Page 77 of Seaside Cowboy's Second Chance

Well, at least it wasn’t an outright no.

Skylar faced her grandmother. “You know I began remembering small things after I started college. Just fragments. Like a shadow on a cliff. Then familiar-sounding voices. Later, seeing Dad leaving. Rain on my skin as I sneaked out. The scent of wet soil.”

Earl didn’t stop her yet. Good.

“Then there was an image in my mind of a woman in a red raincoat standing on a cliff, her hood covering her head. Since it was so vivid and striking, I decided to paint it. It was my best work, even if it gave me a feeling of unease. I didn’t realize yet who the woman was. In that memory, I only saw her from the back. But it looked painfully familiar.” Skylar’s heart shifted with an equally painful wrench.

“I remember that painting,” Grandma whispered.

“Hurry up. I don’t have all day,” Earl waved the gun at her.

Goosebumps erupted over Skylar’s skin, both from the current danger and her dangerous memories. If only Dallas were here. She’d never stopped loving him. Why hadn’t she told him the truth upon returning to Port Sunshine? Because of a threat years ago? Or was it because subconsciously she’d been afraid he’d turn out like her father? Like his father, for that matter? She was wrong, of course.

But maybe she could still tell him that story, even if it was the last thing she did. She slipped her hand into her pocket and hoped she pressed the right button to speed-dial him on her cell phone. Would he understand to call the police? She just hoped he wouldn’t try to remedy the situation himself.

She grasped at straws as she drowned in the ocean of despair. “You can say you killed my father in self-defense. The police will believe you. You don’t have to kill us, you know.”

His gaze became pensive as if he considered that option. “They might, just might have believed me when it happened weeks ago. But they certainly won’t now after I concealed the crime. Besides, I can’t trust you’ll keep quiet.”

“I kept what my father did quiet, for all these years.”

Earl’s lip curled, and his clutch tightened on the gun. “That was for your father. Not the stranger who killed him.”

Well, it was worth a try. Concealing a death seemed to be a habit where her father was concerned. Strange irony to havehismurder concealed.

She drew a deep breath and refocused to show Dallas what was happening, if by some miracle he was listening. “Back to my story. On my visit here to see Grandma and Dallas, I left the painting of the woman in the red raincoat for sale at Dallas’s uncle’s store. Then I went back to Charleston. Later, more memories about the night my dad disappeared came back, as if the floodgates had opened. I called to take the painting back. But Kai told me it was already sold. I hoped it was a coincidence. It wasn’t.”

Tears washed Grandma’s pale eyes. She blinked rapidly behind her thick glasses. “That woman in the painting... She was your mother, right?”

“Yes.” Skylar leaned against the wall, her legs weak. She could make a dash to the kitchen for a knife, but once again, that would leave her grandmother in danger. And even if she tackled Earl and screamed for her grandmother to run, Grandma couldn’t, well, run.

At a thump on the bedroom door, Skylar and Grandma glanced in its direction, but Earl’s gaze didn’t waver as he shouted, “Breeze, stop it!”

Breeze whined but stopped jumping at the door. Claws against tile echoed faintly as if she tried to dig under the wall and escape. Too bad they didn’t have a mud floor.

Meanwhile, Skylar moved to the past again. “I had a new memory of when she turned around, her face streaked with rain or tears or both. Following Dad, I ran from tree to tree until we made it to the cliff. I hid behind a tree trunk, and I was small enough that Dad didn’t notice me when he glanced back. He met my mother on the cliff.”

Skylar swallowed hard, the memory clogging her throat. “She begged him to let her take me with her. But he yelled back at her.”

Those screams still rang in her ears.

“I’ll never forgive you! You were my entire world. I can’t live without you. Why did you leave me? Betray me like that?” Tears ran down his face, mixing with the rain.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just felt... felt suffocated.” Her mother’s tears were mixing with the rain, as well.

Now, Skylar couldn’t speak around the huge lump in her throat. But she had to. She couldn’t let Earl’s attention waver long enough for him to remember to kill them. “I–I didn’t understand at first why she’d wanted to meet at such a dangerous place. But then I realized my father told her to meet him there.”

“This was going to be it for him.” Earl’s expression was gloomy.

It reflected Skylar’s mood. For many years, she pushed the memories away. She still had difficulty reconciling the belligerent man on the cliff with the caring one who’d carried her on his shoulders, bought her ice cream, brushed her hair. “She must’ve known it was a dangerous place to meet, but she still had to try. For me.”

“He was going to commit suicide in front of her. She was his world.” Earl’s lips thinned.

And Skylar wasn’t enough? Didn’t she matter even a little? Besides, she wasn’t sure she believed Earl—or rather whatever story her father had told him.

“He was going to jump off the cliff. He ran to the edge. But your mother tried to stop him,” Earl said gloomily. “They struggled. He told me he didn’t mean to push her off the cliff, but she slipped off the wet surface.” Then he said again, “She was his world.”

The image of her father rushing to the edge, and her mother stepping in front of him, appeared in front of Skylar’s eyes. But that memory was blurry. “I only remember the red splotch falling off the cliff. It took me several moments to realize it was my mother. I ran away. Thunder covered my footfalls, and rain covered my footprints. I didn’t look where I ran. I just ran.”

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