Page 74 of The River We Remember

“He hired a girl last winter,” Colleen said. “She didn’t stay long. My father was kind of hard to get along with.”

“Who was that?”

“Sissy Barrows.”

“From Aetna?”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

Charlie knew of the Barrows. A hardscrabble family in the south of the county. Sissy was what folks called “slow.”

“Could I ask you about the night your father was killed?”

Bridget said, “Not me. I was at a sleepover at Jan Baldwin’s house.”

“Colleen?”

She stared across the yard into the distance. “Sure, why not?”

“What time did he leave?”

“I don’t remember. I was sleeping, but I think it was almost dark.”

“And he was going fishing?”

“He took his fishing stuff, so I guess.”

“He also took a shotgun. Did he usually do that?”

“I didn’t see any shotgun,” Colleen said.

“Would it have been unusual for him to take a firearm, especially if he was going fishing?”

Colleen reached up and brushed at the streak of flour on her face, smearing it into a chalky dusting across her tanned cheek. “I don’t really know. He would just take off sometimes, and sometimes he wouldn’t tell us where he was going or why. And then he’d come back later, a lot later sometimes, you know, kind of drunk. Or the sheriff would bring him back.”

“Did he seem at all angry that night?”

“He was mad a lot,” Colleen said. “So probably.”

“Was he mad at Noah Bluestone?”

“Oh, yeah,” Bridget said. “He was really mad at Noah.”

“Why?”

“He said Noah was stealing gas from him.”

“And that made him really mad?”

Colleen said, “There were other things, too.”

“Like what?”

“Nobody stood up to my father, but Noah did.”

“The night he was killed, it appears that your father had been drinking heavily. Did you see him drinking before he left?”

“He drank a lot before dinner that night.”