Read Online Six Years by Harlan Coben - Free Book Online

shake mine, a practiced smile at the ready, but when he saw my face, I saw the smile flicker.
    “Hello,” he said to me. “I’m Reverend Kelly.”
    “Jake Fisher. We’ve met before.”
    He made a skeptical face and turned back to Lucy Cutting. “What’s going on, Lucy?”
    “I was looking up a record for this gentleman,” she began to explain. He listened patiently. I studied his face, but I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, just that he was trying to control his emotions somehow. When she was done, he turned to me and raised both palms to the sky. “If it isn’t in the records . . .”
    “You were there,” I said.
    “Excuse me?”
    “You presided over the wedding. That’s where we met.”
    “I don’t recall that. So many events. You understand.”
    “After the wedding, you were in front of the chapel with the bride’s sister. A woman named Julie Pottham. When I walked by, you said it was a lovely day for a wedding.”
    He arched an eyebrow. “How could I have possibly forgotten that?”
    Sarcasm does not normally wear well on men of the cloth, but it fit Reverend Kelly as though hand tailored. I pressed on. “The bride was named Natalie Avery. She was a painter at the Creative Recharge retreat.”
    “The what?”
    “Creative Recharge. They own this land, right?”
    “What are you talking about? The town owns this land.”
    I didn’t want to argue deeds and boundaries right now. I tried another avenue. “The wedding. It was last-minute. Maybe that’s why it isn’t in the records.”
    “I’m sorry. Mr. . . . ?”
    “Fisher. Jake Fisher.”
    “Mr. Fisher, first off, even if it was a last-minute wedding, it would certainly be recorded. Second, well, I’m confused what exactly you’re looking for.”
    Lucy Cutting answered for me. “The groom’s last name.”
    He gave her a quick glare. “We aren’t in the information business, Miss Cutting.”
    She looked down, properly chastised.
    “You have to remember the wedding,” I said.
    “I’m sorry I don’t.”
    I stepped closer, looking down on him. “You do. I know you do.”
    I heard the desperation in my own voice, and didn’t like it. Reverend Kelly tried to meet my eye, but he couldn’t quite do it. “Are you calling me a liar?”
    “You remember,” I said. “Why won’t you help me?”
    “I don’t remember,” he said. “But why are you so anxious to find the wife of another man or, if your story is true, a recent widow?”
    “To pay my respects,” I said.
    My hollow words hung in the air like thick humidity. No one moved. No one spoke. Finally Reverend Kelly broke the silence.
    “Whatever your motive for finding this woman, we have no interest in being party to it.” He stepped away and showed me the door. “I think it’d be best if you left immediately.”
    * * *
    Once again, dazed by betrayal and heartbreak, I stumbled back down the path toward the village center. I could almost get the reverend’s behavior. If he did remember the wedding—and I suspect he did—he wouldn’t want to give Natalie’s dumped boyfriend any information said boyfriend didn’t already have. It seemed an extreme hypothesis on my part, but at least it kind of made sense. What I couldn’t make sense of, what I couldn’t figure out in any way, shape, or form, was why Lucy Cutting had found nothing in the neat-to-the-point-of-anal records on Natalie and Todd’s nuptials. And why the hell had no one heard of the Creative Recharge retreat?
    I couldn’t get that to mesh.
    So now what? I had come here in hopes of . . . of what? Of learning Todd’s last name for one thing. That could end this pretty quickly. If not, perhaps someone here still kept in touch with Natalie. That could end this all pretty quickly too.
    “Promise me, Jake. Promise me you’ll leave us alone.”
    Those were the last words the love of my life said to me. The very last. And here I was, six years later, going back to where it all began, to break my word. I