She stared at the buckskin, but in her mind she thought, again, about the order in which her siblings had come into the world: Aaron, Robert, Shea, Oliver, Neville. She thought about the spacing between them, wondered about the miscarriages her mother had endured, but couldn’t think of anything…Nothing made any sense.
She needed to talk to one of her brothers about it, most likely Aaron. She wondered how he’d taken the news of Oliver’s death. It was telling, she thought, that in the face of Oliver’s death, rather than wanting to run to her family, to be a part of the grief and consolation, she wanted instead to run the other way.
Without any answers, Shannon slapped the rail, then walked through the stable. The stalls were clean, fresh straw strewn on the floor. Nate had definitely been around. How did he figure into all of this? Maybe their unspoken agreement not to pry into each other’s lives wasn’t such a hot idea.
The door at the far end of the building opened and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Half-expecting Travis, she was surprised when Nate himself appeared, his silhouette dark, his body thrown in relief by the sunlight behind him.
She’d been so absorbed in her thoughts, she hadn’t heard his truck roll in.
“Jumpy this morning?” he asked.
He was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt that had once been red and Levi’s with tattered pockets, almost the height of fashion, though he didn’t know it.
“Do you blame me?”
“No.” He was serious as he walked toward her. “I just heard about Oliver on the news.” His eyes were shadowed and red, as if he’d been up all night. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
The image of Oliver’s bloodied body, swinging from a crossbeam, leaped from the safe place in her mind where she’d stored it. Her throat clogged.
“You want to talk about it?”
She shook her head and blinked hard. “No. I know I have to go and see my family and…discuss it, and I’ll probably have to talk to the police again, and try to avoid talking about it with the press, so for now, I’d rather pass.” She felt a hollowness inside, an empty place that she knew could never be filled.
“Fair enough.”
“And don’t start in on me about a security system. I plan on calling a company today,” she said, then cringed. “Right after I talk to Mom.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Don’t know yet,” Shannon said, with more than a bit of guilt. “I haven’t talked to her yet. Shea was going over last night. I’m sure she’s devastated.”
“So are you,” he said so gently she nearly broke down.
But she didn’t. Instead, she said what was on her mind. “So where have you been, Nate? And don’t give me any cock-and-bull story about being ‘in and out,’ I know that much. You’ve kept taking care of the animals. Like this morning. You weren’t here when I got in, which was really late, nearly three, I think, but somehow you came back, saw to the stock, then left again. What’s that all about?”
“I thought we agreed not to pry into each other’s lives.”
“That was before people started being killed! Come on, Nate! Before I was attacked, before Molly was tortured.” She pointed through the open door at the far end of the barn to the paddock where the buckskin was restlessly grazing.
“You think I had something to do with what’s going on?” he demanded.
“I don’t know! That’s the problem!”
“I’m no killer,” he said evenly.
“Well, good,” she said, unable to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “But there’s something going on, Nate.” She pointed a finger at his chest. “Something you’ve been hiding.”
His jaw slid to one side. “I said, I’m not a murderer.”
“So then you won’t mind telling me where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing, and why the hell you’re in and out of here like a damned ghost.”
He looked at the ground.
“You know, you’re almost acting as if you’re involved with a woman and don’t want to tell me about it.”