The Widow's Watcher Page 7

  “I hear you met Hannah yesterday,” Owen said during the drive back into Raven.

  Jenna nodded.

  “You’ll have to forgive her,” he said. “She’s walking a line right now between who she is and who she wants to be, and it’s exhausting. At least for me.”

  Jenna recognized a father’s worry, and her throat tightened.

  At one time, she might have tried to minimize his fears. Now she knew the truth. He was right to be afraid.

  “She seems like a great kid,” Jenna said.

  He gave her a small smile. “Her mother, Valerie, she’s not around much. For the best, probably.” His words held no malice. “But Hannah and Dad are close. He spoils her. We both do, I guess, in different ways.”

  “She’s very protective of him,” Jenna said. “She told me about your mother. About your younger siblings.”

  Owen turned his face to her, his astonishment evident.

  “Not specifics,” Jenna hastened to add. “Just enough for me to put my foot in it with Lars.”

  “Dad talked to you about that?”

  Jenna shook her head. “No, not really. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up. I just . . . I think I might have upset him.”

  Owen’s features were inscrutable as he looked back at the road.

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” Jenna said. “I don’t want to pry.”

  She turned away.

  It was a hollow truth to accept. Jenna had been a journalist not so long ago, in another life, but she’d found a different perspective after being on the other side of tragedy.

  The remainder of the drive passed in silence. When Owen parked the truck at the garage, Jenna reached for the door handle and turned to thank him for the lift, but Owen made no move to exit the vehicle.

  “It was hard on Dad,” he said suddenly. “Hard on both of us, but especially him.”

  “Owen,” Jenna began. “You don’t have to—”

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “All the newspapers, scrambling to cover the story. People everywhere, so many people.” He was lost in his memories. “And then, after so much fuss, no resolution. No answers. Eventually, all those people began to fade away. Until the only ones left were Dad and me. Alone, trying to figure out how to live with it.”

  Jenna’s mouth opened, and she heard herself asking the question she’d told herself she didn’t want to know. Too late, it hung there between them, floating like a soap bubble about to burst.

  “And your mother?”

  Owen took a deep breath and met her gaze. “My mother,” he said with a sigh. “My mother is in the same place she’s been for the last twenty-nine years. The Minnesota State Secure Psychiatric Hospital.”

  16

  The secondhand coat was puffy and garish, a bright hunter’s orange.

  “That is one ugly coat,” Cassie said as Jenna crossed the street to Owen’s garage.

  “Ugly and warm,” Jenna replied under her breath.

  She carried her purchases from the secondhand shop, along with the small bag from the general store where she’d bought a toothbrush and a few other basics.

  Owen was busy with a customer but spotted her coming through the doorway.

  She held up the coat he’d loaned her with a questioning look. His smile was distracted as he tilted his chin toward a coatrack next to the entrance.

  “Yes, Mrs. Harvey,” he said to the white-haired woman in front of him. “We can change the oil and give it a look-see while it’s here for new tires.”

  “I only want you to use that specific brand.” The elderly woman spoke in the overloud voice people sometimes use when they can’t hear themselves well.

  Jenna waved in Owen’s direction without meeting his eyes and made her way back onto the street.

  She sucked in what she hoped would be a cleansing breath and pulled up the zipper of the traffic-cone-orange coat.

  With the few items on her to-do list crossed off, Jenna forced one foot in front of the other with the halfhearted idea she’d explore the town.

  The silence at least gave her a chance to sort through and unravel the threads crisscrossing her mind, tangling together to form a jumbled knot of confusion.

  Jenna’s feet carried her places her mind paid no attention to while she found and worried at a new thread in the mix.

  College. A long time ago. She’d had a roommate who was a good person. Not someone who did things only to put on a résumé, like so many others—like Jenna herself, if she was honest—but a genuinely good person.

  Iris was her name.

  Iris had talked Jenna into lending a hand at the campus crisis center where she volunteered three nights a week.

  “I don’t think I’ll be good at that,” Jenna had demurred. “What do I say?”

  “You don’t have to fix anything. You just have to be willing to connect,” Iris had said. “It’s the connection that makes the difference.”

  Jenna had left the crisis center after her one and only shift knowing she was out of her depth. She’d made excuses when Iris asked if she’d like to volunteer again. At some point, the girl had stopped asking. The next semester, Jenna quietly applied for a change of dorm rooms and a new roommate.

  Now, though, Jenna thought she understood what Iris had been trying to tell her. Connections were what kept people tied to the world. Without connections, there was nothing left to stop them from simply floating away.

  Something as simple as a stranger on the other end of the line willing to listen. Or a crotchety old man who believed he knew best.

  Connections.

  That was what she was forming here. And that was exactly what she didn’t want to do.

  The only connections that mattered were gone, severed completely and irrevocably. If she was going to find the strength to do what she was planning, Jenna needed to ensure it remained that way.

  “Force your protagonist to make a choice,” Cassie said. “Then follow through on it, see where it leads. A passive protagonist is the worst.”

  “I’ve made my choice,” Jenna said.

