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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A terrorist.

Aspen had hoped that Marion Eaton’s wild claims about a bombing and a murder were exaggerated, or perhaps an outright lie.

She hadn’t realized that she’d been harboring that hope until she sat in front of the computer monitor at the library the next morning. Thanks to her missing laptop, it was either the library or her phone, and she hated trying to read on her phone’s tiny screen.

She’d searched for all the information she could find about the lumber company bombing thirty years before. Her fear that she’d have trouble digging up old articles turned out to be in vain. Not only had the story been covered in the local newspaper, it’d been picked up in news outlets all over the state and in both major Boston papers.

The articles claimed the bombing was the work of environmental terrorists.

And more than one reporter attached Aspen’s mother’s name to that label.

A terrorist.

Aspen’s mother was a terrorist.

And a murderer.

Aspen felt sick to her stomach.

Everything Marion Eaton had told Aspen had just been confirmed, via multiple sources.

What occurred to her as she walked out of the library late Tuesday morning was that, if at any time during her childhood she’d typed her mother’s name into a search engine, she’d have discovered this information.

It had never crossed her mind that her mother’s disappearance had been part of a larger news story.

She was thankful, so thankful she hadn’t learned this when she was in her teens or even her twenties. She wished she didn’t know it now.

On the sidewalk in front of the library, she paused and looked up and down the street, trying to remember where she’d parked. It hadn’t been that long since she’d arrived, but she felt off, confused, as if her body had been transported to a different time, maybe a different universe. How could the world outside the library still be the same as when Aspen walked in? Everything in Aspen’s universe had shifted, and yet the world appeared exactly as it had before.

A hand slid around her upper arm, and she glanced up to see a man’s face. Tall and handsome with salt-and-pepper hair and a strong chin. He seemed familiar, but she couldn’t wrap her mind around him being there, or how she knew him, or why he was giving her that quizzical look.

“You seem a bit flummoxed.”

She blinked a couple of times. How long had she been standing there?

“Brent Salcito. We met at church Sunday.”

Right. The mayor. He’d been kind, even said something nice about Aspen’s mother.

Concern was etched in the lines around his eyes. “What do you need? Water? Maybe something to eat? We could go to The Patriot.”

But she’d see James there, and maybe others she knew. Worse, she might see people who’d known her mother.

Perhaps sensing her hesitation, Brent nodded toward the corner. “Let’s walk.” He led her around a corner and up a short street to the next block. There, she recognized the old house with the round sign hanging over the door.

“How about Cuppa Josie’s?” Brent said. “This time of day, it’s probably pretty empty.”

The thought of having a conversation with somebody who knew her mother as something other than a domestic terrorist sounded good to Aspen, so she nodded.

Brent kept his hand on her arm, a gentle touch she appreciated, for the two blocks to the coffee shop. Was he worried she’d collapse? She wasn’t usually so fragile.

As he’d guessed, the place wasn’t crowded. A clock in the shape of a teapot behind the counter told her it was not quite eleven o’clock. The woman there, a slender brunette with big brown eyes and long hair pulled back into a ponytail, nodded at Brent, then smiled at Aspen. “Good to see you again.”

Aspen had only been in the shop once, her first morning in town after she’d stayed in the hotel. The barista—or maybe she was the proprietor—had a good memory for faces. Aspen attempted a friendly expression despite the emotions roiling in her belly.

“Where is she?”

The words came from behind. Aspen spun to see an older woman. Based on the light gray hair and wrinkles, she was probably in her sixties, maybe older. Her arms were crossed over a dark gray velour tracksuit, her coal-dark eyes glaring.

“Nobody wants you here,” the woman said.

Aspen blinked. Everything in her wanted to shrink and disappear. But she hadn’t done anything wrong. Instead, she pushed her shoulders back. “I don’t believe we’ve met. You must have me confused with somebody else.”

“I know exactly who you are. Where’s your mother?”

Brent Salcito shifted beside her. “Now Rhonda, there’s no need to make a scene.”

The woman’s gaze barely flicked to the mayor. “Tell that to my nieces and nephew, who grew up without a mother because of her.”

