The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel)

by Loreth Anne White

“Trust, like I said, slices both ways,” he called after her.

  “This was a mistake, you know that.” She swung her hair back over her shoulder, pointed at the rug in front of the fire where they’d made love. “Being with you like this, I . . . fuck it.” Her eyes shimmered with emotion. “This could all still go to hell in a handbasket.” She grabbed the doorknob.

  He went to her. “Rachel—”

  Her palm flew up. “Don’t. Do not touch me.” Her voice caught. “I . . . I made a mistake. That’s all.”

  She swung open the door, faltered. “And don’t you dare leave this boathouse, Jeb, not until Quinn is gone for the day. Don’t think you’re going to Amy’s house and to see Piper without me.”

  “Maybe you should let me do this alone now—”

  “You think you can control this alone now? Or even with me? Shake them loose, you said. Play with their heads. Rattle their cages. Well, we did more than that yesterday. We’ve stuck a stick of freaking dynamite into a pond and detonated it, and now all the dead fish are going to be floating to the surface, if what you claim is true.”

  If. She said it again. His hands fisted.

  “This is my business at stake now. My reputation. Quinn’s future. So, yes, dammit. I’m coming.” She marched out the door, slammed it behind her.

  Jeb cursed and went to the back window. He yanked open the drapes and watched her stomping up the garden in the predawn light—the long plaid shirt, bare legs, gum boots, hair a wild tangle. She was still clutching her jeans. And God he loved her just about more than anything on this earth. He knew why she’d flipped. She was scared and fraying at the edges. He was scared, too, after tasting her love, being shown what he could have. How much was at stake.

  He needed to find a way to forgive her for telling the lawyers and cops about what happened with his dad, because it was going to keep coming up in unspoken ways, like he believed it just had in this argument about trust. Rationally he understood why Rachel had done it, but it had cut him irreparably. He’d laid his heart bare to her, and she’d torn it out. His memory slid back to that fateful night when he was nine.

  He’d been at Snowy Creek Elementary for almost four months. He was having trouble adjusting. The snows had started to blanket the valley and Christmas was near. Not in his house, though. In his house his father had already hit the whiskey, hard. Jeb understood on some level there would be no Christmas for them that year. His mother had also grown sick, weak, in ways he couldn’t understand. She’d lost so much weight, had developed black circles under her eyes. She had bruises, and sometimes her lips were swollen and split. She wouldn’t talk to Jeb about it, and he stopped asking because he was afraid to hear the truth.

  One day, shortly before Christmas break, she didn’t come pick him up from school. He had to ride the yellow school bus as far as Green Lake, which was the last stop, then walk the eight miles down the Wolf River logging road alone. By that time of year the day was dark, and the snow base was growing thick. As he slogged along that road through the dark, snowy forest, he knew something terrible was coming with every fiber of his nine-year-old being, because his mother would never ordinarily have left him to do this. She’d given up. She hadn’t made lunch for him that morning, either, and lately she was barely speaking to him at all. She was slipping away, and he didn’t know who to turn to.

  He made it home alone, and that night a blizzard came. He woke to thuds. He thought it was snow whumping off the roof and branches. But then he heard a thin cry. Heavy breathing. Cursing. A cracking sound that sent bile to his throat. Jeb crept out of his room.

  His mother and father were in the living room. His father’s face was purplish red, shining with sweat. His pants were off and his mother was on the sofa. Blood glistened down her face.

  “Bitch!” His father raised his hand and cracked it hard across his mother’s cheek. She sobbed softly. His father pushed his mother’s skirt up her thighs. She moaned, trying to crawl away. But he grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her upright, then he hit her so hard again, her head flew to the side and a tooth came out.

  “Stop!” Jeb screeched as he barreled into the room. He grabbed his father’s arm, yanking him. “Stop. Stop! Stop it!”

  His father lifted his beefy arm up and flung him into the corner of the living room like a useless flea.

  “You—” He pointed at Jeb, his eyes shining, wild, his hair all over the place.

