The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel) (7 page)

I hold his eyes and feel a sense of mistrust, a suspicion blossoming in Adam. He’s not sure how to read me right now and it’s making him edgy.

“Thanks, Adam.” I go through the reception door and push open the glass doors to outside. Cold wind smacks into me.

“If you do see him, tell me,” he calls after me.

“You think I wouldn’t?”

He meets my gaze. Again, I feel his mistrust. I exit the building, doors swinging shut behind me. As I run down the stairs and hurry back toward the truck, I sense Adam watching me through the doors. I feel he’s itching for it to have been Jeb, for me to have brought him something solid. He’s dying to nail him, put him back, burning at the injustice of a felon his own mother put away being released on technicalities. If Jeb is indeed back in town, I can trust Adam will hunt him down. They don’t need me. Or Quinn.

Whatever unfolds now, my job is to protect Quinn by keeping her apart from it all. I’ll look up flights, book us on a trip tomorrow, get out of town. I have air miles. I can call my friend Emily about her place on Maui. Hopefully by the end of the Thanksgiving break it will all have blown over.

I reach for my keys and am about to chirp the lock when a male voice yells out of the darkness.

“Rachel!”

I stall, heart jackhammering.

A tall figure emerges from a silver SUV parked outside the Rescue One base. I recognize his stride instantly. Trey. I curse to myself.

It’s Wednesday; practice night. After training, the Rescue One group and some of the firefighters and cops usually repair to the Shady Lady Saloon for beers. There was a time I’d join them. Volunteering for Rescue One used to consume my spare hours. Until Quinn. Until I could no longer bear seeing Trey in a social environment after our breakup.

The rest of the Rescue One guys are coming out of the base behind his SUV. Laughter and friendly jeers carry into the night as they make for the village on foot.

Trey reaches me, his breath crystallizing in the cold. “I heard about Quinn and what happened at school.”

My gaze goes to his silver SUV. The inside light has come on. There’s a woman inside Trey’s vehicle, a kid in the back. With a start, I recognize the unmistakable fall of the woman’s white-blonde hair. Stacey Sedgefield. A single mom. Missy’s mother.

It was Melissa “Missy” Sedgefield who Quinn had punched in the nose today. It’s Stacey’s phone number on a piece of paper in my pocket.

Trey sees where I am looking. He clears his throat. “Stacey told me what happened. Are you doing okay? If there’s anything we—”

“We?”

His eyes glitter in the reflected light.

“You and Stacey?”

“Look, it’s—”

“Jesus, Tre
y . . .
it’s been what, four months?” My hurt is sudden and profound and irrational. We were going to marry, spend a lifetime together, and already he’s found someone else. “You can stomach
her
kid, but not my niece?”

“That’s not fair. It’s not like that. It’s—”

I raise my palms. “I’m sorry, I can’t talk now.” I turn my back on him, chirp the truck lock.

“Rachel, I need to talk to you,” he calls after me.

But I ignore him. I climb into my truck, slam the door, shaking from cold.

“What’s happening?” Quinn says, wide-eyed. She’s tucked under my jacket and this gives me an indescribable spurt of relief.

“What did the police say? What does Trey want?”

I put the key in the ignition and quickly start the engine. In my peripheral vision I see Trey approaching my door. I ram the truck into gear and hit the gas, leaving him standing in a red glow as my brake lights flare briefly before I turn into the road. I glance up into my rearview mirror. He stands on the curb, watching me go.

I force out a huge lungful of air. “I didn’t tell the cops anything about that man. I just asked what happened, and if there’d be charges.” I cast another glance up into my mirror. The street behind is empty. “That was Missy Sedgefield and her mother Stacey in Trey’s SUV. It appears you punched the daughter of Trey’s new girlfriend.” I probably shouldn’t mention this to Quinn, but I just need a bond right now. I need her to know we’re a team against the world, that we can confide in each other.

Quinn studies me for several long beats. “Trey is going out with
Missy’s mother
?”

I pull a wry mouth. Inside I hurt. I tighten my hands on the wheel.

“Missy Sedgefield is a cow,” she says.

I smile in spite of myself. “Yeah, well, I never got on with her mother, either.”

“You knew Stacey Sedgefield from school?”

I shoot her a glance. “Yep. And I confess, I also wanted to punch her a few times back then.”

