The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel)

by Loreth Anne White

  But all Quinn is interested in is what’s going on down in the boathouse.

  “He’s there because it’s a nice place to stay,” I say. “He’s a guest and he wants some privacy, too.”

  “Is it because the police are looking for him? Is he hiding?”

  I inhale deeply. “Please, eat something.”

  “You’re not eating,” she accuses.

  I curl spaghetti around my fork and deliver it halfheartedly to my mouth, chew. I’m not hungry, either. I feel vaguely nauseous. As though I’ve overdosed on caffeine. What I really want is a drink, to put the TV on.

  Quinn suddenly pushes her chair back, grabs her bowl, and goes into the kitchen. She scrapes her food into Trixie’s bowl.

  I stiffen but bite back a sharp retort.

  “I’m tired,” Quinn says, dumping her plate in the sink. “Going to bed.”

  I let her go and I clean up the dishes. There is no sound upstairs.

  At eight p.m. I go up to her room. Quinn is pretending to be asleep. I click on the bedside light.

  “Want me to read?”

  Silence, but I know she’s heard. I look through the books on her shelf and find Schooled, the book Jeb mentioned. I want to be let into her life, too. I sit quietly on the edge of her bed, open the book, and start reading out loud.

  Slowly her eyes open and she edges up the pillow a little, watching me intently. I read for a whole hour, until her eyelids are drooping and she is genuinely exhausted and ready for sleep.

  “Night, sweetie.” I kiss her softly on her brow.

  She holds my gaze for a moment, then says, “My mom used to read to me.”

  I force a swallow. “I know,” I whisper. But I don’t really know. There is so little I know about my niece, even now. I want to change that with a passion that hurts. I realize I’ve fallen in love with her.

  I go downstairs to get some food ready to take to Jeb, and it strikes me that I’ve put everything I have on the line today. Everything. And I’ve done it via my heart if not my head. Will there be anything left of me once this has all blown over? I think again of ripples in a pond, of where things begin and end.

  Outside the air is cold and papery dry. The snowcapped peaks glow an eerie white as the moon rises over the range. The lake surface is a black mirror, and there’s a sense of electrical weight pressing down over the valley.

  I have food in a basket, which I carry along with a bag that holds my laptop and some more of my father’s clothes for Jeb. On my way down to the boathouse, I plug the outdoor extension cord that I usually use for Christmas lights into the electrical outlet in the carport. While the boathouse has plumbing, it does not have electricity. I unravel the cord as I go. When it stops short, I connect it to a second cord, which in turn reaches the boathouse.

  I knock on the door but there is no answer. I open it. It’s warm as toast inside, with logs crackling in the stove. The kerosene lamps have been lit, and three fat white candles flicker in holders on the coffee table. I enter, leading the extension cord in, and shut the door against the cold. I can hear water splashing in the small bathroom. Jeb is in the shower.

  Removing my gum boots, I set my bag and basket on the small dining table. From the food basket I extract a bottle of cabernet, glasses, and the pasta that I’ve warmed for Jeb. I pour myself a glass of wine and take a deep sip. Warmth, relaxation, blooms softly through my chest. A measure of relief.

  I set my laptop on the coffee table, plug in the extension cord, and am powering it up when Jeb exits the bathroom, rubbing his hair with a towel. No shirt. Just jeans, slung low on lean hips. Everything in my body goes quiet. I cannot help but stare.

  He lowers his towel slowly, holding my eyes. His hair hangs damp onto his shoulders. His skin is supple looking, dusky. The fish tattoo is dramatic in the flickering light, and his pecs, abs are honed to perfection. Across the left side of his chest runs the jagged scar I noticed earlier. On the right side of his torso is the blue medical tape I used to hold his ribs in place. The tape is sticking well after his shower, but it will likely have to be redone after it gets wet a few a more times.

  My cheeks go warm and I try to swallow against the sudden dryness in my throat. I hate myself for being so damn readable.

  “How did it happen, that scar?” I ask again in an attempt to deflect attention from my fixation with his bare chest, the flush in my face.

