Winterkill - C. J. Box [55]
“The engine lost power. No power steering, no power brakes. Yikes,” Joe said absently, and read on.
WITNESS SOUGHT IN ROLLOVER INVESTIGATION, the third and smallest headline read. In the story, the highway patrol reported that they were seeking a potential witness to the rollover on U.S. 87 that had killed two men from out of state. Specifically, they were looking for the driver of an older-model Jeep with Montana plates that was seen passing a speed checkpoint near Great Falls. The authorities estimated that the Jeep may have been in the vicinity of the rollover and that the driver could have seen the accident happen.
Joe looked up at Marybeth and put down the papers.
“Doesn’t Nate Romanowski drive a Jeep?” Marybeth asked.
Joe nodded. “Yes, he does.”
“Interesting, huh?”
“Two guys sent from our nation’s capital sent to clear up an internal problem crash on a desolate road in Montana,” Joe said. “So what did he do, force the SUV off the road?”
“If the motor of the SUV wasn’t working, he wouldn’t have to, would he?” Marybeth asked. She had obviously been thinking about this.
“So how could he make a motor die in another car?” Joe asked, but halfway through his question, he guessed the answer.
They listened to the shower run upstairs while they ate breakfast. The girls ate pancake after pancake, soaking up every drop of the syrup. Because real maple syrup was expensive, it was saved for holidays and special occasions.
“Grandmother Missy takes long showers,” Lucy observed.
“She uses up all our hot water,” Sheridan grumbled.
“I like the sweet taste of the syrup and the salty taste of the bacon,” Sheridan said, savoring it.
“I just like the syrup,” Lucy declared. “I wish I could suck that syrup up through a straw.” Lucy smiled, pantomiming exactly how she would do it.
“Remember when Mom caught you licking your plate clean of all of the leftover syrup like a dog?” Sheridan asked Lucy, baiting her. Lucy made a face, and Sheridan laughed. “Like Maxine, licking out her dog-food bowl!”
“Stop it!” Lucy howled.
Marybeth shut things down with a look of disapproval.
“What do you like, April?” she asked.
April had been silent through the Rose Bowl parade and breakfast. Joe looked at her from his place at the stove. Sometimes, April withdrew from the rest of them, seeming almost to shrink out of view even though she was in the middle of things—the invisible girl. Other times, like now, she looked lonely and haunted. Joe sometimes thought of her as a living, sweet ghost.
April mumbled something, and stared into her lap.
“What was that, honey?” Marybeth asked.
April looked up. Her face was hard, and pinched. “I said I had a dream my other mom was looking at me last night.”
April’s words froze everyone at the table.
Marybeth leaned closer to April. Sheridan and Lucy looked from their mother, to April, and back.
“Are you doing okay now?” Marybeth asked softly.
“She was outside my window, looking in at me through the curtains,” April said, her eyes still downcast. “She sort of rubbed the window with her hand and smeared the glass. She kept saying ‘I love you, April, I miss you, April.’ ”
April said it in a Southern accent that sounded just like Jeannie Keeley, and it disturbed Joe because he had never heard April talk like that before.
For the first time that morning, Joe was focused. The dull red ball of anxiety, dormant in the pit of his stomach for a few hours, awoke.
Then he realized that Marybeth was trying to catch his eye. When he looked back, Marybeth was using her chin to point toward the back door without April realizing what she was doing. Joe got it: She wanted him to go outside and check the yard. Marybeth obviously believed April, or at least wanted to dispel any lingering possibilities.
As Marybeth cleared the dishes away—leaving a clean one for Missy when she made her morning entrance