“Clematis. I didn’t have a clue what it was when it showed up on my doorstep, but I looked it up that following spring.” Her head tipped back at me, one eyebrow elevating. “One of your ‘suspects’ had it delivered to my house with a note that read, ‘For Joshua.’”
Bumps rose on the back of my neck. “Was there a name listed from the sender?”
“No,” she replied.
“Do you have any idea who it might have been from?” I pressed, not sure why this detail, of all of the millions, captured my attention, but I’d learned to listen to those gut instincts and goose bumps.
Mrs. Price got back to tending to her son’s memorial. “Someone who cared more about protecting the innocent than sheltering the rights of the guilty.”
A handful of questions begged to be voiced. Yet they’d have to remain unspoken.
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Price.”
I was almost to the rental car when she called my name, waiting until I stopped to acknowledge her before continuing. “The Huntsman isn’t only avenging abused children—he’s protecting innocent ones too. He’s striking fear into those who would consider harming them, both an executioner and a deterrent.” She rose from her son’s shrine, looking straight through me. “He’s becoming a symbol—a sign of hope—and if you take that away from us, what does that make you?”
An argument rose from inside, but my gut stalled it, my heart stopping it completely.
Shoulders moving, I replied, “I don’t know.”
Twenty-Four
The last time I’d visited Nebraska was for the funeral of Noah’s dad, five years ago. Noah’s mother still lived in the home the Wolffs had raised their family in, and she refused to downsize despite her being the sole remaining occupant. Noah talked to his mother on birthdays and holidays, and we’d invited her out for Christmas every year since his father’s death, but she’d declined every one, with excuses ranging from not liking to travel in the winter to promising she’d try to carve out time to visit us in the summer.
Sue Wolff had been my mother-in-law for seventeen years, and she was as much a mystery to me now as she had been when I married her son.
My flight from Toledo to Lincoln had been delayed, and my flight back home boarded in a mere ten hours, so I had no time to grab a coffee from the airport kiosks as I’d planned. Last night had been void of sleep at the hotel as I poured over the case file, searching for that one clue, the missing link, that would lead me to the Huntsman’s true identity.
After giving the Wolffs’ address to the cab driver outside of the airport, I decided to use the thirty-minute commute to catch up on my emails and messages. I’d no more than opened my inbox when a new text chimed across my screen from Andee.
Attached to the message was a photo, a selfie of her standing in her room in her school uniform and making a peace sign. Below it read:
I’m going back to Prescott. We can’t let the bastards win.
For a moment, my chest tightened with doubt. My mom brain was dying to type back a string of Are you sures? and Don’t you think you’d be happier in a new school? but I waited for that moment of panic to pass. When it did, something else welled within me. Pride.
No, I suppose we can’t. I’ve got your back.
That was followed up with a fist bump emoji, and another message.
Dad’s driving me to school. He even packed me a lunch.
I felt my eyebrows stretch into my hairline. Is it edible?
Mostly.
Good luck. With the lunch and school day. I’ll be home tonight.
I hesitated before hitting Send, fingers posed to continue typing a message, but I sent it instead of punching in those three words. Andee and I had made progress, but I didn’t want to alienate her by opening the sentimental spill-gates.
As I used the remainder of the drive to reply to emails and a couple of questions Connor had texted me, the car was pulling up to a curb before I acknowledged we’d made it into the outskirts of the city.
After reconfirming with the driver that he’d wait for me, I had my first real look at Noah’s childhood house in years. It was like I remembered; 1950s country blue rancher with a weathered, sturdy wood fence lining the perimeter of the backyard, and a large swatch of grass running from the front yard into the back. Noah used to talk about dreading mowing the yard as a boy because of how long it took to complete the massive lawn. The old tire swing still swung from the great maple in the front yard, the rope frayed and the tire cracked.
Noah had plenty of memories of the tire swing as well, but those ones he rarely brought up anymore.
Forcing myself up the walkway, I checked the time to make sure I was within the window I’d told Sue I’d be arriving. In all the years Noah and I had been together, this would be the first time I’d asked for or had a private audience with my mother-in-law. Not necessarily because she was frightening, as mother-in-laws had a reputation for being, but because in the early years of Noah’s and my relationship, the Wolffs had been as disapproving as my parents. Questioning our decision to get married, parroting reminders that this wasn’t the 1940s when a pregnancy went hand-in-hand with a marriage, exposing doubts that we’d make it to Andee’s first birthday.
After those initial years of censure, following Natalie’s suicide, the Wolffs became not only distant from their family, but from the whole world. Her curtains might not have been drawn, but I felt the air change as I approached the front door, the skin on the back of my neck rising as though a ghost were breathing across it.
Ringing the doorbell, I waited, checking my watch and calculating how much time I could afford here and still fit in my appointments with a couple of Robert Creeden’s former victims. I could allow half an hour for sure, possibly forty-five minutes if the conversation really stretched. The thought of having nearly an hour chat with Sue by myself was difficult to conceive.
When no one came to the door, I pressed the doorbell again, wondering if she’d forgotten all about my visit. Finally, I detected the sound of muted footsteps approaching from inside. When the door swung open, I found my mother-in-law exactly as I remembered from when I first met her, as though the past two decades had skipped her over entirely. Fair-skinned with the slightest sign of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth, pale hair cut short, framing a face that was beautiful in the classic sense of the word.
She was smiling, though it didn’t radiate a sense of warmth.
“Grace, so good to see you,” she greeted, taking my hand to give it a brief squeeze. “Please come in. I was just out gardening, so forgive my appearance.”
“You look amazing as always.” I found myself wiping my feet on the doormat before stepping inside. “Thanks for carving some time out for me with such short notice.”
Sue stopped to adjust a throw pillow before continuing on to the kitchen. The house hadn’t changed since I’d been here for her husband’s funeral. Above the mantel, Noah’s and Natalie’s senior portraits hung. Every piece of furniture in the room angled toward them.
“I’m a retired widow who’s had an empty nest for over a decade. There’s no such thing as carving time out these days, only desperate attempts at filling an empty calendar.” She motioned at the row of barstools lined along the counter as she filled a teakettle with water. “How are Noah and Andee doing?”