Page 38 of Blackwood

“Me too.” I swallowed my tears. “Now tell me the rest.”

He looked away. “After the scandal, I left in disgrace and thought I could come home and lick my wounds. Lillian was always good at smoothing over trouble. I talked to her on the phone the day it all went down. She told me to come home and we’d sort it all out. I left school and drove straight here.” He closed his eyes, memory coating his voice. “It was near the end of spring session. Everything was in bloom on the road home—yellow honeysuckle and purple wisteria hanging from the trees. Despite what had happened, I began to feel hopeful. Lillian would know how to fix it. She’d charmed her way out of tons of trouble. I didn’t have half her ability, but with her help, I don’t know…I thought maybe I had a chance, you know? Maybe she could talk to Dean Farraway or Joan.”

He shrugged and stared at the corner of the room, his eyes roving the wooden planks as if he could see to the bottom floor. To Lillian’s room. “I got home right at sunset. The house was lit up, welcoming. It wasn’t like it is now.” He waved a hand at the walls. “Dying.” He paused, as if trying to wrestle the unhappy words out. “When I got here, everything was quiet. I called for Lillian. She didn’t answer. I went to her room, and that’s where I found her. She’d hung—” He stopped, emotion welling up and drowning out his voice like a flash flood.

“I’m so sorry.” I pressed his hand between mine. I knew she’d committed suicide, but other than her brief obituary, there was no information on it. The then-sheriff of Millbrook covered up the details. I always assumed he’d swept it under the rug so as not to tarnish the family. Suicide was an unbreakable taboo, especially in this notch of the Bible Belt.

“It was unbelievable. When I saw her, it was like I couldn’t process, like it wasn’t real. But then I touched her, and she was…” He wiped at his eyes, the lashes wet.

Seeing him in pain broke a part of me. I wanted to take it away, to pluck the thorn from his paw, but some things—like some people—were beyond saving. “Did she leave a note?”

“No. I demanded Sheriff Pennington investigate it as a homicide. Lillian wouldn’t have done that. I refused to believe it.”

“You think she was killed?”

“I did back then. Sheriff Pennington performed the investigation like he did everything else—half-assed. He told me that because her prints were on the chair, the electrical cord, and the light fixture, he had no evidence of any assailant or explanation besides the obvious. I raised hell, and”—He shifted his gaze away from mine—“I made your father my number one suspect. Iknewit was him. It had to be, and I wanted to make him pay.”

Motive. I tensed and glanced to the knife on the bedside table. Was Garrett confessing to killing my father?

He followed the direction of my gaze. “Take it if it makes you feel better.” The sadness in his tone made me feel like shit. He’d just opened up some wounds, ones that clearly cut him deep, and here I was still refusing to trust him.

“I’m sorry.” I ignored the blade and focused on him. “It’s all so…new, I guess. Please go on.”

“Not much more to tell. I always suspected your father of killing Lil, but he disappeared right after her death. The coincidence wasn’t lost on me. I paid a private investigator to find him. But your dad covered his tracks so well that all traces led right back here, to Blackwood. A dead end.”

He seemed to deflate as he relived his failure to find the man he suspected of killing his sister. I wanted to reassure him that Dad would never have harmed Lillian, but my words wouldn’t do anything to ease his pain. His sister was gone, and there was no reason for it.

More than that, my gut told me he had no idea my dad’s car was rusting on his property. He was just as in the dark as I was. Relief washed through me like the first hit of anesthesia. He had nothing to do with my dad’s disappearance. I knew it in my bones.

I took a chance. “What if I told you that I think all trails lead back here because my father never left Millbrook County—never left Blackwood—alive?”

He let his head loll back and stared at the ceiling. “Nothing would surprise me anymore. Remember when you first knocked on the door, and I told you this place was full of ghosts?”

“Yes.”

“The longer I stay here, the truer it becomes. Ghosts, secrets, lies. All here, all just beyond my sight.” Despair laced his words.

“Why do you stay here? Why not move somewhere else and start over?”

“After Lillian, I couldn’t seem to leave. It’s in my head.” He stroked his temple. “I know it is. I realize I can drive out of the gate and never come back, but I think I’m…”

I knew the feeling. “Broken? You think you’re broken.”

“I would have said fucked up, but yes.”

“I don’t think you are.” I ran my hand down his scruffy cheek. “I think you’ve been through some traumatizing events. And I think you’re afraid. But you’re not fucked up.”

He looked at me with heartbreaking surprise, as if he’d never seen himself as anything other than a monster.

“That’s why you pushed me away, why you’ve been pushing me away this whole time?” I cupped his face in my hands, and he closed his eyes and leaned into my touch. “You’re afraid you’ll hurt me or that I’ll be … what?”

“Disgusted.”

“I’m not.” I stroked my thumbs through his rough beard. “Not even close.”

He drew his brows together. “You heard the part about how I’d like to chase you through the woods? How I want to tie you up and leave my marks on your skin? How I want to fuck you so hard it hurts?”

My stomach clenched at his words. “I heard, though this is the first time you’ve said you wanted to do all those things tome.”

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