In Strange Woods - Claire Cray Page 0,82

state lines and forging birth certificates to cover it up...”

James’s initial anger settled into an uneasy simmer as he listened, trying to understand.

“Besides, Grace had tried her damndest to leave it all behind. She’d already been through so much, taken on so much…and how could we know, really? At the time we did believe Robert was there, that he got his hands on that baby, and maybe I still do. So how the little one could have ended up with Daisy Ann, we just couldn’t imagine. It was too hard to believe, and…maybe it just seemed better not to.”

“So you didn’t tell her?” Beau asked after glancing at James, who couldn’t seem to get the words out. “Grace?”

Deenie hesitated, and James, predicting the answer, unconsciously clenched his fists under the table.

“You have to understand,” Deenie said, her voice tight with sorrow. “She walked away from that baby, and it disappeared. She ran to get help and her mother died alone. She watched her daddy lose his mind, heard he killed her baby brother. Ran away from everything she knew, scared he wanted to find her and finish the job…”

“She was traumatized,” Hunter surmised quietly.

“You can’t blame Grace.” Deenie looked pleadingly at James. “That first night she spent at my house, she bawled so long and hard Marni and I were scared she’d give herself a heart attack. She cried all night and then she got up and just…shut it down. Wouldn’t talk about it. Wouldn’t hear anything from anybody except how to take care of you, James, and how to keep you safe, and how to get the hell out of here. So when I wrote to her five years later, said we thought there might be a little tiny chance that baby might’ve lived, might’ve ended up with Daisy Ann, she said…” Deenie’s lips trembled again and she closed her eyes, pausing for composure. “She just couldn’t take it. Not if there wasn’t proof. She said she was sorry, but it just hurt too much to dream about.”

James slowly shook his head as silence hung in the air, the shock of the conversation settling into a kind of dull ache. He wasn’t angry. Maybe that would have been less painful than the helpless sorrow he felt now, hearing echoes of himself in Deenie’s words.

James couldn’t hold it against Grace that she hadn’t come back to Woodstock, hadn’t investigated Beau or confronted Daisy Ann. She’d been a teenager caught in a freakish situation, and she’d taken charge of it as best she could. And he, of all people, could understand feeling like the only way to survive was to run like hell and not look back.

“How could I blame her?” James said at last, hearing the tiredness in his voice. “I can’t blame her at all.”

Chapter 31: Echoes

After the table was cleared and the food was packed away, Hunter sat in the living room for a while with an emotional Deenie until she was ready to head home. Then he wandered out back to say goodnight to James and Beau, who had stepped out onto the wraparound deck after cleaning up.

Beau was smoking a cigarette on the wooden porch swing that hung against the back of the cabin, looking spooky and beautiful in the shadows. James stood a few feet away at the top of the steps that led down to the backyard, gazing moodily out over the green grass at the edge of the dark woods—his woods. When he turned to meet Hunter’s eyes, he still looked dazed.

“Hey,” Hunter said, closing the door behind him and slowly crossing the deck, exchanging a nod of greeting with Beau before focusing fully on James. “You okay?”

James faintly nodded, holding his gaze.

Hunter stared back at him, not sure if James was waiting for him to say something or not.

“It’s like an echo,” James said at last, in a musing, melancholy tone. “Her mother died young. And she ran away. Abandoned everything. Tried to forget.” James paused. “Then she died young. And I ran away. Abandoned everything. Tried to forget.”

Hunter nodded, tenderly watching his face as he contemplated the idea. “But you didn’t just run away,” he said after a moment. “You came back.”

“And you didn’t forget,” Beau chimed in, gently rocking himself on the swing with one foot on the ground. “You’ve remembered.” After a pause, he asked, “Do you know what Walter Benjamin said about echoes?”

They both turned to him. Hunter had no idea who ‘Walter Benyameen’ was, and judging from