Chapter Thirteen
The Bennet Ranch
Aly blinked her eyes open to a room extra bright. The predicted snow must have fallen overnight—the light reflecting off the snow tended to make everything inside that much brighter. But how late was it?
She rolled over, unsurprised to find Landon’s side of the bed empty. He would have woken up before their alarm, seen the snow, and gone to do something about it.
But she frowned at the time on the clock display. Eight couldn’t possibly be right. She pawed for her phone on her nightstand.
Eight.
She sat bolt right up in bed. When was the last time she’d slept until eight?
She heard footsteps on the stairs and glared at Landon when he entered the room. “It’s eight.”
“It is,” he agreed. He was dressed, had clearly already been out to do chores and come back. “I turned off your alarm.”
“Why?”
“So you’d sleep more. But I wasn’t going to let you sleep the whole morning away, don’t worry.
” He crossed the room, held up the mug before putting it on her nightstand.
“I was coming to wake you up. Court got delayed. Mr. Vanderbilt said we might as well stay put for the day. If they get a couple hours in this afternoon, it’ll just be the medical examiner. ”
Yeah, Aly wouldn’t mind missing that. She picked up the coffee. Sipped. Exactly how she liked it. It wasn’t often Landon had the opportunity to wait on her, and it usually made her feel guilty since he worked so hard.
But she was a little peeved at him for letting her sleep when he deserved some sleep, too, so she sipped and enjoyed the coffee and the reprieve from a day of court. She patted the slice of bed next to her. “How much snow did we get?”
He took a seat she’d offered, rested his hand on the quilt over her knee. “’Bout a foot. Nice and powdery though. It’ll blow around a lot today but shouldn’t cause any extensive damage.”
“Good.”
He filled her in on a few other morning ranch things while she finished her coffee. He didn’t rush through it, but lingered, which was nice. They so rarely had the opportunity for quiet, lingering mornings.
But ranch life called. Life called. She glanced at her phone, remembering the message she hadn’t had the energy to return last night. “I should have called Jill back last night. What if she needs something? Their power will be out, and now I won’t be able to call.”
“Why don’t you take a horse on up? Have Cal go with you. You can dig them out, see if they need anything.”
“Don’t you think you could use Cal’s help around here?”
“He’s already been out and about helping this morning, and I don’t really want you going alone.
I’d also like to know Cal can handle being on a horse in the snow before I actually send him out in it on some of the bigger chores.
You will be infinitely more patient with him on that score than I would be. ”
“You don’t say?”
He grinned at her, then got to his feet. “I’ll go tell him.”
Aly got out of bed and got dressed for braving the cold. The ride up to the Harrington cabin wouldn’t be too difficult, though they’d have to go slow in the snow. Especially since it had probably been a decade since Cal had ridden in these conditions.
When she got downstairs, Cal was already pulling on his winter gear. Aly gathered a few things she thought Jill might need if they were stuck on the mountain for a few days, then got her own winter gear on.
“We should be back by lunch,” she told Landon. “But there’s some soup in the fridge if we’re not. Just have to heat it up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Landon said, then gave her his usual kiss goodbye, except he let it linger.
Right there in front of Cal. His mouth curving on hers, because he was purposefully baiting his brother.
“You guys suck,” Cal grumbled, pushing outside.
Landon grinned down at her, and she shook her head, trying to go for disapproving and failing. Because it felt like such a nice, normal thing for the brothers to poke at each other in harmless ways.
“See you later. Love you.”
“Love you too. Be careful.”
“We will be.” She trekked outside into the cold.
With the sun, it didn’t feel quite as frigid as it had the past few days. So she led Cal over to the stables, got the horses saddled, and then set off. It was a nice ride. Quiet, slow, peaceful.
The Harrington cabin looked a bit like a postcard with all that snow about it. Smoke puffing out of the chimney. Hints of a bright blue winter sky poking through the trees around it.
Aly led her horse up to the front of the cabin. They dismounted, checked the horses to make sure all was well, then tied them to a post. The trees were a nice shelter, and since the wind had died down, and the sun was out, they should be fine for a little while.
Cal followed her up to the door of the cabin.
“Does Glenda ever freak you the fuck out?” he grumbled.
She sent him a censuring look. “She’s been traumatized, Cal.”
