Dead Right (45 page)

“Wait!” she cal ed.

He turned back to see her wearing an expression of panic. “What’s different? Have you met someone else?”

He thought about Madeline and smiled. “Yeah, I guess I have.”

Madeline sat at her computer, trying to write the most difficult article of her life. Ray had required several pints of blood and hundreds of stitches, but he was already out of the hospital and in jail. His trial hadn’t started yet, but with her testimony and his confession, he’d be going to prison for pedophilia, kidnapping and attempted rape, buying and sel ing child pornography, incest and possibly the murder of Bubba Turk. Thanks to Hunter’s insistence, they’d sent Bubba’s body for an autopsy, and petechial hemorrhaging indicated that he’d been smothered. Judging by the time of death, Pontiff was now theorizing that Bubba had somehow caught Ray doing something he shouldn’t, so Ray had made sure he’d never be able to tel .

Sounded logical, but no one real y knew. Ray wouldn’t say what had happened to Bubba. But he was more than wil ing to talk about anything else. He told everyone who came within ten yards of him the gruesome details of what her father had done to Katie and Rose Lee. That he and Barker had raped and tortured them both and they’d done it together. He’d laugh when others cringed and get increasingly more explicit, gaining some grotesque satisfaction from their horror and revulsion. He claimed Grace must’ve received similar treatment—thank God he didn’t real y know. He even announced the details of what he’d planned to do to her at the cabin.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Just yesterday he’d told Toby Pontiff that her father had run Katie down when she tried to get away. And he’d suggested that her father had kil ed her mother and covered it up by making it look like suicide.

Madeline had been up most of the night thinking about that. She’d read through Eliza’s journals with an open heart this time—seeking the essence of the mother she’d lost when she was so young—and had decided she believed Ray. Her mother wouldn’t have left her wil ingly. That was the biggest lie Lee Barker had ever told. And the only positive thing knowledge of his true character had brought her.

So now she was like Clay and Grace and Mol y, without a father she would acknowledge as her own. Lee Barker had nearly destroyed them al , and she felt obliged to write his story. The citizens of Stil water, who’d always loved and supported him, deserved the same kind of resolution she’d sought for herself. The only part she’d leave out concerned Grace and the accident at the farm. Those who didn’t already know who’d kil ed her father would simply be left to speculate.

“Where did it al start?” she wrote. “At what moment does a man who otherwise seems sane and good, who preaches about God and the Golden Rule, choose to indulge his own darkest desires? What turns an ordinary man into a monster? That I can’t tel you. But I can tel you what it was like to live with such a person—”

The telephone interrupted her. Pausing in her work, Madeline reached across her desk to answer it. “Hel o?”

“Maddy?”

It was Grace. Her stepsister had stayed in frequent touch since the ordeal at the cabin. What Madeline had suffered at Ray’s hands had brought her and her stepsister, who’d always been a little aloof, closer together, maybe because they were both victims of the evil spawned by her father.

“Yes?”

“I have a lead on a story.” Her voice was warm, cheerful.

“Real y?” Grace didn’t usual y cal her with that kind of thing, so she knew this must be good. She grabbed a pad and pen to take notes. “What kind of story?”

“A love story, actual y.”

Madeline frowned in confusion. “What?”

“Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard?”

“Hunter Solozano just moved to town. He bought the old Dunlap place.”

“What?”
She hadn’t received a cal from Hunter in over two weeks. She thought he’d put their brief affair behind him, forgotten her already. “That can’t be true.”

“My source is pretty reliable.”

“Who told you?” she asked, her pulse beginning to race.

“He did. I ran into him at the Piggly Wiggly.”

Madeline’s mouth went instantly dry. “He was grocery shopping?”

“No, he was standing in the parking lot, frowning at the sign. When I approached, he said he couldn’t believe he’d be shopping there from now on.”

That sounded like him. Madeline couldn’t help laughing.

But why hadn’t he cal ed her? “He told you he moved here?

That he’s staying for good?”

“That’s what he said. And he told me something else.”

“What?”

“He came back because of you.”

The bel jingled over the door. When Madeline turned to see who’d just come in, her heart skipped a few beats.

Grace was right! Hunter was in town. He was standing in her office.

“I have to go,” she said numbly. “I’l cal you later, okay?”

She wasn’t sure if Grace answered or not, but she put the phone back in its cradle.

“Hey,” Hunter said, offering her a sexy smile. “Got time for lunch?”

“W
here do you want this to go?”

Madeline stopped digging through the box in front of her and rocked back on her heels. “What’s in it?” she asked her stepbrother.

Clay’s expression indicated he wasn’t impressed with the contents. “Mostly yarn. And some old knitting books.”

When she hesitated, he cocked an eyebrow at her. “You don’t knit, Maddy.”

She laughed. “I know. Mom gave me that stuff when she moved away from the farm. I thought I might learn someday.”

“Someday soon?”

“Wel , no.”

“Then I say get rid of it.”

“Fine.” She saw him go out to the front yard, where Al ie, Irene, Grace and Kennedy were helping her hold a yard sale, but after he left, she expected the old panic to set in.

She was final y purging, letting go, moving on. But…it didn’t seem to bother her nearly as much as she’d thought it would. It was time, she decided. And maybe it was easier because she had the prospect of better things to come.

She’d be replacing her old junk with objects related to her life with Hunter. He’d be moving in next week, after their wedding.

“You okay?”

At the sound of Hunter’s voice, Madeline turned to see him standing in the doorway of the kitchen, speckled with green paint. “Fine.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “Did you hear about the baby?”

“Are you kidding? That’s al your big brother can talk about. I don’t think he’s going to be able to wait seven more months.”

She stood up to see inside the kitchen. “How’s the painting coming?”

“Great. When I’m finished with it, this is going to look like a new house.”

“Maybe we should sel it.”

“No. You like it here too much.”

She did. She wanted to raise her children in Stil water, where she’d be close to her family. After everything they’d been through—the realization of al they could’ve lost because of one man’s twisted obsession—they were closer than ever, united in their loyalty to each other and happy at last. But she knew Hunter worried about his daughter and the fact that he was so far away from her.

“We could go to California for a few years,” she suggested. “Until Maria turns eighteen.”

“I may want to revisit that idea sometime in the future, but for now I think we’re fine right here.”

“You real y don’t mind?”

“No. Especial y because—” he tried to wipe some of the paint from his hand onto his tattered jeans “—she’s coming to visit us this summer.”

“What?”
Instantly losing interest in her sorting, Madeline jumped to her feet. “She cal ed?”

He smiled in that crooked fashion she liked so much.

“Yeah. Last night while you were out shopping with Grace.”

She picked her way through the boxes to throw her arms around him. She knew she was probably smearing paint al over her clothes, but she didn’t care. This was wonderful news! “Why didn’t you tel me when I got home?”

Lowering his head, he kissed her neck before meeting her gaze. “It was one of those things where…you just want to mul it over for a while, you know? I’ve been trying not to get my hopes up too high, in case she changes her mind again.”

“She won’t change her mind this time,” Madeline said, holding his face between her hands.

“How do you know?”

“Because she’s figuring it out, Hunter. She’s learning that you’re not what her mother’s told her you are, that she’s crazy to shut you out of her life.”

The screen door slammed as Clay came in for another trip to the basement. “Quit making out,” he teased. “We’ve got work to do.”

But Madeline didn’t care who saw them. She kissed the man who’d be her husband in another week and waved Clay out the door when he brought up the next box—without even looking through it.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-0384-0

DEAD RIGHT

Copyright © 2007 by Brenda Novak.

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