  “Cell mate.”

  Surprise washes softly through me. “He . . . cut you?”

  “With a sharpened pen. We didn’t get on that well.” He tosses the white towel over the back of the dining table chair. “That kind of thing happens when people think you sexually molest and kill innocent schoolgirls.”

  “I . . . thought you were alone in a cell.”

  “He was a snitch. Cops put him in. He was fishing for where I might have left Merilee.”

  A cold sensation drops through my stomach. “Jesus, Jeb.”

  He gives a half shrug. “What did you bring? I’m famished.”

  I get up and move quickly back to the table. “Spaghetti, homemade Bolognese. I warmed it. I’m sorry I took so long.” I hesitate. “Quinn didn’t seem to want to settle, and I couldn’t shortchange her. Not now.”

  He holds my eyes, our earlier conversation resurfacing silently between us. “Thanks.” He pauses. “You make a great mother, Rachel.”

  Is this his way of saying he doesn’t want to take Quinn from me? I turn away from this line of thought, unwilling to probe it further right now. Because one way for us both to keep Quinn would be if we came together as a family, and I’m afraid to even begin to contemplate this when we still all have so much to lose, with so much hanging precariously in the wind.

  I take the bowl of pasta from the basket and remove the lid. “Where do you want to eat?”

  He looks at my glass of wine on the coffee table. “There by the fire is good.”

  I take a spoon, fork, and knife from the drawer in the small kitchenette and place them on a napkin along with his bowl of pasta on the coffee table. Reseating myself on the sofa, I reach for my glass, take another deep sip of wine.

  He sits easily on the rug. The candles flicker in the wake of his movement. “You’re not going to join me?”

  I’m staring at him again, my mind going to dark, hot places, the candlelight too intimate, his naked torso, damp hair too seductive.

  “Rachel?”

  “I . . . uh . . . ate already.” I feel myself flush again. “Do you want to watch the news? Shall I stream it now?” I say quickly, fiddling with my keyboard to bring up the CBC website.

  “A little later.” He curls pasta around his fork. “I just want to enjoy this.”

  “You serious? You want to wait?” I can’t believe it. I’ve been waiting hours myself. I’m itching to see what we’ve done, where the networks have gone with this.

  “I want to eat, Rachel,” he says simply. “I want you to enjoy your wine. Relax for a minute. You need it.” He delivers the food to his mouth, closes his eyes, his dark lashes a thick fringe against his cheeks, and he groans softly.

  “God, this is good.” Opening his eyes, he quickly winds more noodles onto his fork. “I haven’t had anything this good in years.”

  It hits me then, what this freedom to just sit and eat a home-cooked meal must mean to him after being locked away so long, this simple pleasure. I feel embarrassed for rushing him suddenly. Embarrassed by his compassion for me, by my own self-indulgence.

  Jeb has waited in a tiny cell for almost a decade to get out. Time must have a very different meaning for him. And this moment in the boathouse—safe, warm, suspended from the rest of the world—I can see why he might want to savor it for a few minutes before allowing the harshness of reality to flood back in, before finding out what havoc we might have wreaked by our actions today.

  I
curl my socked feet under myself and sip my wine as I watch him eat, as the alcohol eases my wire-tight muscles, calms my mind. He hasn’t bothered with his shirt—the room is toasty. Muscles roll smoothly under his supple skin as he moves, the tattoo aggressive up the side of his neck. I allow myself the luxury of fully absorbing his features—those perfectly arched brows, almond-shaped eyes of liquid obsidian. Those long lashes that would make any woman envious. His wide mouth, firm, sculpted lips.

  Lips that I kissed not long ago.

  The taste of him, the sensation of his body against mine, is suddenly fresh in my mind, and heat stirs low in my belly. As I take another sip, he glances up, catching the intensity in my gaze; how could he not? Again warmth flushes up my neck, into my cheeks.

  He stills for a moment, his black eyes darkening at the interest he’s detected in mine. “You didn’t have to go to bat so heavily for me, Rach.”

