“On a dare,” Garrett muttered.
“A dare,” Annalise affirmed.
“I was a jerk.”
“Totally.”
“But I fell for you anyway.”
“I fell for you too.” She opened her eyes.
Neither of them had more words. Just memories.
The entire football team had dared Garrett Greenwood to go after the straitlaced Annalise Forsythe. The boyfriend-less girl who liked calculus because it made organized sense. What no one knew was that when Annalise cared for something, or someone, she gave her all. Everything. Passionately. In the same way she’d ploughed her way through community college, convinced the bank to give her a loan to start her coffee shop, convinced her parents to sell her their house, and started a pro bono food pantry. The same way she dedicated herself as surrogate aunt to Brent and Christen’s kids. The same way she would have given her soul for Gia . . .
“She had dark eyes. I bet they turned brown.” Annalise’s throat tightened.
Garrett needed to know how much she’d loved their daughter. How much had been stolen from her.
“Yeah.” It was a resigned word. As if somehow he knew the infant girl would have looked just like him. Did he also guess she’d had a distinguishable crease in her chin or that her toe next to her big toe was longer, like his?
“My parents promised me they’d look after you,” Garrett finally admitted.
Annalise watched him link his fingers together, his elbows still on his legs. He stared down at his fists.
“I’d worked hard, and when the sponsorship was offered to climb in Switzerland, they wanted me to take it. I mean, it was only supposed to last a few months and then I’d have been back. For the baby to be born.”
“But you didn’t come back,” Annalise stated boldly.
“No.” Garrett looked up and locked eyes with her. “I didn’t. I wanted to. I called my dad and told him I was going to. But—”
“But you didn’t. They made me give Gia away.” Annalise’s whisper was crowded with tears. They escaped her eyes, and she had little control over her words. Maybe it was the concussion, the terror from the day, or maybe it was finally just time to be honest and pick at the infected emotional wound that had been festering since she was eighteen. “Your parents and my parents talked. They told me the best thing to do was go to Aunt Tracy’s, have the baby, give it up for adoption, and then come home. It would save your climbing career and keep your pristine image.”
“Q—”
“No.” Annalise pulled the hospital blanket up to catch her tears. “No. I had no one to bounce my decision off. No one who wasn’t biased. My parents wanted me to go to college and said a baby would inhibit my future. So there I was, in a hospital in Connecticut, having a baby girl who looked just like you. I heard her cry. I held her. Touched her feet, her hands, and kissed her—I kissed her little lips and then she was gone!” Annalise’s voice rose to a whimper she couldn’t control. “She was gone, Garrett! And you were climbing rocks in Europe like a nomad, while I came home with nothing. Nothing but a heart shattered into little pieces so tiny they can’t ever be glued back together. I was given instructions to ‘put it all behind me.’ So I did. For everyone. For you, for your family, for my parents, even for Gia. But I was left with just me, my memories, and this insatiable need to show people in my community who are broken that I am too.”
Voices in the hallway of the hospital drifted into the room. A toilet flushed in the room next door. Annalise dragged the corner of the blanket across her face, under eyes, and gently around the bruise left by the fist that had knocked her down.
She didn’t know whether she still wanted to scream bitterly at Garrett or recognize the wounded expression on his face and ask him what secret pain he might have suffered too.
Annalise chose silence.
Garrett leaned back in the chair and stretched out his legs, hooking his fingers behind his head, elbows sticking out. “I stink at life, Q.”
He averted his eyes to the curtain beyond her, as if reliving his own memories, his own mistakes.
“But it’s like climbing. You rip the skin off your knuckles. You hold your weight up, pinching a grip less than an inch in depth. Every push higher makes you gut-scream, which echoes across the valley beneath you. One wrong move, one miscalculation, and it’s over. The climb is finished. That free fall? One second feels like years when you’re a thousand feet above solid ground. You screwed up. There’s no coming back.”