Brent said, “Not because of?—”

“Who are you?” Aspen probably shouldn’t have cut him off, but after everything she’d just read, she understood this woman’s anger, even if it was misplaced.

“I’m one of her many victims. The day your mother blew up that building, I lost my sister. My twin. I want to know where she is. Now.”

“Truly, I have no idea. I have no memory of her.”

“Your father knows where she is. I don’t believe for one second that she didn’t go straight home that night. He hid her somewhere, and then, when the dust settled, he left town.”

“He didn’t know where she?—”

“That’s a lie. That’s why he’s been hiding out all this time. Disappeared, just like her. He probably stuck her in some mental institution. She might be crazy, but she needs to face her crimes.”

“My father didn’t hide out.” Aspen worked to keep her voice level, thanking God the coffee shop was nearly empty. The few patrons who were there had turned to watch the scene. “He simply moved away.”

“Where to, then? Where is he now? Why hasn’t he ever had the nerve to show his face here?”

“That’s quite enough,” Brent said. “Rhonda, you need to?—”

“She can answer the question.” Rhonda glared at Aspen. “Unless she has something to hide. Unless she knows exactly where her mother is.”

Aspen laid a hand on the mayor’s arm to keep him from interrupting. The sooner she responded, the sooner they’d be finished here. “My father wasn’t in hiding. He never changed his name.” Though, to be fair, they’d always had unlisted phone numbers. Now she knew why. “We moved to Hawaii when I was a little girl. He was a business owner and an upstanding member of the community.”

“Give me his number, then. I wanna have a chat with him.”

“Unfortunately, he passed away a year ago.” Considering all she’d learned and dealt with that day, Aspen was proud of herself for not shedding tears with the words. “He always said he believed my mother was dead, and there was no indication in his will or any of his papers that he knew where she was. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

“You can help. Get out of this town.”

“That’s enough.” The pretty barista had come around the counter. She held out a cup of coffee. “Mocha cappuccino, just like you like it. It’s on the house today.”

Rhonda’s gaze flicked around the room. She accepted the offering.

“I’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow,” the barista said, an implicit suggestion that she’d seen enough of her today.

After one final glare sent Aspen’s way, Rhonda spun and left.

The rest of the customers averted their glances, but Aspen knew what they were thinking. The same thing she was—that she never should have come to Coventry.

This coffee shop had once been a home, and the owner clearly hadn’t done much remodeling aside from adding the counter and glass case filled with pastries. The room where Aspen waited had a small fire flickering in a fireplace. Brent led her past a couple of empty café tables to an upholstered chair near the hearth. Only when she felt the heat did she realize how cold she was.

While he ordered, Aspen took a few deep breaths, trying to come to terms with everything she’d learned and heard that day. The fact that people actually suspected her father of having hidden her mother for all those years…

If only that were the case. Surely Aspen would have learned the truth at his death. If her mother were in a mental institution somewhere, somebody would have had to be responsible for her.

No, Dad wouldn’t have done that. He wouldn’t have protected her from facing the charges. He’d have trusted the justice system.

“Here we go.” Brent set two steaming mugs on the small table between the chairs and walked away again.

She lifted hers and sipped, then relaxed into the well-worn fabric. She’d asked for a caramel macchiato, and this one was good. With the coffee and the flickering fire, despite everything, she started to feel like herself again.

Brent returned with two plates, which he set on the table between them before taking the adjacent seat. “You looked a little green. I thought food might help.”

She would have refused if he’d asked, but as the scent of the warm cinnamon roll and—was that a blueberry muffin?—reached her, she realized she was hungry. “Which one’s mine?”

“Whichever you want.”

Too difficult to choose. She cut each in half, shifted them so each plate had a portion, and lifted one of the plates for herself. She cut off a bite of the cinnamon roll and ate it.

It was delicious.

Brent hadn’t taken his pastries or sipped his coffee. Instead, he watched her, a small smile on his face.

“Thank you,” she said. “You know that woman?”

