Past Forward- A Serial Novel: Volume 3

by Chautona Havig

  “She’s safest where we have her.”

  “And you can’t tell me where that is?”

  An unfamiliar firmness entered Chad’s voice—one he knew would reassure her. “No, Mom, I won’t. I’m not risking any of you. I’ll call later. Tell Moreno that Willow couldn’t cook with her burned hand anyway. She’ll appreciate it.”

  Chad resumed his post in the doorway of his bedroom. Exhaustion slowly crept up his limbs and fuzzed his brain. He wanted nothing more than to crawl under those covers, fall asleep, and hang anyone who thought it was inappropriate. Only the knowledge that his wife—when she became that—needed to trust him kept him watching vigilantly and from across the room.

  Lynne smiled as she closed the door behind her. It was over. Over. They’d never charge her. They’d even admitted that they just had to question her to cover their backsides. Willow was safe, and with Steve gone, she’d be more willing to take a chance on her poor grandmother who had lost husband and son. She had given Steve the best years of her life. He had been worth it… for a time.

  Automatic shades darkened her room in anticipation of resumed slumber. The phone rang; Lynne swore. “What?”

  “Finley woman is still at the house in Westbury.”

  “Good.”

  “Stay here?” the voice continued with a bored tone.

  “Just check in a couple of times a day. Don’t panic if you don’t see her, but if you notice she’s gone at odd hours, I want to know. She’ll be going back to Fairbury soon, I imagine.”

  “Got it.”

  Lynne sank blissfully into silk sheets and slept.

  Willow inhaled deeply, wondering why Chad’s scent was so strong. Her eyes opened. A pillow—not hers. Chad’s house… why? Solari. She turned her head and smiled at the picture of Chad standing in the doorway, hands stuffed in his pocket, head hanging, asleep. She slipped from the covers and crossed the room. He looked relaxed again. She’d missed that.

  One hand touched his face, and as he stirred, she wrapped her arms around him, laying her head on his chest. His eyes blinked open and his arms instinctively surrounded her. “Mornin’” he whispered.

  “Hi.”

  “Can we go sit down? I’m beat.” Chad grasped her hand and stumbled to the couch, pulling her beside him. In seconds, he was asleep.

  Willow felt terrible. She’d been nothing but stress and worry for so long. Her heart constricted to think that his family might be in danger because of her. His job was dangerous enough without adding her crazy family to the mix.

  Family. Her family. After a lifetime of considering herself as having only her mother, it felt bizarre to realize that family had brought these changes into her life—into their lives.

  Chad’s phone vibrated in his pocket but still he slept. Was it important? Should she wake him up? She tugged at his pocket to see if she could retrieve it before he awoke.

  “Hello,” she whispered.

  “Willow? This is Chief Varney. Is Chad there?”

  “He’s asleep.” Willow extracted herself from the couch and closed herself in his bedroom. “Should I wake him up?”

  “No. He’s been up for too long. When he wakes up, tell him to call in. Tell him the informant says you’re safe now. He’ll know what to do.”

  Willow disconnected the call. She could go home. Home! Such a wonderful feeling. She grabbed her jacket, wrote a note, and slipped out the door. She’d enjoyed her week, her hand was almost healed, and now she was safe. She could do this. Willow Finley was going home.

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Stretch. Oh, the amazing feeling of waking up in your own warm bed! Chad rolled onto one side and opened one eye. Eleven-thirty. What time was he on du—was he on duty today? How had he gotten into bed anyway? Didn’t he—

  Willow! Chad flung the covers off him and bolted from the bed. “Willow?”

  The living room was empty. The kitchen, bathroom, and even his closet, though he couldn’t understand why he’d looked there once he thought about it, were also empty. Nothing made sense. Hadn’t he gone to get her? He grabbed for his cell phone, but it was gone. He shook his head, trying to clear the muddled thoughts clouding his mind and making it impossible to think clearly.

