Page 5 of Dead Man's Hollow
“I did.”
“How’d it go?”
She hesitates. She should talk to Rich first, but the decision she and her sisters made is going to impact the kids, too, so she might as well let him know now. “We have an appointment to meet with Maisy Farley next week.”
“So you’re doing it?”
“We are, and I know that’s going to have an effect on you, Owen, and Ava?—”
He cuts her off. “Mom, don’t worry about it. Aunt Heather’s your sister.”
Amy has always found it odd that her kids call Heather ‘Aunt Heather,’ even though she disappeared long before any of them were born, long before she and Rich were even married. But hearing Evan say it now makes her heart swell.
“Thanks, honey,” she says, blinking back tears at his compassion.
He nods and then changes gears as only a seventeen-year-old can. “I need to go to the library and do some research for my group project. What time’s dinner?”
“The same time it’s been for the past six years. Seven o’clock, after your brother’s fencing class and Ava’s play rehearsal.”
“Kay. Bye.”
He twirls the car keys around his finger in a fast circle then grabs his backpack from the kitchen table where he dumped it after school and she left it because she stopped providing maid service a full decade ago.
“Good luck with your research,” she says to his back.
He goes out through the mudroom and into the attached garage. She hears a muffled conversation between him and his dad. A moment later, the garage bay door chugs open, then Rich enters the house.
“Evan’s headed to the library,” he tells her as he walks over to the kitchen sink and turns on the water. He scrubs his hands with the orange pumice soap she keeps on the windowsill for just this purpose.
She waits until he’s drying them to answer. “He just stopped home to drop the other two off after the movies.”
Rich nods upstairs. “Are they in their rooms?”
She nods. “Ava made a beeline for the stairs. I didn’t hear a peep out of Owen, but I assume he went upstairs, too. He’s probably getting ready for fencing.”
Rich’s eyes flick to the clock on the mantel and then to the glass of wine at her elbow. “I’ll drive both of them. We’ll drop him at the studio and then I’ll take Ava to play rehearsal.
She gives him a grateful smile.
He comes into the room and sits on the ottoman in front of her, taking both of her hands in his. “How bad was it?”
It was hellish, as expected. Every conversation she and her sisters have had about Heather in the past thirty years has been some degree of hellish. But Rich is already worried about this decision, and she doesn’t want to feed the flames. So she says, “It was fine.”
He squints at her. “Fine?”
“Yeah, fine. We reached an understanding. Diana acknowledged she shouldn’t have reached out to Maisy Farley without talking to me and Kristy first, and we agreed that?—”
He barks out a laugh. “But that’s just like her, isn’t it?”
Amy’s instinct is to defend her sister, but the truth is, he’s right. As the oldest, Diana’s always been the self-appointed leader. Her bossiness only grew more pronounced after Heather vanished. Diana arranged for a leave of absence from college to take over parenting Kristy during that first year, when their mother was a shell of a human. It had been Diana, not their parents, who insisted Heather stay the course. Diana who dropped her off for college orientation; Diana who sent her care packages. Her older sister may be hard and unyielding, like a rock. But she’s also steady and solid, like a rock.
Amy lets out a breath now. “Diana’s right though, Rich. We’ve needed to address this for a long time, but it has to be resolved now. She’s the executor of Mom and Dad’s estate, and she can’t close probate without either having Heather declared dead or setting up a trust to hold her share of the estate.”
Kristy had pushed hard for the trust, and Amy understood. She didn’t want to have a court formally declare their sister dead, either. The idea feels like a betrayal of both Heather and their parents, who never stopped believing that she’d walk through their front door. But Amy thinks it’s time. The finality of closing the chapter on that terrible night will be good for all of them, she thinks.
From the outside, it looks as though the Ryan sisters have moved on. Diana returned to college, graduated, married, started her own human resources consulting business, and raised a family. Her daughters are grown and flown, living out of state. She’s divorced now. Maybe that has something to do with how brittle and mistrusting she became after Heather vanished. But Amy secretly believes that Diana and her ex-husband were never a good match and wouldn’t have gone the distance under any circumstances.
Kristy’s married—about to celebrate ten years with her husband. They have two little boys in elementary school. As the youngest, she’s probably the one who was changed the most by Heather’s disappearance. She was only eight when Heather vanished, and once their parents emerged from their cocoon of frozen grief, they were laser-focused on keeping her safe. Amy understands they were trying to protect Kristy, but they stunted her, robbing her of so many of the life experiences—both good and bad—her older sisters had. Sheltered, stifled, and fearful, Kristy is also nurturing and empathetic, albeit terrified of her own shadow.
