A movement at the edge of the crowd made Summer turn. Damian eased his way past the steps and behind a cameraman. The blood left her face. She hadn’t expected him to come.
The anchor went on. “Anyone with information about a man resembling Theodore Braxton, or a red pickup truck with Maryland plates, should contact authorities at once.”
They cut to a commercial, and a woman darted in to powder Ginny’s nose. Summer smoothed the hair at her temples. She could do this. She had to. She looked across the tops of people’s heads, searching for Damian, but he’d disappeared.
“All set?” Ginny asked with a bright smile.
Summer nodded. The cameraman adjusted his light, and then she couldn’t see anyone in the crowd. Just as well.
“We’re back in Whispering Pines, where a little girl was taken hostage yesterday evening.” Ginny began her recap in a somber tone. Her smile of thirty seconds earlier had vanished. “But that isn’t the only cloud hanging over this town tonight, where friends and neighbors wait and pray for Dinah Knight’s safe return.”
The newscaster paused and turned to face Summer. “Ten years ago, another youth disappeared, this one the victim of a deadly car accident. A local man served two years for manslaughter in the case, but today, the sister of the boy came forward to claim responsibility for the accident.”
Ginny thrust her microphone in front of Summer. “Is it true that you were driving the car the night your brother died?”
The voices around her swelled with surprise. Whispers turned into murmurs and became a chaos of chatter. She couldn’t see the residents of Whispering Pines, but Summer knew they stood there gaping at her.
“Yes.” She lifted her chin. “I was with Gabe Roberts, but I was driving his car. We were dating at the time. I went into shock right after the accident, and I didn’t remember anything for years. Until just a few hours ago, really. But...”
She said the rest as quickly as she could. Don’t blame him anymore, she begged the town. It was never his fault. Only once did she try and focus on the faces around her. She thought she saw Gabe, with a restless smile that disappeared when someone moved in and clapped a hand on his shoulder. Within minutes, the crowd had obscured him.
“I’ll be returning to California within the week,” she finished. That had been the only easy part of this whole decision. She didn’t belong here. She could make amends, but she couldn’t carve out a new existence for herself. Just the thought of it exhausted her. Gabe and the town, Damian and everyone else would be fine without her.
Ginny wrapped up the segment with another plea for information about Dinah’s kidnapping, which Summer echoed. It couldn’t happen twice, she thought. This town couldn’t lose two children. The setting sun cast shadows across the crowd, but she saw so many faces she knew. Teachers from the school. Tellers from the bank. Neighbors she’d grown up with. Friends she’d lost touch with.
She walked slowly down the stairs as the news crew packed up their vans and headed over the hill to Silver Valley. No one waited for her, but it didn’t matter. She’d done the right thing. Now she needed to do a second right thing. She needed to go back to the police station and see if there was anything she could do to help. Man the call lines. Even make coffee for the cops pulling night duty.
Donny might have died, but she’d do everything in her power to make sure Dinah came back home to Whispering Pines safe and sound.
HE WAS LEANING AGAINST the brick wall of the high school, half-hidden by shadows and basketball hoops, as she walked by.
“Hey.”
Summer froze.
A car passed, the lights above them flickered, and Gabe materialized a few feet in front of her. “You didn’t have to do that. Say all that, I mean.”
She hugged herself against a chill. “Yes I did. People needed to know.”
“I think most people got over it a while ago.” He took a step closer and she could smell his cologne. She didn’t recognize it; it wasn’t the same scent he’d worn in high school. Probably just as well.
“Doesn’t matter. It was still the right thing to do.” The feeling of standing beside him, looking up sideways to catch his grin, tossed her back ten years in a heartbeat.
“Ah, Summer.” He met her gaze.
“Have you heard anything about Dinah?”
He shook his head. She checked her cell and wondered if Damian or Hannah would call or text her with any news.
Gabe leaned against the wall. Their shoulders brushed. “You hungry? You want to grab some dinner?”
“I don’t think so.” She couldn’t think about eating. Again she saw Damian’s cool gaze move across her, then away, as he listened to her confession. She turned toward Gabe, meaning to ask him something about the accident, but the words died on her lips when she saw the way he was looking at her.
Curious. Familiar. Caring.
A second later he bent down and kissed her. Gentle, chaste, quiet, searching. She leaned into the kiss for a moment, remembering the dozens of times he’d touched her in exactly the same way. Then she pulled back at the same instant he did.
He stuffed his hands into his pockets, and his smile crooked a little. “Not there anymore, is it?”
She shook her head, surprised. She always thought she would hold a piece of her heart for Gabe Roberts forever.
“You love him? This Damian guy? You’ve been spending a lot of time with him.”
“I don’t know.” Love didn’t happen that quickly, did it?
“You should tell him how you feel.”
“I’m not sure it’s really the best time.”
“You should tell him anyway,” Gabe said. “There isn’t always a best time, or a best way, or a best anything when it comes to stuff like that. But time gets away from you before you know it. It’s tough to say things after too long, especially when there’s a couple thousand miles between you.”
“Maybe you’re right.” But where on earth would she begin?
