No River Too Wide (39 page)

Until death did them part.

So far she had only spotted two cars. One heading down the mountain, another behind her filled with teenagers who had picked up speed when she pulled over at an overlook to let them pass. She hoped she didn’t find their car belly-up on the road ahead, wheels spinning, smoke rising.

She hoped she didn’t see Rex in her rearview mirror.

Today’s trip was a bold subtitle in her imaginary autobiography. In the two months since she had come to Asheville, she had moved from fear of nearly everything to shy curiosity. She would forever be affected by her past. She would cringe at loud voices, avoid arguments, struggle to please, take blame where she deserved none. She would probably never be completely comfortable around men. She couldn’t imagine herself in a relationship again. And yet... In two months so much had changed. In two more? In two years? Ten?

By the time the ground began to level and the scenery settled into rolling farmland, she was triumphant at her new achievement. And triumph? Well, triumph was a triumph all its own, because Rex had never allowed it.

And there he was again. Rex, who either hadn’t found her or was toying with her, or was
—
as she had warned her daughter—dead.

What did it say that the last was the possibility she most hoped for?

She found the turnoff without incident and crept up the length of the gravel driveway. When she reached the parking area she got out to gaze up at the log house. No smoke spiraled from the chimney, and the porch was empty. Most significantly Cristy’s canine companion, Beau, wasn’t on his way down to greet her.

Cristy’s car wasn’t parked in her usual spot. In last night’s phone call the young woman had warned she would probably have to start the morning at the local B and B. Leaf-peepers had come out in full force, and she had said she might need to strip beds and do laundry. Jan was supposed to make herself at home. The young woman had promised to leave magazine photos of dresses she liked, as well as a length of periwinkle-blue fabric she had found on a clearance table in Asheville, so Jan could think about what to do.

On the way up to the house Jan heard another car come up the drive and she turned, expecting Cristy. She saw, perplexed, that it was Harmony instead.

She walked back down the series of terraces and waited for her daughter to emerge.

“This is such a nice surprise. Did you know I would be here?” she asked as Harmony got out.

She realized then that it wasn’t a nice surprise for her daughter. Harmony’s eyes were red-rimmed, and her pale skin was flushed. She shoved the door closed behind her, then hurried to her mother and threw her arms around her.

“Sweetheart, what on earth?” Jan stroked her hair.

“Bea called.” The tears were still in Harmony’s voice.

The morning turned dark. Just that quickly. The triumph, the joy at a new accomplishment, vanished, and old friend fear came calling.

“Your father’s found us?” she asked.

“He’s dead.”

For a moment Jan couldn’t make sense of that. She had told Harmony Rex’s death was a possibility. On the way up the mountain she had admitted to herself how much she hoped for it. But now the reality?

The reality was something very different.

Jan held Harmony away and searched her face. “They’re sure?”

“They found his body in a shallow grave not far from our house, Mom. They think he was shot.”

“Shot?” Jan heard the word, but it held no meaning.

“They don’t know much, but Bea promised they’ll keep us up to date when they hear anything else.”

Jan had always known that one day Rex, in a fit of rage, might pull one of his cherished guns from the locked case, not to take his usual potshots at small animals, but to murder the wife who never reached his standards of perfection. She had never expected
him
to die that way instead.

Harmony’s words were going round and round in her head. “When? Do they know when?”

“A while. That’s all she said. Maybe as long as you’ve been here.”

Jan understood the real reason behind her daughter’s serpentine journey up Doggett Mountain, why she had sobbed as she’d driven. Why she still looked distraught.

Not because she was devastated that her father had been killed. Because she was afraid her mother might be charged with the crime.

And why wouldn’t she be?

“They’ll think I killed him.” Jan acknowledged it out loud.

“I know you didn’t.”

The mere fact that Harmony had to reassure her tied the knots in Jan’s stomach that much tighter. “Of course you know I didn’t. But for the record? Your father didn’t come home the night I left Topeka, but that wasn’t the first time. I assumed either he had gone out of town without warning me, as he liked to do, or he was testing me. Only when he fell off everybody’s radar did I wonder if he was dead. He didn’t show up here. He didn’t show up at work....”

