Free Dead Silence by Brenda Novak Page A

to. She remembered how hard it’d been to wipe the sticky blood from her hands. The sound of the shovel scraping through the mud. The smell of rain and damp leaves. She remembered sitting in a tub of hot water, shivering, her teeth clacking together while her mother scrubbed her clean as if she was a baby. And she remembered the pink color of the bathwater when she got out.
    She fought to blank her mind. “Nothing special,” she said. “That night was no different than any other.”
    â€œExcept that Jed never came to the door to get paid for his work. Don’t you think that’s strange?” Madeline asked.
    It was strange. Grace didn’t know what he’d seen that night. Or whether he’d ever divulge it. At times, she believed he’d fixed the tractor and gone home without noticing anything amiss, just as he’d told the police. At other times she was certain he knew much more than he was saying. “Maybe he saw that Dad wasn’t home yet and decided not to bother us.”
    â€œOr he was too busy hiding the body and hightailing it out of there,” Kirk volunteered.
    Grace shook her head. “Jed’s not the type. You stillhaven’t given me a motive. Why would he want to harm the town’s most popular spiritual leader?”
    â€œHe didn’t consider him a spiritual leader,” Kirk responded. “He quit going to church several months before the reverend disappeared. Don’t you remember? One day he got up, walked out and never returned.”
    â€œHe’s not the only person to ever quit church.”
    â€œHe’s the only one I know who walked out in the middle of a sermon delivered by your father.”
    â€œMaybe he didn’t like the way Dad preached.” Grace hadn’t liked it, either—not once she realized that what came out of his mouth had no correlation to what was in his heart.
    â€œI went to Jed’s repair shop with Daddy once in a while,” Madeline said.
    â€œWas there a problem between them?” Grace knew there wasn’t, so she risked another sip of wine.
    â€œI sensed something unfriendly going on. When Daddy invited him back to church, Jed said he’d already heard more than enough from a man like him. ” She ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “That shows some animosity, doesn’t it?”
    â€œBut the police couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that Jed did anything wrong,” Grace said, finally facing them.
    â€œThey never really looked. They pumped him for information, trying to get him to point his finger at Mom—that’s it.”
    â€œAnd now you think he’s the one guilty of murder?” She realized after she’d spoken that she’d emphasized the wrong word. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice.
    â€œDaddy didn’t drive off into the sunset, Grace. He wouldn’t leave me hanging. He wouldn’t leave Mom, you, Clay, Molly, the farm, his congregation. Not afterwhat my real mother did,” she added softly. “He hated her for taking the easy way out.”
    Grace bit her tongue. Madeline must’ve seen some of the cracks in her father’s marriage to the woman from Booneville, sensed the growing strain between him and his stepchildren. But it seemed that she’d chosen to ignore certain incidents and remember the past differently. If not for her loyal support and insistence that Irene was a good wife and mother, Grace thought the investigation might’ve gone on for years. They might even have gone to trial without a body. “But Jed, Maddy? He has no history of violence.”
    â€œHe’s not telling the truth about that night,” she insisted.
    Did Madeline really want the truth? Grace longed to tell her to forget her father. To let what had happened go—because she’d only suffer more if she ever found the answers she craved. She stood to lose her mother, her sisters, her