“Sheriff, you okay?” Trish called out into the dark and rainy night. “Sheriff?” Her voice tightened with panic. “Frank?!”
Seven
With each blink, Hunter’s lids scraped against her eyes like sandpaper. She was out of tears. She hadn’t known that was possible. Not until last night. Or had it been this morning? She shielded her eyes and squinted up at the gray, cloud-filled sky. It had rained sometime in the wee hours of the morning—the only evidence that the world knew it had lost the great soul of Abigail Goode.
The screen door creaked open as Mercy emerged from the house. She shuffled across the porch and clomped down the steps. She let out a sound, somewhere between a moan and a sigh and plopped next to Hunter on the bottom step.
Hunter grimaced as she ran her fingers along the scabbing wounds on her arm. So, she was still able to feel.
Mercy set her phone down on the walkway between their feet and rested her head on Hunter’s shoulder. Mercy was heavy, a steel anvil where the feather-light young woman had once been. That was one of the strange things about grief. How it turned some into weights and reduced others to the molted skin of the person they’d been. Hunter rubbed her cheek against Mercy’s sable hair. Good thing her sister was there to keep her from blowing away.
Mercy’s phone chimed and she plucked it up off the concrete.
Hunter averted her eyes from the screen. She couldn’t bear to see any words about her mother. They were too powerful, too permanent.
“Kirk?” Hunter asked as Mercy’s thumbs flew across the keyboard.
Her sister nodded and her phone chimed again.
“And Emily?”
Another nod.
Hunter twirled the end of her ponytail. “They’ll be over soon.” It wasn’t a question. It didn’t need to be. Whenever the sisters needed their friends, they were always there. Hunter’s phone buzzed in her pocket. It was Jax. She knew Mercy had told him what happened. Even in mourning, her sister was at the top of the phone tree.
A white-and-gold sheriff’s cruiser turned off Main Street and onto their drive. Hunter stood as the car parked and Deputy Carter climbed out of the driver’s side and straightened the tan cowboy hat he was never without. Mercy hefted herself off the bottom step and mirrored Hunter as the deputy motioned for Sheriff Dearborn to join him outside of the car.
Deputy Carter’s boots squeaked in the wet grass as he and the sheriff approached the twins and the bull’s blood red porch that had failed to protect their mother.
The deputy removed his hat and rubbed his thumb against the brim as he blinked down at Hunter and her sister. Emily often mentioned Deputy Chase Carter and how adorable and puppylike he looked with his round gray eyes and his lips locked in a perpetual half smile. But there was nothing to smile about today. Every bit of Deputy Carter’s puppylike appeal had washed away with the rain. “Girls, I am so terribly sorry. We all loved your mother.” He paused before he cleared his throat and nudged the sheriff with his elbow.
The sheriff grunted and removed his sunglasses. “Yes, your mother. We loved her. She was a, uh, a woman.” Dearborn’s brown eyes scraped against Hunter and the corner of his mouth twitched. “A now deceased woman.”
The deputy let out a strained barking cough as he settled his hat against his closely cropped hair. “I hate to do this, but we have to go through the events one final time before we close up Abigail’s file.” He removed a pen and a small notepad from his chest pocket and flipped through a few pages before coming to the right one. “Mercy, you’re the one who called 911.”
Mercy’s hair slipped from her shoulders as she nodded. She pushed it back behind her ear and mouthed a word, but no sound came out. She hadn’t spoken since they’d gotten home. There weren’t words to describe what they each felt. And if there had been, Hunter wouldn’t have wanted to hear them.
Carter’s Adam’s apple bobbed with a tight swallow. “I’m sorry to ask you to go back through this.” He tapped the point of his pen against the pad.
Hunter twined her fingers around Mercy’s. They were stronger together, and Hunter needed strength now more than ever.
“The three of you were out picnicking.” He glanced back down at his notes. “Is that right?”
“That’s right.” Hunter and her sister spoke in unison.
Hunter ignored the sheriff, who shifted restlessly in her periphery, and spoke directly to Deputy Carter. “Midnight picnics are a birthday tradition. We do them every year with Mom.”
A tear rolled down Mercy’s pale cheek and she let out a broken sob. “We did them every year.”
Hunter squeezed her sister’s hand. She’d be strong enough for both of them. “That’s why we had the candles and incense … They were part of the celebration.” Goose bumps peaked along her arms and she shivered. That wolf had assured that the Goode sisters would never have a true celebration ever again.
The deputy’s brow creased as he scribbled something onto the paper. “Those were the same candles that started the fire? The blaze that—”
Mercy’s sob cracked the space between them. “She’s dead!”
Hunter tensed as she steadied the sinking weight of her sister. Mercy wasn’t built for grief or trauma. Until now, those had always been Hunter’s burden.
The sheriff fogged his glasses, wiped the lenses with the end of his untucked shirt, and fogged them again. “She won’t have died in vain if you get money out of the whole debacle.” He peered up at the clouds through his lenses before sliding the glasses onto his broad nose. “You could sue. That’s what people do, isn’t it?”
Hunter’s stomach knotted as she stared at her reflection in Sheriff Dearborn’s mirrored aviators. She’d never wished for the kind of evil dark magic so many people outside of Goodeville believed was part of the Practice. But she wished for it now. Her pendant heated against her chest. It didn’t matter that the sheriff was wrong about how her mother met her end. Hunter wished she could call down the cosmos and send an entire galaxy of stars ripping through him. She didn’t want money. She wanted her mom.
Deputy Carter clapped the senior officer on the back. “You’ll have to excuse the sheriff. He’s been up a long time. Everything’s got him a little rattled.”
The sheriff slid his glasses to the end of his nose. “You’d be rattled if you’d seen what I saw. That dead man out there—old man Thompson—with no eyes.” With his middle and pointer fingers he mimed stabbing his eyeballs.
Hunter tightened her grip on Mercy’s hand as the sheriff wiggled the imaginary eyes in front of them.
“Ripped right out of his head and then, poof, disappeared.” He threw up his hand. “Swallowed up by who knows what.”
With a strangled laugh, Deputy Carter tugged on the tip of his hat. “As I said, he’s shaken up by the scene that happened last night out off Quaker Road by the old olive tree.”
“Not at the olive tree. The tree had nothing to do with it!” Sheriff Dearborn swiped at the beads of sweat popping along his brow. “You girls got anything to drink?”
Hunter released Mercy’s hand. “I’ll get you a glass.”