The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel) (2 page)

I catch sight of Trey sitting on a stone wall under magnolia boughs weighted with blooms. He’s deeply sun-browned from our two weeks in Bali. He surges to his feet as soon as he sees me and comes forward with his strong, easy stride. He’s bold, big, rugged. Like the mountains we come from. His hair is dark blond and streaked from sun and surf. As he approaches, I see concern enter his blue eyes.

He takes my hands in his. “You okay?”

Nausea rushes into my stomach. For a moment I can’t speak.

“Come, sit down. Tell me what happened.”

Guided by Trey’s steady hand, I sink slowly onto a wooden bench. He’s stalwart, a protector. He’s been Snowy Creek’s volunteer search-and-rescue manager for two years, and he’s the kind of guy who never lets a teammate down. I stare at our hands as he laces his fingers through mine—his tanned skin against my pale tone, the shape of his muscled forearm, his body hair gold. The new diamond on my finger.

“I need to be a mother,” I say quietly, looking at the ring.

“Hey.” He cups my face, forcing me to look up into his glacial-blue eyes. “We expected this, Rach. It’s going to be fine, we can do it.” A smile creases his face and lights his eyes. “An instant family, how about that? It’ll be good practice for when we have our own kids.”

“It’s not that simple,” I say.

His features change as he reads something in my eyes, hears it in my voice. A cloud, a shadow, seems to pass over us. In the distance I hear sirens, a tug horn, the chug of an arriving sea ferry, gulls screeching in the wake of a fishing vessel.

“What do you mean?”

I clear my throat. “Sophia and Peter adopted Amy Findlay and Jeb Cullen’s baby.”

He’s silent. Doesn’t move. The cry of the seagulls grows frantic, and a ship’s horn blows loudly. Voices reach us, people coming out of the offices for lunch, the plaza filling. A desperation claws down inside my chest.

He lurches suddenly to his feet, takes two fast strides away from me, then stands as still as a statue. He spins back. “What?”

I don’t answer. I let him absorb the news.

“Fuck,” he says.

My pulse starts to race. “No one knows and no one needs to. Sophia didn’t want Quinn to find out, either, she said so in her will. She wanted Quinn insulated from this.”

“And
him
?”

“He had nothing to do with the adoption. He doesn’t know where his baby went.”

He stares at me, something dark entering his face. That cold foreboding sinks deeper into my bones.

“Trey, please, come sit down. Just listen to me—”

“I don’t get it. How could this happen? O
h . . .
wait, that’s why your sister moved away from Snowy Creek, isn’t it? That’s why Peter took a job down here, so they could take in and raise that monster’s offspring, because Amy’s family couldn’t get the hell rid of it.”

A spurt of defensive anger brings me sharply to my feet. “My sister helped a rape victim, Trey—a young woman torn between her family, her religion, and her rapist’s baby. Quinn is
also
a victim here. She’s an innocent kid who knows nothing about this and never needs to!”

“Jesu
s . . .
” He paces under the magnolia flowers. The petals suddenly seem too fleshy, obscene, the fragrance too heady. I feel sick. He spins to face me, backlit by the sun. “We’re talking about bringing the child of a convicted sex offender, a murderer, a felon, into our own home. Into our future, our lives.”

“He was not charged with murder.”

“And that makes it better? The only reason they didn’t fry him for killing Merilee is because they couldn’t find her damn body, that’s why. She’s still missing.” He flings his hand out and points north. “Out there in the mountains somewhere. Her family is
still
without closure. And thi
s . . .
this bastard could be out within months if his conviction is overturned. On a goddamn technicality, because the defense counsel failed to present evidence that
could
have raised reasonable doubt. We all know he did it. And you want to bring his kid into our lives?”

“Listen to yourself,” I say. “This is Quinn we’re talking about. My niece. You know her. You’ve never had a problem with her before. It doesn’t have to change now that—”

“How do you know it’s his, anyway? Guthrie blabbed it out, just like that? ‘Hey, Quinn is Jeb Cullen’s kid’?”

I thrust the folder Guthrie gave me at him. “See for yourself.”

He grabs it, flips it open, scans through the papers. Then he sits slowly on the bench, reads them again. He glances up. “This will was made five years ago,” he says quietly.

“That’s when Sophia last updated it. Guthrie said she’d made an appointment to come in next week and make changes. Bu
t . . .
the fire happened.”