Quinn stares at me in silence, and I can feel the whisperings of a bond. Spider thread and gossamer thin. But it’s there. I want to ask again what Missy said to her, but I’m nervous about breaking this new connection. I want to build on it a bit first.

I crank up the heat and turn north on the highway. Quinn settles back into her seat, a strange and uneasy truce between us now. It’s been a rough day. I shoot another glance into the rearview mirror, but see nothing strange. I allow myself to breathe.

Jeb watched Rachel go. Adam LeFleur was also watching her from his office window. And Jeb had seen Trey Somerland approach her truck.

He swore softly to himself. He wanted to know what she’d told the cops. He needed to ensure that she kept the secret of Quinn’s paternity until he was cleared. He was worried it might already be out of the bag now.

Engine a low growl, he pulled slowly back into the street. But he didn’t follow Rachel. He knew where she lived, thanks to Quinn. He’d go round later, when all was quiet and Quinn was asleep.

He’d forced his own damn hand by going to that school today. How Rachel was now going to react at the sight of him on her doorstep was anyone’s guess.

Nerves, anticipation, remorse, things he couldn’t define skittered through him.

CHAPTER 7

As we enter the more isolated northern reaches of Snowy Creek where there are no streetlights, the forest pushes in thick and dark on all sides. Aurora borealis undulates over the sky, giving the glaciers a ghostly glow. I steal yet another glance up into my rearview mirror, making sure the road is clear.

No one in sight.

I turn off the highway onto the densely treed peninsula that juts out into the lake where we live. There are only three properties on this peninsula. Mine and the houses of two absentee neighbors who are here only during the winter months. A familiar depression sinks over me as I take my old truck down my rutted driveway. Twigs scrape against the doors, reminding me of the pruning I haven’t done, of all the other things I still need to fix. Jobs that Trey and I had planned to tackle as a team. Rebuild. Landscape. Renovate the boathouse on the water so we could rent it out for extra income. As we approach the house, I notice the bulb in the porch light has blown. The place is in blackness.

I curse softly as my headlights illuminate the wooden gate to the small courtyard off my kitchen where I store recycling. The gate hangs on its hinges, banging in the wind. A mess of scattered tins roll on the concrete in front of the kitchen door.

I’d thoroughly washed those tins before putting them into my recycling container outside. But the bears are growing desperate as they scavenge for anything they can to help them reach hibernation weight. I need to clear this mess up. My first priority, however, is getting some warm food into Quinn before running her a bath. Keeping her routine as best as I can. Finding a way to talk further about what happened today.

I reach into my glove compartment for my headlamp.

“Wait here a second while I check that the bear’s gone,” I say as I get out of the vehicle. But Quinn doesn’t listen. She clambers out of the truck, slams the door, and stomps over to the front entrance, clutching both my jacket and her backpack. I take hope from the fact she’s still holding on to something of mine. She punches in the key code and lets herself in, banging the door closed behind her.

I stand in the dark, alone. Inhaling deeply, I scan the yard with my flashlight. At the same time I kick cans and make as much noise as I can to ensure the bear stays away. When I’m certain it’s gone, I gather up the tins and bag them. But hair prickles softly up the back of my neck as I detect a sound under the rush of wind. I freeze. Listening intently. But I don’t hear it again. Yet, once again, I sense something watching me from the darkness. Fear, visceral, curls into me.

Quickly, I grab the last tin and go inside with the garbage bag, locking the door behind me. I lean my back against the door for a moment, closing my eyes, gathering myself. My heart is racing.

It was probably the bear. I’m just being paranoid. But as I remove my dust-caked boots and pad on stockinged feet into the kitchen, that sense of unease, foreboding, lingers.

Trixie thumps her tail when she sees me, but the old girl doesn’t get up from her basket the way she used to. She’s comfy where she is. She trusts the food will come. There’s no sign of Quinn in the kitchen. Nor in the open-plan living area on the other side of the counter.

“Quinn?” I flick on more lights and turn up the heat. As light floods the downstairs area, Quinn is nowhere in sight.

“Quinnie?” I call as I climb the stairs. I try her bedroom door. Locked. My heart sinks. I rap softly on the door. “Quinn, are you coming for some supper?”

“Not hungry,” comes the muffled voice from inside. She’s been crying.