  He had an erection. Jeb knew what an erection was. He felt sick. He was going to throw up.

  “You get back in your room where you belong, or I’ll take the belt to you, do you understand? Get!”

  His mother moaned. “Leave him . . . leave . . .” She tried to crawl off the sofa. His father turned on his mother again, raising his ham of a fist and punching her in the face.

  A ferocity Jeb didn’t even comprehend overtook him. He grabbed the heavy iron poker from the side of the fire with two hands and he rushed at his father, wailing, “Stop it stop it stop it!” He cracked the poker down across his father’s back.

  His drunk dad tumbled forward from the impact, then rolled onto his back, glaring at Jeb. The fire in his father’s eyes was not human. That beast was not his dad; he’d become an animal. His father lurched off the couch and barged at him.

  He raised the poker. “No, Daddy, no! Please, no!” But his dad kept coming. In abject terror, Jeb swung the poker at his dad’s face. It hit with a kind of wet crunch across his temple and nose.

  His father went still, like an elk stopped by gunshot to the heart. He staggered sideways a little, and his face went funny looking. His knees folded, and he slumped forward. His face hit the ground. Dark blood leaked out from under his head.

  Panic whipped through Jeb. Poker in hand, he stared at his dad, his whole body shaking like a little leaf, bile in his throat. His gaze shot to his mother. She was not moving. He dropped the poker, ran to her. “Mom! Mommy!” He shook her. She wouldn’t move.

  Jeb left her on the sofa and went to his dad. He rolled him over onto his back. His eyes stared up, empty. Jeb had hunted. He knew death when he saw it.

  That night, he’d killed his own father.

  Jeb inhaled deeply, pulling his thoughts back to the present. He left the window and slumped down onto the boathouse sofa. His mother, when she’d recovered, had protected him. She’d lied, saying she’d struck her husband when he tried to beat her, and he’d fallen and hit his head because he’d been so inebriated. The cops had bought it—drunk natives and all.

  A social worker came out to see Jeb, but he didn’t talk to the worker. He told no one anything.

  It had finally died down. Jeb went back to school in the spring.

  The only person he ever did tell was Rachel, years later.

  He put his head into his hands. Reliving it made him physically ill. The guilt . . . it would never go away. God, he wished he could have spoken to his mother before she had died. He wished she could have lived long enough to see the judge set him free.

  He looked up, tears pricking into his eyes.

  I’m going to prove this still, for you, too. I know you’re out there. I know you will be able to see . . .

  But the tears burned down his face anyway. Because who the fuck was he kidding? It was too late. That was all.

  Men don’t cry, you asshole . . .

  That was something his father had said to him, too. This was his legacy. And this was something Jeb had to find a way to live with.

  CHAPTER 18

  I barge through my front door and stop dead in my tracks. Quinn is sitting at the kitchen counter, face pale. The house feels cold, empty.

  “Quinn? What are you doing up so early? It’s not even fully light yet.”

  She glares in sullen silence at my bare legs in gum boots. Guilt washes through me. “Would you like some breakfast? Oatmeal, bacon, and eggs?”

&
nbsp; Quinn’s gaze goes from my legs to my mussed hair.

  “French toast, maybe? Pancakes?” My voice comes out too high.

  She slides off the stool and clatters up the stairs. Her door slams hard, skewing a picture on the downstairs wall. Trixie whines.

  I feel gutted.

  And I’m awash with remorse, for starting a fight with Jeb. For not trusting him all those years ago. For betraying his confidence and relaying that awful story of his youth. I can’t even breathe for a moment as I think about the gravity of what I did. We’re all unraveling at the edges. And truth be told, I’m terrified. About my feelings for him. About what might give now. I switch the radio on to the weather station. A meteorologist is talking about a big multicell storm cluster that is heading north into the mountains. Snowy Creek is directly in its path.

  Quickly, I turn up the volume. The meteorologist explains in lay speak that this is the most common type of storm cell development in these mountains. Mature thunderstorms are typically found at the center of these cell clusters, while dissipating thunderstorms exist on their downwind side. These big clusters can also evolve into one or more squall lines that could bring extremely heavy precipitation, hail, frequent lightning, and gale-force winds.

