blanket she’d dropped at her feet. Moving carefully, he draped it around her shoulders, bringing his face close to hers as he did. Again he detected the scent of alcohol. He wondered how often she drank. Alone? He thought of his father, of things gone wrong. And his sense of purpose fused into a hard, burning coal in his gut. He was going to put this right.

  “Amy would have been a part of it, too,” he said. “If she’d wanted, and been ready.” He hesitated, not wanting to say too much yet about Amy’s death.

  “You’re asking me to believe that Amy and you and Sophia and Peter were going to have one big, happy open adoption? Amy, who believed you raped her and killed her best friend?”

  “Amy knew there was something locked in her memory. It was starting to come out. She was beginning to fear she might have helped put an innocent man away. It started to happen after Piper interviewed her, after the True Crime documentary . . .” He hesitated again, worried about saying too much, too quickly. “Sophia began to believe that Amy did actually form memories that night, that she was lucid despite the drugs, but that she’d blocked them in a form of posttraumatic retrograde amnesia. Sophia was trying a new hypnosis technique to help Amy access those memories. She even tried the technique with me.”

  Something tightened in Rachel; he could see it—walls going up. She clutched the blanket tightly across her chest, anger seeping into her features.

  “Everyone was part of this? Except me? I’m kept out of this? Yet I’m the one left with Quinn?” She glared at him. “Why should I believe you? There’s just your word. Everyone else is gone now. Sophia, Peter, Amy . . . they’re all dead.” Bitterness spiked her words. “Not one of them can verify a damn thing you’re saying!”

  Urgency bit through Jeb. The last thing he wanted was for her to shut down. Quickly, he took the wallet-sized photo album from his pocket. He opened the cover, held it toward the light spilling out from the kitchen window.

  “Here, see,” he said quietly.

  Rachel bent over, her hair brushing his hand as she did. One by one Jeb slowly turned the pages of a young life: Quinn as a newborn baby; Sophia holding her; Quinn’s first birthday, face awash with chocolate cake; Quinn without her front teeth; Quinn the day she turned seven.

  Rachel’s hand went to her mouth as her shoulders sagged. She gave a single sharp inhalation. “Sophia . . . brought you these, in prison?”

  He nodded.

  “She never told me,” she repeated. “She never breathed a goddamn word.”

  “She didn’t want to cause you pain. She was fighting to free a man you helped put in jail. A man you felt betrayed you in the worst possible way. She didn’t want to butt heads with you over this and have you thinking she was betraying you, too. She wanted to be sure first.”

  “Fuck Sophia!” she said suddenly, scrabbling to her feet against the door. “Damn her to hell! She couldn’t tell me all this . . . all this stuff. Yet she made me guardian in her will, letting me find out the truth in the most shocking way possible—through adoption papers—that you’re the father. I was good enough for that? But not to be a part of all the rest?”

  He grasped her by the shoulders, and she went stock-still.

  “She didn’t expect to die, Rachel, before she could finish what she and Peter started.”

  “Get your hands off me,” she hissed. “Just back away. Get the hell off my property.” She was vibrating, fire crackling through her veins. Distance, she needed space to try and absorb this. He was messing with her head.

  “Listen to me—”

  “You think you can just walk in here, tell me there’s been some conspiracy for the last nine years? That group of guys you say perjured themselves—they’re upstanding members of this community. Clint is the fire chief now. Levi is manager of Bear Mountain operations. Zink owns the Shady Lady Saloon. And while Luke might be gone, Adam is now second-in-command of the SCPD. They’re fathers, husbands, brothers. Good people. Those guys are Snowy Creek.”

  He drew in a long, slow breath. “It’s easier, isn’t it, to place the blame on the ‘other,’ the outsider. To attack the loner.” He paused. “Like those girls attacked Quinn today.”

  She glowered at him, but he saw something shifting through her eyes.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “in a small town like this, a community knows that a contract to forget can be as powerful as a promise to remember. Sometimes the secrets are lying right there, in plain sight, but everyone chooses to turn away, pretend it never happened, because then they won’t have to question their own lives, their own children, their own husbands and brothers. They won’t have to look across the dining room table and see a monster looking back.” He paused. “History becomes something agreed upon by mutual consent, and the guilt is anesthetized by silence.”

  She glanced away.

  “Look, I’ve had a very long time to think about this. And I’m not asking you for anything other than to keep Quinn out of it all, to keep the secret of her identity until I can finish this.” He hesitated, then said. “What did you tell Adam, the cops?”

  She remained silent.

  “You told them I’m back?”

  Her eyes flared to his. “No. I didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  She swallowed. “I . . . I don’t know why. I should have.”

  She hadn’t exposed him.

  That smoldering coal in his belly ignited sharp and sudden, starting a hot burn of dangerous hope, of desire. A burn Jeb knew he wasn’t going to be able to extinguish now.

  “I saw Trey approach you,” he said quietly. “Outside the police station. What did he want?”

  “The whole town knows you’re out of prison, Jeb. It’s been in the news. They thought you wouldn’t dare return. But after today, the incident at the school . . . I think Adam believes you’re already here, in Snowy Creek. So does Trey.”

  “I forced my own hand. It was my mistake. I plan to keep away now, but it’s why I had to come tonight, to let you know not to be afraid. And to make sure no one knows I’m her birth
father. As long as no one knows that Quinn is connected to me, nothing can touch her.”

  Wind gusted, cold. Straight off the glacial lake.

  “They’ll annihilate you. They’ll skin you alive. This whole community is your enemy. Do you even know what you’re up against?”

  “I’ve had almost a decade to think about what I’m up against.” He paused. “I have nothing else but this. I have a right to come home. To prove I belong. I have a right to find out why those guys lied for each other, who they are protecting.”

  She stared at him, the gravity of the situation sinking in.

  “I’m taking Quinn away tomorrow,” she said. “Away from town for the Thanksgiving break.”

  “Good. This is good. I don’t want either of you involved in this.”

  “You can’t hide for long.”

  “I don’t plan to hide. I plan to rattle cages. I plan to shake something loose.”

  A light went on upstairs, flooding out into the dark. Her gaze shot up to the lighted window. Panic whipped through her eyes. “You better go, now. Please.”

  He took something from his pocket. “Here.” He pressed a piece of paper into her hand. “My cell number.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “We want the same things, Rachel. We want to keep Quinn safe.” He leaned forward, and so fast she didn’t have time to blink, he brushed his lips softly over the side of her cheek. Her hand went to her cheek and their eyes held, just a moment.

  Then he spun round and made for his bike.

  I watch him go, long, powerful strides, boots crunching over my gravel driveway as he makes his way to where his bike gleams in black shadow. He’s caught a thread in my heart and he’s pulling it away with him, unraveling the fabric of my life, undoing my mind, spooling out the years between past and present.

  He straddles his bike.

  “How?” I yell after him into the wind. “How in the hell do you think you’re going to do this on your own?” He reaches for the ignition.