Cait was dishing up asparagus when Colin’s words sank in. She carefully set the serving spoon back in the bowl and looked at him.
“Dead?”
He had set down his own fork. Nell, across the table from Cait, looked from one of them to the other.
“He was murdered, Cait.”
“But…” Her brain was foundering. “I just saw him.”
A nerve ticked beneath one of his eyes. “I know.”
She could not tell what he was thinking. Her own brother.
“How?” she asked, her voice high and breathless.
“Shot. He was dumped next to a road out past Thunder Creek.”
“You didn’t go talk to him, did you?” she blurted.
His expression changed. “What are you suggesting?”
“Nothing.” She shouldn’t have said that. But remembering Colin’s rage when she’d told him about their mother’s affair, she couldn’t help thinking it. “I just wondered—”
“Whether I killed him.” He said it slowly. “You’re asking me if I killed a man because I don’t like that he slept with my mother damn near twenty years ago.”
“No.” She still didn’t sound like herself. “Of course I didn’t mean that. Only that…maybe you’d talked to him. Know more about him than you did.”
He pushed away from the table although his plate was still full. “What kind of man do you think I am?”
“I don’t know!” she cried. “I don’t know you very well.”
Nell seemed to be frozen in place, only her eyes vividly alive as she watched the scene unfold.
Colin rose, looked at Cait for a long moment and walked away. The bedroom door closed quietly.
At last, Nell shot to her feet. “He’s a good man. For you to imply—” She shook her head and hurried after her husband.
Cait looked down at her plate, not seeing the food she’d dished up. Instead, her head was filled with a kaleidoscope of memories: the brother she had loved so much pitching a softball to her and laughing when she swung hard and missed entirely. Lifting the bike from her after she had fallen, insisting she’d done great; she’d get it. Kicking the coffee table over and launching himself at their father, his face suffused with red. She was screaming and she thought her mother was, too. Both shrank into a corner. Snarled obscenities as the two men’s bodies crashed against the sofa and then the wall. Fists flying.
I don’t know him.
But she’d run to him for safety.
Feeling sick, she scraped her untouched food back into serving dishes, then did the same for her brother’s and sister-in-law’s plates. Carried them to the kitchen, covered them with plastic and put them away in the refrigerator. Rinsed dishes, filled the dishwasher, started it running, all the while wondering, shell-shocked, what she had just done.
He wasn’t a murderer. She didn’t believe that. She didn’t.
But…she remembered how furious he’d been when she had told him about Jerry Hegland. And now, so soon, their mother’s lover had been found dead. How could she help but wonder?
Was there anything more horrible she could have said to her brother?
She stole down the hall to the guest bedroom, hearing the murmur of voices through the door to Colin and Nell’s room. Cait didn’t want to think about what they were saying.
I can’t stay here.
She pressed her fingers to her mouth on a broken laugh. All she had to do was close her eyes and see the way he looked at her. The way Nell had looked at her. It was safe to say she’d worn out her welcome.
But she wouldn’t flee into the night. Colin deserved an apology. Tomorrow morning, she’d go look at the town houses Noah had recommended and any other rentals she could find online. She might even be able to move tomorrow.
No, she couldn’t stay here under Colin’s protection, not even in the apartment over the garage, not after what she’d said. Implied.
She huddled in bed, not sleeping, shriveling from the memory of Colin’s shock. Remembering Jerry Hegland’s face when he recognized her, remembering his kindness to her when she was a little girl, imagining that face drained of life.
And then she thought, Oh, God, should I tell Mom? Who still didn’t know that her daughter had moved to Angel Butte, the town from which they’d fled with little more than their clothes?