“Yeah, join the club. I don’t go around humming at people. Maybe I’ll start.”
“Noted.” Aly knocked on the door, rolling her eyes at him.
But he was here and maybe not his normal irreverent self, but closer than he’d been. Aly wanted to believe that yesterday symbolized a big change, but she knew when it came to people big changes took time. Sometimes progress wasn’t a straight line.
Jill opened it after a few minutes’ wait. “Aly. Cal. What are you doing here?” But she smiled welcomingly and opened the door wide so they could enter.
“We’re here to act as the dig-out brigade. I didn’t get a chance to call you back last night, and then I knew your power would be out today. I wanted to make sure you and Glenda had everything you needed. I brought you a few things. And we’ll get you a clear walkway to your truck if you need it.”
Cal held up the shovel he’d brought. “I’ll get started if that’s okay.”
“Thanks, Cal. I appreciate it. I’ll put some soup on for after.”
“Go talk, Aly. I’ve got it,” he said, then tromped off to Jill’s truck, completely covered in snow. Aly went ahead and stepped inside.
“I’m actually glad you came by. It’s easier to talk about this in person.
” Since power and generators could be iffy up here, everything in the house was also set up to run by fire.
Jill already had one going in her stove.
She got out everything to heat up some soup with nervous, jerky movements, and once that was going turned back to Aly.
Her expression was all worry and concern, which made Aly nervous. She’d hoped for reprieve.
This wasn’t that.
“Detective Hayes came by yesterday.”
“Came by? Here?” Aly’s heart sank.
Jill nodded. She sent a glance down the hall that led to the bedrooms. No doubt Glenda was in one of them.
“He had more questions for Grandma. Which would have been fine, but … first, he made a kind of offhanded comment about…” Jill looked out to the living room where Cal had disappeared outside.
Still, Jill lowered her voice. “He didn’t come out and say it, but he made it sound like he didn’t believe Cal. About the … traumatic amnesia thing.”
Aly frowned. She’d always had a positive opinion of Detective Hayes, but that certainly soured it. Cal hadn’t chosen all he’d been saddled with, and Aly knew without a shadow of a doubt if he had remembered back when Marie had been murdered, he would have told. Not run away.
“Then he said he had to talk to Grandma alone, because that’d be better when he was on the stand.
Which the more I think about, the more I don’t get.
What would it matter?” Jill leaned forward even closer, lowered her voice to a whisper.
“She won’t tell me what he asked. What they talked about. It worries me.”
“You don’t have any idea what it might be?”
Jill shook her head. Worry was etched into every line on her face. “I’d hate for you guys to be blindsided by something in court.”
Aly was starting to wonder if blindsided wasn’t just part of life. She thought of the way Glenda had given her a dress last summer. The way she helped. She wasn’t holding back from telling Jill out of some kind of spite or meanness. It was to protect.
But protect who? From what?
“I’ll keep trying to get it out of her, but I thought if I told you, maybe you or Sam or somebody could get it out of Detective Hayes.”
“Maybe,” Aly agreed.
Not her, but maybe Sam. She didn’t think Sam had actually gone out with the guy, but there had been something about the way the detective had looked at Sam this summer that made Aly wonder. And technically Sam was kind of a professional in this whole scenario. Not the murderer’s family.
The door opened, and Cal stepped in, snow covering his hat and pants. He pushed off the hood he’d been wearing, some snow clinging to the tips of his hair.
“What if Cal asked her?” Aly asked. “He’s got all that lawyer expertise. No doubt knows how to deal with a … difficult witness. And maybe she doesn’t want to burden you. Cal could be like a … buffer.”
“What are you two whispering about?” he demanded suspiciously.
Jill sighed. “Well, it’s worth a shot. Anything is worth a shot.”
*
Cal had never been scared of Glenda. Oh, he’d loved the teenage ghost stories about her. He’d even made up a few of his own to scare his buddies. And sometimes, they felt a little bit more real than not. But that was just … fun. Superficial.
These days, he felt a lot more … scared wasn’t the right word. She was a tiny woman who’d suffered a stroke a few years back. What could she do to him that hadn’t already been done?
But she gave him that same feeling that thinking about his mother did. Like there were pieces to a puzzle still hidden somewhere inside his mind. Ones he couldn’t reach even if he wanted to.