“You need to eat something—”

“I said I’m not hungry. Go away.”

I close my eyes. “Quinn, we should talk.”

Silence.

I stand there, lost. This is exactly the kind of dilemma I would have called my sister with. We might not have spent much time together these past few years, but whenever I needed help, Sophia was there for me at the other end of the phone, and then some. The punch of loss is so acute it takes my breath away. My mother died when I was eight, Quinn’s age. So I understand, perhaps, a tiny bit of Quinn’s pain. Sophia, eleven years older than me, stepped into a mothering role. I wish Quinn would allow me to do the same for her. I fight back tears. I’m tired, that’s all. I’ll feel stronger about it all in the morning. I’ll have a better plan. We’ll go on that trip.

I take a scalding hot shower and wash the dirt and the day from my hair, but I still can’t seem to shake the chill in my bones. I apply disinfectant cream and a plaster to the small cut on my brow, and dry my hair. Dressed in soft sweats and a down vest, I head downstairs in my socks. Once Trixie has been fed, I make for the fireplace.

Getting down onto my knees, I ball up old newspaper and stack kindling, then logs. I light the fire, and as I watch the flames crackle and whisper to life, I think of the logs that Trey and I chopped and stacked in the spring before going to Bali. I wonder how it all went so wrong so fast. Quinn’s arrival was a catalyst, for sure, but there were deeper issues at play. His words sift into my mind.

You know, I always thought you might actually still have a thing for him, that you couldn’t let him g
o . . .

I get up and pace the living room, wishing I’d bought blinds for the floor-to-ceiling windows that look down over the dark garden to the boathouse and lake beyond. The moon is rising. Whitecaps on the black surface are ghostly in the lunar light. Tonight the leaves from my birch are all gone, branches poking up into to the sky like the gnarled fingers of an old man.

I rub my arms and I think of soup. But I’m not hungry, either. Instead I pour whiskey from a bottle of oak-aged scotch that Trey left behind. I take my drink and my laptop to my grandfather’s old armchair by fire.

As I sip the scotch, I search Google for newspaper articles and commentaries on Jeb’s trial and recent release. Clicking on a
Vancouver Sun
feature from three days ago, I read again an overview of the original court case and the Innocence Project’s fight to overturn his conviction. According to the article, the UBC Innocence Project lawyers argued that Jeb’s own defense counsel in the initial trial had been aware of, but not presented, evidence that there was DNA from another male on the bloodied hoodie found in the back of Jeb’s car. The hoodie that contained the empty date-rape drug pack. The hoodie had also been logged into evidence later than the rest of the contents found in Jeb’s car. Police claimed this was technical error, and that the presence of other DNA did not clear Jeb. But based on this the judge threw out Jeb’s conviction, saying that had this evidence been presented by the defense counsel in the initial trial, it would have raised reasonable doubt.

The judge did not rule, however, that Jeb was innocent.

The result, claimed one newspaper columnist, was a violent man being set free. Another columnist argued that the police, the prosecutors, and the defense lawyers had all developed tunnel vision in an “overzealous” attempt to secure a conviction for a man they all believed was guilty of a heinous crime in a small community. In doing so, they’d shot themselves in the foot because a guilty man now walked free because of it.

Jeb himself refused any interviews.

I click on a photo and Jeb’s face fills my screen. Simmering, dark, sensual. A young Jeb. The way I knew and loved him. His father’s smiling Irish eyes, wickedly sensual at times, and at others, so full of deep mystery. One look from those eyes used to melt my stomach, give my skin tingles. I sip my drink and feel warmth spread through my chest—even now his eyes still do it for me, just in this photo. God, what am I going to do with myself? How am I going to rid myself of these twisted, conflicted memories? These feelings? It’s not easy to describe the depth of what I once felt for Jeb. I don’t think many people can understand what we had.

When he first came to Snowy Creek Elementary, I was fascinated with him. He seemed apart from everyone else, mysterious. Special. He appealed to something in my imagination. He disappeared later that year, when his father died, but he returned to school the following spring. We became friends, kicking a ball on the bottom fields during lunch. Gradually he began to show me my own world through new eyes. It was the first time, I think, that I realized there were people in this world, like the First Nations community in the valley over, who thought and lived in a different way. It became an adventure, exciting. I started to meet him outside school, and while my girlfriends were hanging out in the village and shopping and going to movies, he and I went on adventures in the woods. He set the tomboy in me free. We played. We discovered. He allowed me to remain a kid inside my heart far longer than my peers. And slowly we grew into our respective sexuality. It was a thrilling sensation, to touch him, have him touch me. Jeb quite simply became part of me. Of who I was.

