“I’m sorry, Ms. Ford. She’s off today.”
Cindy frowned.
“I’ll come back,” the nurse said, retreating as fast as she could out of the room. Matt didn’t blame the woman.
Cindy turned back to Matt. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“Sure. What is it?”
“It’s about the services.”
Matt had already fielded dozens of texts from Cindy about the funeral, and wondered how there could possibly be more questions—more decisions about the flowers, the photos to display, the program, the obituary, and the other things Matt cared nothing about. He supposed immersing herself in the details was how Cindy was coping with the grief.
“Noah Brawn would like to have the wake at his home,” Cindy said.
Matt thought about this. “Mom’s high school boyfriend? The guy from the documentary? Won’t it be weird to—”
“Look, it’s not ideal. I frankly never liked Noah when we were growing up. But he’s the governor of the state now. The reason your grandpa has this big room. And I think your parents would want this.”
“Are you sure about that? Because I’m not so sure that my—”
“We need Noah for Danny’s pardon.”
And there it was. His brother’s case had dominated his family in life, so of course it would dominate in death. There was no use fighting about it.
“Okay.”
“And I know you haven’t wanted to talk about it, but we need to take care of your parents’ affairs. The house, their credit cards, the will, the life insurance, the—”
“You’re right, I don’t want to talk about it,” Matt said. It came out more sharply than he’d intended, reminded him of the outrageous newspaper story from that morning suggesting he and Danny had killed their family for insurance money. He needed to shake it off. In a softer tone, he said, “After the funeral, I promise.”
Cindy looked like she was going to protest, but stopped herself. Purposefully changing the subject, she said, “So what did those assholes the Adlers want?”
She’d asked him the same thing on the car ride over, but he’d shrugged it off. “I guess they’re making a sequel,” Matt said.
Cindy’s expression turned to disgust. “I’ll never forgive myself for letting them interview me. The way they treated your father. And now they want to put everyone through it all again? It makes me sick.”
Cindy’s eyes were misty. The first sign of emotion other than irritation or anger Matt had seen in his aunt since he’d arrived in Adair. He reached across the table and put his hand on hers.
Cindy gave a sardonic smile. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”
Matt didn’t know what she meant by that.
“All we’ve got is a guy who doesn’t recognize us, and another guy in prison for life.” There was dark humor in her voice, masking the pain.
“No,” Matt said. “We’ve got each other.”
It was the right thing to say, the kind thing to say. But the truth was, Matt felt alone. And he wondered if he would always feel this way. Wondered if the loss and pain would always consume him. Wondered if he’d ever recover from the magnitude of it all. Eyeing his frail grandfather staring out at nothing in his beat-up La-Z-Boy, Matt decided that Cindy was right. Grandpa was lucky he’d never know the truth.
CHAPTER 46
SARAH KELLER
Since watching the video at the Adlers’ farmhouse, Keller had thought a lot about Charlotte’s cousin and the theory that Charlotte was alive. It just didn’t ring true. For one, if it wasn’t Charlotte who was murdered, who was the young woman with her skull crushed in at the creek? And how did the police and prosecutors screw that up? Charlotte’s father might have been abusing her. And she might not be the innocent cheerleader portrayed in “A Violent Nature.” But that didn’t mean she was alive. Even if she was, what would it have to do with the death of the Pines?
Still, Keller wasn’t drowning in leads. She was playing the waiting game now. Waiting for the report on the DNA sample, waiting for the report on the facial rec of the man and woman in the photo Maggie Pine had sent her brother, waiting on a report from Carlita Escobar. So, Keller decided, she might as well confirm that it was Charlotte buried at that cemetery.
Short of digging up the body, Keller thought the best place to test the theory was with those who’d lived the case. Ordinarily, she’d confer with the local prosecutors and detectives. But they’d been under attack since the documentary aired, and had circled the wagons. That left Danny’s lawyers. Not his hippie lawyer at the trial, whom the documentary painted as borderline incompetent, notwithstanding the fortune the Pine family had paid him. And not the new white-shoe appellate lawyers the Adlers found too boring to carry the documentary’s sequel. Keller wanted to talk to Louise Lester, the passionate attorney who’d taken Danny’s case before the cameras were rolling. Who by all accounts was a skilled advocate.