  In his peripheral vision, he saw his phone sitting on the corner of the counter. Strange. He didn’t remember taking it out of his pocket. Where was Willow? Surely, she wouldn’t go out when he’d—dumb question. She’d do whatever she felt like doing. He took a deep breath and tried to think. He had gone to get her hadn’t he?

  The last two calls were from Chief Varney, but he remembered his next to last call being from Willow at his mother’s house. He raced to the bathroom and examined every inch of him in the medicine cabinet mirror. Nothing looked like a hypodermic injection site. You’re losing it, man. Last time you remembered nothing, not something that didn’t happen. Get a grip. Call the chief.

  It seemed like the station phone rang for hours. “Chief—”

  “Good, you’re up. Ok, so they’re going to haul her in after the coroner’s preliminary report is completed. The scratches were made post mortem.”

  “Seriously?” Relief washed over him. A few more hours. “So did I go get Willow or not?”

  “Of course you did, she answered your phone not three hours ago.”

  “She answered—” Alarm coupled with more than a little anger washed over Chad. “What did you tell her?”

  “Told her to tell you the informant said she’s safe and that you’d know what to do.”

  “Gotta go, Chief.”

  “What?”

  “Willow went home.”

  Chief Varney swore—well, in his hick euphemistic way. “Tarnation! Take the cruiser and use the siren.”

  “It’s not that imperative,” Chad argued.

  “It’ll scare some sense into her, though.”

  Knowing the Chief was right, Chad flung open his front door, slamming it shut behind him, and raced down the steps. He ignored cheerful calls of “good morning” by several neighbors, flipped on the lights and siren, and tore down the street as quickly as he safely could.

  On the highway, Chad prayed. He punched Luke’s number and waited for his cousin to answer. “Pray.” Without another word, Chad disconnected the call, and bumped down Willow’s driveway ignoring the protesting shocks of his cruiser.

  Willow raced from her house to meet the car. “What is it? What’s wrong? They didn’t go to your house, did they? Mr. Varney said it was safe!”

  Chad grabbed her shoulders fighting the urge to shake her until some semblance of sense rattled in her brain. “What the h—” He stopped. Swearing wasn’t going to make things any better. “What did you think you were doing? I drove to Westbury at three-thirty in the morning, tore you from your bed, raced back to Fairbury, hid you in my house, stood guard over you until I collapsed…” He took another deep breath. “And you just walked out! How selfish can you be?”

  “Selfish?” She stepped back looking like he’d slapped her. “I don’t get it. The Chief said I was safe!”

  He hadn’t expected anger. Foolishly, he’d imagined that she’d understand and at least show a little penitence for scaring the stuffing out of him. “What exactly did he say?”

  “‘Tell Chad the informant says you’re safe. He’ll know what to do.’“

  He waited. Seconds passed, then minutes. She shivered. The lights of the car still spun crazy red and blue over the snow but his eyes—they never looked directly at her. They shifted from the hills around them, to the fields, and over to the barn.

  “What—” her teeth chattered in the cool morning air.

  “Let’s get you inside,” he sighed. He reached into his car and snapped off the lights.

  Her house smelled like home—his home soon. It had the familiar hint of smokiness, scent of lavender, and water boiled on both stoves, adding moisture back into the air that the stoves removed just as quickly. Stew simmered on the kitchen stove already. It looked as
though she was ready to make soap again. She’d jumped into her normal life as though nothing happened.

  Chad wondered how he’d manage to survive the next fifty years with her and suddenly realized how much he felt as if he couldn’t survive the next fifty without her. Another deep breath shuddered through him as he tried to calm resurfacing anger. The longer he sat and imagined the terrible things that could have happened, the angrier he grew. She had to learn to think out of the snow globe-like bubble of her own little world.

  Lord, help me.

  At the sound of the siren, Willow had shoved the soap mold onto the counter and raced through the house and out the front door, meeting him at the car. Panic filled her as she gasped, “What’s wrong?”

  Why wouldn’t he meet her eyes? He stared everywhere but at her. His questions—his accusations—they made no sense. Selfish? How could he say that when Mr. Varney said it was safe?

