And her father… his eyes were bloodshot, his temper more on edge than she’d ever seen.
After that, she’d steered clear of her brother and her parents. All that mattered to her parents was Ruth anyway.
They hadn’t once called or visited when she was in college.
Get off your pity pot, girl. Go inside and face the music.
She stared at the window to Ruth’s bedroom, and for a second thought she saw the shadow of her sister’s heart-shapedface looking at her. Her eyes that had once been bright and blue now looked dull and seemed to be begging for peace.
Inhaling a deep breath, Tilly tugged her jacket hood over her head, grabbed her purse, computer bag and suitcase and hurried to the front door. She inserted her key in the lock and jiggled it, grateful it hadn’t been changed. Again, in case Ruth came home.
The door squeaked open, a cold emptiness enveloping her. She flipped on the foyer light and scanned the entryway into the living room and kitchen. Everything was just as she remembered. A shiver ripped though her, and her chest squeezed.
The family portrait still hung on the wall in the hall. Ruth’s smiling face stared back. Yet she also saw the mischief in her sister’s eyes. Her parents thought Ruth was a perfect angel. Until she’d rebelled herself. Even then they’d defended her.
But Ruth had another side. Her parents conveniently glossed over that and wouldn’t tolerate a disparaging word against their oldest daughter.
A hollow loneliness permeated the air as Tilly closed the front door and locked it. Her footsteps echoed in the silence as she rushed to adjust the thermostat. A second later, the furnace rumbled to life although it would take hours to heat the house to a comfortable temperature.
Shoulders hunched from the cold, she took a quick sweep of the downstairs. Dust motes fluttered in the frigid air and a musty odor served as a reminder that the house had been closed-up and uninhabited for a while. Although she suspected her father occasionally came back to check on the house, probably looking for signs Ruth had been back.
Returning to the foyer, she hauled her luggage up the stairs.
Tilly’s bedroom door stood ajar, and she rolled her bag inside. Nothing had been touched in here. Dust coated herwooden dresser, and her Jenny Lind bed was still covered in the same purple comforter she’d chosen when she was ten.
Notepads and spiral notebooks were stacked on her desk where she’d done her homework and dabbled in writing. At one point her English lit teacher asked them to keep a shadow journal and she’d enjoyed recording her thoughts and the observations of classmates.
Maybe there was something in there that might offer a lead. Someone, maybe one of the other students, had to have known something.
The Bramble sisters definitely had a grudge against Ruth and vice versa. Hetty was quiet and withdrawn and looked like a vampire with her choppy short black hair and pale skin. Her clothes were often dirty and stank of fertilizer and potting soil, her fingernails permanently stained and black.
Tilly felt sorry for her and Ida. Not only did Ida have a pronounced limp and a gap between her two front teeth, but she struggled in school and couldn’t outrun the gossip about her father’s drunken escapades.
Ruth nicknamed Hetty and Ida the Graveyard Girls and the name stuck.
Trembling at the memory of the knock-down-drag-out fight between the Bramble girls and Ruth at the DQ, she walked to Ruth’s room. A hollow emptiness swelled inside. Ruth’s queen bed was neatly made with a satin white comforter and her big stuffed teddy bear lay against the pillow. One of her teenage boy band posters hung on the wall then her gaze was drawn to a photograph of Clint and Ruth, then one of Ruth in her cheerleading outfit. On a small white board above the desk, her parents had listed their cell phone numbers. No dust motes in this room. In fact, it looked pristine.
The police had turned it inside out searching for clues as to what happened to Ruth, but there were no signs of that now.
She knew her parents had moved further north of Brambletown to a nice area called Finch Gardens but had never visited them. Did they pay someone to come in and clean Ruth’s room regularly?
She closed her eyes to stem the tears threatening, and when she opened them, in her mind she could still see her teenage sister plopped on the bed on her phone, twirling the end of her cornsilk-blond hair around one finger as she giggled and flirted with Clint Wallace before she’d disappeared.
Where are you, Ruth? What happened that night?
The image faded and the news report taunted her.Are you the girl the police found in the graveyard?
FOURTEEN
DAY TWO
Crooked Creek
Cord didn’t deserve Ellie.
But damn if he wouldn’t cut his own arm off to save her if she needed him to.
He rolled over in the dark and stared at her, memorizing every feature of her beautiful face so he wouldn’t forget her if—or when—he lost her.
