Hard Rain (14 page)

Brody turned on his pickup’s wipers, his mind on Harper and the kiss and the feel of her in his arms. He couldn’t deny his feelings. And yet... Mentally he kicked himself for agreeing to help her look for the truth about his cousin and her grandfather.

Earlier Harper had promised to talk to her parents. He’d told her he would talk to his father, and was headed to the ranch now.

He couldn’t help feeling anxious, though. His father and uncle had made it clear they didn’t want to talk about Maggie or her death. It was as if everyone was hiding something. He had tried to question them but had only managed to make them angry and even more closemouthed. This time he wouldn’t settle for being put off again. Harper was determined to find a killer. On the off chance that Maggie’s killer was still alive...

What worried him was the way his father and uncle had been acting since Maggie’s body was found. What could they possibly know that made them seem almost...afraid?

Admittedly, he knew Harper was right. Her family, he was sure, had their own secrets. The two of them couldn’t get the whole picture without putting both sides of the stories together. He’d been a fool to go charging over to the Hamilton Ranch thinking he would accomplish something by demanding to see the senator. The presidential candidate certainly wasn’t going to admit anything to him. But he might tell his daughter the truth.

Brody was still convinced that the only way they would ever know the truth was if he and Harper did the digging themselves. Buckmaster had too much power and influence to suit Brody. Maybe Sheriff Frank Curry couldn’t be bought. But Brody had no doubt Buckmaster could put all kinds of pressure on him during this investigation.

Brody also knew that he and Harper had more access to their families than even the sheriff. While his father and uncle might not tell Frank everything, Brody might be able to get them to talk. He was damned sure going to try.

Because if Brody and Harper had a hope of ever being together, given the way their families felt, they had to find out the truth—and pray that it wouldn’t destroy what they felt for each other.

The rain turned to sleet and then hard kernels of snow. Icy pebbles pounded the pickup and whitened the road ahead. Dark clouds obscured the Crazies. Wind whirled tumbleweeds across the road into his path. He slowed as he neared his uncle’s place.

As quickly as the squall had blown in, it moved on past. The barrage stopped, leaving the sky a whitewashed blue overhead. There was nothing like spring in Montana, he thought as the sun came out again.

Seeing his father’s truck parked outside, he turned down the drive to his uncle’s house.

Good, he would be able to talk to them both, he thought as he parked and climbed out.

He heard raised voices as he neared the front door. He’d never known the brothers to quarrel—let alone fight. Without knocking, he stepped in. The moment his father and uncle saw him, they stepped apart and fell silent.

“Don’t let me disturb you,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“You should learn to knock,” his father said, clearly agitated.

Brody ignored that as he moved into the room. “I can only imagine what the two of you were arguing about. What’s going on?”

“It doesn’t concern you,” his uncle said, and started to leave the room.

“Like hell,” Brody snapped, motioning for his uncle to stay put. “It’s time the two of you told me what you’ve been hiding all these years. I know it has something to do with Maggie. So what is it and why do you both look scared? Does it have anything to do with Maggie’s diary?”

* * *

H
ARPER
COULD
SEE
that she’d upset her mother, but she couldn’t stop now. Brody had gone to talk to his father and uncle. The only way they were ever going to know what happened thirty-five years ago was if they could get the people who were there to tell them.

“Talk to me. I’m not going to give up. I
will
find out the truth.”

Her mother groaned. “What is it with this family and the truth?” She met Harper’s gaze. “There are many truths.”

“You had to know if JD and Maggie were having an affair. When you and Dad first got married, weren’t you living in the same house with him and Grace for a while?” Sarah nodded. “You probably even knew Maggie.”

“I’d seen her go riding by on her way up to Mirror Lake,” she admitted as if seeing that Harper wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “JD fished up there occasionally. But if they had a...sexual relationship, I really can’t say.” She sighed.

Picking up her lemonade, the ice nearly melted, she took a drink. “JD was angry at your father for running off and getting married to a complete stranger. Apparently, there was some girl in the valley whose family had a large ranch that he had wanted Buck to marry.”

