didn’t have to give up, but did anyway. There’s always time to write, if you want it. Story creates a space in which to be told.”
Just like a man to think the world was simple, that story made a place for itself. That you didn’t have to juggle and bargain for every moment of free mental space, for energy.
“Maybe if you’d been around more,” she said, unable to resist a dig herself.
He drew in and released a long breath.
“Maybe,” he said with a nod.
“So—it was a dig.”
“Like I say.” He turned to face her. The lines around his mouth and eyes had grown deeper, his skin crepey and soft. But he was still handsome, still a smile turned up the corners of his mouth—in, as always, on the cosmic joke of it. “It was just a reminder. You have a gift. A calling.”
She laughed a little. He’d always said this to her—her gift, her talent, her calling. It seemed like this idea, like so many of the ideas he had about his only daughter, was more about “The Bruce Winter” than it was about her. What would it be like for the great writer to have a child who was just normal, who had no special place in the world? As much as she wanted to believe that there was more to her than had so far been revealed, she was fairly sure there wasn’t.
“You saw the news?” she said, changing the subject.
“I did,” he said, watching her. “What are you thinking?”
She ran down what she knew so far, her conversations with Chris and Henry, the files Henry had sent her, her visit to the Markham house. She didn’t tell him about the crystal heart; that was hers alone. He listened carefully, rubbing at his chin.
“Have you talked to Greg?”
“He knows I want to follow the story.”
“Does he know you took Lily to the Markham house?”
She shook her head. Sins of omission. She’d been guilty of it before; it had almost unstitched them—more than once. And here she was, doing it again.
“Why this?” he asked. “Why now?”
Something about the way the leaves rustled brought her back there again.
The truth was, she didn’t remember much. After that first blow, there was just a series of images, sounds, vivid but disjointed. Where the dog had bitten her, she saw the bright red of her own torn flesh, even the incomprehensible white of bone, the pain had yet to register. She heard Hank issuing a warrior’s scream that was abruptly, brutally silenced. She wasn’t even sure then where he had come from. Tess over the shoulder of a giant, hanging, a rag doll. Hank, limp and pale being dragged by the wrist. The labored sound of the big man’s breathing. The smell of rot. Her clothes growing damp. The sun sinking. The sound of birdsong. Darkness encroaching. Then the sound of her name, and Hank’s, and Tess’s. Knowing that she was the only one who could answer, but she didn’t have a voice.
The world was far and fading fast. She’d lost a lot of blood from those dog bites; the one on her leg would take more than fifty stitches. A plastic surgeon would be called but the scar of that bite would mar her leg forever. Her jaw was broken, both eyes swollen and black; she had two broken ribs. And she was the lucky one. By far.
Years of therapy, a career that let her dig deep into crime, trying to understand why people did what they did to each other, and yet, and yet, psychologically, in many ways, she was still where she was when they found in her the woods, twelve hours after Kreskey took her friends.
“I’m thinking there’s a connection,” she said in answer to his question. “Between Markham and the Boston Boogeyman.”
“And Kreskey.”
She nodded, felt her chest tighten. “Yes. Maybe.”
“Three men guilty of horrible crimes, all of whom escaped justice.”
“Until they didn’t.”
“It’s a good story,” he said. “Who will you cover it for?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
She remembered this feeling, the feeling of bringing something to her father and waiting for his reaction. Her mother loved everything Rain said and did; even her mediocre outings were met with enthusiasm from her mom. And so Rain learned to never be afraid, that it was okay to try and fail and try again. A beautiful lesson that had served her well. But her father recognized good work when he saw it. There was a special look on his face, a