Free Deeper Than Need by Shiloh Walker

as some thought. Sweet little Nan had been looking for a man to love her … and she’d always looked in the wrong places.
    She hadn’t deserved to die for it.
    The house had passed to Max. Neither Terrell nor Nan had any other family, so it became Max’s burden to bear. And what a burden it was. Sometimes he could rent the house out for a few years at a time and a few times he’d come close to selling it, but close didn’t count, did it?
    Then, back in 1994, there was another tragedy.
    Four people disappeared.
    A dog tag–styled necklace.
    Fingerprints on the window, the door.
    Blood inside and a pool of blood outside.
    That was all anybody found.
    There was no mystery to what had happened with Nan. Not at all. A gory, bloody scandal, but no mystery.
    The second one, though … yes. There was nothing but questions when it came to the Sutter family and the missing Rossi girl.
    Lana had been a good kid and he’d liked her quite a bit, more than most people realized. He still missed seeing her around town, still thought of her as October crept ever closer.
    More than once, Judge Max had been forced to call the cops because there were people out there nosing around that house. He’d see lights, hear noises or just know the nosy bastards were poking around again. Sometimes the cops would find signs of trespassing; sometimes they wouldn’t.
    He was damn tired of it, that was for sure.
    Back in 2006, some fool, so-called journalist writer wannabe had put together a book about some of the crimes that had happened here. Called the book A Cursed Town. He’d written about all the awful things that had happened here: the tragic murder of a young girl in the early nineties, the murder of Max’s sister, the disappearance of Nichole Bell and, of course, the disappearance of the Sutter family and Lana Rossi.
    Now this.
    The new owner. Maybe Max should have just knocked the whole building down and been done with it.
    “Look at all these weeds.”
    Hearing the unhappy tone in his Mary’s voice, he looked at the garden tucked off the side of the porch and watched as she poked at the little patch of flowers.
    “I’ll help you with the weeds, Miss Mary.”
    She gave him a dark look and then went back to fretting over the flowers, her gnarled, twisting fingers ineffectually trying to pull the blossoms out. She was trying to pull out the begonias they had just planted. He moved across the grass to help her and eased his tired old body down next to her.
    She stopped fretting with the flowers after he covered her hands with his.
    Something that looked like recognition peered back at him through her eyes.
    Hope fluttered in his heart. “How are you today, Miss Mary?”
    She smiled and the smile did the same thing to him now that it had always done. It melted him even as it made him feel like the biggest man on earth. His Mary. The good Lord had seen fit to give Max this amazing woman … why hadn’t He seen fit to keep her mind intact? Max wondered. It was one of the biggest injustices in a world full of them.
    “I’m just fine,” she said. Then she sighed and looked up the hill to the hulking grey house that overlooked the river. The Frampton house. “Are you ever going to talk to Nan, Maxwell? I saw her up there last night, with that idiot Troxell boy. Saw her with Boyd a few weeks past, too. Sooner or later, Terrell is going to find out about all the boys she’s running around with and only the good Lord knows what he’ll do to her.”
    Grief tore at Max.
    Mary remembered him.
    But she wasn’t able to remember anything recent.
    He’d take what he could get, though. Leaning over, he kissed the fragile skin of her cheek. “I’ll talk to her. You know I’ve done it before, but who knows … maybe this time, it will do some good.”
    If only he could.
    Mary smiled and patted his hand. “That’s the best any of us can do. Just what we can.” She went back to pulling at the flowers, and when she finally managed to