“Zach!” Mandy scolded. “Don’t tell him stuff like that.”
Zach grinned at Mandy. “He’s nineteen.”
“So you think she’s hoping I’ll kiss her?” Luke asked, as eager as a puppy.
Zach rolled his eyes at Mandy. To Luke, he said, “I think she’ll probably be pretty disappointed if you don’t.”
Mandy sat back and closed her eyes, clearly disapproving of the conversation. As far as Zach was concerned, that was her deal. In every way but one, her brother was physically normal, and it was high time the kid started acting like it.
Mandy felt as if she’d stepped over the edge of a cliff and was plunging, end over end, in a crazy free fall. She’d barely slept a wink last night, lecturing herself on the follies of loving Zach Harrigan, but it hadn’t done a bit of good. She was totally bonkers over him, even when he was telling Luke stuff she would have preferred he not know. Mandy had never gone to the movies with a boy when she was a teenager. Her father hadn’t allowed her to date, and after she went into foster care, she had never gotten to stay at one school long enough to have a boyfriend. Did kids really go to the theater and kiss?
Her mind turned traitorous. What would it be like to go to a movie with Zach? Did adults kiss during a movie, too? Her feelings for him scared her half to death. He was so handsome and so nice and just so . . . everything. When he’d kissed her last night . . . Well, she’d never dreamed in a million years that anyone could make her feel like that. Her knees had felt as if they turned to water, her heart had pounded, and for a horrible second, she’d felt so light-headed she was afraid she might faint.
She’d been honest with Zach. Marriage was taboo for her. She could never go there. And it was also true that having an intimate relationship with a man outside of marriage wasn’t really her style. But, oh, man, he tempted her to change her mind. She was twenty-eight years old. Until last night, she’d never been properly kissed. Was it so wrong of her to entertain the notion of saying to heck with her morals and just going for it? She wouldn’t be making any permanent commitment that way. When it was over, she could just walk, no strings attached. Zach would have no hold over her. Besides, she was probably the only twenty-eight-year-old virgin on the face of the planet. If she told the Smithsonian, they’d put her on exhibit.
Sweat broke out on her forehead. She opened her eyes to stare stupidly at the food perched on her lap, only vaguely aware of Zach and Luke’s conversation. Was she actually considering having an affair? Yes. Was it so wrong of her to want what other women took for granted? Just once, Mandy wanted to be held in strong arms and pretend for a while that the sweet lies whispered in her ear were true. If she was ever going to experience that, she wanted Zach to be the man holding her.
“Earth to Mandy.”
Zach’s voice jerked her back to the moment. She stood to toss her trash into the receptacle. “Sorry. I was woolgathering.”
As she turned back toward the bench, Zach patted the spot between him and Luke. “It’s time for that little talk now,” he said, his tone serious, almost glum. “I have something I need to tell both of you.”
When she sat again, Zach didn’t immediately speak. He turned his watch on his wrist, scratched beside his nose, repositioned his hat, and then tugged on his earlobe. “I’m not sure how to say this.” Expelling air, he slumped on the bench and cursed under his breath. “It’s really, really difficult for me to get out.”
Mandy’s heart caught. Was he about to tell them that someone else had offered a huge amount of money for Rosebud? Then an even worse thought came to her: What if the little horse was sick with leukemia or something that wasn’t presently obvious?
“You’re scaring me, Zach. Whatever it is, just say it and put me out of my misery.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, coughed, then stared off across the park. “Night before last, you told me about the evening your mom disappeared.”
“Yes. What about it?”
He turned to settle a coffee-dark gaze on her. “It doesn’t add up for me, Mandy. None of it. It doesn’t make sense.”
Her heart started to beat faster. “What do you mean?”
“How many times, rough estimate, would you say that your mom sent you to hide in the closet while she stayed downstairs and let your father beat the hell out of her?”
Mandy tried to think. “It happened night after night. A lot of times. I’m not following where you’re going with this.”
