Skylar hadn’t said much when we got home from the mall, but she seemed in a better mood. I’d seen her outside with Aaron. I didn’t pry, but I was curious what they talked about. I knew he’d had a hard life and problems with his father. I hoped he could be a friend to her, or maybe more. Crystal had given me shit once when I expressed concern about Skylar dating boys from the gym.
You have to let her live her life, make her own mistakes. Then she’d smiled her beautiful smile and said, Don’t worry, she won’t turn out like me.
I felt a sharp pain under my ribs, the familiar breathless ache I got every time I remembered Crystal was gone. I still couldn’t believe I’d never see her again. Dallas and I had gone over and cleaned out her place, stayed there for hours after everything was packed, just sitting on the floor with her things all around us. Most days I swung back and forth between grief and anger, struggling to understand. I was still so pissed at Crystal for going to Cash Creek, but mostly I was pissed that she hadn’t run out the door with Skylar.
I hoped wherever Crystal was she was finally at peace.
The phone rang. I glanced at the call display.
Owen.
He’d called after we first got back, checking that we were okay. And we’d spoken a few times since about how things were going. I didn’t know why he was calling this time and didn’t really feel like talking, but maybe he’d heard something about the case.
“Hi, Owen.”
“Did you see the news?” he said. He sounded serious.
I sat up straight. “What?” Please, God, don’t let Brian be on the run. He was still in Cash Creek last I heard, out on bail and waiting for his trial.
“A body was found in Littlefield a couple of days ago. They think it might be a guy who went missing years ago.…” He paused. I waited, my heart thudding. “They had photos of his daughters, asked if anyone had seen them.”
Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe it was someone else.
“Where was he found?”
“On a farm, I think. The new owner was clearing the land or something. I don’t know if the police have positively identified him yet.”
It was true. They’d found him. I stared down the dark hall leading to Skylar’s room. I was going to lose my daughter. I was going to lose everything.
I’d checked the Internet every day when we first got back, watched the news every night, worried about Skylar’s identity being exposed, that someone would realize who we were and connect us with Dad’s disappearance, but as the days passed, I’d gotten busy with other things. I’d thought we were safe.
“I better call my sister.”
“Okay.” He paused. “Hang in there. Call if you need me.”
“Thanks, Owen.”
* * *
I phoned Dallas. She was home with Terry. They’d been spending more time together lately. She stepped outside and I told her about Owen’s call.
“McPhail’s going to realize we’re those missing girls,” I said. “He knows we passed through eighteen years ago—that same summer.”
“Dad’s body was found in Littlefield.”
“Doesn’t matter, they all talk.”
“Just stick to our story. They can’t have any proof.”
Maybe they didn’t need any. “I have a bad feeling, Dallas.”
“It’s just fear. Remember—they have nothing on us.”
“I have to tell Skylar. She’s going to have questions.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
“I don’t know.”
* * *
I knocked softly on Skylar’s door. She turned the music down, opened the door.
“What’s up?”
“I need to talk to you.” I sat on her bed and patted the other side.
She sat beside me with a frown. “What’s going on? You’re acting weird.”
I took a breath. “I got a call from Owen. My dad’s body has been found in Littlefield. I don’t know all the details yet, but the police will probably want to talk to Dallas and me.”
“Did one of you do it?”
“Skylar…”
“You said he was violent, and Crystal, she was really weird about that scar on her face—was it self-defense? Is that why you ran away? She killed him?”
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t look in my daughter’s eyes and lie to her again.
“It was me, Skylar. I shot him.”
She sat back. I tried to reach for her but she shook me off. “Why? Why would you do that?”
“He was drowning Crystal in the toilet.” I told her what had happened that night when our dad came home, how it had ended with my shooting him in the bathroom. How we’d covered it up.
“I had no choice.” I searched her face. She had to believe me. She had to understand.
Skylar was pale, her dark eyes huge, but she just looked worried and shocked. “Are you going to go to jail?”
“No, they’ll probably just have a few questions.”
“You have to get a lawyer.” Skylar’s voice broke like she was fighting back tears. “I don’t want you to go to prison.”
“It’s going to be okay.” I grabbed her hand.
“How can you say that?” She was crying now. “Crystal’s dead and now you’re going to jail. I won’t have anyone.”
“They don’t have any proof.” I thought of the hole in the wall, the garbage we hid, all the things we may have missed.
“I need you.”
I pulled her in for a hug. She rested her head on my shoulders, even though she was inches taller, and I stroked her hair like when she was a little girl.
“Skylar, it’s going to be okay. I promise.”
“If you go to jail, it will be like Crystal died for nothing! She wanted to do something good with her life. She wanted to make it right.”
“Some things can’t be made right.”
“This is my fault,” she said, pulling away and standing up. “They wouldn’t know where you were if you hadn’t come to Cash Creek looking for me.” Tears were streaming down her face. “I screwed up everything.”
I stood, held her hands. “This is not your fault.”
