Page 34 of Snow Creek

The thought of him in foster care stabs at me, even now. It was my fault. I own it. Nevertheless, he didn’t need to bring it up.

“You know, Rylee,” he told me. “I looked up to you. Now when I see you, I realize I don’t know who you are. I don’t know if you’re even capable of being a sister or daughter or anything.”

My eyes were damp, but I didn’t let a single tear fall down my cheeks. I want to cry ugly—it’s how I felt inside.

My brother got up and turned to me.

“See you around, sister.”

Nothing came out of my mouth. It was not my style to say sorry. Or to beg for forgiveness. Why should it be? I remember thinking. I did what I had to do. I can’t take it back.

And then Hayden disappeared through the labyrinth of tables and the cacophony of people who laugh as though whatever their drinking partner has said is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.

I finished my drink and got up to pay.

Nothing’s funny about my life. Never has been.

That’s the last time I saw him.

Fifteen

Snow Creek was punched into the hills and mountains by logging companies more than fifty years ago. After the spotted owl put a halt to things, Olympic, Weyerhaeuser and Puget Logging sold off parcels at bargain rates—because there were no public utilities like water or power or sewer. That was fine for the folks that decided they’d rather live in a lonely world of their own making than the cookie-cutter places they came from. Some were hippie types—at least by the looks of them. Beads, flannel shirts and jeans so dirty they could walk across town on their own. Others came to do things verboten in the outside world. Pot growers, mostly. Some were believers in the occult—or at least pretended to be. A writhing mass of naked people under the moon was something no one would ever see in suburbia where the nosey neighbors lived with 911 on speed dial.

Everyone who came sought seclusion.

As I drive from the Wheatons’ place I make a left, looking for the closest neighbors on that side of their farm. The woods break to a field punctuated with massive stumps, then back again to a black wall of old-growth timber. I can see where the loggers gave up and moved on. One tree looks big enough to tunnel through like the famous Redwoods in California. I slow to take it in. The first driveway is a quarter mile or so further. I follow it up to a small log cabin dripping in ferns and emerald moss. Smoke curls from the river rock chimney. It’s a pancake syrup commercial, I think.

As I open the car door, I’m immediately yanked from the quaintness of the scene.

Cats.

A lot of cats.

I can smell them. Anyone within fifty yards could.

An elderly woman peers from the window. I motion to her and she comes to the door.

She’s in her eighties if she’s a day. She’s wearing a pretty pink robe and boots. Her hair is black and white, almost skunk-like.

I’d rather smell a skunk right now, I think.

She squints at me.

“Do I know you?” she asks.

“No,” I tell her. “I’m Detective Megan Carpenter, from Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, ma’am. I’m here on police business. Can we talk?”

Her lips tighten to a straight line. “I’m not getting rid of my cats. You can’t make me.”

“Oh, no. Of course not. I’m not here about your animals.”

“My babies,” she corrects me.

I ask her for her name.

“Maxine Jacobson,” she says.

“Ms. Jacobson, I’m here about your neighbors.”

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