In the Waning Light

by Loreth Anne White

  Meg felt herself melting, her legs turning to water. She laughed, a little breathless, seriously contemplating it, but she placed her palms flat against his chest and pushed him away, even as she still kissed him. “Noah. School. Will … be … late.”

  He pulled back, his chest rising and falling fast, his green eyes sparking. He lifted her left hand and gently thumbed her naked ring finger as his gaze locked with hers. Silence simmered. Her heart beat louder, faster.

  “I love you, you know that, Meg Brogan?”

  Blood drained from her head.

  But before she could think, or respond, he was making for the door. “Get what you need. I’ll be in the truck.”

  Meg ran upstairs, feeling she was suddenly pushed up against the edge of an abyss. Blake was serious. Dead serious. She’d felt it in the aggression of his kiss, the intensity in his eyes. Heard it in the catch in his voice.

  I love you, you know that, Meg Brogan?

  She had to commit, or cut it off with Blake right now. This was the point of no return. She’d already taken off her engagement ring. She was growing in love with the idea of staying here, not going back to Seattle. But at the same time all her fears of commitment and intimacy were starting to clang like fire alarms around the edge of her brain. It made her skin prickle.

  Tension tickling, she rummaged quickly through her mom’s closet. As she moved the clothes, the scent of her mother’s perfume rose from the fabric. How was that even possible, after all this time? Was she just imagining it?

  Look for that dress, Meggie-Peg. The red one.

  A chill lifted the hairs at the nape of her neck at the sound of Sherry’s voice. Meg stilled. Slowly she glanced over her shoulder, fully expecting to see Sherry sitting there on the bed. All she saw was her own reflection in the far mirror, and for a startling moment she thought it was her mom. Her pulse quickened. Memories were strange. Scents especially could trigger them so strongly that the resulting memory almost seemed to hold enough power to physically reconstruct a person long gone, make them shimmer in front of you like some holographic image.

  She returned to the clothes, and found a red dress hanging neatly in a protective plastic laundry sleeve.

  Yes, that one. Killer dress, Meggie, Just retro enough. Full circle … what do they say? … Fashion goes in twenty-year cycles … and you do need a killer look tonight. Tonight’s the night, tonight will be the big one …

  Meg heard Blake’s diesel truck engine rumble to life. Had to get to Noah. Couldn’t be late for the kid, not with the strange mood he was in. Meg grabbed the red dress from the closet, held it up in front of her, and turned quickly to the mirror.

  See, Meggie-Peg. Killer. Now grab some shoes …

  No. She had boots with a heel in her truck. Boots would be better in this weather.

  At least take the fake fur, kiddo …

  Meg scratched deeper into the closet and found her mom’s fake fur coat, and smiled. She folded it all into a bag, and made for the stairs. Jonah would die if he saw her in this outfit. But she didn’t give a hoot. In fact, the very idea of dressing up as a version of her mom lightened her heart. Sherry would have gotten a kick out of it. As she hurried through the living area, she stalled at the sound of Sherry’s voice again.

  Meggie, remember my goldfish? They lived on that shelf, in their perfect world …

  Her gaze shot to where the fish tank used to be. Where the safe was now in full view.

  No predators in their waters …

  The safe door was shut. She went over and tugged on it. Locked. The combination must have been turned. She was sure she’d left the door open while Kovacs was standing here. One of Tommy’s cleaners must have closed it. Not that it mattered—why should it? But something suddenly felt off about the cleanup job, and people inside her house.

  Meg locked the front door and hurried out to the waiting truck. As she climbed in and shut the door, it struck her how wrong Sherry had been all those years ago.

  Sometimes the predator lives right here, and he looks just like the rest of us …

  “Who’s going to stay with me if you’re both going to the party?” Noah complained, testy, weepy, and tired as they pulled into the marina parking lot. He hadn’t eaten his school lunch, and according to his teacher had not participated in his art class.

  “Your uncle Geoff,” Blake said.

  “He’s not here. Look. His car’s gone.”