She pulled free, grabbed her coat by the door, and ran out of the room. I chased after her. “Where are you going?”
“I need to go for a walk.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“I want to be alone.” She slammed the door, leaving me in the suddenly quiet apartment, crowded with my thoughts, fear pressing in.
“It’s my fault,” I whispered to the closed door.
* * *
I called Dallas back and we talked late into the night. The next morning a police officer called while Skylar was still sleeping. He asked that we come into the Vancouver police station that afternoon to talk about an important matter.
I knocked on Skylar’s door, told her I had to go to the station. She didn’t answer.
The police took us into separate rooms.
The officer who was going to interview me introduced himself as Corporal Parker from the Littlefield detachment. He was a younger man, maybe in his mid-thirties, with black hair slicked back with gel, and his navy-blue suit perfectly pressed—the seam still crisp down his pants leg. He had polished shoes, a shiny watch, and a serious expression.
“First I want to let you know that you are free to leave anytime. You don’t have to talk to us and you’re not under arrest, but we need to clear up some things and we’re hoping you can help us. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“A couple of days ago a body was found in Littlefield. We’re still waiting for dental records to make a final ID, but a wallet in his pocket identified him as Roger Campbell, who was reported missing eighteen years ago.”
His wallet. We’d been so careful but we never thought to check his pockets. I thought of his old leather wallet, how it had worn smooth.
“Do you recognize that name?”
I could tell by the look in his eyes that he
already knew who we were. If I lied now, he wouldn’t believe anything else. “He’s my father.”
He nodded, his mouth pulling into a grim line. “I’m sorry to tell you that it looks like he was murdered.” He explained that an excavator had dug Dad up in the old pig field—and that he’d been shot in the head. I didn’t want to fake tears, so I tried to just look stunned, shocked by the events. It wasn’t that hard to do.
“What do you know about his disappearance?” the officer said.
“We thought he’d left us.”
He held my gaze for a minute. “During the investigation in Cash Creek, an unregistered .22-caliber rifle was found among some other items that we believed belonged to you, camping equipment, clothes. Brian Luxton denied any knowledge of the gun and it was sent to Ballistics to check for matches.”
The rifle. The assholes had kept it. Heat infused my face.
He was staring at me, waiting for me to say something, but I kept quiet, trying to think what this meant. What should I do? Should I ask for a lawyer?
“Nothing turned up, but when we found your father’s body we ran another match. The same caliber of bullet was found lodged in his head,” he said.
I stayed mute.
“We’ve talked to your old neighbors. We’ve read the police reports. We know your father abused you girls. We also know that your sister, Courtney, was involved with a married man and that your father told his friend he was going to beat the crap out of her. We know something went down that night, Jamie.”
I stared at him, my legs starting to shake under the table. This was it. It was finally coming out. We were screwed.
“I know this has been weighing on you for years,” he said, his voice sympathetic but his eyes still fixed on mine. “You’ve probably wanted to share your story with somebody for a long time. I’m a pretty good listener.”
I knew what he was doing, and what he wanted me to say. I took a breath, thought about my conversation with Dallas the night before, what we’d agreed. It still didn’t seem right, but it was our only option. I remembered again what Skylar had said. If you go to jail, it will be like Crystal died for nothing.
I held the words close, focused on an image of Crystal’s face, how she would smile when she played the guitar, how much she loved us. Tears rose in my throat. I pushed them back down. I couldn’t cry now.
“I don’t know what happened,” I said. “Dani and I were out one night and when we came home, Courtney said she’d had a fight with Dad about her boyfriend but he wouldn’t be hurting us anymore.” I realized I’d slipped into using our real names, but it had felt more natural.
“What did you think she meant?”
“We didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t ask? What about when he didn’t come home for days?”
“He always took off after fights. We thought she’d just told him to leave us alone, or threatened to call the cops—she and Dad were always fighting.”
“Did you see anyone else at the house that night? Maybe this married man she was seeing?”
“No, no one.”
“Did you notice anything out of place when you got home? Any signs of a fight? Blood on your sister’s clothes?”
“No, nothing.”
“And she never told you anything else?”
“Nothing,” I said, holding his gaze.
“The woman who owned the ranch said Courtney showed up with a burn and that you had a nasty bruise. Said they heard shots the night before.”
“We’d been shooting rats—it was a week after Courtney and Dad fought. Walter came down, checked up on us. The sergeant came by the next day.”
The officer was watching me steadily. “Whose idea was it to run away?”
“Courtney’s. She said Dad probably wasn’t coming back this time and we should leave before we got sent to foster care again.”
“And you didn’t ask what that meant?”
“We didn’t care what happened to him,” I said. “He beat the crap out of us whenever he was home, especially Courtney. We were just happy he was gone.”
“Do you think Courtney could have killed him?”
I thought about that night, remembered her legs kicking out, how the gun had felt in my hands, the shocked look in Dad’s eyes.
