Page 124 of Moonshine Kiss
“They did the best they could.” But even I didn’t believe it. My parents had let blame and dead dreams ruin what life they did have.
“I know, Bow. I know,” she said softly. “But what if your dad had some kind of involvement and…and your mom knew?”
She was asking me what if my mom found out that my dad killed Callie and she couldn’t live with it.
If Mom couldn’t live with it, how was I supposed to?
“We need to go to Buddy’s,” she said, crossing her arms against some invisible chill.
We.She was including me in this. I almost laughed at the irony. I didn’t want to be included.
I wanted to rewind to two hours ago when Cassidy had given me something beautiful to hang on to in that house. I felt sick.
She was supposed to be my future. My parents, my childhood, those were in my past. But if Cassidy had her way, she’d drag my past back out and make sure it haunted me forever.
58
Cassidy
The rusted metal gate protested as it clanked open. The requisite junkyard dog made his leisurely appearance. Unlike his snarling, territorial brethren, Huck the bloodhound gave Bowie’s pant leg a sniff and then meandered off in search of a warm bed or a biscuit.
“Mornin’ there, deputy.” Buddy Foster, Jr., junkyard entrepreneur extraordinaire, spat his tobacco in the direction of a 1980 Ford Granada on cinder blocks. There was a small cherry tree growing out of the engine block.
“Mornin’, Buddy. Thanks for letting us come out,” I said. I’d dressed casually in jeans and a heavy coat, not wanting to attract any unnecessary attention.
“Sure. Sure,” Buddy said. His red-and-black checked flannel coat was older than I was. “Got a map for y’all.” He handed over a hand sketched version of the junkyard that looked like Mother Nature was trying to reclaim. “It’s thereabouts,” he said pointing at a circle in the northwest corner.
“Appreciate it.”
Bowie was quiet next to me. He’d been quiet, cold since last night. Since I’d shared.
Was he worried we’d find something?
Was I worried we wouldn’t?
I didn’t have high hopes that there’d be answers awaiting us here. But it was one more piece of the puzzle. Something even Connelly couldn’t ignore.
Buddy waved us on and told us we could find him in the office trailer if we needed anything.
“You can wait in the car if you want,” I told Bowie. It had been ten years since Connie had passed. But sometimes all it took was one memory to make those ten years disappear.
“Let’s go,” Bowie said briskly.
We walked the sloping, frozen ground, heading toward the area Buddy indicated. It was a crisp, cold winter morning just days before Christmas, and I was making my boyfriend check out the car his mother died in. This wasn’t sharing. This was torturing.
I stopped. “You know what, maybe you should wait in the car,” I said.
He didn’t look at me, but he stopped walking. “I get that you feel ownership of this whole investigation, but this ismyfamily.Mymother. You don’t own that.”
I flinched. “Bowie, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
“I can see it from here,” he said flatly, pointing ahead of us. There tucked in between the rusted-out corpses of family cars and broken-down pickup trucks was a white Pontiac 6000. Its front end was smashed all the way back to the dash. There were wispy tendrils of blue tarp fluttering in the winter wind out the broken driver side window. It was the kind of tarp we put over fatalities. I felt my blood go cold.
Days ago we’d been decorating cookies and hanging Christmas lights. He’d helped me put up a tree and chased the cats out of it the first six dozen times. And I’d marched him right on up to his mother’s death.
“What are we looking for?” Bowie asked, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He was watching the tarp flutter.
“Dunno.” I approached the car. It was free on the driver side, a grassy path dividing patches of wrecks from each other ran alongside it. The back door was missing. Dead weeds choked out the car all the way around. The tires were long gone. There was no way I was trying to crawl under the wreck and look at the undercarriage. That would be up to Connelly if we pulled the car for some forensics team to take a crack at. If he thought it might offer some hint at what had happened to Callie or if it was just another piece to ignore.
