Page 46 of The Sleeping Girls

Did Heath resent his half brother? Or did Digger resent Heath and Anna Marie because they were his father’s blood kin and Digger wasn’t?

He closed his eyes and landed back in time to the night before his mother left them.

He was eleven. Heard his parents arguing that night. Heard something crash. His mother crying. Then his daddy’s pick-up truck firing up, tires screeching as he roared away.

Anna Marie had heard it, too. She’d snuck into Heath and Digger’s room and stood at the door in her nightgown, wide-eyed and scared.

“It’s okay,” he’d told her although he had no idea if it was. Was his father coming back? What were they yelling about?

“Is Mama all right?” Anna Marie whispered.

Heath climbed from bed. “I’ll check on her.” His stomach clenched as he tiptoed into the hall. Digger stood at the door to the living room, an odd smile on his face.

Crying echoed from his parents’ room, and he turned away from Digger and walked down the hall. When he reached his parents’ room, he pushed at the door.

“Mama?”

The door squeaked and he saw his mother picking up the lamp that had been overturned on the floor. Tears streaked her cheeks as she looked up and spotted him. Moonlight shimmered through the window, illuminating the teardrops sparkling on her eyelashes.

“Go to your room,” she said, her voice shaky.

“But—”

“I said go. Everything will be fine.”

Heath’s fingers dug into the door jamb but he turned and fled. Digger stepped in front of him just before Heath reached his room. His teeth were bared like a wolf’s as he grinned, his eyes vacant. Menacing.

Heath ducked inside his room and found Anna Marie huddled in the chair in the corner. “She’s okay,” he assured her.

“I’m scared, can I sleep in here?” Anna Marie said, her voice pained.

He didn’t want her in the room with him and Digger, but she was shivering and looked terrified, so he pulled the comforter from his bed and threw it on the floor. He tossed a pillow onto it and Anna Marie crawled on it and curled up, twisting the blanket in her fingers.

Heath waited until she fell asleep before he lay back on his bed and closed his eyes. He didn’t like the way his father had left. Or the way Digger had seemed to enjoy the fight his parents had had.

Mama’s okay, he reminded himself.They’ve argued before. In the morning, everything will be fine.

But in the morning when he’d gone to the kitchen to find her, she wasn’t there.

“Your mama left us,” his father said. “And she’s not coming back.”

He’d stared at his daddy in shock, certain he was wrong.

But that was the last time he’d ever seen her.

FORTY-NINE

BACKWATER’S EDGE

With the heavy black clouds above casting the property in shadowy grays, Derrick shined his flashlight along the ground as he searched the drive and front of the trailer park for indications of foul play.

The driveway consisted of mud, gravel and dead leaves. Fresh tire prints marred the ground. Two sets. He made a mental note to follow up on who the second prints belonged to.

Around back, he spotted the girl’s footprints then another set. The girl’s were small but, judging from the size and ridges of the second one, they looked like a man’s boots.

A scrap of trash and an empty cigarette pack lay on the ground so he snapped photos of those. ERT would collect them and process for forensics. The cigarette pack could belong to Ruby’s mother or a visitor or the killer. Although, with trash littering the other properties, it could belong to someone else who lived in the mobile home park. As he reached the rear, he noticed the overflowing dumpster. Loose trash had blown across the yard and the glow from his flashlight lit up more footprints that came from the back stoop. The indentations in the soil looked like sneakers. Probably Ruby’s.

He followed them to the trash bin and realized they were fresh as if she’d been tasked with emptying the garbage. Wind carried the acrid odors of waste and spoiled food and he found a larger partial print that looked like a man’s. This one was slightly different from the one out front.

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