  Willow knew he was upset but didn’t understand why. She was safe. What was the problem? The frustration in Chad’s eyes made her smile inwardly. In seconds, he’d stuff his hands into his pockets and then he’d talk to her—make her understand. It was what Chad did.

  But he didn’t. To her surprise, Chad sank into the rocking chair next to the stove. She’d never seen him sit there in the months that she’d known him. He always sat in Mother’s chair, sometimes turning it around and sitting backwards on it while draping his arms over the top. Today he leaned his elbows on the arms with his head resting in his hands, and his back rose and fell with careful and deliberate deep breaths.

  Her anger swelled and dissolved in almost rhythmic unison to his breathing. How he could be so upset made no sense. She wanted to rail at him, demand that he explain himself. Instead, Willow did what came instinctively. She laid her hand at the base of his neck and kneaded the muscles. Chad didn’t move, but she felt him relax as her hand worked the knots out of his neck and shoulders. Minutes passed and neither said a word. Willow wondered what was so wrong. Lord, I don’t understand.

  Just as he opened his mouth to give her what she assumed he considered a well-deserved tongue-lashing, Willow realized that she had missed something. She wasn’t sure what, but she was certain that she had frightened people who cared about her, and the realization of what that meant cut her. She settled herself in Chad’s lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, laid her head on his shoulder as she once did with her mother, and whispered, “I’m sorry, Chad. I don’t understand, but I am so sorry.”

  “Aww, Willow. You scared us. I need to call the chief and let him know you’re ok.”

  “Then I’m not safe?” she was confused.

  “Give me a minute. I’ll explain.”

  She started to rise so he could dig his phone from his pocket, but he wrapped an arm around her waist and held her close. “You’re not going anywhere for a while.” His phone retrieved, Chad punched the station number and left word of her safety. “You can’t forget, sir; she doesn’t think like we do. She doesn’t watch TV, doesn’t read newspapers, and doesn’t know how informants work.”

  Once the call disconnected, Chad sat rocking the chair. His silence suggested he might be praying. “Willow—” his voice, low and earnest, startled her.

  “What did I do? I heard you talking to the chief, but I don’t understand.” To her utter disgust and frustration, tears hovered in her voice.

  “Aww, lass, I just—”

  “Lass?”

  “Well if I’m laddie, you have to be lassie, but my Willow isn’t a dog, so I shortened it to lass.”

  “Lass. I like it,” Willow murmured, relaxing once again.

  “Anyway,” he continued as though uninterrupted, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to acclimate yourself to the ‘real world’ just a bit more. Do you know what an informant does?”

  She thought. “They know things that other people might want to know so they tell them— either because they’re pretending to be on the wrong side when they aren’t, or they are paid to provide information.”

  “Ok, that’s good. Exactly right. So what do we know about the information when it comes in?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s right,” he agreed as he attempted to smile at her. “We don’t know anything about it. It could be good, bad, or indifferent. We don’t know. We have to take every threat seriously and any retraction cautiously. We just don’t know.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “So if someone Solari paid to hurt me wanted to find me knew I was gone from your house, the best way to get me would be to put the word out that I was safe and hope it got back to me, so I’d come out in the open again?”

  “She’s catching on,” Chad said to an empty room.

  “No wonder you were mad.”

  “I was just scared, Willow—”

  She shook her head vehemently. “That’s a lie. You were furious. Ready-to-bite-my-head-off-and-I-don’t-blame-you-for-it mad.”

  “You do this. You get something into your head, and you just do it. You don’t think about the consequences of your actions, and you especially don’t consider how it’ll affect those who love you and don’t want to see you hurt.”

  Resisting his attempt to keep her with him, Willow got up to get a drink of water and consider his words. “I can’t understand why you don’t thrash me sometimes.”

  “I love you. You don’t thrash the people you love—usually.”

