Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Magnolia
“ A re you sure you want to do this?” Belinda asked, shooting me a worried look as she searched for a parking spot close to the Darling Investigations office. “Who knows what this woman will say? For all we know, she’s staged this just to gawk at you.” She pulled into a space and turned to me. “Let me meet with her. I’ll screen her.”
We’d been surprised when Summer had called us the night before and told us that Rachel wanted to confess what happened but would only tell the story to me. Belinda had been dead set against it, but I’d said yes. Colt had been worried when I’d told him.
“Mags, you don’t have to do this,” he’d said. “How can you trust a single thing that woman says? There’s absolutely no one to dispute her claims. Everyone involved has either disappeared or is dead.”
“I don’t know that I can trust her,” I’d admitted. “But I want to hear what she has to say.”
“Okay,” he’d said with a sigh. “If that’s what you want, I’m behind you one hundred percent.” Then he’d fretted when he found out we were meeting Rachel at three. “It’s a six-hour drive from Sweet Briar to Franklin. You and Belinda should stay somewhere tonight and drive the rest of the way home tomorrow.”
“No,” I said. “I miss you, Colt. I want to get back home. To you.” Maybe that made me too dependent on him, but so be it.
He’d been telling me for months that he was with me because he loved me and not because he felt sorry for me, but for the first time since before I’d nearly died, I believed him.
“I know this weekend has been hard, but I needed it to prove something to myself. And maybe for you to prove something to yourself too. But I’ve figured it out, Colt. Just because you and I need each other doesn’t make us weak. We’re strong on our own, but we’re even stronger when we’re together.”
“I love you, Magnolia.” His voice was tight. “I’ve been scared to death this was your way of leavin’ me.”
“No,” I’d said, starting to cry. “I’m coming home to you. I swear. But I need to do this one last thing first.”
Now, parked outside of Darling Investigations as Belinda offered to take my place, I shook my head. “She won’t talk to you, Belinda. She won’t tell Summer or Dixie her big secret; she’s not going to tell you.” I steeled my back. “I’m stronger now. I’m better. I need to do this.”
“Are you sure?” Belinda asked. “We can reschedule if you want.”
“We’re already here. Let’s just hear what she has to say, and if she’s full of shit or seems shady, we’ll leave.”
Belinda studied me for several seconds. “Okay.”
I wrapped a scarf around my hair and put on my sunglasses before I got out of the car. I was still obsessed about not being recognized, because while I realized it wouldn’t be hard for anyone really looking at me to realize who I was—my disguise was thin at best—fears did not go quietly into the night. I needed to face the things I was terrified of, and meeting this woman was one giant leap toward facing down my demons.
Belinda got out and we walked to the entrance to Darling Investigations. The blinds were drawn, and for a brief moment, I worried we were too early and that no one was here, but that was foolish. It was only five minutes before three. Still, I was relieved when Dixie opened the door before we had a chance to knock, ushering Belinda and me inside.
Summer was sitting on the edge of her desk, her forehead wrinkled with worry lines.
“You need to stop frowning, Summer,” I said as I took off my glasses and tucked them into my purse. “Those lines will make permanent grooves, and you’re much too young for Botox.”
“You’re wrong about the Botox,” she said, relief smoothing out her brow, likely because I wasn’t so mopey. “Women get it younger and younger. Preventive maintenance.”
I walked over to her and patted her cheek. “You’re beautiful just the way you are, but don’t be frowning on my account. I’m fine. Really.”
She searched my eyes. “I have absolutely no idea what Rachel’s going to say, Magnolia. This may be a complete waste of time, not to mention it might be painful.”
“I know.” She and Dixie had both stressed that last night. “And if she’s full of shit, so be it. We’ll kick her out and go get a drink.” I glanced over at Dixie, who seemed to be the more laid-back of the two. “Where is the nearest bar? I don’t remember seein’ one.”
Dixie laughed. “That’s because there isn’t one in Sweet Briar. The closest bar is halfway between here and the Georgia border.” She lifted a brow. “Good thing for us, the border’s not that far. The bar’s about twenty minutes from here.”
I smiled, and it felt good. “Then I say we plan on it.”