“Here’s where I’m going. She loved you and Luke so much that she sacrificed herself on a daily basis to protect you.” He gestured with one hand. “I’ll never understand why she didn’t seek help. Even back then, they had women’s shelters. But that’s beside the point, and I can only assume she must have had her reasons.”
“Money was part of it,” Mandy said faintly. “She had no training. She told me more than once that she’d leave him in a heartbeat if she thought she could support us. And Dad also threatened to take us away from her if she dared to divorce him. He had buckets of cash from his grandparents, a fancy lawyer always on retainer, and he was an important man in Crystal Falls. She was afraid a judge would rule in his favor.”
Zach waved his hand again. “Whatever. The fact is, she didn’t leave. She stayed, and she was as good a mother as she could be under the circumstances. She definitely did her best to keep you and Luke safe. That tells me a lot. It doesn’t paint a picture of a woman who would ever willingly abandon her children. So what happened that night to alter her character so greatly that she suddenly decided to leave?”
Mandy tried to take a deep breath, but her lungs hitched. “Nothing,” she murmured.
Zach held up a finger. “Oh, but one thing did happen that night, Mandy. She finally gathered the courage to stand up for herself. She threatened to leave the bastard. And right after that, everything went quiet downstairs. Right?”
Mandy felt as if she were suffocating. She stared stupidly at Zach, wanting to clamp her hands over her ears.
“The next morning, she was gone. Suitcase, clothing, personal effects, gone, and”—he held up a finger again—“she left no note. Doesn’t that strike you as being a little strange? Even stranger, before a week passed, your father poured a thick slab of concrete in the backyard and weighted it down with several thousand pounds of brick.”
Mandy was on her feet before she even realized she’d moved. “No,” she whispered. “No.” She felt as if all the blood in her veins had drained out through the bottoms of her feet. “That’s enough, Zach.” She reached out to grab something, anything, for balance, but her hand met with air. “That’s not how it went. She just left. He pushed her too far, and something inside of her snapped. She just ran away.”
He drew off his hat and stared into the bowl. As he set the Stetson back on his head, he met and held her gaze. “Is that the deal here, Mandy? You didn’t go down to check on her after the fracas, so you’re afraid to think about any other possibility?”
“What are you saying?” Luke asked. “That our dad might’ve killed our mother?”
Mandy made fists in her hair. There was a searing pain in her belly, as if claws were ripping at her internal organs. Little black spots danced before her eyes. She felt Zach’s big hands lock like manacles over her shoulders.
“Deep breaths, sweetheart. Come on. Deep breaths. Don’t pass out on me.”
Mandy couldn’t have taken a deep breath to save her soul. “Stop!” she flung at him. “Shut up, Zach. Just shut up! Stop!”
“I can’t,” he whispered. “If it went down the way I believe it did, honey, it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t Luke’s fault, and it wasn’t your mother’s fault. The blame rests on one individual.”
Mandy shook her head, her vision so distorted by tears and spots that she couldn’t see his face. “No. Please, Zach, no. That can’t be what happened. I stayed upstairs with Luke. I didn’t go down to see if she was all right. I loved her so much! Don’t you see? That isn’t how it happened.”<
br />
“You were forbidden to go downstairs, and thank God you didn’t,” Zach said softly. “Mandy, he killed her. I’m almost positive of it. And if you’d gone down to check on her, he might have killed you, too.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mandy stared stupidly at Zach, trying to stop shaking and wrap her mind around what he was saying. Then, like a bone-chilling fog, the reality of it crept into her brain. In all these years it hadn’t occurred to her, not once. Why? She’d always known her father had few limits when he went into a rage. Now that she’d heard the words spoken, she could easily imagine him killing his wife. He’d come close so many times that Mandy had begged her mom to leave before it was too late, and years later, when Tobin had broken into Mandy’s apartment, she’d been lucky to escape with her life.
“But, Zach, if he killed her, what did he do with her body?” Luke asked. “Bodies are usually discovered sooner or later. Surely Mom’s would have turned up by now.”
Zach firmed his grip on Mandy’s shoulders. “I think he buried her in the backyard and then brought in a cement truck to cover up the evidence.”
