to. She remembered how hard itâd 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. âNothing special,â she said. âThat night was no different than any other.â
âExcept that Jed never came to the door to get paid for his work. Donât you think thatâs strange?â Madeline asked.
It was strange. Grace didnât know what heâd seen that night. Or whether heâd ever divulge it. At times, she believed heâd fixed the tractor and gone home without noticing anything amiss, just as heâd told the police. At other times she was certain he knew much more than he was saying. âMaybe he saw that Dad wasnât home yet and decided not to bother us.â
âOr he was too busy hiding the body and hightailing it out of there,â Kirk volunteered.
Grace shook her head. âJedâs not the type. You stillhavenât given me a motive. Why would he want to harm the townâs most popular spiritual leader?â
âHe didnât consider him a spiritual leader,â Kirk responded. âHe quit going to church several months before the reverend disappeared. Donât you remember? One day he got up, walked out and never returned.â
âHeâs not the only person to ever quit church.â
âHeâs the only one I know who walked out in the middle of a sermon delivered by your father.â
âMaybe he didnât like the way Dad preached.â Grace hadnât liked it, eitherânot once she realized that what came out of his mouth had no correlation to what was in his heart.
âI went to Jedâs repair shop with Daddy once in a while,â Madeline said.
âWas there a problem between them?â Grace knew there wasnât, so she risked another sip of wine.
âI sensed something unfriendly going on. When Daddy invited him back to church, Jed said heâd already heard more than enough from a man like him. â She ran a finger around the rim of her glass. âThat shows some animosity, doesnât it?â
âBut the police couldnât find any evidence to indicate that Jed did anything wrong,â Grace said, finally facing them.
âThey never really looked. They pumped him for information, trying to get him to point his finger at Momâthatâs it.â
âAnd now you think heâs the one guilty of murder?â She realized after sheâd spoken that sheâd emphasized the wrong word. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice.
âDaddy didnât drive off into the sunset, Grace. He wouldnât leave me hanging. He wouldnât leave Mom, you, Clay, Molly, the farm, his congregation. Not afterwhat my real mother did,â she added softly. âHe hated her for taking the easy way out.â
Grace bit her tongue. Madeline mustâve seen some of the cracks in her fatherâs marriage to the woman from Booneville, sensed the growing strain between him and his stepchildren. But it seemed that sheâd 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 mightâve gone on for years. They might even have gone to trial without a body. âBut Jed, Maddy? He has no history of violence.â
âHeâs not telling the truth about that night,â she insisted.
Did Madeline really want the truth? Grace longed to tell her to forget her father. To let what had happened goâbecause sheâd only suffer more if she ever found the answers she craved. She stood to lose her mother, her sisters, her