“But you might be overdressed,” Dixie said, gesturing to me and then Belinda. “You look like an old-fashioned movie star in that green dress and scarf, and Belinda looks like she’s about to walk a runway in those white capris and pink silk blouse.”
“I think what Dixie is saying,” Summer said with a warm look, “is that you two won’t fly under the radar there. People are likely to recognize you.”
“Maybe it’s time I stopped hiding,” I said. “Maybe it’s time to face things instead.”
Summer gave me a knowing look. “Like face your fears.”
“Exactly.”
The door opened behind us, and my heart skipped a beat. It was one thing to pretend to be brave and another to actually be brave. But I dug deep to find the courage to face Rachel, as Dixie said, “I’m sorry, sir. We’re closed. If you want to make an appoint?—”
“I’m here for Magnolia,” a familiar voice said.
I spun around and gasped. “ Colt? What are you doing here?”
“Do you really think I’d let you go through this alone?” he asked as he crossed the room to me. “No way, Mags.” He pulled me into him, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my face into the crook of his neck.
“I’ve missed you,” I said, loving how his body felt so familiar, as though it had been cut specifically to fit me.
He stroked my hair and whispered in my ear, “I couldn’t be away from you for another minute.” He held me close to his chest. “I love you, Mags. I don’t want you to do this alone.” Then he looked over at to Belinda. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Belinda said with a soft smile. “I’m glad you’re here, Colt.”
“This is so sweet,” Dixie gushed, clutching her hands to her chest.
Colt released me but kept one arm around my shoulders as he turned to face Summer, flashing a grin that could melt even cranky old women. “I’m Colt Austin, Maggie’s boyfriend.”
Dixie laughed. “We kind of figured that out. I’m Dixie and this is Summer.”
“It sounds like you two dug out the truth pretty quickly,” Colt said. “I can see why you have your own show.” He paused and his jaw set. Mr. Nice Guy was gone. “I think it goes without sayin’ that Magnolia will be no part of that.”
“You have nothing to worry about, Colt,” Summer said. “I’ve assured Magnolia and Belinda from the very beginning that I had no intention of using their case on the show. Not only would it be disrespectful, but I’d be accused of using something sensational to boost ratings.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s not my style.”
“No,” Colt said. “I can see that it’s not.” He glanced around. “So where is this Rachel person?”
“She should be here any minute,” Summer said, casting a glance to the door. “All three of you can sit in the chairs in front of the windows. We’re going to have Rachel sit over there.” She motioned to a chair close to the entrance.
Dixie brought out a chair from the back for Colt to sit in next to me. He grabbed my hand and squeezed tight as I took a deep breath.
I could do this, and I would be stronger for it.
The door opened a few moments later and an older woman walked in. She had short brown hair and wore a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She took off her sunglasses and propped them on top of her head as she glanced around the room, her gaze lingering on me for a few moments before she turned her attention to Summer. “Sorry if I’m a few minutes late.”
“That’s okay,” Dixie said with a warm smile as she closed the door behind her. “Rachel, this is Magnolia Steele, her sister-in-law Belinda Steele, and her boyfriend, Colt Austin.” Then she turned to me with a tight smile. “Magnolia, this is Rachel Lyons.”
Rachel looked me over. “You don’t look much like your mother.”
“I look more like my father, but we’re not here to discuss my genetic makeup,” I said, sounding more brusque than I’d intended, but while I used to love that I looked like my father, now it shamed me. “Summer and Dixie say you have some information about what happened to my aunt Bethany.”
Rachel’s face went blank and she looked like she was about to walk out the door. I’d been too blunt.
Dixie must have picked up on the possibility of her running too, because she quickly said in an octave higher than her normal voice, “Would you like some water or some tea, Rachel? We also have cookies.”
“Well,” Rachel said, looking indecisive, then flashed a nervous grin, “if they’re the same cookies you had yesterday, I might take one.”
I wasn’t sure how Rachel could eat. My stomach was churning with nerves. She was the one with the secrets, so surely that made her more anxious than me.
Dixie gestured to the chair she’d brought out and hurried to the back to bring out several bottles of water and a plate of cookies.