It was a good thing Zach had hold of Mandy, because this time she truly did almost faint. “No. Dear God, no. Not even Dad would do something that despicable. Not there. He made me bury Dog out there, right at the edge of the patio in the flower bed.”
“Dog?” Zach echoed.
“Dog was a Doberman our father bought,” Luke inserted. “He’d been raised in a kennel and trained to be a guard dog. Dad was all hot on him at first, but then he ignored him and never even gave him a name. Mandy was afraid to name him herself for fear Dad would get pissed, so we just called him Dog.”
“And Dog is buried out there near that slab?”
Mandy nodded. Her voice rang tinny in her ears as she explained. “Dog had never been indoors until we got him, and all the strange noises made him go berserk. For Luke’s seventh birthday, I bought him a fire engine that had moving parts and a siren. When Luke pressed the button to make the siren wail, Dog went nuts and attacked the toy. In the process, he bit Luke’s hand. When our father got home that night, he took Dog outside and shot him.” She weaved on her feet. Zach tightened his hold on her shoulders. “I begged him not to do it. I begged him. But he wouldn’t listen. Luke is terrified of dogs to this day.”
“No wonder that entertainment area feels like a cemetery to me,” Zach said softly. “It actually is.”
Mandy frowned up at him. “You’ve been there?”
Zach led her back to the bench. “You need to sit before you topple like a ninepin.”
Mandy did as he suggested and waited for him to take a seat beside her before pressing him to go on. “When were you in our backyard?”
“Last night and this morning.” He looked deeply into her eyes. “I leased the place. I’m going to rip up that slab and do some digging. If I’m right, and your mother’s remains are there, it’s only fair that I give you both the option of being there.”
“Holy shit, dude.” Luke’s voice rang shrill. “I can buy that Dad might have killed our mom, but why would he bury her in our own backyard? Who’d be that stupid? What if the cops had gotten suspicious? He’d have been better off burying her miles from our house out in the woods somewhere.”
Zach shook his head. “The cops weren’t suspicious, and bodies in wilderness areas are usually unearthed by animals. The skeletal remains are stumbled upon later by unsuspecting hikers or hunters. Remember the Green River Killer? They’re still finding bones. Burying her in the yard under thick cement was the smarter choice.”
Mandy rubbed her arms. Her heart labored as if there were nothing left in her veins to pump. A cold sweat filmed her body, making her sweatshirt and jeans stick to her skin. “And later, he ordered me to bury Dog only a few feet away. What kind of man would have so little respect for another human being? His own wife, the mother of his children.” Even as she spat the words, she knew the answer to her own question. Her father was exactly that kind of man. Zach echoed her thoughts.
“I don’t think Tobin Pajeck understands the meaning of the word respect. Particularly not when it came to his wife and kids.”
Mandy remembered how angry she’d been with her father for revamping the backyard so soon after her mother left. No tears, no apparent sorrow. Her dad had just moved on with his life. At the time, Mandy had been so young and her grief so all-consuming that she’d been unable to see past it. Now she could look back with more clarity. She didn’t want to believe her dad might have done something so despicable, but she knew, deep in her heart, that he might have.
“I almost started the demolition without telling you,” Zach confessed. “But I decided that would be wrong. So here I am, issuing an invitation, if you can call it that. Do you want to be there? I know it’ll be difficult for both of you, especially if I find your mother’s ... well . . . if she’s there. But in my opinion, never knowing for certain what happened that night would be even worse. Maybe I’m wrong and Sharyn Pajeck is alive and well somewhere. But what if she isn’t?”
Mandy thought back to that night, the memories hitting her hard and fast. Her father had been yelling, and she’d been able to hear the sound of his fists connecting with flesh. Her mother had sobbed, begging him to stop. Then, after she threatened to leave, there had come a sudden and eerie silence. Mandy had almost disobeyed Sharyn by going downstairs to check on her, but she’d had Luke to think about. What if her brother had followed her? If Luke had gotten hurt, Mandy would never have forgiven herself. So she’d stayed in the closet as she’d been told to do.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “I don’t want to believe you, Zach, but it all makes sense.” She sent him a stricken look. “You’re actually going to tear up the slab?”