“I thought he was out there somewhere stalking you...us...and he’d sacrificed the agency and gone into hiding until he found you. It was like him, wasn’t it? To favor revenge over everything else?”

Revenge. Rex had proved he would calmly drown his own son because Jan had planned to escape. Abandoning a well-run agency that could get along without him had seemed insignificant in comparison. Until the weeks had dragged on.

She had known. Deep inside she had known he was dead. But murder?

“No one else will believe this,” Jan said. “They’ll question why I didn’t step forward and tell my story.”

“You were terrified he’d find you.”

“If he died the night I left Topeka...”

“Mom, they can’t pinpoint it that closely. Forensics aren’t exact.”

Jan began to think out loud. “Even that’s not in my favor. If he died sometime after, but they can’t determine when? If there’s even a chance he died that night, they’ll have a scenario all ready. Your father came home and we fought. Somehow I killed and buried him. We had a house filled with guns—I’m sure they found traces after the explosion. Besides, Rex used to brag about his collection, so others knew. Why would the authorities believe me if I tell them I never had access? It only takes one gun, one night.”

“But how could they prove that?”

“It’s all about reasonable doubt, isn’t it? I left town about the time of the murder and hid for two months. And before I left I set fire to the house to destroy evidence and confuse the authorities.”

“But we can prove abuse, Mom. I saw him beat you.”

“You’re my daughter. Of course you want to protect me.”

“There must be doctor’s records. Hospital records. Too many injuries.”

“It won’t help. The police will need a motive. They’ll say I killed him because he hit me one time too many and I snapped.”

When Harmony didn’t reply, Jan saw there was more she hadn’t yet revealed.

“What else did Bea say?”

Harmony chewed her lip.

“What?” Jan asked again.

“The police have been searching for Dad since the fire.”

“Of course they searched. They searched for me, too, I’m sure. Although apparently not hard.”

“No, they were looking for
him
because there was money missing.”

Jan listened as Harmony explained what Bea had told her, then both of them fell silent.

Jan was the one to break it. “I’ve been living in Asheville without a job. I bought a car with cash. By now they’ve checked our bank accounts, and they’ll see I didn’t withdraw anything before I left. So I must have gotten the money somewhere else.”

“You can prove you had a separate account even Dad didn’t know about. You have all the paperwork.”

Jan knew she was frightening her daughter. She didn’t point out that when the police looked closely, they would find she had paved a trail to freedom with carefully planted lies for weeks before she disappeared.

Just as a murderer might have done.

She pulled herself together, or tried to. No matter what, she was still Harmony’s mother. “This isn’t the right moment to assume anything. Rex was your father. He’s gone. You must be feeling something other than concern for me.”

“Relief. I’m a good person, and the fact I don’t feel joy? I’m sorry, but that’s the best person I can be right now.”

“The way you feel might change. We’re both in shock.”

“I just want to leave him and everything he did to us behind. Maybe someday I won’t hate him anymore. I don’t want him to have power over me ever again.”

Jan thought that was probably a form of forgiveness. Letting go of the nightmare. Moving forward. No longer keeping Rex Stoddard at the center of their lives. It was a whole new way to live. It would take time. More than time.

Help.

“We both need to talk to someone,” she said. “Now we can, without worrying it will bring him to our front door. And I have to talk to the police. I have to go to them before they come to me.”

“They’ll want to talk to me, too.”

“We’ll go together.”

“When?”

Jan put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “Let’s go up to the house and make a cup of tea so we can figure this out.”

“It seems bigger than a cup of tea, Mom. Even bigger than a pitcher of hot chocolate.”

Jan didn’t know what to say. In the weeks to come, she was certain that was going to be true over and over again.

Chapter 31

Taylor was taking the day off from work. With a deep sense of gratitude for her daughter’s survival, she had shepherded Maddie to church that morning, a destination nearly as foreign as Outer Mongolia and as high on her bucket list of must-see places. The last time she had been to Church of the Covenant was to attend a formal memorial service for her mother.

