Unforgivable (Romantic Suspense) Read online

  At that moment, she knew that even if no one believed her, if Gary never paid for his crime, that Silas’s standing up for her would help the pain.

  The sheriff turned back to her. “Are you sure you didn’t drop the kitten and are looking for someone else to blame?”

  “I didn’t drop him! I love…” She gulped down the sob that threatened to tear out. “I love him,” she finished on a thick whisper.

  The sheriff looked at the receptionist. “Call Sam over.”

  Gary’s dad. Surely now Silas would back down, tell her she didn’t have a chance. He didn’t. He was as silent and thin as a wooden post, and just as sturdy. Sheriff Tate squinted out the front window where the battered truck was parked. Then he looked at Silas. “You old enough to drive that thing?”

  “I got my learner’s permit. My dad wasn’t around, and we had to get the kitten to the hospital.”

  Uh oh. Now she’d gotten Silas into trouble.

  “Seen you driving into town by yourself before. Does your old man know it’s illegal for a fifteen year-old to drive by himself?”

  Silas’s face went a shade paler, though his body didn’t give away an ounce of discomfort. “He’s been laid up with a broken ankle, can’t manage the shifter. Soon as he’s able, he’ll be driving again.”

  “Maybe I’ll have me a talk with him.”

  “He’s gone a lot, selling his statues.”

  “With a broken ankle?”

  Silas shrugged. “I drive him.”

  Once in a while Katie would see Silas and his dad at their makeshift stand by the crossroads selling pieces of wood carved into the shapes of horses and wolves.

  “What the hell is going on?” Sam boomed in a loud voice as he walked inside. He was Italian, her mama had said, and reminded her of Marlon Brando. He was in the middle of swabbing his forehead when he saw Katie and went dead still. “What’s she doing here?”

  “Says Gary threw her kitten against a glass window, hurt it bad.”

  “And what does she want with me?” He hadn’t even looked at her since the first glance.

  She didn’t like being ignored. “I want him to be punished for what he did.”

  Sam didn’t look the least bit surprised or shamed by what his son had done. He hardened his brown eyes at her. “You got proof of that, little girl?”

  “I saw him do it! That’s proof!”

  Sam picked up the phone at the reception desk and asked for his son. “You throw a kitten against a window?” he barked into the phone without greeting. Then he hung up. “He said he didn’t. Looks like it’s his word against yours.”

  “She ain’t lying,” Silas said.

  Sam took in Silas’s tall, rangy frame. “I don’t have time for this crap. Sheriff, you going to book my son?”

  Tate was leaning against the desk, his arms crossed. “Nope.”

  “I’m outta here.”

  Without another glance at Katie or Silas, he walked out. A burst of hot air from outside washed over her cheeks. She looked at the sheriff, but he was already walking to his office. The woman behind the desk quickly grabbed her coffee mug and scooted to the back. With his hands on her shoulders, Silas steered her out into the hot afternoon.

  “How can they do that?” she said as they walked to the truck. “How?”

  Silas leaned against the door for a moment, giving her a soft look. “That’s how the world works. Bad things happen and nobody pays for it.”

  He was thinking about his father, maybe. She’d seen him wearing a black eye once. He’d tried to cover it up with makeup. “Like with your dad hitting you?”

  He blinked in surprise, but gave away no other emotion. “Yeah.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  “When we lived in Monticello, north of here. I was younger than you. They didn’t want to believe me because they didn’t want to deal with my dad’s temper.” He helped her into the truck and closed the door.

  “Does he still hit you?” she asked as soon as he got in.

  “Not anymore.”

  Silas started the truck and headed down the dusty road that led out of town. All her life she’d been something of an outcast. There were only three other kids who lived in Possum Holler. Most of the kids in her school lived in nice neighborhoods where the homes weren’t made of metal. Silas was an outcast, too, though he didn’t even try to fit in. For the first time, she felt a bond with someone other than her mother. She liked it.

  “I’ll take you in to see your kitten tomorrow if you want,” he said as he pulled into her trailer park.

