he could take care of his own dinner.
She thought about calling Ben. What stopped her from doing so was that she didn’t know what she would say to him. She had no idea what it was that was bothering her—what it was about Graham leaving the house with his guns after having hit his wife that made her stomach ache.
When she reached for her phone she didn’t fully realize it was Abby’s number she was dialing until it was ringing. Abby picked up on the second ring.
“Abby, is Richard there?”
There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds, until eventually Abby said, “No. He and Graham left around noon. Said they were going hunting.”
She hung up with Abby, and once she’d reached the turn at the bottom of the hill, she aimed the car toward home. She tried to analyze what it was she was feeling, except that each time she tried she ran into a dead end. Graham and Richard had every right to go hunting. In fact, the thought of either man not taking every available opportunity to go out into the woods was an odd one. So what was bothering her? Hunting ran in the Baxter blood. After all, CJ was hunting with Mr. Kadziolka.
It was that thought that carried her back into her subdivision, and that thought that caused her to pull over, leaving the engine idling. She couldn’t have told a cop how long she’d been sitting there had one rolled up and inquired. Her mind was engaged in some strange gymnastics and she couldn’t put her finger on why. It kept returning to Graham and Richard out hunting, and CJ and Mr. Kadziolka doing the same. It wasn’t much later that she remembered the article CJ was writing—the wicked smile he’d given her when she asked about it.
This time she called CJ. His number went directly to voice mail, which meant that either he was out of range or the phone was turned off. She ended the call and then sat there in her car, wondering what she should do. While she hadn’t known Dennis before CJ came back to Adelia, she now had his number in her speed dial.
“H-hello,” he said.
“Hi, Dennis. This is Julie.”
“Oh, h-hi, Julie.”
Julie thought she heard another voice on Dennis’s side of the line. It sounded as if Dennis had cupped the phone and said something. Then he was back.
“S-sorry about that,” he said.
“That’s okay.”
She didn’t say anything else for several seconds and she could feel Dennis growing confused and uncomfortable. She didn’t blame him. She was CJ’s married ex-girlfriend, after all. She took a deep breath, debating whether or not to apologize for disturbing him and end the call. Instead she listened to whatever it was in her stomach that, to this point, had kept her from going home.
She decided to tell him everything—about Graham hitting Meredith, about Graham leaving with the guns, about CJ’s article.
Dennis absorbed all of it, and when she was done, the silence on the other end of the line possessed a qualitative difference.
Finally, Dennis said, “I’ll check on him.”
And then he was gone.
Three shapes moved through the trees like shadows, the sounds of their passing muted against the aural backdrop of the forest. The sun was near gone, and the growing dark made them indiscernible from the pine trees.
Graham was on point, and while he couldn’t hear either his father or Richard behind him, he knew they were there. When Daniel dropped them off a half mile back so that they could enter the forest, Graham was worried about how his father would handle himself. What they were doing was the province of young men. But so far, George had proved him wrong. His footfalls were as quiet as Graham’s.
Artie’s mistake was sharing his itinerary with several of his regular customers. Once he’d done that, it became a simple matter for Graham to decide the best place. Meachem made the most sense, since Artie and CJ planned to be there for a full day at least; and the fact that there was only a single campground on the lake made them easy to find.
The clear sky and bright moon were allies as Graham picked his path toward the lake. Depending on the setup of Artie and CJ’s camp, Graham might get a clear shot without having to leave the cover provided by the woods.
He stopped when he saw the fire—just the faintest glow carried around the tree trunks.