At the Edge (17 page)

And why was it all bothering me so much? Why couldn't I let it alone?

“It's just that I know you feel terrible that your dad blames you for what happened,” I said softly. “But it could have happened to you too, James. The man shot your brother. It's a miracle he didn't shoot you. I mean, you were right there. You saw him.”

“I said, I don't want to talk about it,” James said, his voice so sharp that I jumped.

Let it alone
, I told myself.
Leave him alone. You're just stirring up bad memories
. I even had a pretty good idea now why he was so angry. It was because he hadn't been shot. Because he thought that his dad probably wished it had been James shot dead and Gregory still alive. Because he had let his brother and his parents down when he'd fallen apart on the witness stand. Because he felt responsible for the killer walking free.

“It happened,” he said, trying to control himself. “Greg got killed. I should have been”—he broke off and drew in a deep breath. “The guy shot Greg. I saw him. He had dark eyes. He had a long, thin nose. He had ears that stuck out. He had shaggy brown hair. He had a small mouth. He had a scar on his chin. He killed my little brother, Robyn. Greg was lying on the ground. He looked so small. And he was looking up at me. Like he was wondering how I could have let something like that happen to him ... I want to forget it. I just want to forget the whole thing. But I can't. It's like a nightmare. Or like a movie that keeps playing and playing and that I can't turn off.”

“I'm sorry,” I murmured again.

James was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I want to have some fun for a change. You can't believe how much I've been looking forward to this weekend. It's a chance to get away. We can take a walk in the woods when we get there. Then we can drive into town and pick up Morgan and Billy. We can get something to eat, too. And there's this island in the middle of the lake. It's so peaceful. You'll love it.”

I laughed. “I thought the whole point of the trip was to clean the place up so your dad can sell it. When were you planning to do that?”

“I'll get to it,” James said, smiling. “I can always finish it next weekend.”

I let him keep talking about the island and his plans for the day. He began to relax. I asked him how he felt about moving again so soon.

“It's on the other side of the world,” he said. “Maybe if I get that far away, I can forget about everything.”

Maybe. But I doubted it. You could never really escape your memories, especially bad ones like he'd been carrying around.

“I can't wait to go,” he said. “I wish we could leave right now, after this weekend. I wish we could just move on before”—he broke off again.

“Before what?”

“I wish we could just leave. It was a mistake to come back here. I thought changing my name would make a difference, but it didn't. I thought if I went to visit Greg and told him how sorry I was, that would make a difference. I was wrong about that too. I thought ... I thought a lot of things. But I see now that we were wrong. We never should have come back. I never should have let my dad talk me into it.”

“James, I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean to ruin your weekend. It's just that I know you feel responsible for what happened, and when your dad told me about the car crash—”

James's head snapped around to look at me.

“He talked to you about that? What did he say?”

We turned off the highway and onto a gravel road into which countless vehicles had worn two deep parallel grooves.

“He just mentioned it,” I said. “While we were waiting for you to come home for dinner that night.”

James slowed the car down. The road was old and washed out in places. The trees were dense on either side, and there were no signs of life, let alone of other houses, along the desolate road.

“Hey, do you think we could take a picnic out to that island?” I said to lighten the mood. “What are the sunsets like up here?”

James brought the car to a stop and shut it off.

“What did he say about it, Robyn?”

“Nothing. Really. I don't even know why I brought it up. We came here to get some work done and have some fun. Coming back has been hard enough on you—”

“What did he tell you?” His eyes burned with emotion. His voice was quiet but insistent. “Please, I'm not mad at you. I won't get mad. It's just that after it happened, my dad and I never really talked about it. But he said something to you. What was it?”

I hesitated.

“Please, Robyn.”

“He didn't say a lot, James. Seriously. Just that it happened two years after your mom died. And that the police thought it was an accident ... He said he was in the car with you when it happened and he doesn't blame you for what happened.”

“What?”

“He said you took your mom's death hard, which is totally understandable, and—”

“He doesn't blame me?” James said. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“He said you weren't yourself after your mom died. Grief affects different people in different ways.”

“He doesn't blame me,” James said again. He sat very still. With the car engine off, so far from the highway and from any houses or cabins, all I could hear were birds—calling, singing, telling each other their bird secrets.

“Is everything okay, James?”

He nodded—curtly, almost imperceptibly—but didn't look at me. He turned the key in the ignition and started the engine again. We drove farther down the sloping road, deeper into the woods, even farther from the main road.

Finally we turned onto an even narrower road—a driveway, it turned out. Moments later, a two-story, chalet-style house appeared, all rich brown wood and glinting windows against a slash of blue—a lake—behind it.

A red Honda sat on a patch of scrubby grass to one side of the driveway.

James frowned. “That's my dad's car,” he said.

“When you said he went out of town, you didn't say this was where he went.”

“I didn't know.” He parked behind the other car.

We got out, and I started to open the back door to retrieve my purse and backpack.

“We can unload later,” James said. “Let's see what's going on.”

He approached the house cautiously. He did not seem pleased that his dad had shown up. It was becoming clearer and clearer to me that there was a lot of unresolved tension between father and son.

James climbed up onto the screened porch and opened the outer door.

“Hello?” he called.

“Is that you, Dee?” came Mr. Derrick's rich, deep voice. “Is Robyn with you?”

I joined James on the porch.

“Hello!” I called.

“Where are you, Dad?”

“In the kitchen. Come on through. And lock the front door behind you, will you, Dee?”