  “He will be. He promised.” Blake’s blood pressure rose. He tried to tamp down his temper, but he was frothing at the bit about Geoff not being here. The clock was ticking. He needed to know from Geoff if Henry had driven his red van to the spit that day. And he had to tell Meg.

  “Other kids are going,” whined Noah. “There’ll be rides in the harbor on the whale-watching boat. For free. Every hour, even in the dark.”

  “Those kids are older. And the weather might not be good, Noah. I doubt it’s going to happen.” Blake swung open his door, refusing to look at Meg. He’d laid his heart bare, and he could see it had unnerved her. What did he expect? For her to say, I love you, too, Blake Sutton? He was grabbing too hard and fast, because he was shit scared it was all going to go to hell in a handbasket now.

  “But they said!” Noah yelled.

  “Come, out,” Blake said, opening Noah’s door.

  Noah dropped out of the truck and stormed toward the house, his shoulders and chin set forward.

  “You sure Geoff will be here?” Meg said gently, touching his arm.

  “He promised.”

  “Blake, maybe you shouldn’t come tonight. Maybe you should stay with Noah.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to go alone, that’s all.” He raked his hand over his hair. Thunder cracked. A jagged fork of lightning speared down over the spit. Daylight was waning. Puce and black clouds boiled in. Water slapped against the shore with the growing tidal surge. Another smash of thunder sounded right above them and the heavens suddenly let loose. Marbles of rain bombed to the ground. Together they ran for cover. A curtain of water pummeled down onto the tin roof of the marina, and the sky turned black.

  He held open the door for her.

  “I won’t be alone,” she said, entering the marina office. “The place will be packed with people. And I don’t plan to stay long. I basically want to talk with Kovacs, and maybe Ryan Miller, and I want to ask Tommy a few more questions in light of Emma’s latest revelations. And thank him for the renos. I can’t accept the freebie. I need to pay him back.”

  “Everyone’s paying him back. He owns the whole damn town.” He made for the kitchen.

  She grabbed his arm. “Blake, what is it?”

  “Nothing. I’m just frustrated with Noah. It was going so well.”

  “And then I came along.”

  He held her eyes. Thunder cracked again outside, and growled into the distant mountains. “And Geoff is pissing me off. He should be here.” And I love you. I want you. I don’t want to lose you. “And I don’t feel it’s safe for you to go alone. That’s the bottom line. And if I don’t go, you shouldn’t go, either.”

  Her mouth tightened. “This is about what you said earlier, at the house, isn’t it?”

  His heart beat faster.

  “It’s because I haven’t said anything in return, is that it?”

  “You took off his ring, Meg. I thought—”

  “Blake … just give me a little while, okay?”

  “It was a mistake.” He turned from her and went into the kitchen.

  You asshole. She told you herself she had trouble committing. She told you how Dr. Shrink backed her into a corner by pressing for a marriage date, and look what happened—she ran to Shelter Bay, a place of last resort. Now you’re trying to push her into the same kind of corner? Asshole …

  “Noah!” he barked up the stairwell. No answer. He grabbed his phone, called Geoff. It kicked to vo
ice mail. He swore again. Meg entered the kitchen behind him.

  “Blake?”

  “Go get ready,” he said curtly, not giving her his eyes. “Geoff will be here by the time you are. I need to go unload those sandbags, just in case.”

  From the upstairs window, Meg watched Blake reverse his truck up to the garage. He began to haul sandbags out from the corner of the garage and toss them up into the bed of his truck. His movements were powerful and angry, unrestrained. Meg swallowed, and her eyes burned. She clasped her hand around the diamond ring at her neck.

  Maybe I love you, too, Blake Sutton. Maybe I always have. Maybe this was something else Jonah was wrong about—perhaps, deep down, you were the real reason I could never commit.

  As she watched Blake, she wondered about destiny. If some things were just written into the cosmos. If Sherry’s murder had been like a weird blip in a time-space continuum that had bumped lives into the wrong groove, and she’d been meant to return here, to rectify the blip, rewrite the ending, and reset the clock.

  Her thoughts circled back to what Blake had told her in bed, that his father had beat them. And as she watched Blake laboring with the sandbags, her heart torqued with compassion.