“What kind of changes?”

“Guthrie didn’t know. But whatever updates Sophia did intend to make, it doesn’t change who Quinn’s birth parents are. That’s a fact.”

“We need a DNA test.”

I blink. “You don’t believe what’s in those papers?”

He glares at me. He’s in denial. I can see. And he’s hitting out at everything, including me, as he grapples with this.

“You can’t be serious,” I say. “What would you run test results against, anyway? The DNA profiles used in Jeb’s trial? And how do you think we’re going to access those records without pushing this into the open, without letting Jeb know he’s her father?”

He rakes his hand over his hair. “She’s going to find out one day. Quinn is going to go looking for her real parents, and she’ll find out.”

“Then we’ll face that if and when it happens. She’ll be older. She’ll be better equipped to handle the truth at that point. But not now. Not so shortly after she’s lost her parents. We need to honor Sophia’s request. We have to keep this secret, for Quinn’s sake.”

He stares at me.

I sit next to him, place my hand on his thigh. “I’m having trouble processing it, too, but we’ll get through this. It’ll become easier in time.”

He looks away from me. “You can’t do it,” he says softly, shaking his head. “You cannot take her back there, not to Snowy Creek.”

“We,” I whisper. “
We
are taking her home with us. Today. Why are you talking like I’m doing this alone?”

His gaze flicks back to meet mine. A strange look enters his eyes.

“Home?” he says, voice flat. And I feel my world tilt sickeningly as the ramifications of that single word hang between us. Home is where the crime happened. Home is the big house on the lake that my father left me after we lost him to cancer four months ago. Trey only moved in with me last month, before the trip. Our plan is to pool financial resources, fix up the place, rebuild the boathouse, and rent it out to offset the massive property taxes that come with owning lakefront acreage in a ski resort that has grown into a global tourist destination.

“Christ,” he whispers. “The town will annihilate her if they find out.”

“It’s not for anyone in town to know.”

“A secret,” he says quietly. “We must keep that sexual pervert’s kid a secret? We must live with the memory of what he did, in our house, our
home
?” He’s quiet for a long while. A warm gust rattles the fat leaves and chases fallen cherry petals across the paving. A pigeon pecks at crumbs between the blossoms. I hear the horn of the ferry leaving the quay.

He snorts softly, watching the pigeon. “You know, I always thought you might actually still have a thing for him, that you couldn’t let him go in spite of what he did.”

I feel the blood drain from my face.

“I just had to say it. It’s something tha
t . . .
it’s always bothered me. This makes it all fresh. It brings back all the doubts.”

“How
dare
you.” I can barely manage to whisper the words.

He gets up, walks away, shoulders tight.

“Don’t walk away from this, Trey! Don’t walk away from
me
!”

He stops. Turns. Very slowly. His eyes glisten. The pain and confusion that I feel in my heart is echoed in the tightness of his features. He’s fighting something deep within himself.

“How?” he says. “How can I take that child into our new, clean, beautiful life, into our future? I testified against him. So did you. We all helped put him away. This feels like we’re bringing him back in some way.”

I come to my feet and go to him. I touch his hand, struggling to mask the tremble in my voice. “It’s not a decision I can turn away from, Trey. My niece has no one else in this world now but me.” Emotion grows thick in my throat. “I’m going to look after her. But I love you, an
d . . .
” Tears pool in my eyes. “And I don’t want to lose you in the process.”

He gathers me into his arms, holds me tight against his body. “I’m sorry,” he whispers in my hair. He holds me like he always holds me, strong and sure. And he smells like he always does. Good. Masculine. For a moment I feel safe, and I’m seized by a desperate notion that perhaps it never happened. Perhaps I never spoke to the lawyer. Perhaps nothing has changed. Yet our world is not the same as it was moments ago. And there is no going back. Words come suddenly into my mind.

You can’t exist in this world without leaving pieces of yourself, without affecting in some tiny way everyone, everything, you come into contact wit
h . . .

Jeb told me that.

Sometimes the trail you leave is bold, destructive. It’s flattened grass, moved rocks, easy to see. Other times the trace is barely there, invisible unless you know just how to look for it, and it can be like following ghost
s . . .

He was showing me how to track a bobcat through moss when he said that. I was fifteen. The branches of the towering red cedars above us dappled the sunlight that fell to the forest floor. It was like being in a natural cathedral, the trees around us hundreds of years old, as old as Notre Dame. He kissed me that day, for the first time.

