In Strange Woods - Claire Cray Page 0,81

and smiled calmly, reaching over to take his hand.

“Took her an hour to get to my place,” Deenie continued with obvious difficulty, dabbing her eyes with a bandana. “I called Charlie, and he hurried to the cabin. But it was too late. She’d already passed. And then Marni called me, told me somebody’d seen Robert in town…”

“So she didn’t see it,” James said. “Grace. She didn’t actually see anyone throw…”

“No, she didn’t,” Deenie said. “But…”

Charlie was patting the table and working his lips like he wanted to speak. After straining for a few moments, he looked at Beau and stomped his feet under the table.

“Footprints,” Beau suggested, and Charlie echoed the word.

“Charlie saw footprints,” Deenie confirmed. “In the mud, from the cabin to the river and back into the woods.”

“Hang on,” James said, feeling his head spin. “I read an article. It said there wasn’t any evidence.”

“It was raining hard by the time the cops came,” Deenie said. “The prints were gone. Charlie told ‘em what he could, and so did Marni and me, but—Grace was terrified Robert would come after her and find you, and said if we said a word about you or her, she’d take you and run. So we agreed to keep it hidden. Marni ran over to Corvallis for baby supplies so nobody’d recognize her. And we just did our best to take care of you and Grace. After a couple of weeks, when we could tell Robert wasn’t gonna have to answer for shit, I sent Grace to stay with my cousin in Montana. The next spring, she wrote and told me she’d found a way to get to New York City. Said she was dying for a fresh start.”

“So nothing happened to him?” James demanded. “Robert? Where is he now?”

“Oh, he’s dead,” Deenie said, with a profound air of vengeance. “Cancer took him almost ten years ago.”

Hunter was looking thoughtfully at Charlie, his brow furrowed. Then he looked at Deenie. “I gotta assume,” he said slowly, “you don’t really think that baby went into the river.”

Deenie looked down at the table, silent for a moment as she wrung the bandana in her hand. “I don’t know,” she said at last.

“Stranger things have happened in the woods,” Beau said peacefully.

Hunter cast him a bemused look. “Have they?”

Beau met his eyes with one of his wise, enigmatic smiles. “I’m not even sure it’s the strangest part of this story.”

Hunter granted a nod of respect for Beau’s willingness to entertain such an outlandish possibility. Still, he was clearly unconvinced, and his eyes went back to Charlie. “Footprints,” he repeated cautiously, like he was wary of causing offense.

“I think what Mr. Quaid means to imply,” Beau said, throwing Hunter an amused look, “is that they may have been Daisy Ann’s.”

Charlie sighed wearily, looking at Deenie.

“We know,” Deenie said. Her tears had stopped, and she propped her chin on her hand as she mulled it over. “We know. We thought about it every which way for years, how the baby could’ve ended up in her hands—”

“Wait, wait,” James cut in sharply, tensing up as his eyes darted from Deenie to Charlie and back again. “What do you mean you thought about it for years? You knew?” Anger buzzed through him, bringing heat to his face. “You knew this whole time we were both alive? Who else? What about Grace?”

Beau watched him, laying a hand on his shoulder, and then looked at Deenie.

“Honey,” Deenie murmured wearily, suddenly looking much older. “We didn’t know. We wondered, and only later, when Beau told us his birthday. We wondered. But Daisy Ann swore up and down she brought Beau from Alaska. Swore she was still up there when she had him, when it happened.”

“And you didn’t think there was any way she could be lying?” James shot back accusingly, feeling like his skin was on fire.

“Of course we did. Biggest troublemaker in the whole family. But even if we’d been sure…”

For the first time, Beau seemed vaguely disturbed. “Let sleeping dogs lie, hm? Because Robert was alive?”

“That was one reason.” Deenie’s voice had grown quieter, her eyes more anguished. “But besides that, we couldn’t see what good would come out of stirring that pot. Risk Robert comin’ after Beau, or get Daisy Ann in more trouble? There were already people who didn’t think she was fit to raise a child. We didn’t want the state coming to take Beau away. And who knows what trouble Grace would’ve been in, taking you across