A Stillness of Chimes (24 page)

“Grow back together then. Duh.”

“It’s not that simple.” Laura hesitated, running a finger back and forth
on the arm of her chair while she sought the right words. “Even when we were sixteen, seventeen, I knew I didn’t want to be the daughter-in-law of a mean drunk.”

“Oh, come on. Do you ever hear Sean calling Dale his father? No. Sean doesn’t see him as his father, so you wouldn’t have to see Dale as your father-in-law.”

“Cassie—”

“Wait, I’ve got it.” Cassie clapped her hands. “Ask Sean to move to Denver. He’d start packing. You know he would. And you’d never see Dale again.”

Laura didn’t answer, but if there was any chance that her dad would come home, she couldn’t stay in Denver. She’d have to return to Prospect—where Dale lived.

Cassie scowled at her. “What are you so scared of? Marriage in general? Or marriage to Sean?”

Laura shook her head. “Can you at least understand why I couldn’t even think about marriage the week we turned eighteen? The same week my dad disappeared?”

“You’re right, Sean’s timing was terrible, but that was then. This is now.”

“Now wouldn’t be great timing either. With all that’s going on, I’m a mess.”

“Yeah.” Cassie slumped back in her chair. “You are.”

“I was worse then, though. You wouldn’t believe what a mess I was.”

“Well, sure. You’d just lost your dad.”

“It was more than that.” Laura stopped, weighing her words. “Now that you’ve had a taste of what it’s like to live with a parent who has some issues—even though your mom’s issues are minor compared to my dad’s—maybe
you can understand better. He’d become so hard to live with. You have no idea. Then, when we thought he’d drowned, I felt a huge sense of relief and freedom. I was glad he was gone. Cassie, I was
glad
. And I hated myself for it.”

Cassie didn’t answer right away, but she didn’t seem shocked. Finally she shrugged. “That sounds pretty normal, really. And now you think you want him back?”

The muffled, faraway sound of the organ floated across the road toward them as the organist murdered “Amazing Grace.” Laura had sung that song with her dad so many times. She’d give anything for a chance to sing it with him again. She’d give anything to tell him that although she’d hated his unpredictable mood swings, his volatility, she’d never hated
him
. She’d loved him then and she loved him now. No matter what.

“Yes, I want him back,” she said. “Even if it takes a miracle.”

“You’ll need more than one miracle.”

“Then I’ll ask God for two. Or ten or twenty. Whatever it takes.”

Laura closed her eyes, and once again she inhaled the sweet aroma of blackberry cobbler. She’d never eat another blackberry her mom had picked. Never again.

Sean crouched on his back deck to watch the little albino raccoon feasting on the corn and table scraps laid out for him in the far corner. Silvery-white in the moonlight, the baby coon looked up, more curious than wary.

Nobody needed another ordinary trash-can raider, but this white one was a novelty. Casper the ghost coon.

Sean knew he shouldn’t feed it. Hunters didn’t feed coons, much less name them. Keith would never let him live it down if he found out about it.

He wouldn’t, though. Nobody would.

Casper wouldn’t last long. He was too easy to spot. Easy prey.

Sean straightened. Casper scampered away, claws skittering on the smooth wood of the deck. Three seconds, and he was in the oak. He was easy to track through the branches, a pale blur in the night.

The flash of white high in the tree took Sean back to the kite he’d lost to the same tree when he was ten, not long after his mother passed away. Night after night, it had beat itself to death against the branches while he watched from his bedroom window.

Dale had come home one day with an unexpected gift: a white and yellow kite. Sean’s first kite ever. Sensing that it was an apology for especially harsh treatment the night before, he’d dared to hope that things were changing.

“Do your chores, boy,” Dale had said. “Then I’ll help you put it together.” But he was too drunk to help by the time Sean finished his chores.

Keith was at work, bagging groceries, so Sean assembled the kite himself. Afraid he’d be in hot water if he went as far as the park, he tried to fly it in the yard. Within minutes, it took a nosedive into the tree. Once Dale noticed, he wasn’t too drunk to administer another beating.

That was the last day Sean ever called him Dad. Following Keith’s example, Sean started calling him Dale behind his back.

A train was coming through from the south, its mournful, two-tone whistle piping a lonesome tune while the wheels beat a steady rhythm. Sean cocked his head, listening. He’d never minded living near the tracks. A train in the night was evidence that he wasn’t the only soul awake.

Was Laura awake, brooding over everything? He hadn’t heard from her since he’d dropped her off the night before. He hoped he hadn’t scared her off by flashing his headlights.

He went inside. The thunder of a coming storm mixed with his worries to keep him awake long after he’d crawled into bed. He was wrestling with that vague memory of the car in the lake when his phone rang. He grabbed it from the bedside table and checked caller ID.

It was Laura—and it was too late to be a happy call.

He sat up straight. “Hello.”

She didn’t answer. Outside, a vehicle rushed past on the wet street, going too fast for a rainy night.

“Hello,” he said again, hearing a faint noise on the other end. “Laura? You okay?”

“Sean!” There she was, her voice high-pitched and shaky. “He’s back.”