  “I have never had to think of all of this stuff,” she complained. “Sure, I told Mother if I was going to go somewhere, that’s common courtesy. Just like I told you in the note that I was going home. I’ve just never had to think about whether or not someone’s word was trustworthy or if being anywhere near home was safe or not. Home was safe, but ever since Mother died, home has gotten less and less safe.” She sniffled. “I hate it.”

  Slowly, Chad beckoned her back to the chair. “Come here, Willow.” She hesitated. Nothing he could say would remove the pain of the loss of her mother and her freedom. Why be disappointed when his attempts to comfort her failed? But the look in his eyes, the care and compassion he showed even while still irritated with her for her folly—she couldn’t ignore it.

  He pulled her onto his lap again, rocking the chair as he talked. There was something strangely comforting in the motion. “We’re going to get her.”

  “Her?”

  “Oh, Willow.”

  “I thought it was lass now?”

  “Lass then!” he interjected impatiently. “I—Lynne killed her husband—Steve. They just got a preliminary report, and it puts her at the scene after both men were dead. She was seen and they have DNA that’ll eventually prove her guilt. She’ll either go to prison or get the death penalty.”

  “Then we’ll all be safe?”

  “We’ll all be safe once she’s arraigned.”

  She sat upright, her hand smoothing the crease that had formed between his eyes. “I want to see her.”

  “What?”

  “I want to see her. She doesn’t know that I knew I might not be safe.” She knew Chad wouldn’t understand, so she emphasized again, “Once she’s arrested and it makes the papers, I want to see her.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s lost, Chad. She’s a sinner who is lost and broken and may die soon. She needs Jesus. I want to see her.”

  Before Chad could answer, Willow excused herself upstairs. As he listened to her feet skipping lightly up the stairs, he rocked. “Wow.”

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  Lynne waited at the table in the visitor’s room. Her bail hearing had been a wash. No bail. Someone took the eighth amendment regarding bail a little too seriously in her opinion. No one could call zero bail too high of a monetary price. Her lawyer would appeal. She hoped he had good news. Where was Wharton?

  Willow’s entrance surprised her—so, not her lawyer. Lynne watched as her granddaughter sat across from her, hands folded over a box. The girl was so pretty. Why did she down play it with funky outfits? The cri
ticism crumbled as she watched the girl glance around the room. The outfit suited her. “Willow?”

  The girl tried to smile. “I read about what happened and asked if I could see you. How are you?”

  “I didn’t do it, Willow!”

  “Chad says—”

  Tears and an appeal to the emotions—those were her best shots. “You would believe him! He’s just a cop and cops always protect their own. The police didn’t even investigate. They just decided I was guilty and that was it!”

  “Mrs. Solari—”

  “Lynne! If you won’t call me grand—oh no I don’t like that. Lynne. Please. I hate the name Solari. It has ruined my life.” She saw something in Willow’s eyes and pounced on it. “You know what I mean! It ruined yours too.”

  “Outside of the past few months, it hasn’t really affected me one way or another.”

  “But your mother! My son ruined her life. Steve blackmailed her into leaving everything. It’s all their faults, and I’m being blamed for it!”

  “They didn’t ruin Mother’s life or mine. Mother had a good life. She missed her parents, yes. They stole more than one precious thing from her, but she was happy, Mrs.—Lynne. She was very happy.”

  “She was crazy.”

  Willow shook her head. “I didn’t come to discuss my mother. I came to talk to you—help if I can.”

  “I didn’t do it, Willow. You’ve got to get them to let me out of here. I’m going crazy. After the arraignment, I’m going to be sent to a regular prison while I await trial. They’ll put me in a cell with Butchette and—” Lynne covered her mouth in horror at the images she knew Willow couldn’t imagine from her side of the table. “Please. Help me.”

  “I am here to help, Lynne, but I doubt in the way you hope. I brought you something.” Willow passed the box across the table.

  “You’re kidding, right? A Bible? What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “I hoped you would read it. I had it marked, but I think they messed it up.” She turned quickly to Mark and slid one of the ribbon markers in place. “Read here. It’s a short book. You’ll meet Jesus and right now, there’s nothing you need more than Jesus.”