“What is your friggin’ problem, dude?”
Duncan draped his arm over the front seat and looked down at him, laughing. “I was just going to ask you the same thing, lover boy. Don’t you think fourteen is a little early to be sinkin’ the salmon?”
Clancy shook his head and walked around the car, slamming a fist into the hood as he went.
“Hey, moron! You just put a dent in my ride!”
Clancy laughed. “No, I just put a repair in your dent.”
“Fine. You wanna fuck up my car? Then I’ll make sure I get the chance to spend some time with Felicity.”
Clancy knew it was the absolute stupidest thing he could do, because if he reacted, Duncan would see how easy he could get to him through Evie. But he couldn’t help himself. It was like he’d gone blind and deaf with anger. He whipped around.
“I swear to God, Duncan. If you speak to her or even look at her, I will kick your asthmatic ass to Kennebunk and back!”
“Bwaa-haaa-haaa!” Duncan turned his steering wheel and peeled off onto the road, waving. “Later, you pussy-whipped girlie-man!”
Chapter Twelve
She did it. While Christina was asleep, she turned on the television and faced reality. The two of them were quite the celebrities. In the five minutes Evelyn allowed herself to flip through the channels, she heard Wahlman’s interview recounted several times, saw his face on four channels, and listened to two separate interviews with FBI agents. When federal investigators described her as “quiet” and “disciplined,” she just about threw up. They might as well have called her a psychopath and be done with it.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the world now knew she was traveling under the name Cricket Dickinson. Now her ID was worthless.
She turned off Clancy’s television. She refused to let this destroy her, but she knew how shattered her father must be. It had to be killing him. This whole drawn-out saga was putting him through hell. And he didn’t deserve it.
Evelyn squeezed her eyes shut, trying to stop the memory from flooding her mind, but she couldn’t. Maybe the details of that summer day would never leave her, no matter how hard she tried to forget.
Richard Wahlman’s fancy lawyer had shown up at the farm before noon on a sunny July afternoon. Evelyn, Pop-Pop, and Chrissy had just returned from a successful berry-picking adventure, and had arrived home with quarts and quarts of boysenberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. As always, the next couple days would be devoted to baking, canning, freezing, and jam making. Though everyone was choked with grief over Amanda’s death, Evelyn thought Christina needed to see that the rhythm of life would go on.
When they heard a loud and impatient banging at the front door, Evelyn knew she needed to answer it—Pop-Pop was out in the back garden picking snap peas and digging potatoes for dinner. She hurried toward the front of the house with a berry-smeared Chrissy on her heels.
The man in the suit was a stranger.
“Evelyn McGuinness?”
Her stomach fell to the ground. Had something else horrible happened? What now? “Yes.” Christina ran behind her legs.
He shoved folded-up papers into her sticky hands.
“But—”
“You are hereby subpoenaed to comply with an emergency order for determination of paternity, and you are required to make any response within ten days to this petition for custody.”
Pop-Pop came running in from the garden, horror in his eyes. It had been just over a month since State Police arrived to inform them Amanda had been killed. Evelyn saw her father’s expression and immediately knew what he was thinking, because she had asked herself the same question: everyone was right here—who else was left to die?