  “You’d do that?”

  “Sure.”

  Her mama wasn’t going to like this, not one bit, but she said, “Okay, thanks,” anyway. “I can meet you out by the road here at one if that’s okay.”

  “Sure.”

  He pulled right up to her mobile home.

  “How’d you know where I live? That’s right, Mama said you were here when she had me.” Silas had only been a boy then, but her mama had said he’d been a big help until the midwife had arrived. And he’d held Katie with a tenderness her mama had never seen in a boy so young.

  He nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

  She started to get out of the truck, and then paused. “Are you going to get into trouble driving to town again? Will the sheriff talk to your dad about it?”

  “I hope not.”

  For two weeks, Katie’s world revolved around riding with Silas to visit Boots and helping Ben groom the dogs and cats. Boots wasn’t normal, as Ben had warned. His eyes were crossed, and he wasn’t the bright cat he’d been before Gary threw him. Still, he was surviving, and she gave him lots of love to make up for his losses. Her innocence, shattered by Gary’s assault, was starting to rebuild itself piece by piece.

  Her mama wasn’t happy about her hanging around with either Ben or Silas. It was inappropriate for a young girl to associate with a teenager and a grown man. Ben had even spoken to her mama to assure her that his intentions were nothing but honorable. Luckily, her mama was busy working during the day when Katie went to see Boots. Even more luckily, Boots was going to go home with her in a few days, and she would only have to help at the vet’s hospital one day a week to pay for Boots’s shots.

  Even though there wasn’t a dead bird in her yard that day, her luck evaporated. The sheriff was waiting to talk to Silas at the hospital. Ben tried to usher Katie inside, but she stayed next to Silas.

  “We’re going to have to bring you in and ask you some questions about your father’s death.” The sheriff’s eyes hardened. “Why didn’t you report his disappearance? You knew he was dead, didn’t you? You knew his body was up in those woods rotting for six months, didn’t you?”

  She saw the nearly imperceptible tightening of Silas’s mouth, but his eyes gave nothing away. His expression was resigned and hard and blank. “I knew.”

  The sheriff’s voice went lower when he asked, “Were you with him when he died?”

  “No. I never went hunting with him when he went during a school week. I went looking for him when he didn’t come back by Saturday.”

  “And you found him?”

  “Yes, I found him.”

  “And left him there.”

  “Yes, I left him there.”

  Despite her protests, the Sheriff took Silas away, and Ben herded her into the hospital. When he took her home a few hours later, her mother was washing the windows. She threw the sponge in the bucket and stalked over, and Katie knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. She jumped out of the truck before mama got close, but she tapped on Ben’s window.

  “We’ll pay you whatever it is we owe you for the kitten’s care, but I don’t want Katie over there anymore.”

  “Mrs. Malloy, let’s talk about this. I think it’s good for her to take on responsibility, and she’s great with the animals.”

  Katie had never seen her mama look so hard and mean before. “If you see her again, I’ll ask the sheriff to look into the matter for me.
Go find someone your own age to hang around.”

  Ben spun dirt and gravel as he left the trailer park, and Mama stood her ground until he was out of sight. Then she turned to Katie. “Go into the house. You’re grounded until you’re sixteen.”

  Katie knew better than to argue; she turned and went inside. Now wouldn’t be a good time to ask her to do something for Silas, either, she supposed. Mama didn’t fight for anything but Katie. She kicked at the wall in her bedroom, and Mama yelled at her to calm down. She hated feeling helpless. She was going to teach her a lesson and sneak out to Rebecca’s for the night. When Mama found her missing, she’d be worried and maybe she’d rethink the hospital situation.

  But Mama didn’t come looking for her the next morning. In fact, from what Katie could see from Rebecca’s window, there wasn’t anything going on at home. Maybe Mama was sleeping in for a change, and Katie could sneak in and pretend she’d never left. It’d be just like normal.