Chapter Thirty-two
Damian stared out the window of Zeb’s Diner, where his mother had finally sent him.
“You can’t stay in the house and pace,” she’d said. “You’re making me crazy. Go do something.”
Eating without an appetite didn’t really constitute something in Damian’s book, but he supposed she was right. He’d been wearing a groove in the hardwood with his constant walking back and forth. Now he nursed a cup of coffee and a raspberry danish and thought about the Channel 6 news. He’d watched the whole live segment over at the school, and though he knew in some way Summer’s was a noble gesture, he couldn’t see past the fact that she’d lied all those years ago and let someone else take the blame. So she was leaving town, huh? Maybe he didn’t know her at all. Maybe no one did.
He wrapped his hands around the lukewarm mug and eyed an empty Main Street. As the wind shifted, clouds scudded across the sky. A half-moon glowed down, and from where he sat, he could almost see the end of Main Street where it turned into Red Barn Road. If he squinted, he could make out the third-floor windows of Summer’s house. Dark. Silent and empty. Like he felt right about now.
For the first time all day, thoughts of T.J. and Dinah vanished. He forgot the fear and worry crawling up his skin and lingered over the memory of what had happened at that house less than twenty-four hours earlier. Cream-colored toenails. A hand that rested on his shoulder and a smile that asked him to play for her. Lips that melted into his. A body that matched up with his in every perfect, possible way.
She is poetry. She is music under the moon, pieces of a puzzle I want to curl my hands around and move together with my own.
Yet he hadn’t said a thing to her. He’d stood there at the school, less than ten yards away, and stared at her without words. He’d wanted to take her in his arms. He’d wanted to blame her. He’d wanted to kiss her. He’d wanted to hate her.
He’d simply wanted her. Still did, more than ever.
Damian pushed the images away. He couldn’t affo
rd to think about her that way. Not now. He checked his watch. Why hadn’t they heard anything? His leg jounced with nerves. He couldn’t stay here any longer. Even staring at the gray walls of the police station was better than watching couples hold hands over milkshakes.
“Damian?”
He looked up at the familiar voice. Before he could say anything, Joyce Hadley slid into the booth beside him.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I heard what happened with Dinah.” Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying.
“What are you doing here?”
She waved toward the front counter, where one of her look-alike sisters was picking up takeout. “Getting dinner. I saw you over by the school. While Summer was on the news.” Her leg pressed against his. “I never knew that, about the accident. I don’t think anyone did.” She clicked her fingernails on the table. “Can’t believe it. Gabe was a good guy. Is a good guy.”
But Damian didn’t want to talk about Gabe Roberts. He’d watched Gabe while Summer talked. He’d seen the history on both their faces.
“You haven’t heard anything about Dinah?” she asked.
He shook his head. He could smell Joyce’s perfume. For some reason, it didn’t make him gag tonight. She wore less makeup than usual, and without all that eye goop he could actually see light blue pupils surrounded by dark lashes. He tried to speak, but his tongue felt thick, and suddenly Joyce metamorphosed into two faces instead of one. He blinked a few times.
“Have you eaten anything?” Her voice sounded far away.
“Not really.”
“Let me order you something else. Something more substantial.”
“I can’t eat.”
Joyce reached under the table and took his hand. “She’ll be okay. They’ll find her.”
But Joyce didn’t know that. No one did. “It’s my fault,” he said.
“What is?”
“That he found us. That he took her. I couldn’t protect Mom or Dinah.” His knee jiggled. “That’s my job, to protect both of them, and I couldn’t.”
She produced a tissue from somewhere and handed it to him. “You can’t have known this would happen. I’m sure he was waiting for the right time, when you weren’t there.” She ran one finger along his wrist, and loneliness, powerful as a tidal wave, swept over him.
“Let’s get some air.”
SUMMER STOOD IN THE doorway of the Whispering Pines Police Station. She felt wrung out, exhausted, as if the little life left in her this afternoon had vanished.
“There’s a statute of limitations on involuntary manslaughter,” the captain had explained to her a few minutes ago. “Plus, we can’t charge someone else with a crime when the first person’s already done time for it.”
Summer stared straight ahead and realized again the enormity of the sacrifice Gabe had made for her. She could do nothing else to repay him. Nothing to give him back the time he’d lost sitting in a jail cell for something he didn’t do. Strangely, the only relief lay in knowing that Whispering Pines finally knew the truth. Anyone who hadn’t watched the six o’clock news would catch the late-night recap in another hour. That person would tell someone down at the gas station, and those people would tell someone else at the beauty parlor or the frozen foods aisle or the hundred other places stories took root. Within a week, everyone living in a fifty-mile radius would know.
And that lifted the burden from her shoulders and her heart. The truth, after all, would count for something.
“You okay?” Rachael stood at her elbow.
“I think so. Thanks for being here.”
“I’ll come back to the house with you,” Rachael offered. “We’ll buy ice cream and stay up all night like we used to. If you don’t want to be alone.”