Pieces of yo
u . . .

Quinn. My scars. My limp. Who I’ve become. All pieces of him, the past.

The trail left is bold and destructive, flattened gras
s . . .

I bury my face into the crook of Trey’s neck, trying to blot out the memories. His skin is warm, slightly salty. The taste of him against my lips is familiar. Safe. He’s my harbor.

“I’m so sorry, Rach,” he whispers again into my hair. “I didn’t mean it. It’
s . . .
it’s just a lot to absorb at once.”

“I know,” I murmur against his skin, my eyes closed.

“We can do this,” he says. “We can and we will.”

I nod. And I wish in my heart I believed him.

CHAPTER 2

Six months later. Early October. Autumn.

Jeb removed his helmet and walked toward the viewpoint barrier, legs stiff from his ride north into the mountains. At the edge of the lookout off Highway 99, he climbed up onto the concrete wall next to a sign reading “Do not feed the bears.” He surveyed the colorful village nestled in the valley far below: a picturesque huddle of humanity cradled in a basin of densely forested slopes, scoured granite peaks soaring as far as the eye could see.

Snowy Creek.

Home.

After almost ten years he’d finally been exonerated by the courts, his conviction overturned. And just like that, at the decree of a judge, he was suddenly out, startled into freedom like a fish poured from a hatchery bucket into wide-open sea. One minute a convicted felon. Next a man at liberty to go where he pleased. No parole, no release orders. No restrictions at all. Innocent in the eyes of the legal system.

But not in the eyes of the people of that town.

While he might have left behind the max security of Kent Institution, there were still those who believed he’d done it, that his release was due to a technical error, a policing misstep. He still bore the cross of a violent sex offender. A felon. A murderer. He was not truly free. Yet.

Jeb’s gaze rested a moment on the square clock tower rising from the village center, then swept across the colorful jumble of roofs and up the deceptively gentle flanks of Bear Mountain, into which ski runs had been carved. A line of gondola cars moved slowly between the village base and Crystal Peak, windows winking as they caught sunlight. The air was dry, cool. It was almost Thanksgiving here, north of the forty-ninth, and the resort was already prepping for the coming winter season, oiling the cogs and bullwheels of the ski machine that sustained the local economy. Next would come the giant equipment and clothing sales. Turkey sales, they were dubbed, and they would draw skiers up from Vancouver and from Washington State across the border in droves, cars clogging the highway from sea to sky. This land that his mother’s ancestors used to hunt was now an internationally renowned destination resort controlled by the Banrock family, who’d developed Bear Mountain and much of the surrounding village real estate.

The Banrocks had turned the snow of these mountains into their own white gold.

Jeb’s eye followed the line of gondola cars up to the Thunderbird Lodge, then took a leap thousands of feet higher to the crests of the ragged, glacier-capped peaks that sliced above the slumbering village into an achingly blue sky.

Those peaks gave measure to the vastness between earth and heavens. Their desolation and silent grandeur beckoned him, as did these great sighing forests. And as he stood here, a sense of peace finally descended over him. Of belonging. He could dissolve forever into this vast wilderness and barely ever need to cross the path of another human soul again. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t considered doing this after being imprisoned in a cell narrow enough to touch his fingertips to both walls. After getting just one hour of exercise per day for almost a decade, vanishing into that wilderness certainly held appeal. But what Jeb really wanted lay in the populated village down below. That town was his end game. Because someone in Snowy Creek knew where to find Merilee Zukanov’s body. Someone had buried the secret deep, and Jeb was here to unearth it. No matter the cost to him or the establishment.

Because once he found that person—or persons—once he found Merilee’s body, he could finally clear his name. His innocence would be proved. He’d be truly free, and he could finally meet his daughter. Only then would he allow himself into her life. That had been his promise to Sophia and Peter before they died, and theirs to him.

A dry wind ruffled his hair and Jeb lifted his face to it. Layered into the coolness were pockets of warmth. An Indian summer. He’d forgotten the taste of it. The feel of it. The sound of it. The way the breeze whispered in his ears with the voices of dead leaves, brittle grasses, crackling twigs, the soft swishing of drought-browned conifer tips. It was a dialogue that could only come after a killing frost. This valley was tinderbox dry, ripe for fire, whispering for it. Or for rain.