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  A ripple of shock coursed through her at Cassie’s admonishment that she hadn’t yet managed to kill herself.

  “Not here in the metaphysical sense, dummy,” Cassie said. “Here, here. Open your eyes.”

  Jenna focused on the world around her.

  She couldn’t have known where the Raven Public Library was located. And yet, there she was, standing on the sidewalk just outside the entrance.

  “A coincidence,” Jenna said.

  “Mm-hmm.” Her daughter sounded unconvinced.

  17

  Research, for Jenna, was second nature.

  What she hadn’t expected was to be stonewalled by a pleasant-faced librarian as soon as she’d mentioned what she was looking for.

  “You a reporter, hon?” The woman’s voice dripped with honeyed sweetness but couldn’t hide the underlying mistrust.

  “I was, once upon a time,” Jenna answered truthfully. “Not anymore.”

  “A writer, then?” the woman prodded. “One of those true-crime authors looking to cash in on an old story?”

  “No.” Jenna tried to swallow her defensiveness.

  “That’s good.” The librarian gave her a cold stare.

  “I’m just passing the time,” Jenna said.

  The woman’s lips pursed. The set of her hand upon her hip told Jenna she didn’t believe her.

  “I’m not a reporter,” Jenna said. “I’m not a true-crime writer. I’d simply like to read about the case.”

  She should have stopped there.

  “If that’s okay with you,” she couldn’t help adding.

  “You need to work on your people skills,” Cassie said after the librarian grudgingly led Jenna to an ancient microfiche machine, delivered two boxes of film, then walked stiffly away without saying a word.

  “These are the wrong ones,” Jenna said under he
r breath as she examined the labels on the film boxes.

  “Guess you shouldn’t have pissed her off.”

  “Language,” Jenna admonished. She rose and walked back to the checkout counter.

  “The years you requested have been misplaced, dear,” the librarian told her. “The year prior and the year after are the best I can do.”

  The woman’s shoulders were squared and she had a dare in her eyes.

  “What did I tell you?” Cassie said.

  Jenna wouldn’t be put off so easily. “The computers?” she asked, gesturing to the bank of three monitors lined up along the wall. “I assume they’re open to the public?”

  The librarian gave a chilly nod.

  “Thank you,” Jenna replied.

  She’d taken two steps in that direction when the woman spoke again.

  “I should mention, though . . . the internet is down today.”

  Jenna stopped and turned back to the woman, who’d crossed her arms, waiting for Jenna’s next move.

  Of course it is.

  Jenna returned to the counter, placed her hands flat upon the sides of the boxes of film she’d left there, and pulled them toward her. “Thank you for your help,” she said, leaning on the last word.

  She received nothing but a thin smile in return.

  Out of sheer stubbornness, Jenna loaded the film from the later year into the microfiche.

  “Well, that was fun,” Cassie said. “What exactly are you hoping to find?”

  “Shush,” Jenna murmured. She didn’t have an answer for that.

  Hours passed, unmarked and unnoticed. She paid no more attention to the minutes ticking past than she did to the librarian who sent irritated glances in her direction from time to time, even as she whispered into a telephone from the glass-walled office behind the desk.

  Jenna prodded and pushed at the scant information available. She began looking for rocks to peer beneath that had remained undisturbed for a very long time.

  She found what she was searching for buried behind local sports team victories and bake sale advertisements. A single follow-up article.

  Jenna leaned forward in the uncomfortably hard plastic chair and scanned the article. It was light on facts, leaving behind as many questions as it answered. The faces of two children who’d vanished from the surface of the earth stared back at her.

  This is a mistake. What are you playing at?

  With a growing sense of dread, Jenna reminded herself she couldn’t drown in the flood of someone else’s disaster.

  Not unless she allowed herself to be swept away.

  “You’ve never been a good liar,” Cassie said.

  Jenna’s hand shot out, flicking the switch on the side of the machine. The ghost children vanished, and she could breathe again.

  If only she could erase the image from her mind as easily.

  18

  Lars was parked along the street waiting for her when Jenna came out the door of the library. She did a double take at the sight of his truck, then turned in his direction, her head down against the wind, which had started to pick up.

  When she opened the passenger door and climbed in, her face was guarded. Troubled.

  He knew what she’d been doing. Eleanor Lutz, the librarian, had called him straightaway.

  “She says she used to be a reporter, but claims she’s not working on a story. I don’t know, Lars,” Eleanor had said. He could picture her face on the other end of the call, full of typical nervous worry. “There’s something about her. I can’t put my finger on it, but I don’t like her.”

  “You didn’t like me much the first time we met either,” Lars had reminded her.

  “You were six years old, and you were a jerk,” Eleanor said. Lars couldn’t deny that. At six, he hadn’t cared about anything except hockey, fishing, and baseball. Impressing a girl who always had her nose in a book hadn’t been on his list of priorities.

  “It’s fine, Eleanor. I know who she is. She’s staying at my place. Temporarily,” he added, trying to set the woman’s mind at ease.

  “Then what is she doing sneaking around behind your back, digging up all this old stuff again?” Eleanor demanded.