“It’s okay. I’ll be all right.” This was nothing like the grief they’d nursed in school. Back then, rejection from a boy or a rotten grade on a midterm exam warranted two spoons and a carton of chocolate-chip ice cream. Locked away in Rachael’s attic bedroom, they’d eat away the sadness until laughter replaced tears. Talking into the early morning, giggling at Nate and his friends, Summer had always emerged on the other side of sunrise with a refreshed heart.
But she didn’t think anything would heal the damage this time. “I’m just going to try and get some sleep.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“You better. First thing.”
Summer nodded and waved goodbye. She felt a hundred years old, worn out from the strain of a single day. The moment Damian had sung to her seemed ages gone. She’d had a chance and lost it. That was that, plain and simple. There was no use moping around about it, no use rewinding the day and torturing herself by wondering what she might have done differently.
I need to go home. She slid into her car. Just bury myself under the covers and find a way to make it through to morning.
She turned the key in the ignition. A sad, slow blues song filled the car, and she spun the dial to turn it up. She pulled out of the parking space too fast, jerking the wheel and slamming on the brakes as a police car drove by. A few yards away the neon lights of Zeb’s Diner shone against the night sky. Beyond that, nothing but dark, quiet homes. No cars appeared, and she was about to press the accelerator and continue the final mile to her house when she saw them.
The woman, petite and blonde, pressed against the man. Summer stared, her heart in her throat. Lights and shadows spilled down on the couple, striping them in yellow and gray, but she would have recognized them anywhere. Damian and Joyce Hadley stood fifty feet away, arms around each other.
Summer’s fingers clenched the steering wheel. Without looking in her direction, they stopped near a tree, and even in the dim light she could see the smile on Joyce’s face as she reached up and smoothed the hair from Damian’s forehead. Summer bit her lip. She knew how that cowlick dipped down toward his eyes. Every day she watched him push it out of the way while he worked.
He’s going to kiss her. Summer’s breath disappeared. Damian was going to kiss Joyce Hadley, out on the street for all of Whispering Pines to see, and Summer was going to have to watch it happen. Screw that. She gunned her car and shot through the intersection as fast as she could. Her tires squealed, but she didn’t care. Less than twenty-four hours after kissing her, Damian was flirting with Joyce in the middle of town. She couldn’t believe it. Gabe had been wrong. There was no reason to confess her feelings for Damian. Obviously she’d been wrong about them in the first place.
She’d meant every word at the press conference. She would help the cops search for Dinah in whatever way she could. But by the end of the week, she’d be back in San Francisco. She squared her shoulders and forced herself to face the truth: Damian had found solace tonight in the local girl, something Summer had stopped being a long time ago. Whispering Pines wasn’t her home. She didn’t belong here, and the sooner she came to terms with that, the better.
At the house, she climbed the back steps and let herself in. The massive building groaned and settled around her. Dark. Empty. Sort of like the hole in her chest. When her cell phone rang ten minutes later, she ignored it.
Chapter Thirty-three
Theo tried to put weight on his injured hand and failed. Pain shot all the way up to his shoulder, and he cursed.
Using the other hand to bolster himself instead, he made his way off the sagging couch and shuffled across the room. His buddy snored from a mattress in the opposite corner of the old hunting cabin. He crept into the kitchen. This place stunk to high heaven, and a few things were growing mold inside the refrigerator. Still, he was grateful for a place to hide. The alerts on the radio had him heading for Canada or the New York-Massachusetts border, so he’d stayed put in Wineglass Lake, a tiny town about thirty miles north of Whispering Pines. Ronny, a dim-witted assistant he’d met on the job last week, hadn’t asked questions, just let him crash on the sofa when he showed up earlier that morning.
But Dina
h had gotten away from him.
Theo stuck his head under the faucet and slurped. He still couldn’t believe it had gone so wrong. He’d planned it all out, waited until he knew Hannah and Dinah would be alone in the house. He hadn’t intended to belt his ex-wife, but she’d gotten in the way. Shown more spirit than he remembered. Used to be, she’d let him do whatever he wanted and never gave him any lip. Must be a few years by herself had given her courage. Theo chuckled. He’d put her in her place fast enough, though. After getting Dinah into the car, and promising her an ice cream and a puppy later on if she didn’t cry, he’d driven west like he planned, taking the back roads and cruising with the lights off whenever he could. He found an old hiking trail far up Sunrise Mountain where he could park for a while, just in case the cops cruised by. Might have stayed there all night, but Dinah had to get out and pee, and when he turned around for a minute, she took off.
He swore again and ran a wet washcloth over his face. What ten-year old ran away from her own father? In the middle of the night? Just before dawn, he’d ditched the truck and managed to hitch a ride from a broad with no teeth driving a station wagon. He’d been hiding out all day, but he still didn’t dare go out and look for Dinah. He’d probably run into a pack of local cops within the first ten minutes.
Man, he missed his daughter. He missed watching her sing and dance around the house. Missed having her crawl into his lap and watch television with him after dinner. Hell, he missed having a family, coming home to a warm meal and a soft woman. Didn’t look like he’d be having any of that, though, anytime soon.
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