Mariah Stewart - Cold Truth

Cass nodded absently.

“I’m going to want to tell her everything that’s come out today. Including the fact that you were on the scene when your mother was murdered.”

“I wasn’t there,” she told him, her face still white, her eyes huge and round and haunted.

“But Denver said you’d been attacked…”

“I came into the house after it was over.”

“But you saw him.”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember. It happened so fast. He was just a blur.”

“All the same, Annie is going to want to talk to you about it.” And probably more than that, he knew, but he’d leave all that for Annie to go into.

“In the meantime, what would you like to do?”

“Do?” She frowned, as if not understanding the word.

“How would you like to spend the rest of the day? Is there someplace you might like to go?”

She thought about it for a moment, then held out her hand. “Give me the car keys. I’ll take you.”

Rick had no idea where they were headed. All he knew was that right now, Cass appeared to be in a somewhat fragile state of mind, and he’d go wherever she wanted to go if that would help keep her together until Annie arrived. As a psychologist, Annie was much better able to handle this, she’d know what to say and what not to say. For the most part, Rick just wanted Cass to hang on for another day. He leaned back in the passenger seat and waited until they arrived at their destination, wherever that might be.

They were several minutes out of town, on a road that was edged on both sides by marsh. Tall cattails crept to the shoulder of the road on the right side. A mile or two down the road, the cattails began to recede and they came to a clearing. In the center of the clearing sat a house with cedar shingles weathered to a rich brown. Cass turned into the drive and turned off the ignition. She got out of the car without a word and Rick followed.

The house had obviously been abandoned long ago, as had the boat that sat dry-rotting on cinder blocks near a dilapidated garage. A rusted child’s swing set stood at the far end of the yard, the swings long gone, and around the foundation of the house, stubborn flowers bloomed in spite of years of neglect.

Cass went directly to the back steps and sat down on the second step from the bottom. Rick sat next to her, and she moved slightly to the left to accommodate him. They sat in the same way, he noticed. Feet on the step below, arms resting on their thighs.

“Where are we?” he asked, knowing that whatever this place was, it was important to her.

“My house.”

“Your house? This is where…?”

She nodded.

“No one lives here?”

“Not since then.”

“Who owns it now?”

“I do.”

“You do the outside work?” The grass had obviously been cut recently.

“I have someone do that every week.”

He looked over his shoulder and studied the structure.

“I guess you’d have to do a lot of work to sell it.”

“I wouldn’t sell it. I’d never sell it,” she said quickly. “It’s all I have left.”

“You think you’ll move in someday?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t even been inside since that day. I went straight to my aunt and uncle’s after I was released from the hospital.”

“Has anyone been inside?”

“Maybe my grandparents, while they were still alive. The police gave my grampa the key when they finished up. I found it on a hook near the back door after he died.”

“Where’s the key now?”

She dug in her pocket and pulled out her key ring.

“Right here,” she said. “I know what you’re thinking. You think it’s stupid to hold on to a property for all these years if you’re never going to do anything with it. Several acres of ground, this close to the bay, it does have great value, I know that. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been offered for it. But I can’t bring myself to live here, and I can’t bring myself to part with it. I can’t go inside, but I can’t stay away. It’s the last place we were a family. The last place I saw them.”

Cass looked over her shoulder at the house. “Sometimes I think they’re still here, just inside the door. Sometimes I think I see my mother at one of the windows.”

She glanced at him, looking for a reaction.

“You must think I’m loony.”

“I can understand why you would want to see her. I can understand why you would look for her here. Whether you sell the house or keep it, whether you go inside or not, it’s no one’s business but your own. If it comforts you to sit here, that’s what you need to do. You suffered a terrible loss, Cass.” He reached over and took her hand. “ Denver told me about what happened to you. I’m sorry. I don’t even know what to say, how to say how sorry I am for all you went through.”

She nodded an acknowledgment and stared out at the cattails.

“When I was little, the cattails didn’t come up so close to the back here. They did on the side, but out here, out back, it was open all the way to the marsh. There are tidal flats back there, and Lucy and I would use pieces of wood to make little bridges so we could walk out there. We had a plank we carried with us to put down; we’d walk across the water, pick up the plank, and take it with us to the next little stream…” She paused, remembering. “Sometimes the mosquitoes would be so fierce. And the flies! Oh, man, we would get those green flies out there… big enough to lift you up and carry you out to the bay. We’d come in some days covered in welts, and my mother would dab at the bites with calamine on cotton balls.”

She swallowed a lump and tried to smile. “It’s funny what you remember, isn’t it? The things you remember from your childhood?”

Cass sighed, and looked up at him. “What do you remember from your childhood, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?”

“Falling out of the hayloft in my grandparents’ barn when I was three,” he answered without hesitation.

“Were you hurt?”

“Broke both arms.” He moved aside the hair that hung slightly over his forehead to show off a jagged scar. “Landed face-first on the dirt floor.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t crack your skull open.”

“Apparently I had a hard head. I also took some hay with me when I pitched off the loft.”

“Like I said, lucky.”

“It was only the first in a long series of mishaps. I had a bumpy childhood. I was a bit on the reckless side, I guess.”

“Did you spend a lot of time on your grandparents’ farm? Is this the grandmother who taught you how to bake?”

He smiled that she remembered.

“Yes. I lived with them pretty much until I was five.”

“And after that?”

“I still spent a lot of time with them. I just didn’t live with them full-time.”

“And your family? Brothers? Sisters?”

“Two half brothers, two half sisters. All younger. One mother, one stepfather.”

“What happened to your father?”

“I never got to know my biological father very well. I was the product of a youthful indiscretion, as the saying goes. My mother married my stepfather when I was five. He’s really the only father I know.”

“They’re still in Texas?”

“Yes. All of them.”

“Do you go back often?”

“Not so much anymore,” he said softly. “I did while my gram was still alive, but now there doesn’t seem to be much of a point to the trip.”

Cass wished she could ask about that-about why there would be no point to visiting his mother or the others-but knew better than to pry. She knew what it was like to carry around things you hated to talk about, about the feeling you got when someone started to probe amongst all those places you kept to yourself. As sure as she had her secrets, Rick Cisco had some of his own.