“Yes. I’ve already rented the jackhammer and have my tools over there. I’m starting tomorrow morning. If you and Luke want to be there, I’ll drop by and pick you up.”
Mandy didn’t know what she wanted. “I need some time to think about it.”
Luke spoke up. “I’d only get in the way if I went. I couldn’t help much, and I don’t have any desire to go there. All I have are bad memories of that place.” He tipped his head. “If Mandy decides to go, can Rosebud spend the day with me?”
“Sure,” Zach replied. “I see no reason why she can’t.”
After Zach walked them home and departed, Mandy lay down for a couple of hours. She’d hoped to sleep, but her brain kept fast-forwarding to tomorrow and reversing into the past like a tape player gone mad. Memories of her mother’s last night churned in her mind, and no matter how many times she tried to tell herself differently, her gut told her Zach was right. Her father had killed her mother. Maybe her mother wasn’t buried under the concrete slab in the backyard. But even so, her father had murdered her. The horrible fight, the screaming, and then that sudden, absolute silence. Why, oh, why hadn’t she gone downstairs? Maybe she could have saved her mom.
When she finally gave up on resting, Mandy went to the kitchen. Luke sat at the table, wolfing down a PB and J sandwich, his mouth ringed with white from the glass of milk at his elbow. Mandy wondered how he could possibly eat.
As if he guessed her thoughts, he said, “Sorry, Mands. I don’t mean to seem callous. It’s just ... well, I can’t remember Mom real well anymore. I loved her. I loved her a lot. And I can still remember how good it felt when she hugged me. But in my mind, she’s more like a character in a bedtime story now than a real person.”
Mandy sank down onto a chair. “I remember her very well.”
Luke pushed aside his plate. “Sure, you would. You’re older. I know this is tough for you. Do you think Zach’s right, and the old man murdered her?”
Mandy smoothed the tablecloth, thinking as she did that it would be nice if life’s wrinkles could be dealt with as easily. “Yes,” she finally answered. “It tears me up, but I think he did, Luke. What really gets to me is that I did nothing to help her.”
&n
bsp; “You heard Zach. If you’d gone downstairs, the bastard might have killed you, too.” He slumped on the chair. “I can’t believe we’re talking about this. It’s like discussing a plot in a book. Shit like this doesn’t happen to normal people.”
“When has our family ever been normal?”
Luke considered the question. “We’re getting close to normal now, aren’t we?”
Mandy released a tremulous breath. “We’re getting there. At least, we were.”
“You’re going tomorrow, aren’t you?”
Mandy forced herself to stop rubbing her hands over the tablecloth. “Yes. It’s something I need to do. If she’s—” Her voice caught and went squeaky. “If she’s under that slab, I feel obligated to be there.”
“This has really hit you hard.”
“Like a train,” Mandy admitted. Her eyes burned, and so did her throat. “Do you know how many times I’ve told myself I hated her? How many times I refused to forgive her for leaving us? Up until the night she left, she was the best mom ever. She loved us. She cared for us. And in the end, all of that counted for nothing with me. I should have known she would never leave us if she could help it.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mandy. I’ve had all the same feelings. If he killed her, we didn’t know it. Dad led us to think she just up and left, and you did hear her say she was going to leave him. It was natural for us to feel angry and hate her a little.”
Mandy nodded, but her brother’s words failed to ease the ache of guilt deep inside her. Wearily she pushed to her feet and went to the phone stand. She rang Zach’s cell. He answered so quickly she wondered if he’d been waiting for her call.
“Hey,” he said, his voice husky and filled with warmth. “How you doing?”
Mandy saw no point in pretending that his suspicions hadn’t left her reeling. “Better. I, um . . . well, I’ve thought about it, Zach, and I would like to be there tomorrow.”
“I’ve been thinking, too,” he replied. “Chances are I’ll mostly be tearing down the brick stuff. I won’t get to the slab until the following day. You could stay home until—”