As mayor, her father had had several run-ins with him. During one of his drunken benders, Earl had crashed his car into the Soap and Suds car wash and her father banned him fromusing it again. Earl had retaliated and trashed her father’s office the next day, earning him a few days in a cell.
Memories of the way her family had been torn apart by rumors and doubt in the weeks following Ruth’s disappearance made her breathing quicken.
When Tilly left town after high school, she’d vowed never to return to that godawful place. But here she was on her way with a fist-sized knot in her stomach, her emotions in a tailspin and perspiration soaking her wavy auburn hair. She lifted the tangled strands and fanned herself with one hand while gripping the steering wheel with the other.
Determination kicked in. Revisiting her hometown would serve two purposes, she reminded herself. Ruth’s case had gone cold over a decade ago. But if this body was Ruth’s, she might finally get answers about her disappearance.
She could also cover the story of the memorial recently erected and add that credit to her resume.
Although she expected folks back home would think she was strange because of the subject matter she chose to write about.
Travel writing. But not exotic beaches, glamorous cities or desirable foreign locales. She focused on murder tourism, an oddly popular interest that had gained her followers and landed her a regular column for theAJC’s online paper.
Considering the nasty emails she’d received from her estranged father, Edward, who accused her of keeping their painful past alive, he would agree about her job being morbid.
Her mother, Gina… she released her venom by ignoring Tilly and her brother, Hayden, all together. They’d been invisible in the Higgins home.
As mayor, Edward had been the pillar of Brambletown before his older daughter, Ruth, went missing. Respected. Intelligent. Educated in a world where blue-collar workers and miners dominated. Where the Bramble moonshine kept the men happyand college was not an expectation for the girls. A factory worker or secretarial job would suffice, and a doublewide was supposed to be a girl’s dream come true.
Her parents were different though. Educated and hard-working.
Her mother created a social scene with the garden club, but she thought she was better than the other ladies because she had a two-story Georgian house on acreage and they lived in modest brick ranches with pint-sized yards. Her husband was the mayor while theirs managed the grocery store, the hardware business, construction and other jobs deeming them a class below the Higginses.
The hierarchy dropped another notch with the Brambles. Their old clapboard house by the cemetery, thrift store clothes, run-ins with the law, and dirt-coated hands landed them in the white trash category.
All through high school, Tilly had wanted to leave the town. She was a geek, a book nerd. She didn’t belong in Brambletown. Didn’t fit.
Beautiful blond Ruth with the striking blue eyes, a year older than her, had excelled in school. As the pet of the family, their parents were planning her future at any cost.
At night, she and Ruth had shared dreams of what their lives would look like once they graduated. Ruth was set to be valedictorian without even studying, which had earned her the nicknameBrainsand not in a flattering way. Although she made up for it with her notorious flirting and friendships with the cheerleaders.
When the football quarterback Clint Wallace asked her out, she’d been ecstatic and suddenly became a member of the popular crowd. Except it also made her the enemy of some of her female classmates, especially Hetty and Ida Bramble.Apparently Ida had a crush on Clint or was it Hetty? Tilly couldn’t remember and didn’t care.
A knock-down-drag-out fight between the three at the Dairy Queen had caused an uproar. Her father had defended Ruth, and Hetty and Ida were suspended for three days, which only created a bigger rift between Ruth and the Bramble girls. After that, it was one nasty prank after another.
Then perfect Ruth started to rebel. Staying out late. Sneaking out to meet boys. Letting her schoolwork go. Their parents blamed it on the mean girls at school. Wanted her to get away from the clique and focus on her education.
But on a freezing, snowy and stormy night, after a tense dinner on New Year’s Eve, Ruth disappeared.
Her family imploded. Her father and brother were both questioned. The suspicions and gossip destroyed them.
They still had no answers about what happened to her.
Yet here she was, pushing sixty miles, winding around the switchbacks that wove through the foothills of the Appalachian Trail, an endless sea of trees and trouble back to the place where it all went wrong. Rain fell in a near blinding haze, her tires slipping on wet asphalt as she hugged the curves. Her windshield wipers screeched back and forth in tune to her raging heart, and a war raged in her head. Nerves gathered along her spine and she slowed. Maybe she should head back to Atlanta where she was safe.
No, a body had been found at that creepy graveyard and she had to know if it was Ruth.
Fifteen years of not knowing, wondering, fearing and imagining what her sister might have suffered at the brutal hands of whoever had taken her, had nearly stolen Tilly’s sanity.
Fifteen years of living under the suspicion that her own father or brother might have been responsible.
If Ruth was actually alive, where had she been? Had she run away with some secret lover? Or had someone abducted her?
And if she was dead, as Tilly feared, who killed her?
Memories tugged at her, clawing at her with truths and secrets that she’d somehow lost in the cluttered attic of her mind. The family arguing over dinner that night.Herbirthday dinner.
Ruth shoving her slice of cake at her mother and telling her it tasted like mud. Her father finally losing it with her and ordering Ruth to her room. Hayden insisting he was going out and his father shouting at him.