  Oh, the secrets we keep. How we deceive ourselves, often in the name of love …

  How had this shaped Geoff? What invisible scars did he now bear?

  Wait. Stop! Don’t run, Meggie, don’t run!

  Geoff’s voice. Her pulse stuttered as Geoff’s face suddenly loomed into her mind again, waxy white, shining with rain. This time she saw a cut on his cheek. Shit. She rubbed her arms. Had she just added that detail because of what Blake had told her?

  He struck a particularly violent blow early that morning you went missing, cutting open Geoff’s cheek …

  Or was it real?

  Thunder crashed, and lightning streaked down into the bay. She glanced at her watch. She needed to change, or she’d be late, and she suspected Tommy’s event was not going to last long in this weather. Meg turned to make her way to her room, and gasped.

  A small, white-faced figure stood silent in shadow at the end of the passage. Watching her. Like a little ghost child.

  “Noah? Goodness, you gave me a fright. How long have you been standing there?”

  He spun around and disappeared into his room. The door snicked shut.

  She rapped on his door.

  “Go away.”

  “Noah, can I talk to you, please?”

  Silence.

  Meg hesitated and then tried the handle. Locked. Even more uneasy now, Meg made her way to her room, shut the door, showered, and quickly slipped into the red dress. It was a little loose, but she preferred not being sausaged into clothes. She smoothed it down and stepped in front of the mirror. Her heart stuttered in surprise to see a faint memory of her mother looking back at her.

  Meg applied makeup, darkening her eyes, making them stand out. Lips glossed, she slipped into her high-heeled boots and shrugged into the fake fur. A wry smile pulled at her mouth. Sherry would approve—retro chic. Going to do battle in the name of her mom.

  She smoothed down her hair, slipped her recorder, camera, and notebook into an evening purse, and started down the stairs.

  Noah had come out of his room and was in the kitchen, alone, eating bread and Nutella.

  “Not waiting for your uncle Geoff to make dinner?”

  “He’s not here,” Noah mumbled without looking up.

  Meg frowned and glanced at the clock on the stove. Slowly Noah raised his eyes. His body went stone still. He stared at her in her evening outfit with makeup. A small blue vein swelled on his pale temple.

  Blake came in from the office door, taking off his work gloves. He stalled as he saw Meg. He whistled softly.

  Her cheeks heated.

  He came slowly up to her, his gaze locked with hers. Then he brazenly ran his eyes over her, slow, steady, a wolf eating her alive. She swallowed.

  “Well, look at you.” Approval darkened his eyes.

  She became conscious of Noah still transfixed. He began to kick the toe of his shoe against the cabinet. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  “Noah,” Blake said. “Please stop that.”

  He kicked faster. Bangbangbangbangbang.

  “For Pete’s sake, will you please stop that? You’re going to damage the siding.”

  Noah’s face turned bright red. His gaze remained locked on Meg. He kicked harder. Blake stepped forward as if to grab his son off the stool, then he pulled himself back. “Listen, I know you’re—”

  “You’re a liar!” he spat at his dad. Then he turned to Meg. “My dad and Uncle Geoff are liars!”

  “Noah,” Blake said, his voice going low, “what are you talking about?”

  “They know stuff about your sister’s murder. Uncle Geoff was on the spit that night your sister was killed. I heard him and Dad talking. I was outside the door.”

  “What?” Meg’s gaze shot to Blake. The panic and heat she saw in his face struck a blade clean through her heart.

  “Dad and Uncle Geoff have been keeping the secret since that day. Uncle Geoff said if they told you, you’d go looking for the other person.”

  “What other person? Blake—what in the hell is he talking about?”

  “Noah.” Blake took his son’s arm. “Please, I need you to go upstairs.”

  “No!” Meg snapped. “Just no. I want to hear this. I want to hear every damn word he says.” She spun to Noah. “What other person?”

  “Some guy whose marriage would be killed if you found him out.” His voice was going quiet. His eyes were showing fear. “They … they said you’d go on a witch hunt for him because you’re like a dog with a bone. Uncle Geoff said, ‘let her just write her story, and leave that part out.’”

