When she’d tried to stop Call from using this room to punish their children, he’d told her he’d raise them his way, the way he’d been raised. “It’s like breaking a horse. If you can’t stand to watch, don’t.”
She couldn’t stand to watch so she’d stood by helplessly for years, she thought with a shudder.
That was until Trace had come along and she’d sworn Call wasn’t “breaking” this one. Trace was seven when she’d decided to leave Call, taking her youngest son and fleeing.
Call had caught her and locked her in this room for three days.
Not long after that, her husband had gone off for a horseback ride and was never seen again.
She hadn’t been able to save the others. As she opened her eyes again, she felt faint and thought she might have to sit down. She grabbed hold of the windowsill and looked out at the ridge in the distance where her son’s body had been buried all those years. The same spot where he’d died?
This is why she’d had to come up here. She had to know if she could see the ridge from this room.
But now she saw that it would have been impossible to see what had happened on that far ridge at this distance. She’d been foolish to think there might have been an eyewitness, someone in the family who had inadvertently seen Trace’s murder.
Suddenly the full weight of her loss hit her. She felt her knees give way, and even the cane couldn’t support her as she dropped to the floor.
She lay there for a few minutes, letting the dam of tears burst and fall. She wept as she had the time she’d been locked in this room and cursed her son’s killer.
Finally the tears subsided. She sat up feeling dizzy and light-headed. She shuddered at the thought that she was so weak or that the past was so strong.
As she started to get to her feet, anxious to leave this horrible room and the memories within these walls, she saw a small hole behind the window ledge. Someone had dug out the chinking from between the logs and made a space just large enough apparently to hide something.
In this case, a small pair of binoculars.
With a start she worked the binoculars from the hole, wiping them free of dust with her sleeve before raising them to look out at the ridge.
Her heart caught in her throat. She fought to keep down her lunch. She could see the ridge clearly right down to the crime scene tape flapping in the wind around her son’s grave.
“TO TRACE,” RUBY said and took a drink.
To you, Dad. McCall felt the kick of the tequila. She looked out at the sky-mirrored water. From here she could barely make out Buzz Crawford’s house across the lake.
“I suppose by the time we get back to town everyone will know,” Ruby said as she made herself another drink.
“Count on it.” This was the biggest news to hit town in some time. “Are you going to be all right?”
Ruby laughed. “Hell, yes. The bastard didn’t leave me.” She laughed again and lifted her glass before downing half of it. “He might have stayed, you know. Things could have been different.”
She nodded. Or they might have ended the same. They would never know.
But McCall liked to think her mother and father would have made it work and stayed together. She tried to imagine having a normal family. Whatever normal was.
As it was, history would have to be rewritten. Twenty-seven years of stories based on one false assumption. McCall thought of all the whispered rumors she’d heard about her father over the years.
Trace Winchester hadn’t run out on them. True, he probably would have, given what McCall had learned about him and her mother. But he hadn’t and that’s what counted.
A murderer had deprived her of ever knowing her father and had broken Ruby Bates Winchester’s heart. That alone was reason enough to find his killer. That and all the lost possibilities.
“So how did all this get you suspended?” her mother asked after her third tequila drink.
McCall had finished her first but had passed on a second because she was driving. Even one tequila had loosened her tongue. Or maybe it was growing up with all the lies that made her want to speak the truth now.
“I found his hunting license in the mud where the bones had been buried.” She felt her mother’s gaze.
“So you knew it was him that first day.”
“I suspected it was him.”
Ruby nodded and took a drink. “What made you keep quiet?”
“I wanted to wait until I got the DNA report before I told anyone. I also knew Grant would pull me off the case once he knew for sure it was Trace. I thought I’d have more time to try to find the killer before everything hit the fan.”
Ruby seemed lost in thought. “You tell your grandmother? Is that why you went out there that first time?”
“No. I just wanted to see her before she found out about the crime lab results. I’d hoped she might know something that would help me find his killer.” McCall didn’t add that she’d gone to the Winchester Ranch first today to give her grandmother the news. Tequila or not, she was no fool.
“You could have told me,” Ruby said, sounding hurt.
“Not until it was definite.”
Her mother finished her drink and stared out at the water. “You thought I killed him.”
“It crossed my mind.”
Ruby shot her a disappointed look, then asked, “Where exactly did you find him?”
“On a ridge south of town within sight of the Winchester Ranch. You can’t go out there. It’s a crime scene. I’m sure the sheriff will have a deputy posted.”
She nodded. “Who would want to do that to Trace?”
“You’d know better than me.” McCall saw something like a shadow cross her mother’s expression. “If there is someone you suspect...”
“No,” Ruby said with
