The Cypress House(57)

She went quiet for a moment, and when she continued her voice was lower, more controlled.

“Solomon’s had help at the Cypress House for years. Since not long after my father built it. My father thought he was financially secure and found out he wasn’t. He lost his savings, and he couldn’t make any money here. It was a foolish idea from the start. This place is too far from anywhere to make a success. So what if you can catch fish? You can catch fish anywhere.”

Her face was beginning to take shape in the gloom.

“I stayed in Savannah when they moved here. My brother was just a boy, so he went along, but I was grown and I stayed there. They’d been down for only a few years before my mother died. Drowned just out from the beach.”

Arlen remembered the way his mother had looked at the end, body and mind ravaged by fever, her eyes so far from the woman he’d known that he couldn’t look into them.

“My father was devastated, and he needed help with my brother. I came down for a time, stayed for just over a year. When the lumber company in High Town went under, they killed off the railroad spur and this place was truly isolated. I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I left. I hated it here. Hated it. I moved back to Savannah. I was there for five years.”

She paused, and he was about to ask why she’d returned, but something told him not to speak. Just let her talk.

“During that time my father worked with Wade. After Prohibition ended, things got worse. The people involved were more ruthless, my father’s role more important. He was scared of it, then. After getting in so deeply, he decided he was scared. He began writing me letters, telling me that I needed to help him convince Owen to come and live with me in Georgia, that Owen couldn’t stay in this place anymore. I tried to talk to my brother, and I was ignored. Then he was arrested.”

A soft breeze slid in through the open window and flattened the sheet against Arlen’s thigh.

“I left Savannah and came back. Thinking”—her voice hitched slightly—“that I would save them.”

In his room at the far end of the hall, Paul coughed and muttered. It brought Rebecca up, held her silent. The moon painted her shadow on the wall.

“My father was terribly depressed. Near suicidal. He blamed himself for Owen’s situation, and he felt trapped here. He said anyone who betrayed Solomon Wade paid for it. That he’d follow you, find you no matter how long it took, and kill you. I didn’t believe that.”

This time she was quiet much longer.

Arlen said, “Tell me the rest. I don’t care how hard it is. You’ve got to tell me the rest.”

“It was my idea,” she said finally, her voice unsteady now. “My father was willing to try, but it was my idea. He kept talking about how the only way you escaped Solomon was through death. I told him we’d use that. He was going to take the boat out and sink it. Fake his death. He would leave, go to a place we’d agreed upon, but I’d have to stay for a while. For it to fool Wade, I would have to stay here at least long enough to make it look like we hadn’t run. I’d sell the inn, and when my brother was released, there’d be no reason for him to return here. It wouldn’t concern anyone when we decided to leave Corridor County once my father was dead. It would seem logical.”

“Your father actually did drown, though,” he said. “That’s what Thomas Barrett told me. So did he drown trying to scuttle the boat?”

“You don’t drown with your throat cut.”

He was silent for a time, and then he said, “No, you don’t. How can you be sure that’s what happened, though?”

“I saw the body. Who do you think was supposed to get him off the boat before he sank it?”

“You didn’t tell anyone.”

“You have trouble believing that,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve never seen your own father with his throat cut because of the way you handled a situation.”

No, not with his throat cut, Arlen thought. I saw my father spilling blood into the dust from a bullet, though, and you better believe it was because of the way I handled the situation. Difference was, I was right. Edwin Main might have been corrupt, but I did what was right. My father was dangerous. Insane.

“By the time I got back here,” she said when he didn’t respond, “Solomon Wade was waiting. His message was simple: either I did what was asked, or my brother would end up like my father.”

Another sound from Paul’s room, this time a garbled sort of cry. Talking in his sleep. Trapped in a nightmare.

“Is your brother aware of any of this?”

“No. How could I tell him while he was in prison?”