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Chapters (45)
  1. I know you'll never forgive me...
  2. Part One - Your Father
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Part Two - Your Mother
  24. Chapter Twenty-One
  25. Chapter Twenty-Two
  26. Chapter Twenty-Three
  27. Chapter Twenty-Four
  28. Chapter Twenty-Five
  29. Chapter Twenty-Six
  30. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  31. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  32. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  33. Chapter Thirty
  34. Chapter Thirty-One
  35. Chapter Thirty-Two
  36. Chapter Thirty-Three
  37. Chapter Thirty-Four
  38. Chapter Thirty-Five
  39. Chapter Thirty-Six
  40. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  41. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  42. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  43. Chapter Forty
  44. Chapter Forty-One
  45. About the Author

But Tom spoke again, more slowly, as if somehow he could see me in the room. As if he could read my mind through the phone. “Well, when you see her next, please tell her that Tom Ginn says hello. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, I will.”

“Goodbye, Deputy.”

“Goodbye, Sheriff.”

Darrell hung up the phone and looked at me. He wanted answers, and I had none to give him. “Rebecca?”

I was still without words. Without breath. I had to stop myself from crying. My emotions crested like a wave. Your emotions, Shelby. I could feel you kicking. You knew him, too.

Did that mean what I wanted it to mean?

Was Tom your father?

“I met him,” I replied blandly. “I met Tom once.”

Darrell looked as if he wanted to ask me more questions, but he had the grace to let it be.

I simply sat on the bed and thought: He remembers me.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Four

Darrell and I found Ruby sitting in her kitchen, with her youngest asleep in a little swing beside her. She stared blankly into a mug of tea. Ruby was a woman whose emotions often ran hot—I’d seen it for myself when I was on the receiving end, and I’d seen it at the 126 when she attacked Penny Ramsey—but that morning, she couldn’t summon any fire to her face. A kind of nothingness had overtaken her. As we sat down across from her at the kitchen table, she barely looked up from her tea. Her cheeks were red, her eyes were red, both set against her dirty red hair.

“It’s time you told us the truth, Ruby,” Darrell said. He had a calm seriousness in his voice that made you hate to keep secrets from him.

Ruby still didn’t look up. “The truth about what?”

“Everything. Ajax. The lawsuit. Gordon Brink.” Darrell paused before dropping the guillotine. “Kip and Racer, too.”

There it was. She finally looked at us, with a little flinch that gave it all away. At the mention of Kip and Racer, fear flitted across Ruby’s pretty face like wind through the tall grass. We’d been right about everything. She knew. All this time, she’d been covering up a guilty secret, along with her husband.

“What are you talking about?” Ruby asked lightly, still pretending to be in the dark.

Darrell put the tape recorder on the table and pushed play. I heard it again, the conversation between Gordon Brink and his managing partner. I listened to Brink discussing in a cold, horrifying way his intent to arrange for payback against Sandra Thoreau. Ruby listened, too. There was no mistaking on her face that she knew exactly what these two men were discussing.

“That’s Gordon Brink,” Darrell said, “but I think you know that.”

“Yes. I recognize his voice.”