“I guess not off the top of my head,” Ty replied with a frown. Hadley had known he wouldn’t be able to name the last abduction, because it had been years prior. Memory was a fickle thing. “I mean, my dad used to talk about it all the time. Said he'd seen things in the cornfields at night. Movements that weren't the wind. You know, those kinds of things.”
The clouds parted, allowing the sun to break through. Ty raised a hand to cover his eyes, an automatic gesture without his baseball cap. At least, Hadley pictured him as the type to wear one.
“I do hope you find Missy. She was a sweet girl.” Ty shifted so that his elbow rested on the door to keep his hand propped up for shade. “She worked part-time at the diner during her summer break.”
Hadley noted the way he spoke about Missy in the past tense, as if he'd already accepted she wouldn't be coming back. That wasn't unusual in cases like this. After a year, hope tended to fade even among the most optimistic.
“You're Greta Dawkins' daughter, aren't you?”
Hadley's shoulders stiffened, and she gritted her teeth reflexively at the mention of her mother's name. The familiar acid burn returned to her chest, and she chided herself for not grabbing one of the bottles of antacid from her glove compartment.
“Yes,” Hadley confirmed, her voice deliberately even. “I am.”
“Well, now I'm the one sorry for your loss.” Ty rubbed his forehead. “I used to cut her lawn. Every other Thursday. She was a nice lady, always setting out a pitcher of lemonade for me on the porch railing. I still swing by every now and then, though not as often as I’d like. Figured it was the respectful thing to do until the property sells, but I never see a sign in the yard.”
Hadley hadn't been back to her childhood home since she left town twelve years ago. The thought of someone else taking care of it after her mother’s death brought a mix of emotions, from gratitude to guilt.
“I didn’t realize…” Hadley’s voice trailed off, the words creating a strange sensation on her tongue. Ownership implied a connection she'd spent years trying to sever. “I’ll pay you for your work.”
“No need,” Ty insisted, waving off her offer with a dismissive gesture. A cloud must have drifted overhead again, because the sunlight dimmed enough for him to lower his arm. “It's not much trouble.”
The image of her mother, a woman who'd grown increasingly bitter and withdrawn after Mason's arrest, leaving lemonade out for a neighborhood boy, struck Hadley as very contradictory. The Greta Dawkins she remembered had little kindness left to offer after Mason was found guilty.
“Are you planning to sell?”
Ty’s voice brought Hadley back to the present, but she stepped back from the truck. Personal conversations about her mother or childhood always gave her skin the sensation of being too tight.
“Ty, I appreciate what you've done for the property. I’ll make sure to stop by the bank and take out some money. If I don’t see you around town, I’ll leave an envelope of cash inside the screen door.”
Ty seemed to understand he'd crossed some invisible line.
“Well, if you need anything else done at the house, let me know,” Ty said as he shifted the gear into drive. “Take care.”
Ty pulled away, the truck’s tires kicking up a bit of dust before the sound of the engine faded in the distance. Soon, all that was left were the caws of some crows sitting in the surrounding trees.
She hadn't answered his question about selling the house because she didn't have a simple answer. The truth was far too complex, too revealing of her internal conflicts to share with a virtual stranger.
In the years following her mother's death, Hadley had paid the property taxes and homeowners’ insurance, but she had never returned to her childhood home. Since the house was off the beaten path and not tucked into one of the older neighborhoods, it had never occurred to her to maintain the lawn over the years.
She'd convinced herself it was practical to keep it. After all, real estate was an investment, even out in the sticks. But in her most honest moments, she acknowledged the real reason.
The house was for Mason.
Not now, but someday.
When he completed his thirty-year sentence.
Mason would need somewhere to go after his release. Somewhere familiar, not that those in Whistlerun would welcome him with open arms.
In an odd way, she figured keeping the house was a form of penance, her private atonement for the testimony that had sent him away. Maybe it was even a silent promise to her brother that she hadn't completely abandoned him to the system, even if she couldn't bring herself to visit.
What would Mason be like if he hadn’t gone to prison? Would he have grown into someone considerate like Ty, who maintained a dead neighbor's lawn out of respect? Had prison stripped away whatever goodness might have developed in him?
These questions haunted her during quiet moments when her defenses were down. She'd testified to what she'd witnessed that night, and the former sheriff had made it so she was confident in her recollection back then.
But in the twenty years since, doubt had crept in like a slow poison.
Another thought pushed itself in as the dust from Ty’s tires settled on the ground around her. This old dirt and gravel road led to many secluded properties, with enough land to easily conceal secrets, even ones as grim as buried bodies.
