Free Scandal in Copper Lake by Marilyn Pappano Page B

a week throughout his life, and most of their visits had been brief conversations before or after a meal. She hadn’t been nearly as influential in his upbringing as Granddad Calloway, but when she was gone, he would miss her deeply. He couldn’t imagine the loss Anamaria would feel when her grandmother passed on. What had she called herself? Mama Odette’s girl, with a wealth of affection in the words.
    “Why doesn’t she ask Glory herself? You said they talk.”
    “It doesn’t work that way, at least, not for them. My mother is a facilitator. She delivers messages to Mama Odette, but not for herself. Not for us.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because that’s the way it is, chile.” Her accent was heavier, the sounds slower and more rounded. How many times had she asked her grandmother for explanations? How many times had Mama Odette given that answer?
    It wasn’t much of an answer, in Robbie’s opinion. Anamaria looked as if she found it acceptable. He liked proof. She took things on faith.

    “What’s wrong with her?”
    Her eyes widened, and his jaw tightened a notch. He might be a skeptical, lazy bastard, but Sara had taught him and his brothers common courtesy. It had taken a long time, but the lessons had stuck.
    “Besides being almost seventy, her heart is giving out. The doctors thought she wouldn’t survive this last heart attack, but she’s holding on.”
    “Doctors don’t know everything.”
    Unexpectedly she smiled. “One thing we agree on. Where is your car? Were you afraid to be seen driving down my street after having lunch with me in town?”
    Something uncomfortable twitched at the back of his neck. Guilt, shame—emotions Calloways didn’t often deal with. Life was easier when you were better than everyone else and owed apologies to no one. Of course, they weren’t better than everyone else, but as long as they didn’t acknowledge it, they didn’t have to deal with it.
    At least he could truthfully say this time that being seen had had nothing to do with his decision to walk there. It was seeing that had mattered, and what he’d wanted to see couldn’t be seen from a car. “I wasn’t intending to come here. I went for a walk along the river.” No reason to tell her that he’d gone to the place where her mother’s body was found, or that he’d continued walking to see if it was conceivable that a five-year-old could have made her way from this house to that slope on the river and back again on her own.
    She could have. The path that had brought him from the river to Easy Street was a straight shot, a few hundred feet, with no wrong turns to take. It had been in use so long that the dirt was packed as solid as pavement, so it was likely Glory and Anamaria had taken it at some point. Anamaria had probably been familiar with it.

    Though Glory’s car had been found in the parking lot in town. How would her daughter have known to find her along the river path? And if she hadn’t known, why would she have set out that way alone in the night in the rain?
    Still, it was a more logical scenario than the alternative: that she really had seen a vision of her mother’s death.
    Without moving a muscle, she tensed. “It was in the police report, wasn’t it? The place where she was found.”
    He nodded.
    “I’ve been meaning to walk out there.”
    “Will you know it when you see it?”
    She shook her head. “But I’ll feel it.”
    “I’ll go with you.”
    “So you can gauge my reaction? So you can determine whether I’ve been there before?” Her tone was mild, the shake of her head chastising.
    “Who’s the skeptic now?” He paused. “I assumed you wouldn’t want to go alone, but if you’d prefer it…”
    “No,” she said quickly. “Thank you.”
    “You want to go now?”
    She glanced out the window over the sink, and he looked, too. The air had gone still while they talked, the breeze dying until not even a leaf stirred. Thin white clouds streaked across the sky, and the