Elena crashes her knees into the wet earth and flops onto her back, breathing heavily. The sun kisses her milky white skin. Rossco drops the ball onto her stomach, and she giggles.
I observe the sun beating down on her little exposed arms and hastily sit up. “We should get some sunscreen on them.”
Jessica meets my eyes. “Already did. I put it on them while you were upstairs.”
I slump back against the cushion and nod. “Can I ask you something— Actually, can I ask you a few things if I’m going to be trapped here?”
Jess presses her lips in a thin line and nods.
“I don’t know anything about your family, just what I’ve been told.” By one old woman living directly outside the gate, but still. I don’t know anything.
She sighs and twists a strand of straight brown hair around her finger. “I assume you want to know about my mom and dad.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question, but her tone, laced with sadness, tightens my chest. She keeps her eyes on Elena and Tristan, wiping her hands on her jeans.
“My mom was always a bright person,” she begins. “The one whose presence would light up a room even if she weren’t smiling. She had that effect, and it wasn’t hard to understand why my dad fell in love with her.” She swallows. “I remember watching them in the kitchen. The way he’d hug her behind her back and place his chin on her neck to watch her cook. The way he would kiss her was my favorite part. Most kids hate seeing their parents like that, but for me…it set my standards for what I want with someone someday.”
I scan her face as she picks at the pink polish on her nails, the same color chipping on Elena’s.
“Anyway,” she continues, “it seemed like everything changed one random week. My dad was devoted to the company, and my mom had her hands full with me, three teenage boys, andTristan—who was only one at the time. They fought more than usual, out in the open around us and not in their bedroom like they normally did. It just—changed.”
Her eyes settle on me. I may have questions, but I see them dancing in her eyes, too.
“When Mom got pregnant with Elena, she was a shell of herself. My dad lashed out more, spent lots of time in the office in the shop, and Mom always seemed to have dead eyes when she looked at him. Two weeks after Elena was born, she was gone. The few months after that were even stranger.”
“What do you mean?”
She shakes her head. “Our grandparents were always close to us, but after Mom left and never came back, she didn’t contact them or us at all—just vanished.”
Her eyes flutter closed, and she draws in a deep breath. “A month later, after no contact, my grandparents raised their suspicions to law enforcement that my father was involved with her disappearance somehow. That week, cops and investigators were all over our property like ants, and my dad was around his lawyer more than us. They took some samples of a few large stains and smaller ones in my parents’ room as evidence to test. My dad claimed it to be red wine they spilled one night, but after the report came in a few weeks later—” She clears her throat, and I clench my hands in my lap. “It was her blood. They arrested my dad early that next morning, and none of us has seen him since.”
My mouth opens, but her story evaporates anything on my tongue. It’s one of those stories where your head is consumed by thick fog and swishes around like liquid because there is too much to process. I can’t even begin to understand what it would’ve been like for all of them to experience that.
“You don’t have to say anything or apologize,” she mutters, picking at a hangnail on her thumb. “He’s been at Washington State Penitentiary for over four years. He writes us letters, butCam, Bren, and I are the only ones who write back.” She faintly smiles. “Elena draws him pictures even though she has no memory of him. And, of course, Tristan doesn’t have a lot to say, but he tries.”
My heart plummets into my stomach like the chaos of an avalanche destroying everything in its path. The cold snow drifts over my skin, leaving chills in its wake.
A short exhale breaks past her lips. “Sorry, I know that’s a lot for you to process.”
Not as much as it has been for them to process. No wonder the Lindenvale children keep to themselves up on this hill.
“Do you think he did it— Your dad? I mean, there’s been no body.” I don’t know why I say it. I’m sure she’s considered that brutal fact enough to drive her to the brink of madness.
She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. “No. But there was a lot of blood…There was also enough circumstantial and behavioral evidence to charge him. Honestly, I don’t know what I believe.”
When I went inside to go to the bathroom, I wandered around the house to get acquainted with my prison for the next…however long they plan on keeping me. Jess looks like her mom. I’ve seen the family pictures framed in a few hallways, on mantels, and in the kitchen. Their smiling faces, frozen in time, are a stark contrast to the broken family I’ve found myself trapped with. Her mom had shoulder-length light brown hair, but their arched brows and button noses are the same. Jane Lindenvale was beautiful. I can see some of her features in all of them, and I’m sure that haunts them sometimes.
I shift in my chair to face her, placing one foot on the cushion and wrapping my arms around my knee. “What about Cameron, Brennan, and Colten? What do they think? Do they think he did it?”
The breeze floats through her hair, blowing some across her lips. She picks it away with her finger. “Brennan writes to Dad, but he bottles up his emotions pretty well. I think he only writes because he feels guilty if he doesn’t. Cameron loves hard and trusts hard—with everyone. He doesn’t believe Dad could do something like that.” I give her a weak smile because even though I barely know them, her descriptions seem spot-on. “Colten, on the other hand, doesn’t like mentioning or talking about my father at all. He remembers everything too well. Sometimes, I wonder if he knows more than us.”
“Why do you say that?” I listen intently.
“Because the night before she disappeared, my parents were having the biggest fight they’ve ever had. Something shattered, and Colten gathered us all in Brennan’s room and told us not to come out until he came and got us. I remember hearing the front door slam once and a second time a few minutes later.”
“Did he ever come to get you?”
The perplexed look that passes over her glassy eyes forms a lump in my throat.
She languidly shakes her head. “We stayed in that room the rest of the night until morning. But when morning came, Colten was gone, and so was Mom. He didn’t come back until three days later. Even then, he didn’t seem the same and hasn’t been since.”