James's frown deepened, but he did as he was told. We walked through a large, sunny living room to the spacious kitchen at the back of the house. The kitchen overlooked another screened porch, through which I could see the dazzling blue of a vast lake dotted with treed islets. The view would have been breathtaking if I had been able to give it my full attention. But I was distracted—by the man kneeling on the kitchen floor with his hands clasped behind his head, and by the gun in Richard Derrick's gloved hand.

J

ames stared first at the man on his knees and then at his father. My attention was riveted to the man. I recognized him even though I had never met him. It was the same man who had been in all those pictures on James's cell phone.

“What are you doing here?” James said to his father. “What's he doing here?”

Mr. Derrick shook his head slowly.

“We talked about this, Dee,” he said. “We talked about it dozens of times.”

My eyes went back to the gun. What was going on?

“You know the plan,” Derrick said.

“Dad!” James looked frantically at me.

“It's all right,” Mr. Derrick said. “We don't have anything to hide from Robyn. We talked about this, Dee. We talked about how it would go. He spotted us up here. He recognized us. He recognized you. He threatened to get even with you back then. The police know he did. They have a record of it. And he's never forgotten that threat. He's never stopped blaming you for his family leaving.”

The kneeling man looked up, and James met his eyes. The color drained from James's face. One of the man's hands reached out, groping for anything that could steady him. He found nothing.

“But I thought—”

“You thought what?” Mr. Derrick said.

“You got that new job in Australia. You're going back to teaching. I'm going to college. We're getting out of here. I thought we could put this behind us.”

“Put it behind us?” Derrick said. He shook his head. “We came back here to take care of things, Dee. We talked about how this would happen. He saw you up here. He was determined to get even with you, and there was nothing we could do. He wanted payback for what he thinks you did to his family, in his pathetic mind. As if a murderer like him even deserves a family.”

I stared at the kneeling man. Was it possible?

James looked at me again before turning back to his father.

“But, Dad, Robyn—”

“Ah,” Mr. Derrick said. “Robyn.” His eyes flicked to me. “Robyn, would you be so kind as to kneel down beside Mr. Leonard?”

I was right. The man on his knees was Eddy Leonard—the man who had shot James's brother and gotten away with it. He'd put on weight. A beard covered the scar on his chin. But he still had a long, straight nose, dark eyes, and ears that stuck out from his head.

“Dad, what are you doing?” James said, horrified.

Derrick turned his icy hard eyes on me.

“Kneel,” he ordered. “Now.”

I stared at the gun in his hand. What would happen if I refused?

“Let me make myself clear,” Mr. Derrick said when I hesitated. “This gun is loaded. When I tell you to kneel, please believe that there will be consequences if you don't.”

“Dad, please,” James said. “This has nothing to do with her.”

“Kneel,” Mr. Derrick said. The chill in his voice made my knees buckle. I sank to the floor.

“Dad, please!”

“Do you know who she is, Dee? Did she tell you?”

“What do you mean?” James said. “What are you talking about?”

Mr. Derrick repeated his question, emphasizing each word: “Do you know who she is?”

I had been dreading this moment, but never in my worst nightmares had I imagined how awful it would be.

I looked up at James. “I should have told you,” I said. “I should have told you as soon as I realized.”

“Realized what?” James said. “Told me what?”

“Her mother is that piece of scum's lawyer,” Derrick said, jerking his head at Eddy Leonard.

Eddy Leonard looked at me for the first time. James stared at me too, his mouth agape. I should have told him. He might have hated me for it, but at least I would have been able to say that I'd done the right thing. As it was, I felt like a coward. James had bared his soul to me, and I had hidden something from him.

James shook his head, as if he couldn't believe what his dad was telling him. As if he refused to believe.

“But her name—” he said.

“She has her father's name. But her mother is Patricia Stone.”

James was still shaking his head. “How long have you known? Why didn't you tell me?”

“It's part of the plan,” Mr. Derrick said. “It's why we came back here. Now we can show that woman, Dee. We can show her what it feels like. That piece of garbage took Gregory away from me, and her mother let him get away with it. Now he's going to take her daughter away from her, and she'll have only herself to blame. If he'd been convicted four years ago, he would be behind bars now. But she kept him out, so now she has to pay. And so does he.”

James stared at me. He looked betrayed and angry. And lost.

“Remember how we planned it, Dee,” Derrick said, his voice soft and lilting as he tried to soothe James. “He broke in here, desperate to get even with you, just like everyone heard him say he would, just like he said he would do in those calls he made after the trial.”

“I was drunk,” Eddy Leonard said. “I was mad. But I never would have—”

“Shut up,” Derrick said.

Leonard bowed his head.

Mr. Derrick turned back to James. “You and Robyn arrived to find him here, holding me at knifepoint. Remember how we said it would go, Dee?”

“You never said anything about her daughter,” James said. “You never even told me she had a daughter.”

“That lawyer has to pay, James. Listen to me. You had no choice. He had me at knifepoint, and he was waiting for you to arrive. He was going to kill us both, Dee. He said he was going to get even for his wife and child leaving him. But you fought back. You got away from him and got your grandfather's old gun out. You were just trying to make him put down the knife. It all happened so fast. You were terrified. You shot—but he had grabbed the girl for a shield. It happened so fast, Dee. You told him to put the knife down, but he didn't. You panicked and shot at him. It wasn't your fault that he grabbed the girl at the last minute. You shot her, but it wasn't your fault.”