  I blow out a heavy breath. “It almost backfired. I hope it doesn’t yet.”

  “You put everything on the line for me—your paper, your own standing in this community.” Sensual tension shimmers, dark and layered. Dangerous and fragile. I wonder if we’re ready for the damage that might be caused by the bombshell we dropped today. I glance at the laptop, almost scared to look now.

  “No,” I say softly. “Not just for you. For something bigger than us. For truth. For justice. For Quinn and Sophia and Peter. This is about the town healing, about the Zukanov family finding closure. It’s about me doing the right thing with the newspaper, the thing my grandfather would have done.” I push hair back that has fallen over my eye. “Ironically,” I say with a soft laugh, “it means being vilified in the process. And while justice and closure might come of it, there’s no way this can happen without some kind of collateral damage. And that sucks. I don’t want to tear lives apart, either.”

  “Whoever committed this crime is the one tearing lives apart, not you. It’s something they put in motion themselves a long time ago.”

  “Right.” Ripples in a pond. Sometimes they take time to reach a distant shore. Sometimes they grow in power as they travel, a silent, insidious surge.

  He’s silent for several beats, then a smile curves slowly over his beautiful mouth, and his eyes catch the candlelight. “We’ll make a crusader out of you yet. Sophia would be proud.”

  I stick my tongue out at him. And suddenly we’re kids again. Teens. In love. The years overlapping. The force of it all is too much and I get up abruptly, go to the window. Wineglass in hand, I stare over the moonlit lake.

  “You really think it was one of them?” I say. “One of those guys at the Shady Lady today, who killed Merilee, raped Amy?”

  He’s silent. I glance over my shoulder. He’s watching me with a feral intensity. I know what he’s thinking. I know what he wants. I can see the desire sharpening his features. I can see it in the deep blackness of his eyes. My body wants him, too. The heat, the ache for him coils tighter and tighter in my stomach, like a spring that’s going to snap. I break the gaze, turn back to the lake. But my heart is racing and my legs are jelly.

  “It’s the only place I can think to start.” Jeb pushes his empty bowl away and leans back on his hands, the firelight playing over his chest, the angry scar. “One of them, or all of them. I’m hoping that if one or more of them is innocent, they’ll crack and turn on the others to save their own skin. Or their family members, friends, might buckle under the weight of secrets.”

  He gets up, sits on the sofa, pats the seat next to him. “Come, let’s see what we’ve done.”

  I take a seat beside him, and for a minute I can’t focus with his bare skin so close. I can scent the soap and shampoo he’s used. I lean forward to click on the laptop. But he places his hand on my arm, stopping me.

  “Wait. I . . . need to ask you something first, Rachel.”

  My pulse spikes. “What?”

  He glances away for a minute, then says, “Will you tell me about my mother, how it happened? Do you know?”

  I go dead still inside. “You don’t know how she died?”

  “Only that it was her heart. All Sophia could tell me was that she was found dead on the property. I don’t even know who exactly found her.”

  His eyes, the emotion in them, is both fierce and tender. All the old love I’ve ever felt for him as a boy, then a young man, resurfaces, the memories swirling thick. I am reminded of the day he rescued an injured robin, how gentle his hands were. And of another day when he took me hunting and I asked him at the very last moment not to shoot the deer. How he lowered his rifle without question. This man was sensitive and empathetic, and he hid it deep from most people under a tough-ass shell. I’m reminded of how deeply I hurt him by telling the lawyers what he confessed to me about his father. Guilt slices sharp and cruel through me. For a moment I cannot speak.

  “Rachel?” he says softly.

  Tension builds in my muscles and my mouth goes dry. I inhale deeply. “She died right by the river.”

  “She was outside? By the water?”

  I clear my throat. “It looks as though she was hanging salmon . . .” I force myself to meet the intensity in his eyes. “It was two weeks before they found her.”

  “Two weeks? How do you know this? Through Rescue One?”

  “First responders—they talk privately.”

  He stares. I can see the pounding of his pulse in the carotid at his neck, under the coho. It makes the fish appear alive, as if it has its own racing heart.

