Douglas Preston - Two Graves

But as she thought about her father, and what she would say to him, and he to her, her stomach began to tighten up again. She could hardly remember him physically, had no real idea of what he looked like—her mother had thrown away the scrapbook of pictures of them together. She had no idea what to expect. So, he was now a bank robber? God, he might be an alcoholic or a drug addict. He might be one of those criminals full of whining self-pity and justification, blaming everything on bad parents or bad luck. He might even be shacked up with some horrible sleazy bitch.

And what would happen if he were caught, and there she was living in the cabin with him? She had already looked up the federal statute on the web, 18 USC § 1071, which required them to prove she’d actually harbored or concealed him and had taken steps to prevent his discovery or arrest. Just living with him wasn’t enough. Still, how would it affect her future law enforcement career? It sure as hell wouldn’t look good.

In short, this was a stupid idea. She hadn’t really thought it through. She should have stayed back in his house where she was perfectly safe, and let him live his own life. She slowed, stopped, shrugged off the knapsack, and sat down. Why had she ever thought this was a good idea?

What she really should do now was turn around and go back to Allentown, or rather West Cuyahoga, and forget all about this bullshit. She rose, slung the knapsack back over her shoulder, and turned to leave. But then she hesitated.

She had come too far to run away. And she wanted to know— really wanted to know—about those letters in the closet. The postmaster at Medicine Creek was about as dumb as they came… but she didn’t think he was that dumb.

She turned around and trudged on. The shortcut trail left the road for good, went around a bend, and there, in front of her in a sunny clearing, was the shack, all by itself, no other buildings even remotely nearby. She stopped and stared.

It was not charming. Tar paper had been tacked on with irregular strips of wood. The two windows on either side of the door were curtained but broken. Behind and through the oaks she could see an outhouse. A rusted stovepipe poked up through the roof.

The yard in front, however, was neat, the grass trimmed. She could hear someone moving inside the house.

Oh, God, here we go. She walked up to the door and knocked. A sudden silence. Was he going to bolt out the back?

“Hello?” she called, hoping to forestall that.

More silence. And then a voice from inside. “Who is it?”

She took a deep breath. “Corrie. Your daughter. Corrie.”

Another long silence. And then suddenly the door burst open and a man tumbled out—she recognized him immediately—who enveloped her in his arms and just about crushed her.

“Corrie!” he cried, his voice choking up. “How many years have I prayed for this! I knew someday it would come! My God, I prayed for it—and now here it’s happened! My Corrie!” And then he dissolved into great hiccuping gusts of sobbing joy that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been so completely flabbergasted.

25

INSIDE, THE CABIN WAS SURPRISINGLY COZY, NEAT, AND even charming in a beat-up, rustic sort of way. Her father—she called him Jack, unable to bring herself to say Dad —showed her around with no little amount of pride. It consisted of two rooms: a kitchen-living-dining area, and a tiny bedroom just big enough for a rickety twin bed, bureau, and washstand. There was no plumbing or electricity. An old Franklin stove supplied heat. An upright camping stove on legs, supplied by bottled gas, was used for cooking, and next to it an old soapstone sink was set up on two-by-fours, its drainpipe simply dumping water onto the ground under the floorboards. Drinking water came in plastic jugs lined up by the front door, filled, he said, at a spring half a mile from the cabin.

Everything was in its place, clean, and orderly. She noted no liquor bottles or beer cans anywhere. Red paisley curtains added a cheery note, and the rough wooden kitchen table was spread with a checked tablecloth. But what surprised Corrie the most—although she didn’t mention it—was a large cluster of framed photographs that dominated the wall above the table, all of her. She had no idea so many childhood and baby pictures of her even existed.

“You take the bedroom and get settled in,” Jack said, opening the door. “I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

Corrie didn’t argue with him. She dumped her knapsack on the bed, and rejoined her father in the kitchen. He was standing over the stove.

“Are you staying for a while?” he asked.

“If that’s okay.”

“ More than okay. Coffee?”

“Oh, my God, yes.”

“It ain’t French press.” He laughed and dumped some coffee grounds into an enamel pot filled with water, stirred it, and put it on to boil.

So far, after the initial effusive greeting, both of them had somehow refrained from asking questions. Although she was dying to—and she knew he must be, too. It seemed neither one wanted to rush things.

He hummed as he worked, brought out a carton of doughnuts, and arranged them on a plate. She suddenly remembered that humming habit of his—something she hadn’t thought of in fifteen years. She examined him surreptitiously as he bustled about. He was thinner and seemed astonishingly shorter, but that must be because she’d grown up. No man could shrink from giant size—which is what she remembered—to a measly five foot seven. His hair was thinning, with one jaunty tuft that stuck out from the top; his face was deeply scored but still strikingly handsome in a kind of sparkling, cheerful, Irish way. Even though he was only a quarter Irish, the other parts being Swedish, Polish, Bulgarian, Italian, and Hungarian. “I’m a mutt,” she remembered him once saying.

“Milk, sugar?” he asked.

“Got cream?”

“Heavy cream.”

“Perfect. Lots of heavy cream and three spoonfuls of sugar.”

He brought the two steaming mugs over, set them down, and took a seat. For a moment they drank in silence and Corrie, realizing she was famished, ate one of the doughnuts. The birds were chirping outside, the late-afternoon light came dappling in through the rustling leaves, and she could smell the forest. It suddenly seemed so perfect she began to cry.

Like a typical man, Jack leapt up in a complete panic. “Corrie! What’s wrong? Are you in trouble? I can help.”

She waved him back down and wiped her eyes, smiling. “Nothing. Just forget it. I—I’m kind of stressed out.”

Still all aflutter, he sat down and went to put his arm around her, but she shied away. “Just… hold on a moment and let me kind of get used to this.”

He withdrew the arm all in a rush. “Right. Of course.” His extreme solicitude touched her. She blew her nose, and there was an awkward silence. Neither one wanted to ask the other the first question.

“You’re welcome to stay here long as you like,” Jack finally began. “No questions asked, free to come and go as you please… Um, do you have a car? I didn’t see anything.”

She shook her head. And then she said, without really meaning to: “They say you robbed a bank.”

A dead silence. “Well,” he said, “I didn’t.”

Immediately, Corrie felt something go cold inside her. Already he was lying to her.

“No, really, I didn’t. I was framed.”

“But you… ran .”

He smacked his head, shaking his tuft of hair. “Yeah, I ran. Like a damn idiot. Totally stupid, I know. But I didn’t do it. Please believe me. They’ve got all this evidence, but it’s because I was framed. It happened like this—”