Jeb allowed his gaze to drift westward, where jewel-colored lakes were strung like beads along the twisting thread of the Green River. He followed the river course to where the valley funneled sharply between basalt cliffs. The cliffs where the old quarry was.

Where it had started nine years ago.

It had been autumn then, too, gold leaves clustered in the coniferous décolletage of the mountains where streams tumbled. Amy and Merilee had disappeared sometime after ten p.m. during a pit party at the old quarry. Amy was found a week later with no memory of what happened. Merilee was still out there somewhere.

Jeb inhaled deeply. The town was going to fight him. The outsider. The guy from the wrong side of the river. They were going to watch for him to make a slip so they could lock him back up where they believed he belonged. Or worse. They might try worse.

But Jeb was prepared. He was like the coho salmon teeming up these rivers now, fierce ruby-flanked warriors that had survived the killer whales and ghost nets of the wide Pacific waters until their bio-alarms had suddenly turned them toward the scent of fresh water and set them on a crash course for home. Those fish were hardwired to fight upstream, to bash themselves to ribbons over rocks and waterfalls just so they could return to the quiet mountain pools and eddies of their birth to mate, then die in a nutrient soup that would nourish their offspring in turn.

Like those fish, Jeb was hardwired for this place. This was his heritage. His home. He refused to let them take it from him again. He’d rather die here than end up back in that cell.

Traffic fell eerily silent on the highway behind him, and the dry wind soughed again through the trees, stirring branches as it moved like an invisible spirit through the forest. With the susurration came another thought, one he’d been struggling all day to hold at bay. But suddenly it was whispering, sparking, crackling like fire at the edges of his mind.

Rachel.

Jeb knew she had Quinn. He knew she still lived somewhere down in that valley. At some point, once he’d cleared his name, he was going to have to go through Rachel to access his child. His blood quickened as an image of her face in the courtroom flashed into his mind, the rawness of pain tearing at her features. If he was guilty of one thing, it was putting that pain into her face. For sleeping with Amy in the fiery aftermath of his and Rachel’s last fight.

And God knew he’d paid. He’d paid every day for over nine years. Amy had also paid dearly. So had Quinn, and she still would, in so many more complicated ways.

Jeb drew air deep into his lungs. There was one road into this valley, one road out. It was time.

Pulling on his helmet, he returned to his black-and-chrome custom cruiser. He straddled his bike, booted back the kickstand, and fired the four-hundred-horsepower engine to vibrating life between his legs. He gunned back onto the highway with a throaty roar, giving his metal beast juice as he powered up the road, overtaking a red Volvo, g-forces gathering low and delicious in his gut. But as Jeb entered the resort boundaries, he slowed. This was Snowy Creek Police territory. He could not afford the slightest misstep.

He neared the first intersection. A forestry sign on the side of the road declared that wildfire danger was extreme, and open fires were currently banned. Jeb stopped at the red light, bike rumbling, his heart suddenly thumping and his mouth dry. Tufts of white fireweed seed wafted across the road, piling in soft drifts against the concrete road barriers and collecting against the brown cedar shake wall of the old Powder Hound Diner on the corner. The building had seen better days, but it was still standing. Kitty-corner across the intersection was the Husky gas station. It had been torn down and rebuilt in a rustic but high-end ski resort style. The red Volvo drew up alongside him. A woman in the passenger seat, maybe late twenties, turned to look at him. She met Jeb’s eyes and he felt a sharp kick in his blood.

He hadn’t been with a woman since Amy, since he’d been taken away in handcuffs at nineteen. He was twenty by the time his case went to trial. From there it was straight into max-security lockup. Now he was nearing thirty. He might look rough and ready—time had certainly taken its physical toll on him in prison. But there was a yawning gap in his life experience. And there was still only one woman he truly wanted.

One he’d betrayed. One who had helped put him in prison. One he could never have.

A young mother in yoga pants crossed the street in front of him, pushing a baby in a jogging stroller. A pit bull trotted at her heels, attached by a leash to her waist. Jeb wondered if they were heading down to the grassy beach along the shores of Whiskey Lake, if there was still a dog park there. His thoughts turned again to Rachel, and a day long ago.

