“What do you mean, Dad?”
“Well, the F-150 was abandoned near your namesake lake. That’s on the other side of the county from Witch Tree. And yet you still think the truck was connected to the boy’s disappearance, don’t you?”
“Agent Reed thinks so.”
“So why take the truck so far away?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ve always wondered how he got away from the lake,” Dad went on, as if he were still Sheriff Tom Ginn. “It’s remote out there. How did he get away from that area once he left the truck behind? Did someone pick him up? Did he have another car waiting for him?”
“That’s a good question,” I said. And it was.
We didn’t have many conversations like that anymore, and they never lasted long. I treasured them when we did. For those brief moments, I had my father back, and I remembered the man he was. I wished it could last all night, but the heat began to make me tired. As we sat next to each other, I found myself drifting off, giving in to the exhaustion of the day. I blinked my heavy eyes and tried to stay awake, but it was no use. Eventually, I surrendered to the hypnosis of the fire.
I awoke sometime later with a start. When I checked my watch, I saw that nearly two hours had passed. Dad was exactly where he’d been, still sitting straight up in his Shaker chair, his blue eyes wide awake. The fire was waning, burning down to the last embers.
A footfall landed on the hardwood floor under the archway behind me. I realized that the noise of the front door opening and closing had awakened me. When I turned around, I saw a vanishing swish of blond hair. A girl disappeared into the shadows, and I heard the squeal of the old wooden steps as she climbed to her bedroom.
Anna was home.
Suddenly, it felt like a good night.
The next morning, early, I drove to Stanton. I left Dad in Anna’s care for the day. I only had time to stop briefly at the Nowhere Café to fill up my travel mug with coffee and take out a blueberry muffin for the road. I wanted to talk to Breezy, but she wasn’t there for her morning shift. I still felt bad about the previous night, and I wanted to make sure we got past it.
The winter gray hung over my drive east, like an old blanket thrown across the sky. The roads were empty except for the occasional deer hunting for fallen twigs under the snow. I made my way to the state prison north of Stanton, spent an hour checking in through the bureaucracy, and then another half hour waiting in a small conference room with concrete walls.
Eventually, they brought in Keith Whalen.
I hadn’t seen him since the trial where I’d testified about our affair. I wasn’t sure how I expected him to look or what I would feel when I saw him again. His thick brown hair had been cut short, leaving him without a cowlick to toss back. The lines on his face were deeper, but he still had the same sad brown eyes. He was even leaner than he’d been in the past, to the point of being skinny. Despite our history, not much had changed for me. I still looked at him like he was my high school English teacher and I was still eighteen years old.
“Shelby Lake,” he said with surprise.
“Hello, Keith.”
He took a moment to assess me the way I’d assessed him. “You look good, Shelby. Not very happy, but you look good.”
I resented that he could still read me so well. “How are you?”
“You mean, how has prison life suited me for ten years? The days are all the same in here. After a while, you look forward to it being that way. You don’t like having the routine disrupted.”
“Like by me?”
“No, not you. You’re a welcome distraction.”
I found myself struggling for words, like this was a cocktail party and I was making small talk. “You’ve served half your sentence. That’s good.”
“I don’t count the time. It’s a waste.”
“Do you read a lot? Do you need books? I could send you some.”
“It’s sweet of you to be concerned for my welfare after all this time,” he replied, in a tone that made sure I knew it wasn’t sweet at all. “Yes, I read. I write, too. You’ll be amused to know that I turned my Ursulina story into a children’s book. Isn’t that what you told me to do? A publisher actually accepted it, at least until they found out about my circumstances. Then it quickly became ‘thanks but no thanks.’ Oh, well.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What do you want, Shelby?” he asked impatiently. “Why are you here? Welcome distraction or not, seeing you is hard for me on all sorts of levels. Partly because you’re the reason I’m in here. Partly because I know I’m going to spend the next several months seeing your face again whenever I close my eyes. And it took me years to get you out of my head the first time.”
I thought of all the things I could say to that.
Then I said, “I’m not the reason you’re in here, Keith.”
“No? Well, it doesn’t matter. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“The Mittel Pines Resort,” I said, studying his face for a reaction. His expression was blank.
“What about it?”
“Do you know it?”
“It’s that old ruin near Witch Tree, right? So what?”
“Have you ever been there?”
“Didn’t it close like five hundred years ago? No. I’ve never been there. What is this about?”
“We think that’s where Jeremiah was taken after he was kidnapped.”
Keith leaned across the table. I could smell his closeness. “Ah. I see. Is this the part where I break into a nervous sweat because you’re so close to finding the body I managed to hide?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
He fired his words at me. “My story hasn’t changed, Shelby. I had nothing to do with Jeremiah’s disappearance. I don’t know what happened to the boy. I was nowhere near the national forest that day. And since you saw me in the cemetery in Everywhere that same afternoon, I don’t know how you think I managed to take the boy out to this old resort, kill him, bury him, and then get back to town in time for you to see me visiting my wife’s grave.”
That was what I’d expected him to say. Honestly, I’d come to this place just to hear those words from his mouth.
“You’re right.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re right. I don’t see how you could have done it. The timing doesn’t work.”
“Well, doesn’t that make me feel better.”
“The fact is, I never really thought you were involved in his disappearance.”
“That’s big of you, Shelby.”
“But I have to ask. Is there anything at all you can tell me about Jeremiah? Or about the Mittel Pines Resort? I’m not trying to trick you, Keith. Back then, I know you couldn’t say a word, even if you knew more than you were telling us. But now, well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? You’re already in here. If you can help me, I wish you would.”
“I don’t owe you anything, Shelby.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Regardless, I can’t help you. I don’t know a thing.”
“Okay.”
He waited, and I didn’t say anything more.
“Are we done?” he asked. “Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
Keith stood up. He took a long look at my face, as if he were trying to memorize it. I was about to signal to the guard to take him away, but Keith stopped me by sitting down again. His jaw softened. His hard eyes were suddenly full of emotion.
“I made a mistake back then, Shelby.”
“You sure did.”
“No. You don’t understand. My mistake was to hide the evidence.”