Her Little Secret

“Because you didn’t. I know. I know it all. I walk around this town in the night. No one sees me. I’m invisible.”

Van stared, his own good sense returning. “You’re tired and sick and you need to be cared for.” Van dared to stroke Leo’s thin hair as he would have touched his own father—or his child, if he and Cassie had been so lucky. “You’ll get better and you’ll start remembering.”

“I remember everything. People laughed at her and they said she deserved it. They said she should have been more careful. She was asking for it.”

“Those are your own fears talking. It never happened.”

“It was worse. You don’t even know. She won’t come home now.”

“She’ll be here tomorrow. She’s planning to stay at your house.”

The house. With his heart breaking for his broken friend, he felt anxious. What would Cassie walk into in her childhood home? If Leo hadn’t washed himself in weeks, he certainly hadn’t cleaned the house.

Cassie had enough to face. No one had understood why she’d run away from Honesty. Her former neighbors would flood her with casseroles. They’d sympathize with her about Leo’s illness and they’d fish for answers about why she’d stayed away so long.

They’d tried often enough to extract the truth from Van, but no one seemed to realize she hadn’t been content to cut the town out of her life. She’d had no more room for her father or her ex-husband, either.

“Leo, I’m heading over to your house for a while. Just to make sure everything’s ready for Cassie.”

“I’ll give you a buck and a half to mow the lawn.” Leo dug for a nonexistent pocket. “It’s not worth that much, but I know you. You’ll just spend it on a Coca-Cola with Cassie, and you shouldn’t be paying for her treats.”

Van felt as if he’d run face first into a wall, but Leo didn’t seem to realize it was December. “Pay me later.” Van wondered which lawn guy had flirted with Cassie. Van hadn’t noticed her as more than a cute kid until after he’d been working in the bank for almost a year and she’d started college.

He pushed his fist against his chest. They’d been a family once, the three of them. He kissed his former father-in-law’s head and hurried out.

At the nurses’ station, he backed up and asked them to call if Leo’s condition changed. Despite all signs to the contrary, he hoped Leo might improve before Cassie arrived. Good food, warmth and attentive care had to give him a chance.

The Warnes lived across the lake from Beth’s fishing lodge. Van pulled up to Leo’s place to find Trey Lockwood, one of last night’s EMTs, banging away at the front porch with a hammer. Trey stopped and brushed back his ball cap with a weary sigh. He pulled a couple of nails from between his lips.

“I didn’t expect to find anyone else here,” Van said. “What’s wrong with the porch?”

Trey stepped on a board and it squeaked. “Ann and I didn’t realize we should have checked on him.”

“Has he been acting odd for long?”

“He definitely changed after Cassie…” He didn’t say the words and Van was just as glad. “We thought you probably knew, but you weren’t welcome here, either.”

“I’d have forced my way in.” He took in the paint peeling off the siding. Why hadn’t he driven past once in a while? The answer would keep him from facing himself in a mirror for a while. He’d been a coward. Pretending Leo and Cassie didn’t matter anymore had been easier than fighting them for a few pathetic minutes of their time.

“You look gutted,” Trey said. “People think everyone knows what goes on in small towns. But the doors shut here, just like anywhere else, and some things you can’t know.”

Trey was a smart guy. “The door didn’t shut on this.” Van pulled Leo’s keys out of his jacket pocket. “I’ll see how things look inside.”

“Yeah. Good luck. Let me know if I can help.”

“Thanks.” Van trod the rickety boards with care. He dreaded opening the door. “Cassie’s due back tomorrow.”

“You don’t want her to see what’s been going on with her dad.”

“I can’t protect her from what’s happened to her father, but I’d like to clean this place a little.”

“She shouldn’t have left.” Even after five years, Van turned to defend Cassie, but Trey tested the next step, looking regretful. He’d been Cassie’s friend, too. He yanked and the plank gave way with a scream. “None of us asked her to go. None of us wanted her to.”

“It was my fault,” Van said, surprising himself. “Not hers.” A floorboard groaned as he eased across it. A strong wind could send the porch across the lake to Beth’s yard. “It’s too late to talk about the past,” he said.

“You gotta talk to someone.” Trey held a nail against the board and hammered. “Sometime.” He added another nail. “Or it’ll drive you crazy.”

“Yeah?” Van turned the key in the lock, but it took determination, as if Leo hadn’t locked it in five years. He looked over his shoulder at the lake. Leo rented a boathouse down there, hidden by the pines. Three years ago, Van had discovered it open, and he’d locked it to keep it safe from vandals. He’d left a note, telling Leo to get in touch with him for the lock’s combination, but Leo had never called about it.

Trey was watching. “I’ll finish out here. I know a guy who can repaint fast. Cassie’ll feel at home.”

Van nodded. “Thanks for the help and the therapy.”

The EMT grinned. “Free of charge, buddy.”

He went back to work, and Van turned the doorknob and shoved it open. The hinges screamed for oil. A stench of decay and dirt almost knocked him back down the steps.

“God.” He stared at newspapers and canned goods stacked in ranks like soldiers waiting to march down the hall. On each tread of the staircase along the right wall, three packages of paper towels stood side by side.

He pushed the door wide and went searching for the source of the smell. It was easy to trace it to the dining room.

Food. Old, old food, and food as new as last night’s dinner.

He slammed his hand over his mouth like any heroine in one of the old movies his sister loved to watch. Apparently, Leo had thought getting the food to the dining room was enough. There were china plates on the table, but at some point he’d switched to paper and plastic utensils.

And then he’d stopped washing dishes. He’d neatly aligned the plates and the cups and glassware and, eventually, he’d done the same with the throwaway stuff, unless he hadn’t finished his meal. Those plates perched on any surface—and the floor.

Compulsive neatness and haphazard filth. How had it made sense?

The kitchen was even crazier. Completely spotless, except there wasn’t a dish to be found, beyond the paper and plastic in the cabinets where the real stuff used to be stored.

“Dear God, Leo.”

In the back of his mind, Van had blamed Leo for Cassie’s leaving. If her beloved father hadn’t been ashamed, maybe Cassie would have given Van another chance, but Leo’s humiliation had blinded her. She’d taken Van’s revulsion at his inability to help her, for shame like her father’s.

He choked in a breath and grabbed a garbage bag from beneath the sink. He set to work, realizing he’d misread Leo. They’d tried to live with their guilt in different ways.

He’d been unable to touch his wife, and Leo had stopped living in a world that made sense.

“HOW MUCH LONGER, Mommy?” From her car seat in the back of their rental, Hope flipped her cloth doll, Penny, in circles until the arms coiled like springs. “Where is my grampa, anyway?”

“In a hospital, honey.” Squinting into the fading evening sun, Cassie passed another highway sign that assured her she was on her way to Honesty, Virginia. She didn’t need the sign. She knew each bump and dip of the road like the corners of her childhood bedroom.

“Will he like me?”

“You’re funny. How could anyone not love you?” It was what Cassie feared. It was the reason she’d told no one back home that she’d had Hope. The reason she’d never returned.

“He didn’t come see me. We never visited him in his neighborgood.”