  Except it wasn’t normal. Mama was lying on the linoleum. She didn’t answer Katie’s calls, and she was cold and stiff. Katie dropped to her knees and shook her. She smelled a chlorine scent and saw blue crystals spilled across the linoleum and her mama’s nightdress. An open jar of Blue Devil drain opener lay on the floor. Bloody sores dribbled down the sides of her mama’s mouth and nostrils. Her eyes were wide in terror, but they looked at nothing. As though she had been about to scream, and then had frozen.

  Katie screamed for her.

  CHAPTER 2

  Eighteen years later…

  The hapless black bug flew into the spider’s web in the light outside the kitchen window. It knew immediately that the gleaming strands of silk were the clutches of death. At first just its legs were stuck, and it strained its wings to fly away. It vibrated and twisted. The brown spider crept closer. With a burst of panic, the bug tried again to fly free, but the web had ensnared its wings now. The spider came in for the kill, skirting along the silvery thread and spinning its deadly cocoon around the bug. Still it fought, twisting and churning, but it was too late now.

  Katie Ferguson could hardly see it now beneath the milky shroud. The macabre theater mesmerized her as she could feel the pull of the strands that trapped her in a tight hold, the sense of suffocation. Her hands squeezed the sponge in the sink full of warm, soapy water. Enough! She’s already caught, trapped forever, she can’t get away now. The spider kept spinning the bug around and around, until it disappeared completely. Now it would suck the lifeblood from the bug.

  “Honey, the Smiths called and need a hand with a foaling mare.”

  She started as Ben came up behind her and slid his arms around her waist. She twisted around, perhaps a little abruptly, and moved out of his hold.

  “You startled me,” she offered as an excuse.

  He adjusted his glasses, his shoulders slumping. “Sorry, honey. I thought you heard me come in. I saw you at the sink and couldn’t resist giving you a hug.”

  She forced a smile that she hated having to force. “I’m sorry, I’m just…edgy lately. I’m sorry,” she added again, and his hurt look transformed to a smile.

  “I told you, you’re just being superstitious.”

  She dried her hands on the lacy kitchen towel. “I know it doesn’t make sense, I know it’s superstitious. But I can’t help feeling it.”

  After another glance at the spider’s web, she forced her gaze back to Ben. Her mother died at twenty-seven. Not just died; took her own life. Katie had just turned twenty-seven. Her birthdays were always tainted by a mother who wasn’t there to give her a silly gift or send her off on a treasure hunt to find trinkets. This birthday had been different. She’d looked in the mirror and seen her mortality.

  He put his arms around her again. “You’re not going to die.”

  She laughed at the absurdity of the statement. “I know.”

  At forty-two, Ben was starting to soften around the edges. His silvery-brown hair shimmered in the light, and his gray eyes crinkled in a smile behind his glasses. He was a loving husband who didn’t deserve a wife who felt as trapped as a bug in a web.

  “Don’t I make you happy?” he asked, tilting his head as he waited for her answer.

  “Yes, of course you do.” In many ways. In the ways that counted, she reminded herself. Security. A home. Working with the animals at the hospital.

  “Am I still your hero, Katie?”

  She remembered the months after her mother’s suicide, such an ugly word, the way Ben helped convince the Emersons to keep Katie indefinitely. They had a farm in the outlying area of Flatlands, and six children. Ben had become part of their family, too, helping them out with the cost of treating their animals to help offset Katie’s financial burden. Not that she didn’t earn her keep. The Emerson children worked hard on the farm, from sunup to sundown, except for the hours they were home schooled.

  Ben had always been there, though. He’d helped her through her realization that the only reason the Emersons had taken her in was for the extra work hand. He’d been there for her since the day Boots had been hurt.

  “Yes, you’re still my hero,” she whispered, feeling grateful and selfish and guilty all at once. He was the best thing that ever happened to her. He was perfect in all the ways that mattered. He loved her and she loved him. She thought that would be enough.

  It hurt like hell that it wasn’t.