Rachel took a bottle and a cookie. Belinda and I both took a bottle of water, but then I promptly set mine on the floor.
Summer and Dixie sat behind their desks, watching and waiting for Rachel to begin.
Rachel nibbled on a cookie, then glanced over at me. “I knew your mother, back before…” She trailed off. “I just knew her before.”
Since she’d opened that door, I decided to walk right through it. “I know that my mother left Sweet Briar after she graduated, but that’s all I know. I didn’t know she inherited her family’s farm. I didn’t even know I had an aunt until we came down here and searched through the house.” I took a breath. “Rachel, I just want to know what happened. Why she left and why she never talked about her life here in Sweet Briar.”
Rachel glanced down at the cookie in her hand.
“I don’t care if she robbed a bank, or if she murdered half the town. I need to know.”
Rachel lifted her gaze to mine. “You really don’t know why your mother kept that farm all these years?”
“No . I had no idea she even owned the farm until just this past week. My mother’s attorney says they have someone interested in buying it. I fully intend to sell, but I wanted to see it first. I wanted to find out why my mother ran away from this place and never come back.”
Rachel took a sip of her water.
I was starting to get ticked off that she wasn’t saying much, and I wondered if Summer and Dixie were right, that she was just wasting my time. But I decided to give it one more try. “I hear you’re the person who can tell me. That you’ve been keeping my mother’s secrets for years.” I gave her a grim smile. “But I’m here to relieve you of them. I’ll carry that burden now.”
That caught her attention. “What makes you think this is a burden?”
My lips twisted into a wry grin. “Are you telling me that keeping my mother’s secrets hasn’t been a burden?”
She started to protest, then sat back in her seat with a defeated look. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Magnolia.”
“Maybe I don’t,” I said. “I admit that I don’t know anything. But you do, so tell me.”
Her eyes downcast and glistening with welling tears, Rachel ran a hand over her head, mussing her short hair. “I don’t know where to start.”
“The beginning is usually the best place,” Belinda said in her soft, soothing voice. “Why don’t you start there?”
Rachel nodded, then said in a defeated tone, “You’re right.” She took a breath, and her shoulders slumped a little as she said, “My family moved to Sweet Briar when I was a junior in high school, and I hated this backwater town. Especially when I thought we were moving to New York City, and we landed here instead.”
“That seems like night and day,” I said. “What happened?”
She shifted in her seat. “We were living in Atlanta. My father was in advertising and had just gotten a job offer with a firm in New York, but then my grandfather got sick and needed help with the farm. The next thing I knew, my father turned down the offer and we were moving to Sweet Briar to help my grandparents. I was horrified. I’d visited Sweet Briar often enough to know it was ass-backwards.” She grimaced and turned to Dixie. “No offense.”
Dixie laughed. “Hell, you’ve been living here longer than I have now, no offense taken.”
“Anyway,” Rachel said, “I figured I’d get through the rest of my junior and then senior year, then go off to college and never come back. So I wasn’t intent on making friends.” She released a nervous chuckle. “But I did like to watch people.”
“But you became friends with my mother?” I asked softly.
She nodded, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. “I didn’t notice Lila right away or her sister Bethany. They were so quiet that they flew under the radar. But I found out, through some stranger in town, that two teenaged girls lived on the farm next door. I would have known from riding the bus, but I never rode the bus. My parents’ concession for dragging me here was to let me use my grandfather’s car.” She took a breath. “It took me a few weeks before I realized that one of the girls was Lila, and something about her drew me…” Her voice turned wistful.
“Did my mother introduce herself to you?”
“Shoot, no,” she said with a laugh. “Lila and Bethany were used to being the outcasts. They’d been treated like shit for years. Lila had the same attitude as me—bide her time until she could go to college and never look back.” She released a chuckle. “Of course, I didn’t know that was her plan back then. I only knew she kept to herself. It wasn’t until we were thrown together as lab partners in chemistry that we got to know one another.”
By now, I already knew my mother had been an outcast, but it was still painful to hear. She’d never once hinted that her life here had been miserable. Then again, the fact she never mentioned her past had served as a sort of a neon sign. I just didn’t see it before.