  Every last drop of blood drained from Meg’s head. She reached for the back of a chair to steady herself. She felt as though she’d been shot.

  Thunder boomed overheard. The windows shuddered. The buoys outside thumped in mounting wind.

  “What does he mean, Blake?” she said, very quietly.

  “Meg, I was going to tell—”

  She shot her hands up, palms out, backing away from him as though he might be a viper ready to strike.

  Blake grabbed Noah’s shirt and pulled him down off the stool, shaking. “Get out of here. Go upstairs. Now.”

  Noah clattered up the stairs. Blake’s eyes crackled. His neck muscles bulged. “Sit down, Meg.” He pulled out a chair.

  She glared at him. “I don’t know you. I don’t know you at all.”

  “Sit. Hear me out.”

  Slowly, she sat.

  He yanked out a chair and sat opposite her. “Geoff was on the spit that day. He went to meet someone. When he came back that night, I saw his face was cut. He told me that my father had hit him early that morning, and I believed it, because I’d heard them arguing. Geoff didn’t want to reveal himself to anyone that night, because he didn’t want the shame of being an abused son. And he didn’t want to say he’d gone to meet someone for fear of being outed as gay.”

  “The other person was … a lover?”

  “A boyfriend.”

  “Who?”

  “I think it was Henry. Because of what Irene said on the way home today. It just started to add up. And last night in the shed I found a photo of Geoff and some of his schoolmates in front of a red VW van. I was going to ask him whose van it was.”

  Dizziness swirled. “That’s why you were upset after the bookstore. You learned Henry had taken ownership of his father’s van, and then you heard Henry might have been gay, and you put two and two together, placing Henry and his red van on the spit because you already knew Geoff was there.”

  He nodded, dropped his face into his hands, scrubbed his skin hard.

  “Why, Blake? Why did you keep this from me? I trusted you. We were doing this together.”

  “Meg, I know. I told Geoff I was going to tell you—”

  “You sat on
this for twenty-two years!”

  “No. Not all of this. Only that Geoff was on the spit. I was just figuring out the other pieces at the same time you were.”

  “Bullshit. How can I put the whole picture together when you two are hiding pieces?”

  “Calm down, please. Just listen. Back then we were all convinced that Ty Mack had done it, and it didn’t feel like a big deal that Geoff was on the spit. I believed Geoff back then. And I didn’t want my dad in the news as an abusive father, either. I didn’t want to lose Bull. I didn’t want to be sent to some foster home by social services. Geoff was leaving—I’d have had no one. I did not see it as a big issue.”

  “But it is now. And you’ve been working with me on this for days now. You were with me when Lee Albies told us about a red van.”

  “I didn’t know Henry had a red van, Meg, not until Rose told us.”

  “You saw a photo in the shed.”

  He dragged his hands over his hair. “I didn’t know it was his—I just told you. I was planning to ask Geoff about it. And when I saw that photo I had no idea Henry might be gay.”

  She stared at him, dumbfounded.

  “Geoff begged me to hold off telling you for just one more day, so he could prepare his lover. He said it would destroy his marriage. And if that person is indeed Henry, Geoff is right, it will destroy that marriage. It’ll kill a guy like Henry Thibodeau. He’s been living in an iron closet all his life.”

  Meg got slowly to her feet. She looked down at Blake, bitterness filling her mouth. “I trusted you, Blake. The least you could have done is trusted me with this, too.”

  “Meg, I can see how this looks from your perspective now, in hindsight. But until today—”

  “This information about at least two other people on the spit that night could have changed everything. Ike Kovacs would have interviewed them. He might have been forced to look more deeply at the other DNA evidence. He might have scoured the area more thoroughly for witnesses. He might have found that homeless vet who told Lee Albies he’d seen a red van. Then blind Ethel McCray’s testimony about hearing a VW van might have been given more credence.” She paused to catch her breath. “All of this could have painted reasonable doubt all over Tyson Mack. An innocent man might have lived. My father might still be alive, and so might my mother.” She pointed at him. “You and Geoff helped kill my family.”