Page 28 of A River of Crows

With the car in park, Sloan heard the faint song on the radio. Keith Whitley, she recognized. The lyrics suddenly took on a more personal meaning. She was no stranger to the rain either. Not since November, anyway.

Sloan wiped her eyes again with the handkerchief Walt had given her. “How can you be so cold?”

“I don’t expect you to understand any of this, but one day you will,” she said, echoing Sloan’s father’s words. “I need you to trust me. Soon everything is going to make—”

“Shhhh!” Sloan reached and turned the radio knob. “There’s breaking news.”

“Oh, Sloan, don’t listen to the news for a while. You don’t want to hear what they say about your father.”

“If you’re just joining us, there is sad news today in the country music world,” the deejay said. “Rising star Keith Whitley was found dead in his Goodlettsville home around noon today. We will keep you posted on this breaking—”

Mom killed the car, and the radio stopped. “Come on. Get in the house. I didn’t see any reporters, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t here.”

But Sloan couldn’t move. Had she heard right? Was her dad guilty? Was Keith Whitley dead?

“Suit yourself.” Mom climbed out of the car and slammed the door.

Once her mom entered the house, Sloan allowed herself to cry, to scream. She cried not just for her Daddy now, but for Keith. Sloan wondered if his wife and little boy felt just like she did now. Wondered how many lives in the world were simultaneously crashing down with her own.

When the car got too hot, Sloan reached to crank down the window and spotted the cameraman in the bushes beside their home. She wondered how long he’d been there. Wondered what pictures he’d taken. She didn’t care. She and Daddy would never see Keith Whitley in concert together. They’d never even lay on her floor and listen to his new album together. Keith was dead, and it felt like every dream Sloan had was gone with him.

Chapter 11

Mallowater, TX, 2008

Sloan’s eyes jerked open to complete darkness. Her heart pounded, and her pillow was drenched in sweat. It took her a minute to anchor herself in the present, to accept she was safe in her bed.

In her dream, she’d been a teenager shopping at Leo’s Drug Emporium with her mom. No matter which aisle she ventured down, the same man followed her. He was thin, wearing a Chicago Bulls baseball cap, but his face was featureless. A face that only makes sense in a dream.

Sloan had ventured away from her mom to check out the latest issue of Seventeen Magazine. She hadn’t even picked it up before a hand clamped over her mouth and powerful arms pulled her backward.

Sloan sat up in bed and grabbed her water bottle off the bedside table. Her hand shook as she took a drink. Just a dream, she assured herself, but certain images had been so vivid and the terror so unsettlingly real. It took Sloan a few more minutes to figure out why.

It wasn’t just a dream; it was a memory. Sloan remembered the papery cardboard smell of the store that day as Leo stocked a shelf near the cash register. She’d been wearing her new cropped denim jacket and scuffed white Keds. They were too small and rubbed against her heel. She remembered the man’s clammy hand over her mouth, remembered her thrashing heartbeat. She knew she needed to fight but felt paralyzed.

But her mom had fought. The stranger almost had Sloan to the door when her mother appeared out of nowhere. Caroline screamed, hit, and bit. She slung her purse at the man, and its contents flew across the dingy tile floor. Hot pink lipstick, Juicy Fruit gum, a blue checkbook holder. Sloan remembered staring at those items on the floor long after the man had let her go and run out of the store.

There had been no other customers in the store, only Leo. “I set off the alarm,” he’d told Sloan as he knelt beside her. “Police will be here soon.”

But Sloan didn’t remember talking to the police. She didn’t even remember talking about the incident at all. Was this one of those repressed memories she’d learned about in her child psychology class? Or simply a bad dream brought on by all the talk of kidnapped children and sinister criminals?

There was no waking her mom now, not after she’d taken her Doxepin. Or rather, after Sloan slipped it into her nightly tea.

There was only one other person to ask. If this had happened, Sloan would have told Noah. Or, at the very least, Noah would remember his dad talking about it. By being quiet, Noah learned a lot, especially in the home of a police officer and hairdresser.

Sloan turned on her cell phone. 11:30. Late, but not as late as she expected.

She typed out a lengthy text only to delete it and type it again. At this rate, she wouldn’t get it sent until midnight. She finally settled on simple:

Do you remember a man grabbing me at Leo’s when we were kids?

Sloan laid back on her pillow but kept the phone in her hand. Even though she’d turned the ringer up, she checked the screen every few minutes, as if she’d somehow missed the notification chime. He could already be in bed. The Noah she knew would never go to bed before 2:00 am, but maybe the Noah she knew didn’t exist anymore.

Sloan tried to remember more details of that day, tried to recall the man’s face, but she couldn’t. It was only the denim jacket, too-tight Keds, Seventeen Magazine, and hot pink lipstick on the floor.

If it was a memory, someone had tried to abduct her, just like they’d abducted Logan Pruitt and Dylan Lawrence.

The phone chimed. She shot back up in bed to read Noah’s reply:

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