Mama sank into the kitchen chair with a thud and closed her eyes as if she might faint.
Her father whipped his head toward Kat. “I heard kids are going up there to take pictures by that memorial, but you’d better stay away from that place and the graveyard. It’s dangerous.”
Kat started to protest, but his sharp look stopped her cold.
“Your daddy’s right,” Mama said, her voice on edge. “Stay away from there, Kat.”
“Do you understand, girl?” her daddy barked.
Kat gave a slow nod and glanced at her mother who was trembling so hard her knees were knocking together. Curiosity gnawed at Kat again. Was her grandfather still hiding out? Had he killed Ruth and now these other two girls? Did Mama know where he was?
Her father turned off the TV then walked back to the table. “Now, no more talk about that. Let’s eat.”
The chair rattled as he slid into it, and he wiped sweat from his face with his napkin then scooped up a ladle full of pot roast and a hefty spoon full of mashed potatoes and smothered it with gravy.
Bile rose to Kat’s throat, her appetite vanishing as she remembered the picture on the news. Jacey Ward was close to her age. Daddy was right. The graveyard was dangerous.
It could have been her.
SIXTY-SIX
Pine Hill
Tilly finished her notes on the memorial, detailing comments people offered when she talked to ones visiting the graveyard.
Now that detective and federal agent had found another teenage girl’s body, and they seemed to believe the same killer murdered her and Bonnie Sylvester. Which meant it was possible he’d killed Ruth.
Fear and grief balled in her belly. It had consumed her fifteen years ago and although she’d moved away, she couldn’t outrun it.
She went to Ruth’s room, memories bombarding her.
She remembered her mother sitting for hours in this room, hugging Ruth’s stuffed bear while crying. Once Tilly found her curled on her side in Ruth’s bed, Ruth’s cheerleading outfit and soft sweaters spread around her as she pressed them to her cheek and sniffed them.
That day was burned into her brain. It was the beginning of the end of her relationship with her mother.
“Mom, come on out and let’s take a walk.”
Her mother ignored her and pulled Ruth’s comforter over her.
Tilly walked over to the bed and started to sit on the edge, but her mother pushed her away. “No, this is Ruth’s. Go away, Tilly, and leave me alone.”
A sharp pang cut through Tilly at her mother’s words. She understood her mother was hurting and frightened but so was she.
She’d tried a couple more times that week to reach her, but each time she received the same cold response. Day by day, her mother sank deeper and deeper into depression.
Eventually Tilly just stopped trying and disappeared into a shell herself.
If only she’d been able to help find Ruth. If only she’d told her parents sooner Ruth had slipped out. If only she’d insisted Ruth tell her who she was meeting.
Guilt eating at her, she searched Ruth’s closet and found a box. She opened it and saw several spiral notebooks filled with school assignments. They obviously weren’t sentimental to her parents, but she dragged the box into the middle of the room and began to flip through the contents.
Algebra and trig assignments filled one notebook while another held book reports, which Tilly recognized because she’d helped Ruth write them. After all, she was the bookworm while Ruth was the outgoing social type who barely skimmed cliff notes before a test.
She flipped through another one with history notes, but the next one made her perk up. Ruth always liked to doodle. In this one she’d sketched rough drawings of flowers and animals, then a heart with her initials and the initials CW in the center, an arrow drawn through it.
CW for Clint Wallace.
Tilly drummed her fingers on the page. Ruth claimed she wasn’t meeting Clint that night and he insisted he was with his buddies.
