Dead Right (14 page)

He knew she’d caught him when she took a step back and folded her arms over her chest.

“If you’re going to walk around like that, it could be a problem,” he admitted, listening to his heart pound as their eyes met.

She seemed to col ect herself. “Let me put on some sweats and I’l make you breakfast.”

“Sounds good.” Hunter started into the kitchen but, at the last minute, he turned back to watch her climb the stairs.

Did she real y think she was too old for him?

Madeline couldn’t stop brooding over Kirk’s visit—but that didn’t surprise her. She always had trouble letting go of people, places, even things. Which was why she’d stayed with him for so long. She’d known from the beginning that they made better friends than lovers. She’d tried to tel him on a number of occasions. But he tended to accept what came easily without bothering to fight for more, so he’d never been wil ing to acknowledge the lack of intensity in their relationship. Ending it had been entirely her decision, not his.

Anyway, considering her own problems, she couldn’t complain about
his
lack of decisive action. She had a garage, a basement and two sheds stuffed ful of junk. No doubt her penchant for hanging on to everything that came into her life stemmed from losing her mother and father so early. But she
had
to overcome that compulsion. Hoarding affected too many aspects of her life. How could she be decisive about ending a relationship when she couldn’t even part with simple, almost worthless items that others discarded every day—receipts, advertisements, tin foil, sacks, old yarn. She was careful to avoid the stigma that went along with being a pack rat, and stored it al out of sight, away from the main part of her house. But hiding her problem didn’t solve it.

“You okay?”

Madeline glanced up from her plate to find Hunter watching her. He sat across the table, apparently finished with his meal. “I’m fine,” she said. But the panic she’d managed to hold at bay since she and Kirk had broken up was rising inside her, making her heart pound and her palms sweat. Loss…Nothing frightened her more. And she cared about Kirk, loved him in many ways. They’d known each other most of their lives. What if she regretted her decision later on?

“You’ve only eaten a few bites.”

Madeline put down the fork she’d been using to push her eggs around her plate. “I’m not hungry.”

“Are you upset?”

She was having an anxiety attack. Did that count? In any case, she didn’t want to explain so she shook her head.

“Maybe you should cal him,” he said.

“No.” She was cleaning out her emotional closets. She wished Mol y could do it for her, the way she’d gotten rid of old furniture and other junk by having a yard sale when she was here last. But this was something Madeline had to do for herself.

She eyed the ring Kirk had given her for her birthday a year ago. It had two smal diamonds beside her birthstone.

He was a good man. Should she settle for a mediocre relationship? Al ow him to settle, as wel ? So what if he didn’t want kids? Maybe she could live without becoming a mother. She was thirty-six. There wasn’t much more time….

“Wil you be able to concentrate on what we need to do?” Hunter asked, drawing her attention again.

His words sounded ominous. “What
we
need to do?” she repeated.

“It’s time to take a strol down memory lane.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’d like you to show me your old photo albums, scrapbooks, letters, anything you might have from your parents, Irene, Clay, Grace, Mol y—anyone associated with the family.”

“What about the police files?” She’d thought he’d read the files and then interview people, start piecing the puzzle together that way.

“They haven’t led anyone to your father’s kil er so far, right? Something must be missing, which might mean they’ve been looking in the wrong place.”

“You don’t even want to see the files?”

“I’l go through them eventual y.”

She wanted a shower. But she had a very expensive private investigator sitting in her kitchen, ready to work, and she couldn’t afford to keep him waiting until she could come to grips with the upset caused by Kirk’s unexpected visit.

“What do you think my old photo albums wil tel you?” she asked.

“They’l give me a feel of who you are, who your father was, maybe even a sense of Irene, Clay, Grace and Mol y.”

He rested his elbows on the table. “You have a few old photo albums, don’t you?”

She had more than he’d ever get through. She was the queen of memorabilia. To someone who prized tin foil, pictures were nearly sacred. “I also have my father’s belongings.”

