Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
I look over at him and he shrugs. “Just… go ask her. Then we can sort this out with Jim Bob.”
“What good is asking her, Amon? We already know the truth. What good is making her say it to my face? It’s not gonna change anything.”
“Well, what else are ya gonna do? Just walk away?” When I don’t say anything, one of his eyebrows shoots straight up. “You’re not walking away from Lowyn McBride, Collin. Don’t be fuckin’ stupid. It was one weekend when she was twenty years old. It was one year after her mama died. Two years after you walked out on her. Don’t judge her for this.”
“That’s not what I had in mind, trust me.”
“Then what is the problem?”
“The problem is… she wasn’t gonna tell me.”
Amon sighs and looks out his window. “I get that. But it’s only been a week. She needs more than a week.”
He’s not wrong. So I get out of the truck and go inside to McBooms.
Rosie Harlow is fucking with some cassette tapes over by the jukebox and greets me with her trademark good-natured smile. “Hey, Collin. What’s up?”
“Is Lowyn around?”
“Not right now. She was called over to Jim Bob’s.”
“How long ago was that?”
Rosie glances up at a clock and makes a face of surprise. “Well, look at that. It was a while ago, I guess. I was so busy I didn’t notice. But I’d say about two hours, maybe?”
“A two-hour meeting with Jim Bob?”
“Maybe she went to home to eat lunch?” Rosie shrugs. “She did tell me that if you came by, I should tell you to wait for her. But”—her face screws up a little—“she’s been gone way too long for that. You should call her.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.”
I pull my phone out and leave. Then press her contact and stop next to Amon’s truck and wait for it to ring.
It goes straight to voicemail.
“Figures.” I get in the truck. “Take a ride over to my house. I wanna see if she’s home.”
Amon chuckles. “Your house, her house. Same thing, I guess, huh?”
I don’t say anything to that.
A minute later we’re there, but there is no truck in the driveway. And it was there earlier, right next to my Jeep, when I came down out of the hills and Amon picked me up.
“Now where?” Amon asks.
“The only place left to go, I guess. Jim Bob’s.”
Iimagine several hundred thousand ways I might fall off this galloping horse and die on our way up the trail. At one point, I simply give in to the fact that my life is over. But then I just hold on tighter. Which, I believe, is probably the whole reason Ike is doing this to me. To scare me and make me hold on tighter.
We finally stop just shy of the mountaintop clearing that contains the village of Blackberry Hill and as soon as this happens, I let go, get my leg between him and me, and slide right off that horse’s back. When I turn and glare up at him, he’s smilin’ down at me like an asshole.
I try to stay calm and project an outward sense of control, but internally I’m seething. “You could’ve killed me, you jerk.”
Ike scoffs. “You’re still here, aren’tcha?”
“No thanks to you.”
He tilts his head at me, those blue eyes of his dancing with… I would like to say mischief. People often mistake him for mischievous, but he’s not. Because mischievous kinda implies that he’s being playful in a teasing way and that’s never been my impression.
Well, perhaps at first—the early hours of that first day nine years ago—I might’ve fallen for the charm. But it was a very short-lived mistake once I saw what was really happening in Blackberry Hill.
Then I just saw him as menacing. I got the impression that he likes to scare people. He enjoys it. He cultivates fear to keep his people in control.
Right now, he’s looking at me like he’s a cat and I’m a half-dead mouse he’d like to torture for a few hours before leaving me to die.
I haven’t had any kind of interaction with him for all these years, but I did see him around a couple times. Once, when I was waiting at the stoplight in Revenant, right there at the highway. He was turning right, going up the hill. And I was in the left turn lane, about to go down into the valley. We locked eyes as he passed, but that was about it.
Another time I saw him in the Bishop Inn pickin’ up food. I was lookin’ out the back windows at the hedge maze, waiting for Bryn to take her lunch break—she was a maid back then—and Jessica came and hurriedly ushered me into the kitchen so I didn’t have to talk to him.
There have been a few more incidents like that over the years, but no conversations. Not a single word between us since Jim Bob came up this very hill and walked me back out the way I came in.