Chapter 39

As twilight cast long shadows over the lawn, Ruby sat dry-eyed on the back patio, watching crime scene technicians uncover her son’s bones underneath her roses. Her precious baby boy had been surrounded by the fragrant blossoms of the Virginia rose during his eternal rest. Quentin probably thought his placement there would make Ruby feel better. The look on her husband’s face when he realized the warrant covered the grounds was enough for Ruby to know Jesse would be found on the property.

“Mom?” Jillian touched her arm. “Are you okay?”

Ruby glanced up as Jillian dropped into the chaise lounge beside her, eyes red-rimmed and cheeks pale. She should comfort her daughter, but Ruby had nothing left to give. For years, she had fanned her anger at Melender to hold the sorrow over Jesse’s disappearance at bay. Discovering she had been tending to Jesse’s grave as she tenderly cared for her roses had drained her of all emotion, leaving a hollow shell inside her core.

“Mom? You’re scaring me.” Jillian whimpered, her voice dropping back into the cadence of a preschooler.

“He was there all this time.” Ruby stared at the mound of dirt, so much dirt to extract so little a body.

“Ma’am?” Collier’s softly spoken question pulled Ruby’s attention away from Jillian and the excavation. “Do you know where your husband is?”

Ruby pressed her fingers into the lounge cushion as her heart rate increased. “He’s around here somewhere. He said he had to make some calls. Why do you need him?” Even as she asked the question, she knew. Because Quentin had morphed from the father of a missing-presumed-murdered child into a person of interest in Jesse’s disappearance.

“We have some questions for him,” the detective replied with professional smoothness.

But Ruby had stopped caring what happened to her husband, not when the evidence of what he had done had been uncovered inch by inch in her garden. Ruby leaned her head back, allowing her eyes to drift close. “I suppose you do.”

“Did you know that a child had been buried in your garden?”

Collier’s question snapped Ruby out of her apathy. She opened her eyes to meet the other woman’s gaze. “No.” She swung her legs over the side of the lounge and rose. “And please don’t insult me by insisting it can’t be confirmed to be my son your crime scene technicians are uncovering. We all know it’s…” Her voice broke, but she summoned the will to finish, “…it’s Jesse out there.”

The detective said something else, but Ruby stopped listening, her gaze focused on the men and women crouched down among her roses. My little Jesse, who didn’t like the dark, had been buried in a black hole for nearly two decades. How often had she waved off help from the lawn maintenance crew and attended to the rose garden herself over the years? Almost as if she’d instinctively known there was something special about that plot of land. Under her care, the bushes had flourished as if honoring sacred ground.

A sob escaped, followed by another one. Ruby no longer had the strength to hold back the tidal wave of tears breaking over the dam she’d constructed in her heart. With a hand over her mouth, she raced for the house. She’d carried this grief around inside of her for too long to share it with anyone else. Ignoring the people milling about the house, Ruby maneuvered her way up the stairs and into her bedroom.

Two men dressed in white jumpsuits stood near the bathroom, bags of gear at their feet.

“Get out!” Ruby pointed a trembling finger to the door. “Get out of my room now!”

The two exchanged glances, and one reached down to pick up a bag.

On the dresser, Ruby spotted a framed photo of Quentin and herself at some long-forgotten charity event. Rage at her husband supplanted the grief for an instant, and she lobbed the photo in the direction of the technicians. The frame shattered against the wall, sending the pair scurrying with their bags out the bedroom door.

Collier appeared in the doorway. Ruby snatched another heavy crystal frame, not even bothering to look at the photo inside. She hurled it toward the detective, who sidestepped to avoid the missile. The knickknack hit the doorframe with a satisfying thunk, crystal breaking into tiny pieces as it showered the carpet.

“Mrs. Thompson,” Collier began, her voice pitched low.

But Ruby wasn’t going to be talked out of her anger or grief. She’d held it bottled inside for too long to be soothed by a police officer or anyone else. “Get. Out.”

“I know it’s been a shock.”

“You know nothing about it.” Ruby stalked toward her, stopping a foot away. Her entire body trembled with the effort to not scream or hurl more things as her heart cried out for release from the torment. “You haven’t clipped blossoms for a bouquet while your child’s little body lay buried under your feet.”

Collier opened her mouth to reply, but Ruby held up her hand. “You don’t get to tell me you understand. Because you can’t possibly. Myhusband allowed me to cling to the tiniest bit of hope that maybe, just maybe, Jesse was still alive somewhere. That he had been taken and given to another family.” She laughed but choked on the sound. “You want to know the real irony is?”

“Mrs. Thompson, is there someone we could call to sit with you?” Collier interjected.

“I’ve spent the last eighteen years hating a woman who had nothing to do with my son’s disappearance. A hatred my dear husband fanned with comments over the years. Because as long as I was fixated on Melender, I wasn’t asking the questions I should have been asking. If I hadn’t been blinded by my grief and despair, I would have seen the inconsistencies years ago. If I had, Jesse might have come home sooner.”

“Mom? What are you saying?” Jillian pushed past Collier. “Are you saying Dad had something to do with Jesse’s death?”

“Of course he did.” Ruby snarled, her sharp tone sending Jillian reeling back a step. “You think someone buried your little brother in our backyard without his knowledge? I doubt he did the dirty work himself because he had people for that sort of thing. I have no doubt Quentin knew exactly where Jesse was all these years for one reason. Your father put him there.”

Jillian’s eyes widened, and she stumbled back to sit on the bench at the foot of the king-sized bed. “Oh, no.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, bending over at the waist to rock back and forth. “It wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t a dream.”

“What wasn’t a dream?” Collier stepped to Jillian, laying a hand on her shoulder.

Her anger spent, Ruby gaped at her daughter. “Oh, dear God.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “Jillian, what happened?”