31. Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-one
Remington James
I t’s not a great time for Droolius to get the zoomies around the cabin since I’m getting ready to meet Cal. The exposition baseball game of alumni from Lake Hollow is this afternoon, and I promised Cal to be there cheering him on. It’s played every five years and he’s the captain for his team. “Nuh uh… buddy, stooop it.” I try to catch him each time he speeds past me.
Lunging at him, I grab his collar triumphantly, “Gotcha, you, little goofball.”
“Was he on the run again?” Grady asks me.
Oh, boy. How does he do that? Impair my breathing every time I set eyes on him. A white T-shirt and black athletic shorts shouldn’t ever look that good. Damn.
He bites back a smile. By now he should know the effect he has on me. Brain scrambling.
“Sir Droolius likes to keep me on my toes. Plus, he may have dumped me for Wilder.” I pull the baseball cap I have on tighter, adjusting the ponytail I fed through the back.
“Ahh. No accounting for his taste.” He can say that, but I saw the flash of sadness in his eyes when I said Wilder’s name.
They’ve taken a couple of steps backwards all because he doesn’t want us to see him have a seizure. I can fix that. “Do you have a minute to talk?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he says with a half-smile. “If you don’t mind. I take it you’re going to Cal’s game?”
Grady picks Droolius up effortlessly, following me into Winifred’s domain. He tells me that Cal invited him to come watch. That means I’ll have three of the four guys to explain what’s happening. I was never one for picking up the rules of any sport. Did he bother to ask Wilder? It’s not like he’d go anyway.
Curiosity prompts me to ask what he wanted to discuss. He gets solemn looking, running his hands through his hair. Taking a seat on the couch, only to get up. Pacing, he says, “I’ve kept something to myself for six years. It’s been tearing me up inside.”
“Go on.” I sit pulling my knees to my chest.
“I can trust you, right? Not to tell anyone? I’m going to call Detective Hemminger, tomorrow, but… can I trust you?”
“Cross my heart. I’m trustworthy.”
A chill passes through me, that gives me goosebumps. Makes me wish we’d talked outside.
“I lied to the police six years ago. At the time I thought I was protecting a friend, hoping they’d come forward and talk to the police. But it never happened, and I wonder what I could’ve changed if I hadn’t done it.”
He knows something. Wilder was convinced he was keeping secrets.
I stay silent while he tells me what’s been burdening him all these years. “The night Sara died, I tried to go after her. She’d fought with Wilder and ran off. I didn’t get far before I came back. When I started back, I saw Katie Gibson running in the dark by the shoreline towards the main road.” He sits down, tears filling his eyes. “It was late. Later than I’d ever seen Katie out, not to mention her house was on the southwest corner of the lake. Not close by any means.”
Her diary. How’d I push that out of my mind? I start to speak, but Grady cuts me off.
“After Sara died, Katie only came back to The Bends twice. Not talking to either Wilder or me. I convinced myself that it was because Wilder did something, but the only thing that I could ever come back to was… Katie was running from a crime scene. She was younger than us, but close to Wilder, maybe she confronted Sara over all the insults she yelled at him that night. It could’ve been an accident. When Katie died the same way…” He wipes away the tears. “I was sure she’d done something to Sara. She couldn’t live with what she’d done.”
He thinks she committed suicide? There would’ve been less challenging ways.
“You’ve got it all wrong.”
So, I tell him. All about the diary found in the wall of the bathroom. What was written, and importantly what she doesn’t say. Pages were missing. He sits forward listening to me, things clicking into place. “Sh-she witnessed the person who killed Sara?”
My stomach flips thinking about the way Grady let Wilder twist in the wind over the allegations made against him. “Why did you tell the police about Wilder’s visions?”
“Remi, love, no one can explain them. Doctors don’t see a medical reason, no meds can help… I can’t discount, and you shouldn’t either, that he could be remembering things he’s done, or that he will do.”
I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t push him further.
“How do I know you didn’t hurt Sara or Katie?”
He lays back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “My last conversation with my aunt? She asked me the same thing.”
My heartbeat kicks up higher.
“What did you tell her?” She wasn’t convinced whatever it was.
Grady lets out a big sigh. “It was a bad time to talk to her, we were working overnight to cut a track. I was crabby, hungry, tired… I snapped at her that she couldn’t know then hung up.”
“You’re not any of those things now… how would I know you didn’t?”
Looking me in the eye he says, “Grant picked me up after I saw Katie, I was with Wilder before that. We listened to my dad bitch for half the night that we’d snuck champagne at the wedding. Then I passed out on the floor in Grant’s room.”
His aunt never would’ve considered him a suspect if she’d known that.