When Clay had dismantled the office in the barn last summer, he’d said he’d be wil ing to store everything he’d packed up for her. But Clay hadn’t just cleaned out the place. He’d ripped off the wal paneling, torn out the air conditioner that had fil ed one side of the window, even removed the carpet. If her father’s personal effects couldn’t be in their rightful place, waiting for him to return, then she wanted them close to her, not sitting on a concrete floor in a room she no longer recognized.

“Here, in the house?” Hunter asked.

“In the basement.” She stood. “I’l get them.”

“Wait til you’re finished eating.”

“I’m done.” After depositing her plate on the counter, she headed down to the basement. She hadn’t expected Hunter to fol ow her but he did. She got the impression that he was taking in every detail of what he saw and heard, cataloging everything in his brain.

So what would he make of the fact that she decorated with bright, primary colors? Would he decide she was basical y cheerful and loved the sun?

Or that she was terrified of suffering from the kind of depression that had afflicted her mother?

She wasn’t sure, but she was fairly confident that visiting the basement would give away more about her particular neurosis than she wanted. Mol y always made a huge fuss about al the clutter; that was why Madeline had never admitted how difficult the yard sale had been for her. Mol y probably suspected, since Madeline had ducked out midway, but they hadn’t discussed it.

They al had their problems. Mol y couldn’t stay in town longer than a week for fear she’d never be able to leave.

She said coming here was fun for the first few days, that she liked seeing her family. But any longer than that and Stil water began to feel like quicksand, sucking at her ankles. The fact that Madeline had never escaped their hometown, never gone on to become the
Washington Post
reporter she’d once hoped to be, no doubt made Mol y’s phobia worse.

“I’m not getting anything that’s very heavy,” she said, standing in front of the basement door. “Why don’t you wait in the living room?”

“Is it only one box?”

“No…” There were several and she couldn’t carry them al at one time. It made more sense to let him help her. But she didn’t want to see her problems through his eyes.

Especial y now…

She’d clean out her storage areas when she was back on stable ground. Maybe once she knew what had happened to her father, she could stop looking back. Then she’d be able to let go of everything she felt so compel ed to save. She hoped. One problem at a time, right?

“Is there any need to bring them al up?” she asked.

“There’re two of us. Why not bring up a couple, at least?”

Arguing would draw more attention to something that didn’t real y matter, she told herself. Why obsess over what Hunter might think? He was here for only one reason—to solve the mystery behind her father’s disappearance.

Afterward, he’d go back to California and she’d never see him again.

“Fine.” Bracing herself for what he might say, she opened the door.

9

A
pale light slanted into the basement, reaching only halfway down the window and not al the way to the middle of the room. Madeline pul ed the chain on the bulb overhead to banish the shadows, then stiffened as Hunter whistled.

“What
is
al this stuff?” he asked.

“Just…storage.” Acutely self-conscious, she began stepping over the boxes and baskets piled on the steps.

“What are you storing?” She could hear the creak of the stairs behind her. “Food and clothing for the entire town for a year?”

“There’re some canned goods here.” There were a lot of other things, too—things no one else would bother to store.

Hunter lagged behind as she wound through the walkways, which became progressively narrower. She knew he was inspecting the place, marveling.

Final y, she reached the area under the stairs where she kept her personal mementos, as wel as her father’s belongings. This seemed the safest place because it was away from the windows and the moisture that occasional y seeped in, away from the paths where she’d had to shove this or move that.

She motioned for Hunter to take the top box, and grabbed the one underneath. Carrying the boxes made getting out of the crowded basement more difficult than getting in, but Hunter led the way, using his knee to widen the paths. When they emerged into the living room, Madeline shut the door with a resounding bang.

“What’s the point of al
that?
” Hunter asked, watching as she set her box on the floor by the sofa.

She pretended not to understand. “What are you talking about?”

“You have boxes and boxes and boxes of…what?”

“I told you, storage.”

“What kind of storage?”

“Does it matter?”

