The Violent Season by Sara Walters

Author:Sara Walters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2021-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

15.

I probably should have been more surprised to see the cop car parked in front of my house. I was walking home from doing homework at Quinn’s the next afternoon, and there it was. But the sight of it barely made my pulse jump. In the year since Mom had died, I’d become so used to seeing cop cars in my driveway that never brought any answers that I didn’t even give it a second glance before I let myself in the front door. I could hear voices coming from the living room, and after I’d dropped my backpack, I heard my dad call for me.

Sheriff Grant was sitting on the couch across from Dad, and they both stood up as I entered. The sheriff was wearing the same expression he’d worn the night my mom was killed—pained, but like he was making an incredible effort to keep it from showing. Finally, my body began to react. My blood pressure picked up. The back of my neck prickled with sweat under the light scarf I was still wearing. My dad and the sheriff both looked like doctors about to deliver bad news to family members in a hospital waiting room.

“What’s going on?” I asked, wiping my palms on my jeans.

“Wyatt, Sheriff Grant came over to give us some news.” My dad had his hands half inside the pockets of his black jeans, a nervous, awkward stance he assumed when he didn’t want to say something. I remembered him standing that way in my bedroom door when he had first tried to ask me without asking me if I was having sex with Cash, if I was being safe. I cringed, both at the memory of that conversation and in anticipation of whatever conversation was about to happen.

“We’ve got a new suspect in your mom’s case,” Sheriff Grant said, as if my dad’s nervousness was palpable enough that he felt it, too. “We needed probable cause to pick him up for questioning, but now that we have it, I wanted you and your dad to be the first to know.”

As he spoke, though, I was spiraling away, leaving my body, tumbling back into the passenger seat of Cash’s truck on the night he’d told me what he’d overheard at the police station. A new suspect. Maybe they knew who’d done it. When I closed my eyes for a second, trying to anchor myself in my body again, I saw the blood-soaked hallway carpet, the snow blowing through the open front door, fanned out over the floor in the foyer. That sickeningly haunting song playing on repeat.

“Wy? You okay?”

My dad’s voice tethered me. I opened my eyes.

“Who?” I asked.

My dad took his hands from his pockets, taking a step toward me. “Wyatt—”

“He’s not local,” Sheriff Grant interrupted. “We’re working with the sheriff’s office in Addison County on this one.”

“Wait, he’s not from Wolf Ridge?” I asked, unable to filter the exasperation out of my voice. “That doesn’t make any fucking sense.” I shook my head.

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