Girls of Brackenhill - Kate Moretti Page 0,53

forced out, Hannah thought but did not say. She was intent on keeping up the act: Wyatt had meant nothing to her then, meant nothing to her now. She affected a look of boredom. Changed the subject. “It’ll be maybe two weeks until they can ID the body. Maybe more if they can’t find a hit through dental records in missing persons.”

“And then what?” Huck leaned back against the countertop, swirled his wineglass.

Now it was Hannah’s turn to play along, pretend they were casually discussing the weather, the lack of rain. “I don’t know. I mean, I can’t imagine this girl isn’t related to Julia’s disappearance.” Then, a quick thought: she hadn’t meant to hide it. “Huck, she was pregnant. When she died.”

“Really?”

“See, it’s connected. I can feel it.” Hannah shook her head, staring at the wineglass in her hand. “It’s connected to Julia.”

“How?”

She resented Huck pressing the issue. She wanted him to go along to get along, like he always had, always did with her. “What do you mean, how?” Sometimes she wondered if he was stupid. Quickly, she felt bad for thinking it. But honestly, “how”? Maybe she was just tired. She never used to be so impatient with him. She took a deep breath and a swig of wine. When she answered again, she kept her voice level. “Well, my sister goes missing. Seventeen years later they find the body of a pregnant teenage girl, killed around the same time my sister disappeared, on our family property. How can it not be connected, in some way? Seems like a no-brainer to me.”

“Only if your aunt and uncle are involved.” To Huck it was a thought exercise, a playful game; true for most things in his life.

Hannah felt another surge of anger, then tempered it. “No. You can access the castle grounds from the back, up the embankment on the west side. It leads down to a road.” She pointed south. Then pivoted, pointed west, toward the courtyard, where the sun was glowing gold through the trees. “The river is there.”

“So you think someone killed a teenager, then hiked her body up a steep embankment to bury her at Brackenhill. For what purpose?”

“I don’t know!” Hannah exclaimed, exasperated. “If I knew, obviously we’d know who it was, right? What if . . . this is crazy, but what if Julia killed the girl and buried her? And she ran away to hide from the crime? Or! What if someone else killed the girl and Julia saw it, then ran away to stay safe?”

“Like witness protection?” Huck turned his back, resumed his chopping. He seemed tired of the conversation. “I mean, maybe. Sure. Hannah, there’s something else we should talk about.”

She didn’t respond, didn’t have to. Knew where he was going before he said it. At her feet, Rink whined, and she scratched his ears.

“I have to go home.” He ran a hand through his hair, his back still to her. “It’s coming into fall planting season. I have clients to keep. The crew’s been keeping up with the maintenance clients: the mowing, hedge trimming, weeding. But there are incoming projects I have to handle.”

She knew he was right—Huck did a lot of the design work, and it was his business. She thought back to the first night she’d met him, at the bar. All his friends in suits and ties, working in finance jobs in DC. They’d been harried, lined in the face, their mouths pinched in permanent fury: at traffic, pedestrians, clients, the market, their bosses, their idiot bosses. And then Huck, his face relaxed, his nails dirty, his eyes laughing. He’d left their world, the suits and ties and washed-out faces, to pursue his own path, to be outdoors, his own idiot boss. He’d been one of them, once upon a time, in finance. He’d gone to college for business administration, taken the requisite associate job working sixty hours a week right out of school. Left to “dig in the dirt,” they’d mocked. Hannah had gone to dinner with the whole crew and their wives, new babies. They made twice Huck’s salary now and had all looked exhausted.

“I can’t leave yet,” Hannah said. She had a job to return to too. They’d been patient so far, but Patrice, her boss, had left her a slightly huffy voice mail yesterday morning, asking when she thought she’d be returning.

She and Huck had a life together in Virginia. They had a couple of friends. “Stuart needs placement. He’s on

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