Copper Lake Secrets by Marilyn Pappano Page A

my dogs and my friends. I can pay my bills, and I’m in good health. That’s a lot.”
    Halfway through her response, his gaze had zeroed in on her. She could feel it as surely as she felt Mick’s warm, comforting weight against her.
    “What happened that summer?” His voice was low and comforting, too, with its blend of accents. It was a perfect voice for talking in the dark, for lulling an edgy woman into relaxing all those taut muscles, for making her feel safe.
    God, she’d been using that word a lot lately. Yearning for something she couldn’t regain until she faced the fears that had taken it from her.
    Unless remembering stole it from her for good.
     
    Jones watched her, her fingers lightly stroking Mick’s fur. Her head was tilted so little of her face was visible to him, but that was enough in the silvery light to know that her expression had gone blank. The suspicions that had reared their ugly head that morning came back, prickling his spine, making him sit straighter in the chair.
    He thought she wasn’t going to answer and didn’t blame her at all when slowly she lifted her head and met his gaze. “I don’t know.”
    “What do you mean?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t remember most of the time I spent here. I remember coming with my mother. Mark arrived soon after we did for his summer visit, and Valerie left again not long after that. She didn’t even tell me goodbye. I got up one morning, and she was…gone. The next memory I have after that day, she and I were back in Colorado.”
    Truth? It was impossible to tell with an accomplished liar. But something about the look on her face, the way she said the words…it felt like truth.
    He knew from fifteen years ago that her mother had just bailed on her. She’d told Glen the story, and he’d repeated it angrily, wondering how a woman could do that to her child. In their culture, family came first…unless two restless sons ran off to experience a different life.
    “Where did she go?” he asked, though he knew the answers to that, too.
    “Grandmother said she left to take care of things back at home, but she was gone a long time. There wasn’t that much to take care of.”
    That had been Miss Willa’s first explanation. Later, she’d told Reece that her mother had gone to Europe with friends. Glen had shaken his head in disgust. Can you believe that? Leaving her own kid to go on vacation?
    “What did Valerie say when you asked her?”
    Reece’s brow furrowed. “She would never talk about it. Even now, if I ask her anything about that summer, even about my father’s death, she says the past is past and she’s not going to waste any time discussing it.”
    That was cold, when your daughter still had questions. If the daughter really did have questions. But leaving your grieving thirteen-year-old daughter for whatever reason was pretty damn cold, too.
    “So you really don’t remember anything? Swimming in the creek? That old cemetery? Hanging out with your cousin?”
    She shook her head. “I remember enough from the first few weeks to know that Mark and I didn’t hang out. He was mean.”
    Mean wasn’t the half of it.
    If she was being honest, she didn’t remember Jones and Glen.
    She didn’t remember Mark trying to drown her.
    She didn’t remember anything her grandfather might have done to her.
    She had no answers to give him.
    She was of no use to him.
    If she was being honest.
    He could be honest even if she wasn’t. He could tell her why he was here, what he remembered of that summer. He could appeal to her conscience, could trade answers to some of her questions for some sort of closure for the family regarding Glen.
    Silently he snorted. If Glen was dead, knowing was better than not knowing, but it wouldn’t provide closure. It wouldn’t make the knowledge any easier to bear. It damn sure wouldn’t ease his guilt for leaving his brother there. Yeah, Glen had been older; yeah, he’d been stubborn as a mule. But Jones should