The anger in Gabe had nowhere to go. It rushed at his father, at the sheriff’s office, at the town, at every Sunday dinner where Arnold had carved ham while people passed him the rolls. It rushed at himself for not seeing sooner, though he’d been a child. Most of all it rushed toward the dead man who had taken Ellie and then gone on living, respected and praised, while the rest of them shaped their lives around a wound that never closed.
On the porch, the screen door banged open.
Ray stepped in. “What’s going on in here?”
Diane wiped her face quickly, but Gabe no longer cared about maintaining the old arrangements.
“Did you know?” he asked.
Ray frowned. “Know what?”
“What he did to Mom. What he did to Ellie.”
The silence that followed answered before Ray could.
His father’s face hardened, then sagged around the edges.
“I knew your mama hated him,” Ray said. “I knew something wasn’t right. But—”
“But what?”
Ray looked at the floor. “I didn’t know how bad.”
“You didn’t want to know.”
“That’s enough,” Ray snapped, some old reflex reasserting itself. “You don’t get to judge everything you don’t understand.”
Gabe took one step toward him. “My sister disappeared from his house, and you let that man sit at our table for fourteen years.”
Ray’s voice rose too. “He was my father!”
“And she was your daughter!”
Diane flinched at the volume. Gabe saw it and pulled himself back by force.
Ray gripped the doorframe, breathing hard. The anger bled out of him almost as quickly as it had come.
“I searched for her,” he said, but it sounded weak even to him.
Gabe stared. “Not hard enough.”
No one slept much that night.
By noon the next day, half of Larkspur knew something had happened.
Small towns prided themselves on discretion in the same way drunks prided themselves on moderation. Mara Jennings had come to the Walker house and spoken with Diane at the kitchen table for nearly two hours. Two sheriff’s vehicles in a front yard were enough to set the gossip mills turning. By afternoon, the cashier at Miller’s Grocery looked at Gabe with the hungry sympathy people reserve for fresh scandal.
He bought coffee and drove to the only person outside the family he could think of who had known Ellie as more than a story.
Sara Collins lived in a one-story rental on the edge of town with plastic toys scattered across the patchy front yard and a wind chime made from old silverware on the porch. She opened the door holding a toddler on one hip and stared for a second before recognition broke across her face.
“Gabe?”
No one had called him “Little Gabe” in years, but hearing it from her made him feel four again.
“You got a minute?” he asked.
Sara looked over her shoulder into the house, then nodded. “Come in.”
She settled the toddler on the couch with a cartoon and led Gabe into the kitchen. The years had changed her less than he expected. She had fuller cheeks now, worry around the eyes, a wedding ring, and the same blunt, steady gaze she’d had in the old yearbook photo standing beside Ellie in cheer uniforms.
“You look like your sister when you’re mad,” she said, pouring him coffee without asking. “That’s the first thing I noticed.”
He almost smiled. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
“It is if you knew Ellie.”
He took the mug. “I found something yesterday.”
As he explained, Sara’s expression went still.
“She told me,” Sara said when he finished.
“What?”
“That she was scared of your granddad.”
Gabe gripped the mug tighter. “When?”
“A week or so before she vanished.” Sara leaned against the counter. “We were at Dairy Queen after practice. She kept looking out the window like she thought somebody was watching us. I asked what was wrong and she said, ‘If something happens to me, don’t let them say I ran off.’” Sara shook her head. “I thought she was being dramatic. She could be dramatic.”