  She felt the tears rise inside her and pushed them down. It had been like this all month, since her birthday. Bertrice, the high school girl who helped part-time at the hospital, teased her about being pregnant. Katie knew she wasn’t pregnant. She was spiraling down a dark hole of irrational fear and depression.

  “Don’t I give you a nice life, Katie?”

  “Yes, you have. You’ve…given me everything.” She swallowed hard. “Maybe it would help if I got out more. Do you realize I have no friends?”

  He looked surprised. “Of course you do. You have me. And Bertrice.”

  “Bertrice is a teenager. And you’re my husband.”

  He took her face in his hands and said in earnest, “I’m your friend, too, Katie. Don’t forget that.”

  She shook her head. “I meant female friends. I was thinking about volunteering at the County Fair.”

  “But then I wouldn’t be able to spend the day with you. You’d be busy selling cupcakes or something silly like that. I’d have to wander around all by myself.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but closed it with a sigh. Even volunteering was a selfish act. “I guess you’re right.”

  “Don’t be mad because I want to spend time with my wife. A man’s entitled, you know.”

  “All right. What about helping at the playhouse? They’re always looking for people to help with sets and sell tickets.”

  He put on his fatherly face. “Katie, I hate to remind you of this, but you hardly have time to do your household chores as it is.” He glanced around the kitchen, which was in need of spring-cleaning. It was already mid-summer. The plain white cabinets were in need of a washing, maybe even a coat of paint. The wooden floor needed refinishing.

  “I try to keep up with everything. It just gets away from me.” Since Ben was busy with his veterinary outreach, it was her duty to run the house. That seemed fair enough, but between the yard and household maintenance, and the fact that she hated the latter, it seemed too much at times. Not that she’d complain.

  Ben squeezed her hands. “Are you going to be all right? I’m only going to be gone for a couple of hours. Remember, they had trouble foaling with this horse before. They want me around just in case.”

  She gave him a hug. “You’re a good person. I hope our customers appreciate that.”

  They seemed to. They were always thanking him for the free services he provided to those in need. For the strays he helped at no charge. Everybody loved him.

  He squeezed her back. “I love you, Katie. Don’t ever forget how much I love you. How much I need you.”

  “I won’t.”<
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  He kissed her forehead. “Don’t go wandering around outside. You know how it worries me.”

  She nodded instead of reminding him that they could move to one of the neighborhoods in town rather than living out in the woods not far from Possum Holler. It was an old argument she wouldn’t win. The house was nice enough, the Victorian-style cottage lived in by old lady Babbage until she died the year before Katie and Ben married.

  She stood at the door and watched their custom van’s headlights disappear down the dark driveway. Their van doubled for a “Bowie,” the official veterinary mobile unit. How lucky she was to be married to a warm, compassionate man.

  She walked back through a living room that resembled a Victorian dollhouse. He’d decorated the house just for her right before they’d gotten married. The flowery pink velvet and gold wallpaper closed in the front room with its heavy detail. Two couches imprinted in a pink flower pattern faced off against each other across a prissy coffee table. Even the fireplace was fussy with its frills etched into the marble.

  “A place a woman will feel right at home,” he’d announced when he’d bought her here on their wedding night. He’d been so proud, she couldn’t bear to tell him she liked simpler lines and much more light.

  So he’d added to it over the years, elegant draperies, intricate light fixtures, and a flowery carpet he didn’t realize clashed with the couches and wallpaper.

  All for her.

  The sink full of lukewarm sudsy water looked like a greasy miasma. Ben would have bought her a dishwasher years ago, but the tiny kitchen didn’t have room for one. He would do anything for her. Lucky, lucky woman.

  Selfish, ungrateful woman.

  She tossed the sponge in the water and walked to the back door. The lights mounted outside the kitchen window cast a glow that quickly dissipated into the murky night. To the west, the sky was shadowy blue with a hint of a glow: the day’s last gasp. The yard was a neat square cut into the thick of the woods surrounding them. The simple white gazebo Ben had built was tucked into the far corner, lost in the shadows.