Nell opened the door and walked down the steps. A reporter thrust his mic at her, “Nell, can you tell us how JJ got free?” That was the last thing Nell heard as the entire pack of nearly rabid journalists converged on her.
The sheriff and Orson took her, each one by an arm, and pulled her into Orson’s SUV. As if they had rehearsed it, the sheriff raced to his unit and blasted the lot with lights and siren, driving his car through the mass of cameras and up to Orson’s truck, where he whipped the wheel, turning the car in a tight U. Orson followed and reached the road, the two vehicles moving up the black asphalt, away from Rocking River. Nell leaned her head against the headrest, startled to see that the sky was bright.
“You want to tell me what the hell you intended to do just now?” Orson said, his tone mild in comparison to his word choice.
Nell wondered if he was one of the men who got progressively quiet the angrier he got. Joe had been a shouter. The madder he got, the louder he got, making it fairly easy to tell when she had ticked him off. She glanced at the cop, whose eyes were on the road, and who looked less than irritated.
“I was going to talk to RiverAnn and the guides. If there was a pink rabbit’s foot in the grave with Joe—that was what you were trying to say to me, wasn’t it?” When he nodded, she continued her first line of thought. “Then the guides, Harvey at least, had to be there when he died. Right? And now Harvey’s dead. So, one of his friends has to know something about his death, and it has to be tied in with my baby getting kidnapped.”
“It’s plausible.”
“Plausible?” Nell felt her blood pressure rise at his tone, which was on the verge of patronizing. “Of course it’s plausible. It’s more than just plausible, it’s likely. To the point of being a near certainty.” She crossed her arms and looked away. “And don’t smile at what I’m saying. I’m not stupid, you sanctimonious…cop.”
He chuckled, which made her want to hit him, but she didn’t want to end up in jail if he decided to arrest her for it. “I know you’re not stupid, Nell. But this is an ongoing police investigation and I can’t let you interfere.” When she snorted, staring at the sunrise, he said, “I’ll drop you off at your house. Claire can bring the RV and JJ. Okay?”
“Whatever.” A moment later, she said, “I need you to take me back to the shop. I need to do some paperwork. And I got a kayak lesson to give at ten.”
“Nell,” he said patiently.
“Don’t Nell me. I got a business to run and my kayak instructor up and quit on me without notice. Now, take me to my place of business or arrest me.”
“For what?” he said, the patient tone morphing into irritation.
“For whatever you dang well please, I reckon.”
The SUV lurched forward when Orson hit the brakes, throwing Nell against her seat belt. The screech of tires announced they were turning around and Nell grabbed the arm support with one hand and the loop-style handle over the door with the other. The tension in the vehicle went up about 150 percent, but Nell didn’t back down. When Hartford came into sight, she said, “Stop here. I’ll walk around behind the post office, along the river, and up to the shop to avoid the reporters.”
Orson braked hard in the middle of the road and Nell undid the seat belt, opened the door and climbed into the street. “Ain’t no call to be snippy.” She slammed the door and walked off down toward the river, satisfied that she had ticked him off enough not to pay attention to where she was for the next half hour or so.
Nell made her way along the river, watching for snakes out for their morning sun, moving upstream, behind her river-running competition, The Bean Trees, which was open for business, selling coffee to the media and the locals, and past the post office to Rocking River. But she kept going. Twenty yards upstream of the shop, Nell came up from the water and crossed the street to the guides’ house without looking back down the road, hoping that the remaining reporters wouldn’t see her. She was in luck. No one shouted or gave chase.
Without knocking, Nell climbed the three front steps, turned the front door handle and went in. It was early yet and, after the excitement of the hunt for JJ, everyone was, oddly, either hiding in their rooms or back in bed. Nell could hear three people snoring, two radios playing competing stations and a soft thumping sound she really didn’t want to investigate. Fans hummed quietly from upstairs and down. The house smelled of river, unwashed bodies, cigarette and marijuana smoke, beer and cooked cabbage.
Nell remembered it all from her eighteenth year, when she had run away from home and signed on as a guide. She’d taken a private room on the second floor and had installed a lock to ensure her privacy. Now, she looked up the stairs, trying to decide which room RiverAnn and her now-dead boyfriend might have chosen.