Annalise was transfixed. She’d never seen Garrett introspective. His words resonated in her soul, even though she fought against it. She didn’t want to relate to Garrett, didn’t want to let him reach any place inside of her ever again. Yet, he did . . .
His eyes moved back to hers. There was a quiet confidence there, mixed with regret. “As you fall, you pray that anchor you set in the crevice holds. When you wedge that tiny piece of metal in that crack in the rock face and you clip on, you’re trusting it has the grace to catch you if you fall.”
“Did you fall?” Annalise whispered.
“Yeah,” Garrett whispered back.
“Were you caught?” She couldn’t even blink.
Their eyes were locked.
Garrett nodded. “Yeah. By the grace of God.”
Chapter 23
Libby
This day was too similar, too stained in suspicion and fear, like the day they’d buried Elijah’s father. While the parlor walls and décor were in hues of blues instead of yellows, it had still housed a casket, shrouded in funeral crepe. The stifling scent of flowers perfumed the air, mirrors cloaked, pictures facedown. The body of Dorothy Hayes lay silent, hands crossed over her chest before they’d taken her to be buried at the cemetery. Libby had stared at her, every nuance of her mind trying not to concoct what Dorothy’s last moments might have been like. What she might have endured. The terror of staring into the eyes of her killer, accused of some secret worth having her life stolen, being plunged beneath Gossamer Pond, needing to breathe, with her hands clawing at the one who held her under the murky water. . . .
Libby shook her head to clear her mind. Concocting visions of violence would result in nightmares. She’d had enough of those the past few nights and had no wish to repeat them when awake.
The home of Dorothy Hayes was now clear of mourners, leaving behind a few stragglers like Libby’s and Elijah’s mothers. The women worked soberly and efficiently to tidy the house. This time, unlike with Elijah’s family, there was no mother left behind to put things to rights.
“Libby?”
Grateful for the interruption to her unwelcome but unstoppable thought progression, she jerked her head up at the sound of Elijah’s voice. A boy shadowed him.
“This is Lawrence, Dorothy’s son. He’ll be staying with my family for a while until . . .” Elijah glanced over his shoulder at Lawrence’s father, the bereaved widower who slumped in a chair in the corner of the room. “Well, until my uncle can sort through her affairs.”
Libby gave the blond boy a smile. He ignored her and looked up at his cousin with sad eyes. Elijah held his shoulders, muttering instructions. Lawrence nodded, brushed away a tear he was too embarrassed to let fall, and hurried away.
Watching the boy disappear through the parlor entry, Libby wondered what kind of future he would have. Losing a mother so young would impact him for the rest of his growing-up years.
“We need to speak.”
Libby nodded. Yes, they did.
Elijah led her down the hall into a small room. Gauzy white curtains filtered the sunlight that cast pleasant rays over a desk whose feminine curves from its legs to the scalloped edge of its top led Libby to conclude this must have been Dorothy Hayes’s personal study. A doily with delicate tatting of yellow-and-blue threads adorned the mantel over the small, cold fireplace. A porcelain statue of a raven-haired Southern belle was centered on the spot of homemade décor. Libby noted a few volumes of books, hardcovers embossed with go
ld flowers with titles printed in a golden swirl.
Elijah closed the door and brought Libby’s appreciation of the simple beauty of the room to a shuttered halt. The room became suffocating. Like being in a casket with the lid closing and latching over her. She wrapped her arms around herself, her fingers toying with the satin-covered button on the cuff of her black dress.
Elijah’s eyes bored into hers. There was distance between them, as there always had been, in spite of the truth they shared. A truth Elijah would never speak of. She wished he would. There was so much of Elijah that spread silky cobweb-like dreams in her heart, and yet, like a cobweb, they were fragile and spoke of neglect. The Elijah of her memories was less and less the Elijah who stood before her.
His voice was toneless. He crossed the room and stared through the filmy curtains. “The authorities are still trying to figure out why my aunt was in Gossamer Pond. The only thing they can conclude is that she went for a nighttime walk.”