“I’m not sure.”

She could feel his gaze resting on her but refused to meet it. Shrugging, she said, “It’s nothing.”

He didn’t press her beyond that, but only because she’d already pul ed out a scrapbook.

“What do you want to see?” she asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor and staring at a photograph of herself as an infant.

He dropped down beside her. “That’s your real mother holding you?”

She nodded, noting her mother’s proud smile. Her father stood behind them, talking on the phone.

“She was pretty,” he said.

Madeline had never thought she resembled her mother.

And if she did, few people mentioned it. But she remembered her father gazing distantly at her on several occasions. When she questioned him, he’d shake his head and say, “You’re the very image of her,” even though she looked much more like him.

“She had…problems,” Madeline said. She’d intended to say it lightly, carelessly, but there was no concealing the bitterness in her voice.

He took the scrapbook and began turning the pages.

“What was she like?”

“I thought she was perfect,” she told him. “She lit up whenever she saw me. She loved me. She was everything to me. Maybe that’s why I feel so betrayed.”

He surprised her by briefly touching her shoulder. Hunter seemed remote, indifferent, but she wondered if there wasn’t a tender streak beneath that “I don’t give a shit”

attitude. “It’s only natural to feel that way.”

“I didn’t know it when I was little, or understand what it meant, but she suffered from depression,” Madeline said.

He examined various pages, pausing now and then to study one a bit more closely. “How did her depression manifest itself? Did she weep? Sleep? What?”

“She wept easily, but usual y tried to hide it. Mostly she became quiet, subdued. And she wrote in her journal. She fil ed one spiral notebook after another, then tore out most of the pages and burned them up. I remember standing next to her, watching them blacken and curl.”

“Did your father know she destroyed what she wrote?”

“Probably. But she always did it while he was gone. She knew it’d make him angry.”

“Why would he care?”

“He was frustrated that she couldn’t be satisfied with her life.”

“He felt she should be?”

“He tried to give her everything she needed.”

“Was there anything specific that was causing her unhappiness?”

“No. Depression runs in her family. She was just too fragile, too…weak, I guess.” It hurt Madeline to say it. She didn’t want to believe that about the mother she remembered so clearly, the mother who’d loved her so much.

“How did your father react when she made the decision to end her life?”

“He was disgusted.”

Hunter looked up at her, clearly shocked. “Somehow that wasn’t what I was expecting you to say.”

“You have to understand, he’d been dealing with my mother’s sickness for years and had run out of patience with it. He was disgusted with her even before she took her life.”

“What about heartbroken? Did that figure into the equation at al ?”

How could she explain? Hardhearted though it sounded, How could she explain? Hardhearted though it sounded, Madeline understood the confusion and disappointment her father had experienced. “My father admired strength and saw her as terribly flawed.”

“Flawed?”

She tried again. “He was angry. He wanted his family to set the perfect example for his flock. Instead, my mother committed what he considered the unpardonable sin.”

“Disgust and anger. Maybe your father was putting too much pressure on your mother. Maybe she couldn’t be everything he wanted her to be and that was the only out she could find.”

“I could never abandon
my
child,” she said resolutely.

“Neither could I. And yet here I am,” he muttered.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He paused at a picture taken when Madeline was eight. Leaning against the porch railing at the farmhouse, she was missing her two front teeth and smiling with abandon. Madeline was fairly certain that was the last time she’d felt so carefree. Soon afterward she’d become aware of her mother’s malady and begun to worry—about everything.

“Did she leave a suicide note?”

“Yes, but it was just more of the same ‘life is hopeless’

kind of stuff.”

“Where is it now?”

“My father burned it.”

“You didn’t mind?”

“What could I do? He was upset. And it seemed fitting somehow.”

Hunter didn’t comment on that. “How were things financial y?” he asked, turning another page.

“Tight. It was that way for most people in town. But we had a roof over our heads and plenty to eat. I remember my father pointing that out to my mother again and again, tel ing her she should be grateful.”