The cadence of soft voices floated in through the open windows from the back. With nothing better to indicate a direction, Nell followed the sound through the living room and the kitchen, to the back. Standing on the rickety porch, in the doorway to the kitchen but still hidden in early-morning shadow, Nell spotted a gathering in the backyard near the edge of the porch.
RiverAnn lay on the hammock, which was swinging slowly. Wearing shorts and a thin yellow tee stretched across her pregnant belly, she was curled on her side. There were scratches on her arms, and a swath of what looked like poison ivy on one ankle.
Hamp sat facing her, his bare feet on the grass, his eyes full of misery and longing. It was that longing, so full of tenderness and desire and pain, that stopped Nell, made her pause just out of sight. The helplessness in Hamp’s eyes. And grief. Utter, total grief.
Turtle Tom, dressed in cutoff jeans and sandals, shirtless, sat in a deck chair, bent over, his head hanging forward, his laced fingers dangling between his knees. His back was bowed with worry and tension, his long hair unbound from its tie, draping forward to obscure his face. “You can’t do it, Annie. You got to turn yourself in,” Tom said.
“For what?” RiverAnn asked. “They can’t prove Harvey took the little shit. Brat never saw us, not once. Besides. It wasn’t like I was gonna hurt him. All we wanted was the money so we could go away. The family’s rich. They wouldn’ a missed the money any.”
“The cops are involved. It’s daylight.” Tom lifted his head and, for an instant, Nell feared she had been seen. She stepped deeper into the shadows and his eyes looked away. “Won’t be long till they head up the hill. They’ll find Stewey’s crop. And the place where you tied JJ up. If the old man and his dogs haven’t already found it.” Tom looked up the hill behind the garden, a darkly shaded path curving into the trees. “For all you know, JJ’s PawPaw has a hunting rifle trained us all right now.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hamp muttered, looking uneasily up the hill. “They’ll put it all together. And they’ll come here.”
“No,” RiverAnn said. As if the huge bulge itched, she rubbed her stomach over her T-shirt with the tips of her fingers, a nervous, angry scratch. “I am not going to jail.”
Nell closed her hands into fists, her breathing sped up. In the distance, a mourning dove cooed, a plaintive “Who, who, who?”
“I’ll get you the best lawyers,” Tom said finally, his head hanging low, his eyes not meeting his friends’. “The best in the state.”
“I’m not going to jail,” the girl said, her pregnancy-swollen lips snarling. “I’ll get away. I just need money, and you got some. We all know it, Tom. So just give me a couple ’a thousand, to get to a new place and get a new start.”
“If you run, they’ll figure out about Joe,” Tom said, “and then you’ll go to jail for a long time. But only if you run. If you go to the cops, with a lawyer who knows how to spin it, it can make the difference between life in prison and just a couple years.”
RiverAnn raised up, her face twisted with hate. “I. Am. Not. Going to prison.”
Nell shrank back again. Prison? For kidnapping JJ? For…Joe? She put a hand on the doorjamb to steady herself. She needed to get Orson. One-handed, Nell patted the pockets of her sweats. Her cell was in the RV bathroom, where she had left it when she cleaned JJ’s wounds.
“Come with me, Tom,” RiverAnn said. “We’d would have us some good times.”
Hamp’s head drooped lower and, from her place in the kitchen, Nell saw tears fall from his face to the ground. When he spoke, his voice was pleading, vibrating with pain. “Where’ll you go, Annie?” He put his fisted hands together, white knuckles touching. He raised his tear-stained face. “Where?”
“I’m not going with you, RiverAnn,” Tom said, his voice heartrendingly sad, but calm. “And I can’t let you run away from this.”
“You gonna turn me in?” she asked, rolling in the hammock to see Tom better in the brightening light. “After all we been to each other?”
Up on the hillside behind the house, a dog started baying, long, crying howls of success. PawPaw’s hound had found JJ’s trail.
“We slept together a few times, Annie,” Turtle Tom said, still staring down.
Both men were watching their hands now, as if they couldn’t bear to look at her or at each other. Stoned Stewart, sitting in the shadow of the porch, looked confused. Uncertain.
Tom sighed and said, “But then, you slept with all of us at one time or other.” He shook his head. “No, Annie. I won’t let you. I won’t let you hurt Nell anymore. And now that I know about Joe…” He sighed again, his voice firming. “You got to turn yourself in.”