  “Go on,” he says.

  “There’d been some wildlife activity. Bear. Probably attracted by the salmon.”

  He inhales, slowly, deeply, that dangerous edge in him surfacing. The whole cabin seems to shimmer with his quiet ferocity.

  “A whole two weeks, and no one called her? No one went to check on her? No one missed her? They let a bear eat her?”

  I remain silent.

  He surges to his feet, drags both hands over his hair, paces, his muscles rippling bronze in firelight. He’s suddenly a caged beast of a man, the cabin too small. I swallow. I cannot imagine him in a tiny cell all these years.

  He stops in front of the window overlooking the lake and just stands there with his back to me. A man broken but not bowed. Compassion slices through me.

  I get up, touch his shoulder. His skin quivers under my touch. Supple, and warm.

  “I did this to her,” he says. His voice is strange. Distant. Husky. “I became a pariah that night, and by default, so did she.”

  “No,” I whisper. “If what you say is true, someone else did this to you, to her.”

  He spins around, eyes sparking with fierce emotion. “If . . . it’s always if.”

  “That’s why we need to prove it. So there is no doubt in anyone’s mind.”

  “But you, Rachel, you still say if.”

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  His face darkens. “Not one goddamn person on this earth ever just believed in me, apart from her, my mother. Do you know that? Not even you. Not when it truly mattered.”

  His words deliver a gut punch so powerful I step back, winded. “I was eighteen. It was . . . I . . .” But explanation fails me. We’ve been here. I suspect we’ll revisit this place many more times yet, because even in my own heart I’ve not managed to come to terms with the role I played in his conviction.

  He’s breathing hard, a vein swelling on his temple under the butterfly sutures I applied earlier. It makes his cut look angry.

  “I’m sorry,” he says finally. “Jesus, I am sorry. I . . .” He walks away, then spins back, pointing his powerful arm in the direction of my house. “But this is why I have to fix things before Quinn finds out who I am. I can never let this same thing happen to my daughter, let her become a pariah like me. Like my mother. Do you see? She’d be forced to wear my history like a label. A label she might no
t be able to shake for the rest of her life. That’s what happens when you put people in a box, Rachel. You judge them. You force them to wear a label. You force them to begin to think that they’re somehow deficient and, because of it, they make the wrong choices in life. Choices you can’t undo. This is what Sophia was trying to set right. This was why she and Peter were help—”

  I touch his arm. His skin is hot, damp. The connection is electric and stops him instantly. He glowers at my hand on his skin, my pale tone against his dark. Slowly he looks up at me. Heat floods to my groin, my nipples going tight. Suddenly I cannot breathe.

  He grabs me, yanks my body hard against his. His hand slides brusquely up my neck, his fingers digging, fisting into my thick hair. He pulls my head back, forcing me to look up, and he presses his mouth down hard over mine. I melt instantly, going hot and wet and boneless as I open my mouth to him. His tongue enters, tangles with mine, and I feel his other hand sliding down my waist, going round my hip, cupping my butt. He jerks my pelvis against his thigh. The length of his erection presses hard and hot against my stomach.

  My mind goes blank as fire erupts inside me. I fumble desperately with the buckle of his jeans as he kisses me. I undo the zipper, and his erection swells hot and hard into my hands. A soft groan of pleasure escapes my throat as I massage him.

  Jeb edges me back toward the woodstove, a moan coming from deep in his chest as I work his erection, and he lowers me to the rag rug in front of the fire. He breaks our kiss, looks into my eyes.

  “Protection.” His voice is thick.

  “Bathroom cabinet,” I manage to whisper, my voice hoarse. “Close the drapes.”

  He leaves me lying there, blood pounding, as he goes to fetch the condoms Trey left down here. Things had been going bad between us with Quinn in the house. We’d tried a romantic tryst in the boathouse, but it hadn’t salvaged a thing. I hear Jeb in the bathroom. I have time to change my mind. I can’t—I’ve ached for this on some level since I was a teen.