She admired, even loved, the Reverend Analiese Wagner, so it was no surprise that Analiese’s sermon about the Bible’s fallen women kept her rapt attention, and the music performed by a church choir from Raleigh had her on her feet clapping along with the rest of the congregation.

Everything had changed since Taylor had been forced to attend the obligatory Friday chapels of Covenant Academy, the private school that was still associated with the church. In those days she had been labeled by teachers as a rebel and an outcast, and she had been sure that the Friday sermons, preached by a minister with no sense of humor, were aimed straight at her. Today’s message of love, hope and strong women was a relief.

Rather than go to a class with her contemporaries, a still chastened Maddie had stayed for the service, but afterward she announced she hadn’t been too bored. Taylor thought that was high praise. Then when some of Maddie’s school friends detailed the plans their religious education class was making for a Christmas party, Taylor suspected she and her daughter might no longer be strangers here.

In this, as in so many corners of her life, she knew she needed to move on. The prodigal daughter might find her way home.

“Edna would like it here,” Maddie said on the way to the car.

“We’ll bring her next time when we don’t have plans for after the service.”

“Do I have to go to lunch with you and Adam?”

Maddie liked Adam, so Taylor probed. “Where would you like to go instead?”

“The mall.”

Taylor could see the battle lines forming. She wasn’t ready to have a teenager, or for mall roaming and bare midriffs and piercings. A decade ago she had been a teenager herself.

“And what would you do?” she asked.

“Go to Build-A-Bear. Edna and I want to make bears that look like our Halloween costumes. So we can remember how cool they were. I still have money Daddy gave me when I was in Nashville.”

Relief became a laugh. “You’ll need a grown-up.”

“Miss Georgia said she would take us.”

Taylor was fairly sure that “Miss Georgia” would soon become “Mrs. Georgia,” since she and Lucas Ramsey were already making plans to build a house together and Georgia was sporting a very lovely ring.

“I don’t see any reason you can’t go,” she told Maddie. “Are you supposed to meet them there?”

“Can you drop me at Edna’s?”

“Do you have your money?”

“Can I borrow some until I get home? I have to dig it up.”

“I’m sorry?”

Maddie looked a little sheepish. “I kind of buried it behind Papa’s workshop. In a plastic bag. You know, in case Jan’s mean husband came looking for her and tried to take our money, too.”

Taylor hadn’t realized that the tension around Rex Stoddard had infected her daughter. Maddie had bravely kept that to herself.

“I don’t think you need to worry about your money, sweetheart, or about Jan’s mean husband. He seems to have disappeared.”

“He could still be looking for her.”

Taylor thought that was more and more unlikely, and told Maddie so. She also pulled out her wallet and gave her daughter most of what she had. She thought maybe this bear would be on her, a gift to the child who had silently lived with fears of “Jan’s mean husband” and never hinted she was afraid. A bear who would quite likely be the last stuffed animal her daughter bought for herself. Because before too long boys would begin presenting them as gifts.

A bear because her daughter was alive and well and still, thankfully, a child.

She put her arm around Maddie and squeezed. Maddie didn’t even pull away.

Taylor dropped her at Sam’s, chatted a moment with her friend, then headed downtown to the restaurant where she was meeting Adam. He liked Indian food, she liked Indian food—the destination had been a natural.

She managed to find a parking place on the next block, no easy feat on a pretty Sunday afternoon near the inevitable end of pleasant weather. Adam was waiting outside when she arrived. He raised an eyebrow when he saw she was alone; then he swept her close and kissed her on the sidewalk.

“Maddie still okay?” he asked when he released her.

She took a moment just to admire how nice he looked in a dark dress shirt and faded jeans. “She sends her regrets. She’s off with Edna and Georgia.”

“The restaurant’s crowded. I put my name in, but there’s a thirty-minute wait.”

“We could stroll around Asheville and look in windows.” She paused. “Or we could go to your place and come back later.”