“All this is her fault. I shoulda killed that bitch first time I set eyes on her,” RiverAnn said viciously. “None ’a this ever woulda happened if Joe hadn’t gone and married her.”
Rage shot through Nell. The howling on the hill resolved into sharp barks. The dogs were getting closer. PawPaw was coming. His presence gave her courage. Spurred her anger. Before she could think it through, Nell stepped onto the porch, into the light. “Joe loved me, Ann,” she said.
With twin jerks, RiverAnn and Hamp looked up at her. Stewart turned more slowly, puzzled. Only Tom didn’t look her way and Nell knew he had spotted her earlier. Spotted her and let her stay. Let her listen.
RiverAnn rolled to her feet, her back swayed, holding her belly. Fury flashed across Ann’s face, her mouth snarling. “He was mine!” she said.
Nell stopped cold. RiverAnn lunged at her. Hamp caught Ann’s arms, holding her back. The girl whirled and slapped him. His head snapped back. RiverAnn screamed. Balled her fists, raging, beating him. Hamp suffered it, ducking his head, stepping back as he absorbed the blows, blocking the ones he could.
Tom shook his head and looked up through his long hair. “I’m sorry, Nell. I just found out about it.”
“Found out what?” She watched the four friends, her gaze picking from one to the other.
RiverAnn wrenched away from Hamp. “I was gonna have Joe’s baby,” she said, spitting the words. Climbing the steps. “All those years ago, back when you stole him from me! I was pregnant with his baby.” Laughter split her face at whatever she saw on Nell’s. “He was mine and you stole him away from me.”
Nell backed away. Blood and strength seemed to leach out of her. “No.” Nell retreated through the kitchen, her knees weak, her vision blackening. “No…” she whispered, “No, no, no.”
“Yes,” RiverAnn said, advancing. Her body was bent forward over her belly, her fists clenched and vibrating with anger.
“He was mine. We were in love,” she said, following Nell into the living room. Light from the busted overhead fixture and the broken lamp cast strange shadows, harsh on the mud-brown walls. “And then you came in. And you waved your little ass at his face and he left me.”
Nell bumped into a chair, the upholstery rough on her calf and knee. “No.”
“Yes. But I knew I could make him come back to me. I knew I could make him love me again.” RiverAnn kicked a chair.
Hamp, following her, caught it and set it upright. Behind him stood Tom, his tattoos like living things crawling up his arms. Stoned Stewart, confused, crowded into the living room, blinking as if he was trying to wake up.
“I could have,” RiverAnn said. “He woulda come to me. Divorced you. And married me. I know he would. Soon as I told him about our baby.”
“RiverAnn and Joe were together for a couple of weeks that summer before he met you, Nell,” Tom said, filling in the blanks.
“How—” Nell stopped, blanching. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t.
“He was gonna leave you,” Ann spat. “That was what he was gonna tell you on that trip down the South Fork of the Cumberland. And we was gonna move back to New York.”
That stopped Nell. “New York?” she said. “He was going to live in New York?” Relief spiraled through her, weakening her further. Suddenly she laughed, the sound shaky. “Joe hated New York. He hated it.” Nell backed away, along the moldering couch, toward the door, her hands waving back and forth as if she were wiping away the girl’s claim. And she began to put it together.
“No. You’re lying.” She thought back, putting the months in place in her memory. “Joe saw me on the Nantahala in early spring. He came to Hartford in April, looking for me. He drove into Hartford on a Friday, when the river wasn’t running, and he found me in Wildwater, where I was working. Asked me if there were any creeks to run.”
Nell sat slowly on the lumpy couch, remembering, her eyes out of focus, buried in the past. “He came into the Smokehouse for lunch. And we took one look at each other and whatever had started on the Nante picked up and…and we fell head over heels.”
Nell blinked her way out of the past and RiverAnn’s face came clear. “There wasn’t time for him to meet you and get you pregnant. You’re lying, Ann. You’re just plain old lying. You were still in school that year. He didn’t even meet you till he and I had been dating for nearly a month.”
The boys looked from Nell to RiverAnn, uncertainty on their faces. “It wasn’t Joe’s baby?” Tom said.
“That means it was mine,” Hamp whispered. His face fell as horror grew in his eyes. “You got an illegal abortion,” he whispered in growing horror. “You killed my baby. You…killed my baby.”
RiverAnn screamed and rushed Nell.