“She hates me, too, if that helps. Apparently, the traffic is my fault. And also, she’s against taxes of all kinds. I’m not sure how she thinks wider roads can be built without tax money.”

“I guess you deal with that kind of thing all the time.”

“Not exactly that kind of thing, no. Nobody’s ever demanded I leave town, though I wouldn’t put it past some people if they thought I’d do it. But yeah, I’m used to some people not liking me.”

“I can handle being disliked, but having the whole town hate me?—”

“Not the whole town,” he said. “People who hold grudges tend to do so loudly.” He sipped from his mug. “Josie’s good at coffee.”

“The barista?” At his nod, Aspen said, “It is good. Maybe not as good as Kona coffee?—”

“Ah. You’re one of those.” His eyes twinkled. “A coffee snob.”

She let out a short laugh. “Probably. But this really is good.” She sipped again to prove her point.

He was fatherly, seeming almost indulgent as he sat beside her, tender and kind. When he set down his half of the muffin and reached for his drink, she caught sight of a scar across the bottom of his palm.

“That looks like it hurt,” she said, nodding to it.

He regarded it a moment. “That’s what I get for trying to slice a tomato without a cutting board.”

“Ouch.” She didn’t know his politics, but she could see why people voted for him. He felt trustworthy and gentle.

When she’d eaten as much as she wanted, she set the plate down.

“What had you so discombobulated when I ran into you outside?”

“I was looking at old articles about…what happened. With my mom. And that lumber company.”

Brent looked pained as he leaned forward. “I’m sorry. That must have been very difficult.”

“Surreal. Dad told me she got into some trouble and disappeared. He never said anything about…”

“Your mother was an amazing woman. She was passionate and beautiful, and she loved the forest. She loved the earth.” He smiled at Aspen. “And she loved you, very much.”

She was thirty-one years old, and nobody had ever said that to her. Not even her father, though until that moment it had never occurred to Aspen that he should have.

“You were the driving force of her decisions,” Brent said. “To be fair, her decisions weren’t the best. What she did…” He blew out a long breath. “I wish I’d been there. I wish… I had no idea what she was planning. If I had, I could have talked her out of it. What she did was wrong. So wrong. But her heart was pure. She only wanted to save the forest from a company she felt wasn’t treating it well.”

“Was she right?” Aspen asked.

He shrugged. “At the time, a lot of people thought so. They’d been fined and claimed to have cleaned up their act, but I believed, like Jane, that they would slip back into their old ways when nobody was looking. In retrospect… You know how it is when you’re young. We were barely twenty years old, and so confident. Cocky. And stupid. That lumber company is still in business today, and as far as I know, they follow all the rules. So maybe we were wrong.” He shrugged. “But your mother was sure, and she was going to save the forest for her daughter, no matter what it took.”

Aspen wondered if Brent’s words were supposed to make her feel better. But how could knowing she’d been the motivation for a bombing that had led to a woman’s death be any kind of comfort?

“What you read about your mother this morning,” he said, “That’s true. I wish I could tell you it was all a big mistake, a misunderstanding. But Jane did what the papers say she did. She got it in her head something needed to be done, and she did it. I’m sure your father told you—and the articles, probably—that she suffered from mental illness. As far as I know, she never sought help, though we all tried to convince her to. It got to where she simply couldn’t think rationally.”

He paused as if waiting for Aspen to contribute something to the conversation, but what was there to say?

Brent continued. “So what she did, she did. That’s true. But there were other things about your mother that were also true. Equally true.”

“Like?”

“She was charismatic. People who met her remembered her, and people who remembered her liked her. She could stir up a crowd and get them laughing or crying or…or whatever she was feeling. It was amazing to watch. She loved people. She never forgot anybody. I remember once we were at school, and she saw this little slip of a girl. Mousy hair, glasses. The kind of person nobody noticed. I certainly hadn’t. But your mother had been in a class with her. She walked right up to her, called her by name, and gave her a hug. She asked her about a research project and then listened as if it were the most interesting thing she’d ever heard. I swear, when that girl walked away, she looked like she’d grown a foot taller. That’s how your mother was. That’s the kind of impact your mother had on people.”