“In her undergarments?” Libby’s eyes widened at her own loud exclamation of surprise.
Elijah shook his head. “They found her dress in the bushes. Like she’d removed it so she could swim.”
Libby pursed her lips. “In the middle of the night? Your Aunt Dorothy would have done no such thing.” Even Libby knew that, and she wasn’t well acquainted with the woman. Her reputation preceded her.
Elijah blew out a puff of air that lifted the hair falling over his forehead. His face seemed gaunter, his skin paler. Grief was a weight no man should have to bear.
“I can only assume she was lured from here. After my uncle went to bed. I don’t know why, or how, but—perhaps whoever wrote the obituary wrote her a note to compel her?”
“And the police won’t even believe you? About the obituaries?”
“They believe something happened. What, is unclear.” Elijah raked his hand through his hair and released a growl. He lifted a brass letter opener from the top of his aunt’s desk. The blade glistened in the sunlight. For a brief, strange moment, Elijah seemed ominous to Libby. Unpredictable.
Elijah set the letter opener back in its place. “Unless I find something to substantiate the obituaries’ obtuse claims and the remarkable timing of your trying to convince them Paul was going to die and then Paul showing up the next day attempting to convince them my aunt was murdered . . . it’s all just something they’re still ‘investigating.’”
Libby eyed the desk. Perhaps it was wrong of her, but the need to press for the truth persuaded her. If she didn’t, her father might be permanently branded a mudslinger, and if word of the obituaries got out as falsified reports, it would ruin the paper’s credibility. She might not have a conventional relationship with her father, but Mitch still deserved her loyalty as a daughter.
“Perhaps we should search your aunt’s things.”
Elijah drew back. “For?”
“For whatever lured her from the house. A note, anything. Isn’t it odd that both your father and your aunt have—well, have died? And don’t you think it strange they both have something shameful and yet are so well respected?”
His eyes flashed. “What are you implying, Libby?”
Libby sucked in a gulp. Well, she knew what she was implying, but she had no desire to speak it aloud. It was scandalous, moreover, and the actual saying it to Elijah would be awful.
“I’m saying,” she paused, twisting her hands and wishing it was anyone but Elijah standing here. Anyone at all. “What if your father and your aunt—”
“No.” Elijah’s word split through Libby’s suspicion.
“And what if, whoever is writing the obituaries lured your aunt from the house with the threat he would—well, I mean, consider it, however painful it could be—if I were your aunt, I wouldn’t want my husband to know, my family to know!”
“Of course you wouldn’t.” Elijah’s voice was stern. Convicting. Resigned.
A coldness ran through Libby as she realized her words. The memory so rife between them rose like a ghost in the room, snatching any warmth and leaving in its wake a sickening guilt.
“Elijah, please.” Libby looked away, biting her upper lip against the tears.
He leaned closer, his breath against her ear, his hand lifting a curl to brush her cheek. “I’m so tired of secrets, Libby. I have no compulsion, no energy to seek out those of my father and my aunt.” Elijah’s hand cupped Libby’s upper arm. Gentle, almost with longing but also with regret. “We’ve enough of our own, don’t you think?”
Libby turned her head to the side and then looked up at Elijah. Yes. Yes they did. Every day since she was fifteen, they had eaten tiny pieces of her soul.
“We must find out, Elijah. What if . . . ?” Libby hesitated, a greater fear in her heart. “What if whoever knew your father and aunt’s secret, knows ours? What if—what if we’re next?”
Elijah’s shoulders sagged. He rubbed his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose. With a barely suppressed groan, he crossed the room and pulled open the drawer of his aunt’s desk. Libby watched him tug out bunches of blank writing paper and fan through them. He shoved them back into place. A bundle of letters was next. Elijah studied each one, finally returning them to the drawer as well.
Libby swiped at tears as they trailed down her face. Tears of guilt, tears of fear, and tears of what had been ruined.
The drawer slammed shut, its little brass pull tapping against the drawer from the movement. Elijah straightened.
