Page 93 of Weight of Guilt

Humming helped him feel better. His chest opened up some, and he sucked in a breath.

He got all the way through the song once. Then he started it again.

From the front seat, the man began to hum along.

Christian pressed his lips shut.

This man was not his mom.

The man kept humming. He had the tune right. Not close to right, but right right.

“Go on,” the man said. “Don’t quit. You’ve got a real pretty voice, same as your sisters. Has anyone ever told you that before?”

Christian didn’t respond. Instead, he forced himself to start humming again—even though he didn’t really want to now. Come home, come home, Ye who are weary, come home.

Home . . . that was all he wanted right now.

Outside, the road went from smooth to rough, and the car slowed and started to climb.

Christian had no idea where he was going.

But he knew he only wanted to go home.

He didn’t care about the glowworm anymore.

Chapter

Forty-Seven

PRESENT DAY

Wren’s clients at Shear Bliss had discussed Roy Callahan’s ill-timed fate twice before eleven.

Peg Alders started the conversation under the dryer. Then Carol Ann came in for a trim, and the whole story went around again from the top.

“Sixty-eight years old and diabetic,” Carol Ann said. “I assumed it was his heart.”

“It wasn’t his heart.” Peg didn’t look up from her phone. “My cousin heard it from the ambulance side. They’ve got investigators out there. That means something happened to him.”

Nobody said one word about a boy walking out of the woods.

Wren had feared that all morning. Every time the bell went off over the door, she waited for it. Christian had been in an emergency room half the night. Nurses had seen him.

Somebody at that hospital could tell someone else—though they weren’t supposed to—and the news would come back over the mountain and into this room.

Word hadn’t spread yet. But they couldn’t keep this hidden forever. It was only a matter of time.

“You’re quiet,” Deja said as she placed her client under a dryer.

Wren had come to the color bar to mix a toner and stayed there longer than mixing took. Deja’s chair sat two feet away.

Deja Whitfield had owned this building for nine years. She’d been a family friend and had hired Wren fresh out of beauty school.

The woman was a head taller than Wren, and her big blonde hair made her seem even taller. Her personality was even larger than her looks. She had three kids at home and a husband who ran a bread route out to Knoxville six days a week. More so, she could read Wren in a mirror from clear across the room, and she did it more than Wren liked.

Deja stared at her, waiting for her response to “You’re quiet.”

Wren shrugged. “I’m working.”