How could the person he described also have killed a woman?

Where had it all gone wrong?

“If things had been different,” Brent said, “she could have run for president.”

Aspen’s disbelief must’ve shown in her expression because he added, “I’m serious. We used to joke that she was the female version of Bill Clinton. Attractive and charismatic and smart. She was amazing.”

Aspen worked to fit Brent’s description of Jane Kincaid in with everything else she’d heard. She was getting a picture of the woman who’d birthed her.

“It seems like you and my mother were very close.”

He leaned back in his chair, nodding once.

“How long did you know her?”

“I met her when she and her family moved here. We all went to Plymouth State together.”

“Who is we all ?”

“Oh, just some old friends.”

Aspen wanted to ask for names, but something else occurred to her. “Mom was in college, but she and my dad were married, right?”

He nodded, but she saw tightness around his lips.

She’d hit on something, something important.

“Dad never talked much about their relationship, so I don’t know their story. Were you and my dad friends too?”

Brent’s focus had hardly moved from her face, as if talking to Aspen were the only thing that mattered. Now he shifted his attention to the fire and didn’t look at her for a long time.

“I take it by your silence the answer is no. So you and my mother were…?”

When he looked at Aspen again, she saw pleading in his eyes. He leaned close and lowered his voice. “First, this has to stay between you and me. Talking to you about this… I’m the mayor. I’m not sure if you knew?—”

“I heard.”

“I have a reputation. A business and a family. People know I knew your mother, but most don’t know the extent of our relationship, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

He seemed to be waiting for her to say something, so she nodded. “I’m not here to ruin your life. I just want to find out what happened. I need to know.”

“Why? Why does it matter now?”

It was a good question. The obvious answer—that her father had sent her there—wasn’t the real one, not anymore. Yes, Aspen had come to Coventry because of Dad’s last words. But it was more than that now. Now that her father was gone, Aspen had nobody in the world. She felt…adrift. Like she no longer had anything solid to hang onto.

Without her father… Without her dad’s restaurants and her job, without her home back in Kona, Aspen didn’t know who she was. She’d always been a daddy’s girl, but she’d had a mother too. She didn’t feel like she could ever truly know herself until she knew where she’d come from.

She didn’t say any of that to this virtual stranger. Instead, she said simply, “She was my mother.”

He studied her another few moments before he seemed to make a decision. “I knew your father, of course. Coventry is a small town, and we were in the same grade. You know how they call people ‘old souls’?” At her nod, he said, “Your dad was an old soul. Always so mature and grown-up compared to the rest of us. He was a great kid. But there were goofballs, and there were normal kids, and then there were people like your father. Smart and mature, even from a young age.

“Your mother had a thing for him. I don’t know why. Your mom was so vibrant, and your dad… Don’t get me wrong, he was a great guy. He worked full time in the summers and put away all his money to cover his tuition. But his family barely got by. I think your grandfather worked at the factory.”

He seemed to be waiting for her to confirm or deny that, but she had no idea. Nobody’d ever talked with Aspen about their time in Coventry.

“He made great grades. He took life seriously. He was just a nice, normal, sort of boring guy.”

“Not good enough for my mom.” Aspen heard the irritation in her voice but didn’t temper it. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Just…different. That’s all.”

Aspen sat back and waited for him to continue.

Brent gave her an apologetic look. “I’m not doing a very good job of this. Everybody liked your mother. I’m pretty sure most of the guys at Coventry High were half in love with her. For whatever reason, your mother liked your dad. She dated lots of guys, but your dad never asked her out. I always figured he knew she was out of his league. And then something happened in the summer between our freshman and sophomore years in college. I’d been gone for an internship, and when I came home, she was pregnant with his kid. By Christmas, they were married. You were born a few months later.”

Dad had married Mom because she was pregnant? Had they loved each other at all?

Today was a day for revelations, but with every one, Aspen felt she had more questions, many of which would never be answered.

“Your mom didn’t want to give up school,” Brent said, “so your father quit and got on full time with the construction company. His parents kept you while he worked. That fall, your mom went back to class as if nothing had changed.”