  But Lars understood why Jenna didn’t ask her questions directly, though he’d never be able to explain it to Eleanor.

  With enough time and distance, even the worst wounds could appear healed, but Lars knew better. It seemed Jenna Shaw did too.

  “Owen says he might have made some progress tracking down the part for your van,” Lars said to Jenna as the truck trundled down the road.

  She didn’t reply.

  “Forecast is calling for more snow.” He turned the truck toward home.

  She didn’t ask where they were going. She didn’t ask how he’d known he could find her at the library, nor mention what she might have learned.

  The air around them bristled with unspoken things.

  When he pulled into his driveway and turned off the truck, Jenna made no move to get out.

  She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again, looking away.

  He waited.

  The two of them stared out at the ice he’d pulled her back from, and Lars wondered if he was destined to do it again.

  Finally, she turned and spoke.

  “My family . . .” She stopped, but he didn’t interrupt. He could give her little except his silence while she gathered her thoughts.

  “A plane crash.” Her gaze was drawn again toward the frozen lake. “A plane crash took them all.”

  She was rubbing the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other, massaging the hollow there.

  “They were coming back from Alaska. It was a small plane, one that was supposed to take them to the airport in Anchorage. A mechanical malfunction. No one knows why. My husband, my two amazing daughters, so different from each other. And my son. My baby.”

  One corner of her mouth lifted sadly. Her voice trembled as it navigated the high wire she was forcing it across.

  “Matt used to tease me that Ethan was my favorite.”

  Lars braced himself for tears, but he underestimated her.

  “In some ways, maybe he was right. Ethan was six. He loved me in a way the girls didn’t. Not better or worse, just his own way. No one on earth would ever love me that way again. He was my last. He made us whole. I thought we were unbreakable.”

  The harsh, haunted sound that came from her throat made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  She turned to look at him, and the nearness of her, the raw, unvarnished pain that radiated from her, pinned him to his seat. He couldn’t have spoken nor moved a muscle even if he’d wanted to.

  “But nothing’s unbreakable, is it?” Jenna whispered.

  Lars had no words to give her.

  She reached for the handle on the passenger door and stepped out into the cold, hunching against the wind in her bright-orange coat as she made her way toward his home. He let out a pent-up breath as he watched her go.

  He was a fool.

  Only a fool would believe himself capable of helping this woman.

  19

  The previous summer had steamrolled by, never hinting it would be their last. School was scheduled to start in a few weeks, bringing back the sense that the chaos was controlled, scheduled, delineated by report cards and holiday breaks, if only they could make it through summer.

  The days had gone blindingly quick, leaving Jenna, once night had fallen, to search for her own pulse. Was she still in there, somewhere? A real and whole person, with needs and dreams and an identity that didn’t begin and end with the word mom?

  She was, always. But sometimes the pulse was faint. On those nights, she’d be the first to reach for Matt in the dark, a gentle hand on his. With his touch he would help her remember.

  When John had called, insisting they were long overdue for a visit, Matt read the resignation in his wife’s face.

  “We don’t have to go,” he said.

  “It’
s his fortieth birthday, and the kids haven’t seen their cousins in such a long time. He’s your brother. We should go.”

  “But you hate the cold.”

  She tried to smile. The cold didn’t matter so much as the effort of it all.

  Effort was in short supply by the end of the summer.

  She dug down and found the resolve to give Matt a genuine smile, if not a large one.

  “It’s okay.” She took a deep breath at Matt’s dubious expression and exhaled slowly from her mouth. “The kids will love Alaska, and we haven’t seen them since they moved. It’ll be fun.”

  He hugged her tightly, recognizing the feat of determination for what it was.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  “Love you back.”

  Two days later, they met for a rare lunch alone.

  “I’ve been thinking. Why don’t I take the kids to Alaska on my own? You could stay and have a break. Get a head start on that book before school starts?”

  “What? No. I couldn’t do that.” She shook her head. “What would your family think? Besides, traveling with three kids? Alone? That sounds awful.”

  She dismissed the idea. It was a sweet offer, but she couldn’t do that to him.

  “I’m serious, Jen. They’re not babies anymore, and Cassie can help.”

  He was sincere. He’d do this, give her this, and not think twice about it.

  “What about John and Melanie?”

  “What about them? They have five kids, Jenna. John went on a whiskey tour of Scotland a few months ago with some old college friends, and Melanie takes a vacation every summer with her sister, religiously. If anyone will understand the need for a break, they will.”

  A flicker of hope flared. An entire week. Alone. Nothing to worry about but the dog and the blinking cursor in front of her.

  “No.” She stamped at the little fire before it could catch and burn. “I can’t do that. It’s his fortieth birthday. And the kids. I can’t just . . .”

  Matt raised an eyebrow at her. “What? Leave them in the bumbling care of their father?”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  He smiled and wiped his mouth on a napkin, then sat back and looked at his watch. “Listen, you don’t have to decide right now. Sleep on it a few days. I’ll hold off buying the plane tickets, but think about it. Okay?”