And then he told me his deepest, darkest secret. He told me why he had disappeared that first winter.

It was the ultimate confession. The ultimate bond of trust. And I betrayed that trust. In the trial. I used his deepest, most personal secret to help send him away. Guilt whispers through me.

I click on another photo, this one taken outside the courthouse near the start of the first trial just over eight years ago. In this image the angle of the sun accentuates Jeb’s dusky skin, the flare of his cheekbones. His long black hair gleams. I can see his tattoo—the angry, masculine mouth of a coho swimming up his neck. Jeb told me once that the coho salmon possessed three traits he valued most: courage, tenacity, and a ferocity of purpose at the end game.

I wonder, now, about his own end game.

Gently, I brush the screen with my fingertips, touching his face. Familiar feelings of hurt and affection mushroom inside me. With them come the anger, hatred, and bitterness of betrayal, and it all swims like an oily cocktail in my gut. This man raped and left my schoolmate for dead. Quinn’s mother, Amy. Another schoolmate is still missing, presumed murdered. The judge has not said he was innocent of this. There is still no one else the police are looking at for the crime. That’s because the cops still believe he did it. It’s because there’s no one else they even suspect. Everything still points to Jeb.

I curse and swallow the rest of the whiskey before sloshing another two fingers of the amber liquid into my glass.

Here’s to you, Trey. Here’s to you, Je
b . . .
here’s to some seriously messed-up past.

I take another swig and scroll quickly through several more newspaper articles, stopping suddenly as a photo snares my attention. I click on it and the enlarged image floods my screen.

It’s a group sitting at a picnic table outside the courthouse during the hearings to have Jeb’s conviction overturned. They’re having lunch. A sunny day. At the table are legal counsel for the Innocence Project, an older Asian woman—the retired tech from the police lab who testified in Jeb’s favor about the DNA—plus a blonde woman I recognize instantly as Piper Smith. It was Piper’s true crime docudrama that brought to light the errors in the police evidence log and the existence of additional DNA on the hoodie. Piper was the first to get the lab tech to talk. But it’s another face in the group that has my heart beating suddenly.

Sophia’s face.

My sister is sharing lunch and laughing with this group. This does not look like an adversarial relationship. My pulse quickens. I carefully set my whiskey glass on the side table and check the date the story was filed. Seven months ago. A month before she died.

Sophia attended those hearings to free Jeb? How could she be so apparently intimate with this group fighting for the overturning of his conviction? Surely it would have been the opposite, especially given Sophia’s knowledge that Jeb was her own daughter’s birth father. Wouldn’t Sophia and Peter have been fighting their damnedest to see he
stayed
behind bars?

Frowning, I scroll farther. I find another photo of Sophia and one of the Innocence Project lawyers conversing on a bench outside the courtroom during a recess. There’s an intimacy in the way their heads are bent close.

I sit back, a strange sensation settling into me.

What were you doing at those hearings, Sophia? Why didn’t you talk to
m
e
. . . 
?

Guthrie’s words curl through my mind. He said Sophia made an appointment to come in and update her will. But she died just before she could do it.

What changes, Sophia? Were they to do with Quinn?

The wind moans in the rock formations across the water, an eerie sound like howling wolves that always gives me a shiver. I reach for my glass and take another sip of Trey’s very fine, very expensive, cask-aged scotch, and exhaustion falls like a blanket over me. I shut down my laptop. Tomorrow I’ll look up flights, book something, call in to work. I’ll ask Cass, my editor, and Marjorie, my sales manager, to jointly manage their respective sides of the business for a week. I’ll explain that I have an emergency and need to get out of town. If they lose the prospective advertising accounts in the process, I’ll deal with the fallout later.

It’s going to be fine.

By the time Quinn and I return, Jeb might have left town, or Adam might have taken him in. I rest my head back against my granddad’s chair, letting the comfortable old arms enfold me, enjoying a few more moments of the warm fire and the sound of crackling logs, before heading up to bed.