Rachel didn’t look at me, keeping her gaze on the half-eaten cookie in her hand. Then, as though realizing she didn’t want it anymore, she reached over and set it on the edge of Dixie’s desk.
“Sorry,” Rachel finally said. “I guess I got lost in my memories.” She gave me a half-smile. “I was intrigued by this quiet girl and became determined to befriend her. It took the rest of the spring semester for her to accept that there were no ulterior motives behind my talking to her. She loved to read, and I started bringing her some of the books I’d brought with me from Atlanta. I guess I wore her down.” She lifted her shoulders into a shrug.
“I don’t know anything about her past here,” I said. “She never, ever brought it up, and when my brother and I asked, she changed the subject.”
Her gaze lifted to mine. “She never told you about me?”
“No,” I said softly, hating the pain in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s for the best,” she said, her words barely audible.
“So you became friends?” I prompted.
“Oh, yes.” Happiness washed over her face. “By the summer, we were fast friends. During the school year, I got to know Bethany through Lila, but it was over the summer that I really got to know them both. We did everything together that summer between my junior and senior year. Lila and I may’ve been seventeen years old, but we still climbed trees—Bethany too. We ran through the creek, and even skinny-dipped in the stock pond. But then something shifted between us.”
She looked torn, as though rethinking what she was about to say.
“Go on,” I said, wondering what she was hiding. Was it to protect herself? Me? Possibly my mother? Or maybe all of the above. “I know some things about my mother now that I hadn’t known before, so don’t worry about shocking or hurting me.”
She looked me straight in the eyes. “I loved your mother, and it wasn’t puppy love. It wasn’t even a deep friendship.” A tight smile strained her face. “No, it was a friendship, but it was also more than a friendship. We loved each other. She was the love of my life. And Lila loved me too. We kept it to ourselves, of course. Back then and living here…it wouldn’t have been received well.” She looked down and took a deep breath. “Besides, we were seventeen and it was exciting to have a secret romance. But then someone found out.”
“Bethany?” I asked, my stomach clenching. Surely they hadn’t killed her for knowing.
She nodded. “The three of us all spent so much time together…but Bethany was a sickly girl, and it wasn’t uncommon for her to stay inside a few days a week while Lila and I ran all over our farms. It was after one of those times that Bethany sensed something was different. To be fair, while Lila and I cherished the secrecy, we struggled to hide it all the time. Especially around Bethany. Still, while Bethany knew something had changed, she didn’t understand what . She felt hurt over being left out. But we never meant to hurt her, and finally, one night in their room, she and Lila had words, and Lila told her the truth. That we were in love.” Her voice trailed off, her chin trembling. “Bethany was livid. I think she felt betrayed by the fact that Lila could love someone else more than she loved her sister, not because Bethany thought we were an abomination.”
“That had to be very hard for Bethany,” Belinda said. “It sounds like Lila was her only friend.”
“No. Not at that point,” Rachel said, her voice breaking. “I was her friend too. She felt betrayed by the both of us.” She drew a breath. “You have to understand, I loved Bethany too. Not like I loved Lila, that was different, but I loved her like a sister. We’d spent countless hours together. I hated that we’d hurt her. I tried to make things right, but I only made things worse. She resented me for coming between her and her sister, and I think she hated me a little bit, not just for stealing her best friend, but because we were in love. Especially when Bethany was so desperate to be in love herself.”
Had the sisters come to blows? Had Bethany threatened to expose their secret and my mother and Rachel killed her to keep her quiet? I had a hard time picturing my mother doing something that awful, but then again, I had a hard time imagining her life here at all. I decided to cut to the chase.
“Did my mother kill her sister?” I asked flatly.
Rachel’s eyes flew wide. “What? No. Oh my God, no. Bethany’s death killed Lila, devastated her. She felt responsible, but she didn’t kill her. In fact, I don’t think she ever recovered from the loss, at least from what I saw.”
“But you know who did kill Bethany, don’t you?”
Her eyes dulled with pain. “I do.”
She swallowed hard, clenching her hands in her lap. “Lila may not have killed her sister, but she left Sweet Briar with plenty of blood on her hands.”