Jonah limped out of the woods, got the truck running, and worked his bare hands at the heater vent waiting for the ache of life to return to his fingers.
He needed to find Lucinda. Explain his story. He. What? It confused him, the past days. He’d seen LeFranc kneeling beside her and known she was dead. Because of him. Or was it because of him? Had it even happened, his bringing her to the cabin?
Had he shot her and found her dead a week ago and left her there and slipped into a hallucination? Out of a desperate need for a second chance, had he dreamed of saving her and protecting her? Or had he lived all that he imagined the past days? He’d seen the yellow coat. Hadn’t he? How could she get the yellow coat if she’d not been in the cabin? Perhaps it wasn’t the same coat. Or perhaps he was imagining that too.
No. All of it had to have happened. And now. She was dead. Because of him.
He needed to explain he’d done what he’d done in order to protect the girl. He would take the consequences. He’d harbored her not out of altruism but out of selfishness. He’d looked for reasons to keep her. Wanted to keep her.
He drove his truck down out of the mountains, past the old house, to Lucinda’s place. Her Wrangler was not in the drive. He sat in his truck, waiting. When she did not show, he drove off.
He pulled in front of the Grain & Feed and went in, the cowbell clunking.
A boy Jonah did not recognize sat behind the counter.
“How are you this morning?” the boy said.
“Lucinda around?” Jonah said.
“Nah.”
“Know where she is?”
“I’m just filling in for Mr. Baines. She’s at her house, I guess.”
“Nope.”
The boy shrugged.
“Maybe her father’s place,” the boy said.
Lucinda’s Wrangler sat parked in front of the house, along with three state trooper cruisers. Something’s happened to Maurice, Jonah thought.
Though he had not seen Maurice in many years, Jonah knew of Maurice’s failing health.
Except. If something medical had happened with Maurice, where was the ambulance?
He buttoned his coat to the top, smoothed the front of it. A nervous flutter in his chest, like the moment he’d been about to confess his love to Rebecca for the first time, knowing it would change everything, the arc of his life, one way or another.
He went up the walkway and knocked on the door.
No one came.
He knocked again.
The door went unanswered.
He pounded on it.
The door opened and Lucinda stood before him.
“Jonah,” she said, and he saw anguish in her eyes, remembered her as a sweet, sweet girl, the friend of his daughter.
She looked out past him, up toward the Gore. He knew she saw the smoke from his burning cabin rising in the distance. He needed to tell her about what he’d done, what he’d seen these past days. Tell her the truth, as he knew it.
“I have to—” he said.
The torment on her face morphed into compassion.
Jonah composed himself, tried to hold Lucinda’s gaze. He looked down at his boots. Their leather was worn through at the toes so a dull sheen of steel shone through. His eyes trailed back up her to find her face again.
“We found them,” she said, her voice that of a frightened girl.
What Lucinda had prattled on about in the cabin, her believing she knew where Jonah’s wife and daughter were, but not wanting to tell Jonah until she was sure.
A star but not a star. She had my doll, Lucinda had said.
The words cleaved him open.
He thought of Sally’s drawings that Maurice had found. Not a star. A badge. Maurice’s badge. And Jonah knew. Knew what the anguish and compassion in Lucinda’s face meant. Maurice had manipulated Jonah into thinking the drawings might implicate Jonah. Tricked Jonah into destroying evidence, not against Jonah, evidence against Maurice.
No.
Yes.
Jonah waited for the old rage to rear in him, prepared to fight against it. Yet it did not come.
Instead, he felt calm. To allow his rage to overcome him, to lash out would only shame his wife and daughter. What was there left to lash out at?
“In the cellar,” Lucinda said.
Jonah ran his palm down the front of his coat.
Part of him never wanted to lay eyes on that cellar, to see where his wife and daughter had lain in ignominy all these years, yet another part of him wanted to rush to them, assure them all was well now. They were found and they would never be lost again.
“The state police are handling it,” she said. “One of them is speaking to my father now. He’s dying. Has been for years.”
Good, Jonah thought. I’m glad it’s been a long torment.
“We’re all dying,” he said. “The best we can hope is that no one hurries us toward our death. No one decides for us how and when.”
He stared at his boots for an eternity.
No matter what he did or where he went, it would never end. Missing them.
“I need new boots,” he whispered.
“Jonah, he’s my father,” Lucinda said. “My father did this.”
He looked up at her again.
She was crying. “She was my best friend.”
This was not Jonah’s pain alone. Her father. Her dearest childhood friend.
He took her hand in his.
She tried to blink back her tears but they could not be stopped. “Do you wish to . . . after they’re done, after they take him away . . . just you and them?”
“I’d like to remember them as they were. Before all this.”
A state trooper came up behind Lucinda.
“Deputy,” he said.
Lucinda turned to address the trooper.
“We’ll need to speak to you,” the trooper said.
“Give me a moment,” she said.
The trooper nodded and walked back toward the kitchen.
Lucinda turned back to see Jonah was halfway to his truck.
“Mr. B.,” she said.
But Mr. B. kept walking, opened the door of his truck, shut himself in the cab, and rested his forehead on the steering wheel.