  I look out the window at the dead-calm waters of Green Lake, the tinder-dry brush and crisp dead leaves, the brown-tipped conifers. We need rain. We need snow higher up. But lightning could be a killer. And if the winds do switch suddenly, the Wolf River fire could grow aggressively within minutes and turn this way. If other fires are sparked by lightning strikes elsewhere, and these fires join the Wolf River wildfire . . . we could be looking at a perfect firestorm. I have a real bad feeling about this.

  Before anything else, I go quickly up the stairs to make sure both Quinn and I have emergency bags packed, and that Trixie’s kennel, water bowl, kibble, and leash are also ready.

  Beppie was making breakfast. It was Clint’s Friday off. The Wolf River fire had finally been brought under control using water bombers, but it was still burning and the air outside was static with the crackling quiet that often heralded a severe thunderstorm. Clint’s gear was packed and he remained on standby, his pager and radio with him as he worked down in his shed.

  The washing machine chugged downstairs, a comforting sound. Beppie was reading a novel as she stirred a pot of steel-cut oats on the stove, the steam rising up and misting her glasses; she’d never been able to wear contacts. It used to worry her at school, but not anymore. She removed her glasses and glanced at Susie, who was struggling with her knitting at an antique wooden table. Janis, her middle daughter, was upstairs reading. Holly was playing with her dolls. Beppie homeschooled and tried to grow as much of their own food as she could. She liked to be in control of what was going into her children’s minds and bodies, and she wanted them to learn in the spirit of the Lord.

  The windows were misting up, too. Blackstone, their Labrador, slept in front of the hearth where Beppie had a lit a fire that morning. When the timer buzzed, she set down her book and carried the steaming pot to the table, where there was fresh farm cream and fruit preserves. The weather guy on their small television set near the table was talking about how a change in wind direction could cause the Wolf River fire to flare up again, turning it toward the high-end real estate of Snowy Creek.

  TV was Beppie’s weakness.

  While she limited viewing in the house, she had not managed to go so far as doing without a television completely. It was addictive, and she liked the news. She’d gotten used to it, the company it had provided when Clint was away on tours with the army and she had been raising the girls on her own.

  “And speaking of Snowy Creek,” the anchor was saying, “a storm of another kind has been brewing in the popular ski resort, one that ties back to a vicious sexual assault almost ten years ago, and the mystery of a missing young woman who has never been found.”

  Beppie stilled, the pot clutched in her oven gloves.

  The news anchor started recapping the story that had broken last night after Jeb and Rachel’s publicity stunt at the Shady Lady. As the news footage segued to the skiers’ plaza outside the saloon, Beppie saw her husband coming out of the saloon with a group of his firefighters.

  The anchor was saying that Jebbediah Cullen had accused the fire chief, among other men, of perjury. The camera zoomed right into her husband’s rugged face. Beppie’s pulse quickened. She moved closer. The file footage cut quickly to a shot of Adam, his face twisted and angry as he argued with Rachel outside the saloon. There was chanting, yelling, in the background, but the sound bite that followed played clear.

  “I’m warning you, Rachel.”

  She spun round, the camera catching the fierceness in her eyes.

  “I want to ask you something, Deputy Chief Constable LeFleur,” she said, as though she was saying it especially for the cameraman. “Why did you become a cop, sir? Did you once believe in the law, in justice? Because if you don’t do something about the attack on Cullen last night, people are going to think you’re protecting someone. Is it your mother? Your brother? Old mates? Town vigilantes?”

  “The community is enraged,” one protestor said into the reporter’s mike. “A dangerous man, a rapist, is out free.”

  The footage cut away from the taped segment to a reporter standing in the plaza. “Clearly, wounds from an event ten years ago are still raw here in Snowy Creek.”

  The anchor cut in with a question. “Can you tell us more about this alleged attack on Jebbediah Cullen?”