Aspen tried to fathom what that must have felt like for her father, to give up college when he’d worked so hard to go. To suddenly be saddled with an infant when his wife didn’t seem to care.

Meanwhile, Mom was off at college. And so was Brent.

“I take it you continued to be friends with my mother after they got married.”

He was looking at the flames when he nodded. “We were more than friends. She loved you, but she didn’t like being married. She didn’t want to be tied down. Truth is… Maybe the other guys we graduated with were half in love with her. I was completely in love with her.”

“You were having an affair.”

He met her eyes again. “It’s not something I’m proud of. Certainly not something I run around telling people.”

“Of course not. Your girlfriend murdered a woman. I’m sure you did your best to keep that on the down low.”

He winced, but Aspen wasn’t sorry.

Brent’s shoulders drooped. “I have nothing to gain by telling you any of this, Aspen. This story only makes me look bad.” He exhaled a long breath. “Your mother loved you, and I loved her. I’m trying to be honest with you. I wanted your mother to divorce your father. He was a nice guy, but he wanted her to fit into a box. To stay home and take care of the baby.”

As if that was too much to ask of a new mom.

“Your dad couldn’t give her the life I could. The life I wanted to give both of you. My parents had money. My dad built a business for me to take over when I graduated. I could offer her much more than your father could. Meanwhile, your dad wanted her to give up on her dreams and forget her passions. He wanted her to be somebody she could never be.”

That didn’t sound like the father Aspen had known her whole life. Maybe Brent was trying to justify his own behavior. Or maybe Dad had changed over the years. Aspen guessed that the truth was much more complex than Brent was making it out to be.

“Jane could never have been happy in that role. Your dad didn’t understand her.”

“But you did.”

“God help me, I did. I understood her, and I loved her for who she was, and I would have married her in a heartbeat if he hadn’t beaten me to it. It was just a matter of time before she left him, and then the two of us”—he nodded to Aspen—“the three of us would have been together. It was selfish. I realize that now. But we were young and in love, and the fact that she had a husband…?” He shook his head. “I’m married. I have a wife I love and three kids of my own, and I realize how stupid I was. How incredibly self-absorbed your mom and I both were. But at the time…”

At the time, Aspen hadn’t mattered to this man or her own mother. At least Mom had the mental illness to blame.

“I thought you’d want to hear a different viewpoint,” he said. “I can see I’ve only upset you more, and I’m truly sorry for that. I think that, if she’d seen a psychiatrist, if she’d gotten on medication, maybe she would have left your father. Maybe she and I would have…”

He must’ve read the horror on her face. He shifted gears.

“Or maybe she would have stayed with your father, and they’d have made it work. I know he was trying very hard. I can tell you one thing. Your mother would never have set off that bomb if she’d thought there was somebody in that building. And now I’ve taken up enough of your time. I didn’t mean to upset you more.” He started to push to his feet.

“Wait.”

Seeming wary, he settled in the chair again.

“From the articles I read, after the bomb went off, the authorities immediately started looking for her.”

“She’d made so many threats?—”

“But nobody ever saw her again. She just vanished. What do you think happened to her?”

He took a long time answering. Finally, he said, “If your mother were still alive, I’d have heard from her. Again, I’m not proud of this, but if she’d contacted me, I’d have done everything in my power to protect her. She never contacted me.” Brent hung his head so long that Aspen feared he wouldn’t continue. But then he looked up and met her eyes. “I looked for her. I looked everywhere I could think of, everywhere we’d ever been together, everywhere we’d ever talked about going. I searched for her for months.”

Aspen didn’t speak, just waited for Brent to answer the question she’d asked.

“I think she heard about the woman in the building, and it destroyed her. I think she went somewhere remote, somewhere nobody would ever find her, and committed suicide. Either that or…” He pressed his lips and swallowed hard. “There’s only one other option I can think of, and I hesitate to say it.”

She couldn’t imagine what he could add that would be worse than what he’d already told her.

But then he said it, and it was so much worse.

“Or your father found out what she did, and he killed her.”