“Nothing. I found nothing. What am I supposed to look for?” Elijah took a step toward her, his brows drawn in frustration with a look she was certain mimicked her own.
“I don’t know,” Libby whispered. Helpless. All she’d ever wanted was to protect Elijah, just as he’d done for her all those years ago. She was failing miserably, and yet it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t done this. Someone far more devious and wicked had. Someone who believed they were bringing God’s justice down on the deserving.
Elijah gave her a short nod. “I’ll go look in her dressing room. Perhaps—” he paused and swallowed as if choking back emotion—“perhaps I’ll find something there.”
The door shut behind him. Libby sank into a stuffed chair beside a table with hardcover books on it. She wiped at her cheeks, her chin still quivering uncontrollably.
She absently picked up a book with a burgundy cover and straightened a crease in one of its pages. A bookmark tilted out from the back third of the book, and Libby straightened it. As she did so, she noticed handwriting. Curiosity overtook her.
The bookmark had a purple ribbon at its top. Its edges were straight, and a violet was embossed on its paper. But it was the script at the bottom that made her frown.
Our love never lost, though silent for now.
H.
Libby ran her finger over the inked words. While a delicate bookmark, it was not a womanly script. The lines, the slant, even the shake of the handwriting insinuated it was male. But the H?
Harrison.
She fumbled through the pages of what must have been Dorothy’s favorite book. A small paper fell from it onto Libby’s lap. Typewritten. So familiar. She unfolded it and sucked in a breath.
Be sure your sins will find you out. Secrets can never be silenced.
It said nothing about Gossamer Pond. Nothing that would even be enough to convince the police that she was murdered. But it was enough for Libby. The killer knew and he’d told Dorothy so. It was enough to drive her from her home into the night. Perhaps that was all he’d been counting on. He followed her, waited, and then enacted a righteous judgment against unconfessed sin.
Libby’s hands shook with fervor. She would show Elijah, and in turn he would show the police. But that wouldn’t stop this person. A self-appointed judge was at large, whose personal vendetta reached across the boundaries of the Ten Commandments and well into the dark places behind “Thou shalt not murder.”
Chapter 24
Annalise
I’m fine.” Annalise adjus
ted herself on a stool in the stock room of the food pantry.
Christen shot her a dubious look as she stacked canned peas from a donation box on a shelf.
Word of Annalise’s attack had spread as soon as Tyler Darrow learned about it and printed it as front-page news. Some claimed it was a publicity ploy for more attention for her social cause. Annalise chose to ignore them. Her bravado didn’t include sacrificing herself to bodily harm.
“I can finish unpacking this box, but then I need to get home. Brent has to get to work, and I need to watch the kids.” Christen lifted a can of black olives and wrinkled her nose. “Ew. If I were homeless, I’d still pass this up.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” Annalise was sorry her tone was so grave and serious.
Christen cast her a sheepish glance. While Annalise spent much of her time in the coffee shop running the business end of things, she still helped the volunteers during the hours the pantry was open. She’d seen the faces of people like Eugene Hayes who were hungry, alone, and needy. She’d even handed out food to people she knew were taking advantage of the system and too lazy to get a job. But, she couldn’t judge them. Life’s circumstances could be disabling sometimes. Without guidance, help, grace, it was hard to crawl out of that pit.
Christen straightened and rubbed her hands down her jeans. “So, um, I meant to ask, but have your parents called at all?”
Annalise raised an eyebrow, and Christen met her with open frankness. Annalise grabbed a can from the crate of donated canned peas and set it on a bottom shelf. “Yes. My mom did. Well, first it was a text—Heard you’ve run into some trouble—but then she called when I didn’t reply.”
“Well, at least she was concerned.” Christen, always trying to find the good in things, God love her.
Annalise gave her a soft smile. “Yeah.” She nodded. Her mother had been concerned, a little. But more than anything, it had been very awkward, stilted, and Annalise was willing to bet her mom was as relieved as she was when they’d ended the call.
The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond Page 17