“She hated him, hated what he did to all of us.”
“I need to talk to your sister.”
He was gone for a long time. I sat numb, thinking about Dani, thinking about Courtney, how young we all had been.
The officer finally came back and sat down.
“Your sister confirms your story. She says that neither of you knew what had happened to your father.”
I felt a surge of relief, forced myself to stay calm. “What’s going to happen now?”
He looked thoughtful, his eyes focused on the file he was holding. “We’ll never be able to truly close the case—Courtney’s gone and she can’t tell her side of the story—but there’s enough evidence to suggest that it was likely her and we won’t be pursuing this matter any further.” He flipped through the file, pulled out a few documents, glanced at them, then back up at me.
“You kids went through a lot.”
The tears I’d been fighting rolled hot down my cheeks. The sympathy in his face, the understanding, shattered the wall I’d built around me.
I thought about all the years we had lived in fear, how many beatings we had taken, everything that we had lived through in Cash Creek, and how it had felt like we were never going to be free of our past.
“You have no idea,” I said.
EPILOGUE
DALLAS
I’ve been angry as long as I can remember. Even before our mother died, I remember being angry. Angry at our father, and angry at our mother for not leaving, for always giving him another chance. I’d cried at her funeral, holding Crystal’s and Jamie’s hands, felt their bodies shaking beside me. Then I stopped. I just fucking stopped.
I didn’t cry at that crap foster home when they made me work so many hours that my hands were raw, or when the wife smacked me with the wooden spoon across the back of my head, or when I had to sleep in the barn with the horses who shuffled their hooves all night long. Not when Dad beat us, punching us so hard we lost our breath, or when Jamie shot him, then looked at me with huge eyes, as if asking me to make it better. But how could I? I knew our life was never going to be the same. I knew that it was over. Whatever pitiful happiness I had managed to scrape up for us had blown away the second that bullet hit my father’s head. I knew I’d never marry Corey and have his babies and rock on the porch and laugh. Crystal would never move to Nashville and become a singer. Jamie would never get to travel the world and take photographs.
And I damn well didn’t cry when Brian and Gavin raped me, their sweaty hands all over me, their disgusting breath in my face, when they twisted me around and hurt me in ways I didn’t think possible. I just got angrier. All I’ve ever felt was rage. Deep, deep dark rage. It consumed me.
I tried to drown it out at the gym, took it out on my opponents, on the heavy bags, on myself, but it never went away. It was always there, simmering.
The thing that made me the maddest of all was Crystal dying. I mean, what did she ever do? She’d never hurt anyone. All she wanted was to sing and have fun, but that asshole Gavin killed her. I’d held her in my arms when my mom brought her home from the hospital, and I held her in my arms when she died. I hadn’t told Jamie that I’d felt the last breath leave her body, felt her go. I’d wanted to scream at her to come back, made deals with God, but she left anyway. Left us behind. She wasn’t supposed to do that. We were three. Not two.
I glanced over at Skylar and Jamie as we got out of the car.
“Ready?” Jamie said.
I nodded, but I wasn’t ready. I’d never be ready to say goodbye. It was just something we had to do. We got the boxes out of the trunk.
It had taken almost a week to make the origami cranes. We had a thousand by the time we we
re done, three hundred and thirty-three brightly colored birds strung on three different lines. Skylar kept the extra one. We’d spent hours threading the string through the cranes, fitting each one inside the other and carefully staggering the colors until they made a beautiful rainbow. Skylar had told us that the Japanese believed that the wings of cranes could carry souls up to paradise. I hoped it was true.
You weren’t supposed to spread ashes in a public place, so we’d come down to the beach early in the morning, the grass still damp with dew. There were so many birds we each had to carry a box to the shore, then carefully take the string out. We had to let most of the string drag behind as we took our sandals off and waded into the cold water, sand squelching between our toes. When we’d gone a few feet, we stood in a solid line, pulled our strings closer, so they were floating in front of us, then let go so that the waves could take hold.
With our hands over our eyes, blocking the sun shining off the water, we watched them crest, then disappear, then come back up. They floated together, some of the strings tangling, making one brightly colored line on top of the wave.
“They look pretty,” Jamie said.
I had the fleeting thought as they floated away that I wanted to run after them, wanted to dive into the water and swim hard. I wanted to bring them back.
“I should get the ashes,” I said.
I walked toward the picnic table on the shore, where’d we left the cedar box. I held my hand on top of the box for a minute, the wood smooth and warm in the sun. It seemed so small, too small to hold such a big spirit.
When I came back to stand beside Skylar and Jamie, I slowly opened the box with the little plastic bag. I realized, with surprise, that my hands were shaking slightly, and I fumbled for a second with the tie around the top.
I got the bag open, leaned over the water, and let it flow out. The ashes were delicate, a soft gray. Some sank down, but some of the particles floated on the surface. The waves pushed them closer, and they wrapped around our legs. None of us moved. Another wave came and pushed the ashes away.