The Search The Secrets of Crittenden Cou - By Shelley Shepard Gray Page 0,36
well.” Oh, but she felt sick at heart now. When she’d left Perry, she’d been so disappointed by how things had ended up between them that she’d never spared a thought of what might happen to him out alone on the Millers’ land in his state.
Maybe his killer had been lurking there, just waiting for his chance to attack Perry?
She looked at Sheriff Kramer and couldn’t take it any longer. “Do you think I had something to do with his death? Is that what you are worried about? Is that why you came here to the hospital?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He was speaking so . . . so differently, not in his usual way. He was frightening her. “Mose, I mean, Sheriff, I promise you this, I did not kill Perry. I would never have killed him. We might have had our differences, but that didn’t mean I wanted him dead. You know that. Right?”
With some dismay, she realized her hands were shaking. She could never have imagined anyone would think she was capable of doing such a thing.
She paused, half waiting for him to rush to her defense. Half waiting for him to tell her that of course no one would ever think she could harm another person. After all, she was a nurturing sort.
But the sheriff didn’t respond. Only continued to scribble on his notepad.
Panic engulfed her. “Sheriff Kramer, you believe me, don’tcha?” Tension infused her voice as she rushed on. “You agree that I could never harm Perry. You agree that I’m not capable of hurting him. Right?”
Instead of nodding he looked directly at her. “Besides you wanting to go home . . . what did you and Perry talk about? Do you remember?”
Unfortunately, she remembered every bit of their conversation so clearly it could have been stamped into her head. “Perry, he wanted me to change. And to think about moving.”
“He wanted me to leave the order. He wanted me to change who I was,” she explained in a rush. “Perry wanted me to become English and follow him to wherever he wanted to go.” Of course, she’d realized that those things were just the beginning. She knew that if she couldn’t change to suit his new life, she’d lose him.
“And what did you say when he asked you to change? To leave Crittenden County?”
“I told him I didn’t want to leave. And that I didn’t want to become English,” she confessed. “I said that I liked who I was, and that I had thought he’d liked me, too.”
Though she was talking to the sheriff and not a girlfriend, she finally voiced the private worries she’d been harboring. “Why did he ask me to court him if he didn’t like who I was in the first place? It makes no sense.”
Sheriff Kramer crossed his legs.
She knew he was waiting. “I told Perry that I couldn’t move. I told him that I loved my bed-and-breakfast and was hoping it would become a success.”
“And Perry, did he understand your reasons?”
She shook her head slowly. Even now his dismissal of everything that was important to her stung like a slap in the face. “Not at all. He said it was destined for failure. That no tourists would come to Crittenden County.”
“Ah.”
Frannie watched him pull the cap off the pen and scribble more on his paper. And the butterflies got worse in her stomach. She didn’t want to remember any more. She wanted to pretend that the rest of what had happened could be erased.
As she continued to hesitate, he eyed her. “And then what happened, Frannie? After he asked you to change, after you told him you wanted to leave . . . what happened?”
He wanted answers. She knew she had two choices. She could either tell the complete truth—tell Sheriff Kramer about the sunglasses that Perry gave her, tell how she’d tossed them into the woods because she’d been hurt and confused.
Or she could tell only half of the truth. Say that she ran.
If she told the full story, it would undoubtedly bring more questions. Questions about where he got the sunglasses, about the Englischers he was spending time with who she knew nothing about. If she never mentioned throwing the sunglasses or running into Jacob Schrock . . . if she said she just went home, perhaps Sheriff Kramer would be satisfied and leave. Leave her in peace. Maybe then she wouldn’t have to think about the whole incident anymore.