The worst part of that feeling was the niggling worry that she knew them. Whatever they were.
He hated it. So, he didn’t beat around the bush. He didn’t try to charm her, though he knew that was what Aly and Jill had hoped for when they’d gone outside to check on the horses. They expected him to put his lawyer hat on and get the details.
He sat across from her on the sofa, leaned forward, and went for straight to the point. Ignoring the way her eerie light green eyes felt like a nightmare he didn’t remember.
“Well, Glenda, here we are again. And I don’t know why Jill thinks you’ll talk to me over her. Maybe it’s the lawyer in me. But I’m fresh out of lawyer bullshit this morning, so let’s just cut to the chase.”
She cocked her head, still studying him with those calm, eerie eyes.
And he didn’t feel any more in control trying to emulate Nate’s directness, which soured his mood further. “Just write down what the detective asked you.” He put the pad and pen on the coffee table in front of her. “It’s not complicated.”
She made a kind of huffing noise.
“Okay, everything’s fucking complicated.”
She sent him a sharp, disapproving gaze—no doubt for his language. He wanted to tell her he didn’t give a fuck, but he bit his tongue. He wasn’t going to be rude just because she unsettled him. Just because he was in a piss-poor mood over too many things to count.
He took a breath, slowly let it out. Tried to find some piece of the lawyer he’d once been. “We just want to make sure nothing is going to blindside us during the trial. It’d really help if you could give me an idea of what the detective asked you about.”
“Not good.”
Her voice was just a whisper. It sounded more like the faint scratch of claws against a door than a voice.
Cal wasn’t proud of the noise that came out of him. Something like a little girl’s shriek. His heart pounded hard against his ribs as he tried to determine if he’d just hallucinated. But no … No. “You spoke.”
Glenda shook her head. Like she was refuting him. But he’d heard it. He’d watched her mouth move.
“You spoke,” he insisted, breathless.
It had been real. She’d done it. Panic tickled at the base of his throat. What the hell?
She chose that time to pick up the pen, balanced the pad in her lap. She made that humming noise she’d made this summer. Not the same lullaby that had haunted him since, thank God, but humming nonetheless.
Cal wanted to get up and run, hard and fast. Far, far, far away. But he was rooted to the spot. She’d said words. All this time, all these years … she’d never…
She held up her paper. In shaky handwriting, she’d printed Comes and goes.
Comes and goes. Her speech? Her humming? Only choosing to do those things around him rather than the granddaughter she presumably loved? He didn’t buy it. Wouldn’t.
“My ass, Glenda.”
She sent him another disapproving look but put the pad back in her lap and began to write. She took her time, no doubt her shaky writing was aftereffects from the stroke, but it made everything she wrote feel that much more threatening.
She held up the writing this time, and it took Cal a minute to decipher it. The detective asked about a man Sam’s helping.
Cal was still floored by Glenda saying words, but the man Sam was helping could only be the case Nate was concerned was going to connect to the Bennets. To Dad. A man who looked like … them.
“Why was he asking you about that?” Cal demanded.
What would Glenda have to do with it? How did the detective know about it? Had Sam told him?
Glenda shook her head. Wrote her next sentence slowly. He didn’t breathe, just listened to the uneven scratching of pen on paper. Until she held it up.
You need to get him far away from here.
Him. The guy Nate said looked like them. Cal started to see spots, realized he wasn’t breathing right. So focused on that.
Over her speaking. Over saying the guy Sam was helping needed to go. Over Detective Hayes being involved in this.
“Christ, Glenda, what do you know?”
She shook her head and got to her feet. She started to walk away, leaving him breathless and speechless. Lost. Another twist and turn to this interminable hell of a year.
But he heard her odd, faint, scratchy voice again. Like a ghost. “Don’t tell.”
An old memory skittered across his consciousness. The flash of something. Those words and Glenda’s voice. Here then gone. His mind rejecting it. Everything in him rejecting it.
His stomach roiled, threatened to revolt.
Glenda turned, stared at him. Then she walked over to him. He could only stare at her right back, maybe like she was that ghost in all those stories people liked to tell about her.
She put her hand on his head, gently. Maternally even. She didn’t say anything else. Didn’t write anything else. Just let the touch linger.
Then walked away.