But she had climbed the gate across the lane several times now. Easily. All she’d have to do now was step over a low sill.
She shouldn’t. But would Sam really mind if she told him she was only looking for her father’s things?
She’d had a week full of reckless, daring, impulsive actions. What was one more? She stepped over the sill.
Skirting the two covered vehicles in the three-car garage, she headed straight for the boxes. It was almost with a sense of inevitability that she saw her mother’s handwriting on the outside. “Al’s things.”
Rachel sighed and rubbed a finger over the stark black letters. How must her mother have felt, packing up her husband’s belongings, knowing that he had abandoned her and their children for another woman?
She winced as the questions brought back the sense of overwhelming betrayal she had felt when her father lef her. And, later, when she had been told Lucas had spent the night with Lizzie Carpenter. She’d been devastated. She could only imagine how her mother must have felt.
Learning that Lizzie had lied to her about Lucas had shaken Rachel so much that she still didn’t know quite how she felt about it. If she dwelled on it too long, she would become fixated on how much time she and Lucas had been apart—and how much might have been different if she had taken his call the night he left.
The sealing tape on the boxes was yellowed and brittle, but still securely adhered. Rachel plucked at it futilely for a few moments, then looked around for something sharp for cutting. She didn’t immediately see anything useful. The garage was clean, with very little in it besides the shrouded vehicles and the neatly stacked boxes. There weren’t even any shelves along the walls, though a door at the back of the garage probably led into a storage room.
She stood and started through the shadowy room toward the door. She stumbled when her foot caught in the corner of a dusty car cover.
She hastily made a grab for the tarp. A glimpse of bright orange made her go still. Very slowly, she lifted the cover and looked at the classic two-seater sports car beneath.
Want to go for a ride in my magic pumpkin, princess?
Staring at the car, she could almost hear her father’s voice.
It couldn’t be the same one, she told herself dazedly. She hadn’t seen her father’s car since she was nine years old. It was just a coincidence that her uncle also owned an orange two-seater.
Moving as if in an eerie dream, she circled the hood, trailing her fingers along the time-dulled paint.
Her father had kept his sunglasses in the car. When he’d slid those aviator-styled glasses on his nose, Rachel had thought he was the most handsome man in the world.
She reached inside the vehicle and opened the tiny glove box, reaching inside as nervously as if she thought a mousetrap might clamp down on her fingers. And then she pulled out the sunglasses.
So many questions were spinning inside her head. Had her father left the car with his brother? Had Sam known Al and Nadine were planning to run away together? Maybe he’d even helped them. Maybe he’d given Al money, so that burying a wallet full of cash hadn’t been any big deal.
Maybe Sam had only pretended to be as shocked and outraged as everyone else when Al and Nadine disappeared.
Not certain what she was looking for now, Rachel reached into the glove compartment again. What she pulled out this time made her gasp.
The heavy, gold-link bracelet gleamed dully in her hand. It looked old. Solid. Expensive.
It looked very much like the one Lucas had described to.her. The bracelet that had been taken from Emily’s wrist.
The small door at the front of the garage rattled. It was the only warning Rachel had before her uncle stepped inside.
He looked at her. At the uncovered car. And at the bracelet in her hand. And then he si
ghed.
“I really wish you hadn’t done this, Rachel.”
11
IT SEEMED that nearly everyone had plans for Saturday afternoon. A wedding shower was being given for Emily by her aunts and cousins. A large number of Emily’s friends and co-workers were expected to attend.
Bobbie and Ernestine had declared that men had no place at a shower, so the male members of the family were bundled off to Emily’s house to spend the afternoon watching football. Lucas waited until Caleb McBride and his sons were settled in front of the TV, along with Kit Pace and Savannah’s teenage son, Michael. Clay played patiently with Trevor’s toddler son. Seeing that everyone else was occupied, Lucas drew Wade out to the front porch.
“Feel like taking a walk in the woods with your future brother-in-law?”
Wade studied Lucas’s face. “Why?”