Karen Whiddon - The Texan's Return

Now, Hailey would mark the anniversary with a quiet prayer. June would do her best to stay drunk, beginning the moment she opened her eyes until she passed out, oblivious to both pain and memories. This year, her mother had started early.

Hailey did her usual chores while her mother slept off her drinking binge. At least she’d come home this time. Someone had dropped her off, and she’d staggered into the house right before Hailey got up to begin the day. This was infinitely preferable over getting a call in the middle of the night asking Hailey to pick up June at the Legacy police station. As long as she didn’t drive, the officers remained sympathetic toward her. The woman’s daughter had been murdered after all. No one could blame her for turning to alcohol to drown her sorrows.

Except Hailey did. She understood grieving—heck, she’d grieved over her baby sister’s loss, too. But June had other children. Eli had just turned one when Brenda died and the twins were four. June had let her seventeen-year-old daughter shoulder the responsibility for her entire family. Hailey had needed her to be strong, especially after her stepdad-slash-adoptive father, Aaron—the younger kids’ birth father—had taken off. He’d given both Brenda and Hailey his name, but little else. As far as Hailey knew, he and June had never actually divorced, but he certainly didn’t pay child support or make any effort to see his kids.

Or—and she winced at the thought—if he did sporadically, June drank the money away.

Hailey blinked, realizing she’d been standing near the sink staring blindly, the task at hand forgotten. Seeing Mac again had made her lose track of the present and revisit the past. Since the past couldn’t be changed, Hailey believed in moving forward. She tried not to dwell on things that would make her sad. After all, she had her life to live and enough responsibility for two twenty-seven-year-olds.

Speaking of responsibility, right at this moment it meant boiling noodles to mix with tuna and peas for their dinner tonight. She shook her head at her own foolishness and got back to peeling carrots, cutting them before adding them to the broth.

In a few hours, she’d leave to go pick up Eli from elementary school and then Tom and Tara from middle school. Their mother might or might not wake up to eat supper, but Hailey would take her a plate anyway.

After dinner, Hailey would help her younger siblings with their homework, and later they’d all watch some television. She’d monitor their internet usage, a fact of life that totally irked the fourteen-year-old twins, though not nearly as much as the fact that they still had dial-up since they couldn’t afford broadband, and later tuck them into bed with a kiss.

Despite being their older sister, she did everything her mother should have done but wasn’t capable of.

Again she thought of Mac and his father. Mac had never believed in Gus’s guilt, even when a jury had convicted him. Too bad Mac couldn’t have seen what Brenda’s murder had done to her family. Luckily, Hailey had been strong enough to pick up the pieces. She’d been determined to give her brothers and sister the best, most normal life possible, even if doing so meant sacrificing her own.

Now that the kids had gotten older, Hailey had begun taking an occasional class at the junior college the next town over. She paid for this—and for the kids’ essentials—by operating her own resume business, walking the neighbors’ dogs, cleaning houses during school hours, taking in laundry and ironing, running errands for elderly shut-ins, basically picking up any work she could. She also tried to make sure to get her mother’s disability check before the woman could drink it all away. They weren’t rich by any means, but Hailey made sure the children were fed and clean and, most important, loved.

If she sometimes longed for a life of her own outside of tiny Legacy, Texas, she didn’t allow herself to wallow in self-pity for long. She simply had too much to do.

She didn’t date, unwilling and unable to divide her time any further. Plus, she didn’t need the complications having a boyfriend would bring. Her busy life had settled into a sort of static routine that felt normal and safe.

Except today... Seeing Mac on her doorstep made her feel alive in a way she hadn’t for years. Ten, to be exact. She found this both terrifying and exhilarating.

Of course, she wouldn’t be seeing him again. Just because he’d moved back to Legacy didn’t mean they’d be running into each other all the time. Nothing was going to change.

Maybe if she told herself that often enough, she’d come to actually believe it.

Chapter 2

After a restless night, Mac abandoned any attempt at sleeping and got up with the sun. He showered and dressed, then quietly padded into the kitchen to make coffee and a pan of oatmeal. He fixed his breakfast and ate, leaving the rest of the oatmeal for Gus to have when he woke.

The sound of the television coming on alerted Mac that Gus was up. Gus loved to watch the morning news, a habit he’d no doubt developed while in prison as he’d always been an evening news kind of guy before.

“Are you ready for breakfast?” Mac called. He’d nuke the oatmeal, add raisins, a spoonful of protein powder and milk, and carry it in to his father.

“Mac!” Gus tried to shout, but only succeeded in a loud croak. “Come in here. You’ve got to see this.”

Mac hurried in, just in time to hear the news reporter comment on a teenage girl’s murder that had happened a few hours ago in the tiny east Texas town of Legacy. The reporter informed them excitedly that this was the first murder in ten years, the first since Brenda Green’s body was found in this exact same spot.

Stunned, Mac reeled. Glancing at his father, who wore a grim expression of pain mingled with satisfaction on his wasted face, he looked back at the television.

Ten years to the day. And right after Mac and Gus had come back to town. Then, a combination of relief and horror flooded through him. Relief, because anyone looking at his father could tell instantly he wouldn’t have been able to do it—the man could barely even walk, for pity’s sake—and horror because of the killer’s choice of date and place. Ten long years had passed since the first murder. What would make someone do such a thing to celebrate such a gruesome anniversary? It had to be the original killer. Had to be.

“See?” Gus said quietly, switching off the television once the segment had ended. “You know as well as I do that this has to be the same person who killed Brenda Green. Why else would they kill again at the same location, on the same date? More proof I didn’t do it.”

While Mac agreed, he had to wonder about the timing. Ten long years had passed since a killing. If it had been the same person, what had been the reason for the huge gap? Now Gus had returned to Legacy and immediately another girl got murdered? It sure sounded like someone was trying to set Gus up.

But why? For what reason? It might have worked, too, except whoever it was had no idea how fast the illness had marched through Gus’s body.

“Now you have even more incentive to find out who the real killer is,” Gus continued. “Not just to clear my name, but to make sure no other young girl suffers a horrible fate.” The older man’s eyes glistened.

“I’m sure the police will be working hard to solve the case,” Mac said.

“Right. Like they did ten years ago? No. They didn’t find the right man then, and I doubt they will now.”

Gus swiped his hand across his face and shook his head. “The hell I’ve been through. While I know it’s nothing like what the Greens suffered, knowing everyone believes you’re a monster is its own kind of torture. Not to mention rotting in prison for something I didn’t do.”