Page 88 of The Intruder

He shakes his head without hesitation. “Not that I know of.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “Rudy told me that when you first met with him, you asked about me. By name.”

“Did he?” He doesn’t bat an eye. “Casey, he’s clearly remembering wrong.”

“Is he?”

“Sure. It’s not exactly the first thing Rudy’s gotten wrong. Didn’t he leave you in a huge storm with a roof that was about to cave in and an unstable tree that could have killed you?”

Lee was thrown for a moment when I first called him out on saying my first name, but he got his composure back, and now he’s sticking to his story.

I study Lee’s features—his crystal blue eyes, the beard concealing the bottom half of his face, his tousled brown hair. For a split second, I feel a flicker of recognition, but before I can grasp it entirely, it’s gone.

No, I don’t know him. And if he somehow knows me, I can’t imagine how.

“Anyway,” he says. “I’m heading out now. But maybe you’ll come by sometime tomorrow?”

“I will,” I say. “I promise. I want to see how the two of you are doing.”

Lee turns around and heads back outside. He turns once to wave to me—I wave back—then he disappears into the clearing in the woods that connects our cabin.

I still don’t trust him. But that’s okay, because I don’t trust anyone.

EPILOGUE

SIX MONTHS LATER

CASEY

I’m teaching Nell how to play poker.

She’s scarily good at it. That girl can look me in the eye and lie her pants off. I am almost certain she doesn’t have anything good in her hand, but as she takes a bite of her scrambled eggs and raises me two chips, I can’t be sure.

“Well?” She grins at me across Lee’s kitchen table. “Will you see my bet?”

I think about it for a moment, then shake my head. “No, too rich for my blood.”

Nell’s face lights up, and she grabs the contents of the pot. I have to say, even though I hate losing, I love to watch her win. I do wonder if she had something better than two pairs though. I guess I’ll never know—she always refuses to show me her hand when I fold.

Lee wanders into the kitchen, wearing a pair of old blue jeans and another of his checkered shirts. He cracks a smile at the sight of us. “Yep, this is what I love to see, Casey. You teaching my niece to gamble over the breakfast table. Wholesome.”

After Jolene Kettering’s body was found, no other next of kin came forward, and Lee stepped up as Nell’s legal guardian. She’s been living here with him ever since the fateful night of the storm, and as far as I can tell, she’s been flourishing—she’s even gained fifteen pounds and no longer looks so skeletal. She’s finally found an adult that she can trust, and although there’s still a lot of healing left to do, she’s well on her way.

I should know.

I never got in trouble for Jolene’s death, and neither did Nell. I kept expecting the police to show up at my door, and I wasn’t sure if my alibi would hold up. As it turned out, Jolene’s boyfriend had a rap sheet the length of my arm, and he was stupid enough to keep his shirt with traces of her blood still on it. Maybe Jax wasn’t the one who finished the job, but after stabbing his girlfriend and leaving her for dead, his arrest seemed well deserved.

As for me, I kept up my part of the bargain and have been at Lee’s cabin all the time to help out. We discussed it, and we decided to homeschool Nell for the rest of the school year, so I’ve been the one taking that on. She’s an incredibly bright girl, and I’ve loved getting back into teaching. But for next year, Lee is planning to move back to town to let Nell attend the local school.

“Anyway.” Lee looks down at his watch. “I better head out, but I’ll leave the two of you to your super fun schoolwork.”

“Yuck,” Nell says, even though she actually loves her classes. She just likes to pretend to be difficult.

He grabs a piece of toast off the pile I made on the center of the table. I used to offer to make him a full breakfast, but he always says no, so I just have some toast available to go. “How about this? When I come home tonight, I’ll bring home pizza.”

“How late?” Nell asks.

“Not too late.”