Harper thought she finally might be getting somewhere. “What about my grandmother?” she asked, positive now there was something her mother didn’t want to tell her. “Was she angry, too?”

“Grace was more angry than JD, but she hid it behind a sweetness that would have given a person a cavity. At least that was the way she was around JD and Buck.”

Harper thought she was finally getting somewhere. “So the two of you
didn’t
like each other.”

“Not to speak ill of the dead or—worse—your grandmother, but Grace was the most manipulative, controlling, stubborn, domineering woman I’ve ever met. If she was protective of her husband, she was worse when it came to her son. No one would have been good enough for Buck.”

Harper saw her mother’s eyes seem to glaze over, as if she was back there, the new bride coming home to the ranch to meet her in-laws for the first time and not under the best circumstances.

“Grace had insisted Buck be called Buckmaster—just as she had named him. She’d insisted on a lot of things and JD did his best to make sure she got what she wanted. I saw at once that Grace Hamilton wasn’t as helpless as she wanted her husband to think.”

“I get the feeling you’ve never talked about this with anyone,” Harper said.

Her mother smiled, tears in her eyes. “There were a lot of things I’ve never told anyone, not even your father.” She let out a bitter laugh. “You asked for the truth? There was one time when I accidentally walked in and found Grace standing a few feet from her wheelchair. She’d gotten up to get something, thinking no one was home.”

“So she
could
walk.”

“At least a few steps. She looked startled when she saw me. Then we both heard JD coming down the hall calling Grace’s name. I saw a change in her expression. She grabbed for her wheelchair, but it rolled away. I reached for her, but she fell, knocking the chair over as she hit the floor. JD had rushed in, demanding to know what had happened. ‘That girl,’ Grace had cried, pointing a finger at me. ‘She tried to kill me.’ JD didn’t believe her, but Grace never changed her story of how her chair had gotten stuck on the rug and she’d asked for my help. That I’d purposely dumped her out of the chair.”

“That’s horrible,” Harper said, almost too shocked to speak. She’d heard of awful mother-in-laws but nothing like this.

Her mother laughed. “You think that’s horrible? Grace told everyone I was the one who pushed her down the stairs to begin with. I was the one who put her in that wheelchair. She would have done anything to get rid of me. Even lie.”

“But surely Dad and JD saw through it.”

“JD wouldn’t let her call the sheriff. Your father didn’t believe it and I don’t think JD did, either. Still, when I became pregnant with Ainsley, that’s when we had to move out of the old homestead. I didn’t feel safe around her. We moved into a cabin on the ranch until the main house was finished. Buck told his mother we just needed more space, but she knew why we moved out.”

“What a nasty woman.”

“That’s what I thought then, but now? Now I think she was just afraid of losing her son—
and
her husband,” Sarah said.

“If that was the case, then she must have known someone was after her husband,” Harper said. “She must have suspected there was someone else and if she was desperate enough to try to keep her husband and son by lying about you trying to kill her... What if she knew about Maggie? Unless there were other women. Was my grandfather a womanizer?”

“He was handsome enough, that’s for sure. I wish I knew more but Buck and I didn’t see that much of them after we moved out. Grace took my pregnancies very badly.”

Harper frowned. “So what happened to the old homestead where my grandparents lived?”

“It’s still there. Like a lot of early settlers, the original house was built down by the creek in the trees to shelter it from the storms. It’s only today that people build so they have a view.”

“Wait, where is this house?”

Her mother described how to get there.

“My grandparents lived in what we call the old Maynard House?” she asked in surprise.

“Is that what your father calls it? Probably because his grandfather, Maynard Hamilton, built it.”

Harper sat back, considering everything her mother had told her. “So if my grandmother could walk, and she stayed in the wheelchair as a way of trying to hang on to her husband, she must have known about Maggie and the affair—if there was one. Was there, though?”

Her mother shrugged. “Maggie was young and beautiful and carefree and probably fun, everything that Grace wasn’t. I’m sure JD was tempted. But if he acted on it, I don’t know.”

