Black Water by Ninie Hammon

Author:Ninie Hammon [Hammon, Ninie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sterling & Stone
Published: 2020-01-27T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Bailey watched the play of emotions across the face of the sheriff and felt a pang of sympathy. The poor man. If she were in his place, she wouldn’t have believed a word the three of them said. The story was totally preposterous and the three of them must look — what was it that old man next door used to say? — crazier than a soup sandwich.

She wouldn’t believe it herself if she hadn’t lived it. And even then … some part of the Essential Bailey wanted to keep arguing the case before the High Court of Common Sense. Things like this — painting the future? Living somebody else’s death? That was ridiculous. Things like that didn’t happen to real people! She and T.J. and Dobbs were real people, normal people, ordinary people. Maybe it was all a dream and she’d wake up tomorrow morning — No! She wouldn’t go there again. For months after she’d crawled through the mud to escape the rats under a dumpster, she’d told herself that the whole nightmare had been just that, a nightmare, that she’d wake up with Aaron beside her and Bethany sound asleep in the nursery. Well, she hadn’t. It hadn’t been a dream. It had been real. This was real, too. She really had drowned with a faceless little girl who existed only in wet paint on her canvas. She might not want to believe it, but she had no choice.

The sheriff did have a choice, though. He had to decide to believe, and when he finally stopped studying their faces and spoke, she appreciated his honesty.

“I’m not going to pretend that I’m buying what you’re selling.” he said. Then he cast a glance at T.J. “Not that I could get away with lying to you, T.J.”

She didn’t know anything about the tall, thin man who had shown up in a thunderstorm with a sixty-year-old painting and a dripping dog. But she could tell that the sheriff held the man in high regard. And the sheriff didn’t strike her as a man who handed out his approval, respect — no, admiration — like he was throwing feed to chickens.

“But if there is even the possibility that someone’s life is in danger here, then I have to act ‘as if.’ So…” He spread his hands, fingers splayed in a gesture of submission. “So let’s figure this out.”

She hadn’t expected him to cave in so easily, thought it would take way more convincing than he’d been given. T.J. appeared to be equally skeptical. Clearly, the sheriff was humoring them. But what if he was? If he was willing to help them, what difference did it make why?

She watched the big man step effortlessly into police officer mode, then noticed as he began to speak that T.J. seemed to be on the same page, asked questions in the same manner. It occurred to her then that maybe T.J. had once been a police officer, too.

“Okay, Bailey,” the sheriff said. “You say you … saw, felt, experienced, whatever, this little girl drowning.

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