“Who?” Sean’s feet hit the floor. He switched on the lamp and grabbed his jeans from the chair.

“At the window. He—” The phone started cutting out.

Words and fragments of words flitted in and out of his ear. Something about a beard.

“Was it your dad?” He struggled to pull on his jeans with one hand, clamping the phone to his ear with his other hand.

“I don’t—” The reception cut out again.

Cursing the lousy connection, he fought one-handed with his zipper. “Laura? You still there?”

Silence.

The phone slipped out of his hand, hit the floor, and slid under the bed. He ran down the hall for his gun.

Nobody in his right mind would be out in this weather.

The truck slued around the corner and fishtailed on the rainswept road. Sean maneuvered around a downed tree branch, swerved back to his own lane, and tromped on the accelerator. Between the swipes of the wipers, he could hardly see through the streaming glass.

In less than a minute, he outran the neat layout of city blocks and crossed the railroad tracks at the edge of town where a criminal would have plenty of places to hide—if he didn’t mind lurking under tall trees in a thunderstorm.

Kim would have advised calling the professionals. He couldn’t, now that he’d dropped his phone, but a loaded gun had to be worth a couple of phones.

The truck fishtailed again as he hauled it around the bend by the church, tires sliding on wet pavement. The house was dark. He pulled into the drive and killed the engine but left the headlights shining while he put his hands on his gun.

He didn’t see anybody, but that didn’t mean somebody wasn’t out there. Elliott? Dale? Or a stranger. A stranger might be easier to deal with.

He shut off the headlights. The church’s security lights still reached toward him from across the road. They’d make his bare skin as visible as the albino coon’s white fur. He should have grabbed a shirt. A black one.

Gun in hand, he opened the door and slid out. With cold rain pelting his back, he crouched beside the truck. But he didn’t know which side of the truck the intruder was on.

He held still, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. No noise but wind and rain … and a strange absence, like a hole in the night. Spooky.

No time to figure it out.

He straightened, closed the door, and started for the house at a fast walk. Didn’t want to run; didn’t want to show his fear. He was soaked before his feet hit the steps.

The rain pounded the porch’s tin roof like artillery, masking his knock, but Laura cracked the door open immediately. She opened it wider, beckoned him in and pushed him to the side. He heard the bolt sliding home, the scrape of chair legs on the floor and a metallic sound. She was shoving a chair under the knob.

“Where was he?” Sean whispered, his heart pounding, his nose dripping rain.

“Looking in the kitchen window. I screamed. Dropped a mug in the sink—smashed it—and he ran.” That clipped, staccato speech wasn’t her usual style.

“Did you get a good look?”

“No. It happened so fast. He was there—he was gone. And you know how nearsighted I am without my contacts or glasses.”

His eyes were growing accustomed to the black room. Laura was wearing Jess’s white bathrobe.

In the silence, his breath coming fast, he tried again to identify why the wind and the rain sounded so different tonight. Something was missing.

Goose bumps stirred the hairs on his wet skin. “You’ve seen somebody twice, just since you’ve been back in town.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He could only think of the flash of brown in the green, the first day Laura was back in town, when he’d walked her home from church. It might have been a man in camo, and that made three times.

“Tonight, it was my dad,” she said. “I know it was.”

“How can you know, if you couldn’t really see his face? And if it was your dad, why did he run?”

She pulled in a sharp breath. “Because I screamed. I screamed at the top of my lungs. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to scare him away.”

The scream that would scare a banshee.

“Let’s go in the den,” Sean said. “That’s where you always felt safe when Slattery was prowling around, remember? Maybe we’ve got ourselves another Slattery.”

He led her there, holding her hand. The den was pitch-black, its heavy drapes drawn tight. He placed the gun on the floor, switched on a lamp, and tugged her down beside him on the double rocking chair. He was freezing, his shoulders still wet.

She’d found her glasses. She studied him with those solemn brown eyes framed by brown plastic, but she didn’t speak.

“We need security lights everywhere,” he said. “We’ll light up the place like Vegas. You need new locks too. And an alarm system.”

She only shrugged.

He put his arm around her but resisted the notion to kiss the top of her head. He started the loveseat rocking. It should have been a
comforting motion, but it only created a breeze on his damp skin, chilling him.

A gust of wind and rain battered the house. Laura tensed. Not wanting to scare her off, he resisted the impulse to pull her closer. As long as she was in his arms, she was safe from whoever had been at her window. Except one man’s body wasn’t much of a shield. He couldn’t be with her twenty-four hours a day, either.

“There are guns in your dad’s gun safe,” he said. “You have the right to defend yourself if anybody breaks in. And you have a phone. I’m glad you called me, but you need to call 911 too, if it happens again.”

“I’m not calling 911,” she said. “You told me the sheriff thinks the rumors are bogus. He won’t even care.”

“He’ll care about a man who’s walking around town, looking in windows. If you won’t call the sheriff, you’re staying somewhere else. My house, the Brights’ house, I don’t care. Or I’m staying here.”

“Then you’re staying here,” she said.

She sat stiffly in the dark, breathing fast and trembling like a hummingbird’s wings.