“Dad said the same thing. That he didn’t know.”

Sarah looked uncomfortable. “I do know that if the two of them were lovers, your grandfather didn’t kill her.”

“How do you know that?”

“He was a good, kind, peaceful man as honest as the day was long and he would never have left Grace. He was committed to her.”

Harper felt confused. “But if he was running for president in four years and he’d fallen in love with Maggie McTavish, then wouldn’t he be—”

“Living in his own private hell.”

“So what would he have done?”

Her mother shook her head. “That’s just it, I have no idea. Love can be blind, especially when you fall in love with the wrong person. Or, maybe to him, she was the right person but the wrong circumstances.”

Like Brody McTavish, Harper thought. “What if Maggie wasn’t the wrong person for him? What if she was...the love of his life?”

Her mother gave her an impatient look. “There could never have been a happy ending for them. The differences in their ages apart, Grace would never have let that happen.”

* * *

B
RODY
WAITED
. H
E
saw his father and uncle exchange a look. “I’m not going to leave until I get some answers.”

“He’s correct,” Finn said, over the protests of his brother. “Brody has a right to know.”

Flannigan started past them. “I won’t be part of this.”

“You
are
part of it,” Finn said grabbing his brother’s arm. “We
all
are. Brody has to know the truth. Don’t you see that? We can’t hide it anymore—especially from my son.”

Brody looked from his uncle to his father and felt his heart drop to his boots. “What is it you’ve been hiding from me?” he said, his voice sounding strange even to him.

Flannigan swayed on his feet like a large pine in a fierce wind. “We swore on the Bible that we would never—”

“We did what we thought was right then because Maggie insisted,” Finn said. “I have to do what is right
now
. I told you no good would come of it. But you were so hell-bent on saving Maggie and look how much good that did.”

Flannigan pulled free of his brother’s grasp. “She was my
daughter
. She was—” his voice broke “—my life.”

“Yes, we all know that,” Finn said. Brody heard the pain in his father’s voice. “And I am your brother.”

“You want to drag her name through the dirt like everyone else?” Flannigan demanded.

“No, I want to tell the truth, something I should have done a long time ago.”

“I was trying to protect her. It’s what she wanted.”

“Maybe protection wasn’t what she needed.”

“You don’t have to remind me of the mistakes I made with Maggie. I’ve had to live with them for all these years.” There were tears in his uncle’s eyes.

Brody had been trying to follow the conversation. As his father turned to him, he was suddenly afraid that the last thing he wanted to know was the truth.

His father cleared his throat. “Maggie was raped. Not that she told us. We wouldn’t have known at all, except that she’d written something in her diary and your uncle found it.”

“So she
did
keep a diary,” Brody said. Harper had been right about that.

“You were only guessing when you asked about a diary?” his father asked, frowning.

“She said in the diary that she was raped?” he asked. “She used that word?”

“No,” Finn admitted. “She’d been to a doctor. Apparently, there was some...damage.”

“She was
raped
,” Flannigan said.

Brody rubbed a hand over his face. “Who?”

“We don’t know. She refused to tell us, but there was also a mark on her face where she’d been hit,” Finn said. “And bruises on her wrists...”

“We damn sure knew who,” Flannigan snapped.

“We didn’t know,” Finn argued. “We
still
don’t. But we suspected.”

“Senator JD Hamilton,” Brody said.

His father nodded. “Then we realized that Maggie was pregnant. Your uncle tried to talk her into going away and having an abortion, but by the time we found out, she was too far along to have a legal abortion.” He stopped to clear his voice again.

Brody didn’t like what he was hearing. “Tell me you didn’t—”

“The day she disappeared...” He looked to his brother before continuing, as if he hadn’t heard his son speak. “We found a doctor who would perform the abortion.”

No longer able to stand, Brody dropped into a chair. He felt sick. He could tell by the looks on their faces what had happened. “She didn’t want an abortion. You were going to what? Force her?”