  The reporter held her earpiece for a moment, listening to the question. She nodded. “Yes, Cullen claimed yesterday that he was attacked the night before by three men in ski masks. He would not speak with us directly, but according to the Snowy Creek Leader, the men arrived in two vehicles. One was a silver SUV, the other a dark-blue truck with an extended cab and a long box. Cullen claims he could make out the letter D on the plate. These three men allegedly set fire to his land and attacked him with a tire iron. He says he has no doubt they would have killed him had a propane tank not exploded near their vehicle, wherein they basically fled and left him to burn. Cullen told the Leader that he landed a few punches of his own, hitting one of the masked men in the face. He says the community should take note of vehicles matching those described, and be aware of injuries and possibly even ski masks with bloodstains on them, or which smell of smoke.”

  “He’s stirring an atmosphere of suspicion, a witch hunt?” asked the anchor.

  “Yes, and it’s upsetting a lot of people. But Cullen claims someone here in Snowy Creek is hiding the truth and is prepared to kill him in order to stop him from digging further.”

  “Heavy stuff for the small ski town,” said the anchor.

  The pot burned suddenly through her oven gloves. Beppie quickly set it down on the table, heart racing.

  “What’s a rapist?” Susie asked, looking up from her knitting.

  Beppie reached over and turned the television off. “Go tell your father breakfast is ready. He’s down in his work shed.”

  “Why me?” she whined.

  Beppie cast her The Look. Susie sighed dramatically. “He’s always in that shed. I hate that shed,” she said, stomping to the door. Blackstone lifted his big, square Labrador head, but slumped back, deciding to remain by the fire.

  The door thudded closed.

  Beppie quickly put the news back on, Stacey’s shocking revelation about what she’d overheard playing through her mind. She glanced up through the misted window and watched her daughter going down the path to the shed. Susie was only a year younger than Quinn.

  What would she do for her own children?

  Was it possible—that someone other than Jeb Cullen took those girls? No, of course not. That would mean Clint and the others lied, that they’d knowingly sent the wrong man to prison. Jeb had to be the one lying. He was messing with th
eir heads, that’s all this was. Some kind of twisted revenge.

  Susie skipped down the path. Mist was rising in wavy wisps from the river in the gulley, and the sun was just starting to spill over the high granite mountains. The light from the sun was a weird sort of orange, and she could smell smoke. A scarecrow stood silent in their veggie field. It was being watched by black crows that lined the wire between telephone poles. The trees had lost most of their leaves in the last winds, and their branches reminded Susie of a skeleton’s fingers pointing into the sky. Pumpkins big, and fat, and orange dotted their neighbor’s field.

  She stilled suddenly as something caught her eye. A ghost. Sifting through the grove of alders on the neighboring farm. Strings of panic wrapped around her throat before she realized it was Mr. Davis in his bee suit, smoke coming from the smoker thing he used to calm the bees. The mist from the river had played tricks with her mind. She gave a little shiver, wishing Blackstone had come with her. She fisted her hands at her sides and tromped smartly down the path to her dad’s workshop, dead leaves crunching under her feet.

  She opened the door. It creaked against the hinges.

  Her dad glanced up. “Hey, hon.”

  Susie’s eyes went immediately to the bearskin on the wall, the giant claws. She swallowed and her gaze was pulled, inexorably, as it always was, away from the grizzly pelt to the bottles of weird things floating in formaldehyde on the top shelf. She felt a skitter in her stomach. She hated this shed.

  Her sister, Janis, loved it. Janis thought it was cool that their dad had a big walk-in meat locker with hanging carcasses and a freezer full of animal parts, stuff that went into the pot that reached their table, like the moose that her mother was going to stew for tonight. Janis also thought it was awesome that their dad stuffed animals as a hobby, sometimes for nice commissions.

  But it made Susie feel . . . she wasn’t quite sure. She forced her attention back to her father, who was busy with a raccoon.

  She smiled shakily. Her father didn’t like it when she got squeamish or frightened. He liked her to be adept in the wilderness, confident in herself. And she liked to make him happy.