“Jeb, do you think you’ll ever leave this valley after school?” She’d been lying on her back on the sun-warmed dock, eyes closed, droplets of water shimmering like jewels on her lashes and goosefleshed skin. Her nipples were hard under tiny yellow scraps of bikini fabric. He allowed his eyes to slowly travel the length of her body and he felt arousal. Pleasure. Heat. Life. Thrumming through his blood with each beat of his heart. He scooped up the wet tennis ball that had rolled against her waist and threw it into the lake for Trixie, Rachel’s father’s new border collie pup. The ball landed in the water with a plop.

“Why would I leave when you’re here?” he whispered, bringing his mouth close to hers.

Rachel’s eyes flared open at his sudden proximity. She stared up into his eyes, her own darkening with arousal. Then, suddenly erupting into laughter, she rolled onto her side, launched up, and raced to the end of the dock, where she dived into the clear water. Jeb got to his feet, watched the ripples fanning out from where she’d gone in as sleek as a fish. She surfaced a distance away and called out to him. “Race you to the far end!” She swam, kicking water splashes up into the sunlight. He’d watched her go, and something in him had known that day it wouldn’t last.

He was pulled back to the present by a group of young snowboarder dudes, baggy pants hanging low around their butts as they ran across the intersection with an awkward wide-kneed swagger, presumably to keep their pants on.

Jeb’s skin felt hot.

It was all the same, yet all was new. As if he’d been put on pause while the rest of the world had gone on. Time, his youth, Rachel, robbed from him. A soft, dark anger swelled in his chest.

The lights turned green. He revved his bike aggressively and roared ahead of the Volvo, but quickly slowed back to the posted limit, tempering both anger and speed.

Violence, it turned out, came easily when you lived with anger swimming permanently inside you, when you were trapped in a cage with no other hope. But after a few early incidents in prison, Jeb had learned to accept his fate, to control his impulse to resort to physical aggression in the face of a threat. He’d turned his energy toward getting a degree instead. He’d begun to find reward in reaching small goals.

It was a simmering, hard-won control, and he was not about to lose it now that he was back. Patience, he told himself. The mind of a hunter. Be prepared to lie quietly in wait. Because there would be cracks, and cracks were where the light would get in.

Jeb aimed to first cut straight through town and head north into the Wolf River Valley, to his old home, the five acres of land his mother had left him. He’d check it out and set up shop. Tomorrow he had an interview scheduled with the editor of the
Snowy Creek Leader
. He was not here to hide. He was here to make his intentions known, to rattle cages, mess with minds. To shine a spotlight on people who might try to run him out of town. But as he neared the turnoff that led down to Snowy Creek Elementary, Jeb’s chest constricted and he chanced a quick glance at his watch. If the school still followed the old schedule, it would almost be lunch break. And on a split, impulsive second, he took the left-hand turn off the highway and headed down the road to the elementary school, inexorably pulled by the possibility of seeing his daughter for the first time in his life.

He slowed to the posted school zone speed, his bike grumbling down the hill as he rode past the main entrance, aiming instead for the river, where he planned to double back into the neighboring subdivision and circle round to the rear of the school grounds, where the ball fields abutted a treed swamp. Where the kids used to go out and play at lunch when he had attended that same school.

He turned into the residential subdivision, rumbling slowly into a place of quiet, untroubled calm. A red scooter lay discarded at the edge of a lawn. A plastic truck and an expensive-looking bike lay in a driveway. People here trusted their neighbors. A baby kicked his chubby legs in a stroller on a porch. Two mothers talked over a fence while toddlers played on grass at their feet. Carved pumpkins, fat and orange, had already been placed in windows, harvest garlands on doors.

The mothers glanced up and stared at him as his bike growled past. A small terrier bolted from nowhere and yipped in his wake. The dog veered off as Jeb rounded the crescent. He parked off a cul-de-sac next to a small park with a brightly colored play structure. Leaving his helmet with his bike, he walked through the park toward a stand of alders that screened the park from the ball fields. Everywhere around him dry leaves and drought-burned pine needles whispered for rain. The first thing he saw when he came through the trees was the school building up on a rise, a red-and-white maple leaf flag snapping in the breeze.

And suddenly Jeb was thrust back in time.

He was nine years old, standing outside that same squat building, his hand tightly clutching his mother’s. The fall wind was blowing cold, lifting the ends of her blue-black braid and ruffling her straight bangs.

As if it were yesterday, Jeb felt a surge in his chest, a mix of hot anticipation, anxiety. Fear of what lay ahead. It was to be his first year at the school, the first time he’d be missing the fall hunt with his dad. The first year his mother would not homeschool him through the winter.