Chapter 4
Four
I’m unstable.
—Text from Eddy to Nettie
Eddy
I was a nervous wreck.
I scrubbed my hands down my face, wishing that I could just fast forward to the end of the day when all this was over.
Life didn’t work that way, though.
Sadly.
The bell above the door rang, and I glanced toward it to find a drop-dead gorgeous man strolling inside.
He had a head of thick and wavy chocolate-brown hair, steel-blue eyes, and a beard that was full and thick with just a hint of red in it. He paused in the doorway to shake the snow off, and I took my time taking in his attire.
Black jeans that fit him like a glove hugging some very powerful thighs, black boots that were caked in mud and snow—thank you, Montana weather—and a hoodie that said ‘Jesper County Co-Op’ on it.
He worked for the power company, which made sense that he would be wearing a sweatshirt with their logo. Had he come straight from work?
This was the man I was meeting.
Weaver Grant.
The “electrician.”
His steely eyes scanned the room and stopped when they landed on me.
I know what he saw.
A tiny slip of a woman who was covered head to toe in winter gear.
I was always cold, and it didn’t help that I had zero percent body fat—something that I’d struggled with my entire life.
I wasn’t super tall, and definitely not athletic—hence not going into soccer professionally like my sister had. But I had a killer smile, skin like a doll, and the longest curly brown hair that never failed to look good.
The long hair thing was due to my parents’ absolute abhorrence at the idea.
My parents were devout Pentecostals, and from a very early age, I’d known that long hair was sacred to them. My sister, Nettie, also had very long hair. Though, she hardly ever wore hers down. Being a professional soccer player wasn’t necessarily conducive with long hair like ours.
Needless to say, I may have great hair and skin, but everything else about me was pretty darn average.
Average height for a female. Average beauty. Average eye color. Average personality.
There literally wasn’t a single great thing about me that really stuck out—unless you counted my extreme skinniness.
The much sexier version of Jonathan Taylor Thomas scanned the room, landed on me, and began heading my way.
He stopped at the table and offered me his hand. “Edith?”
“Eddy.” I took his hand nervously.
His fingers reached all the way to mid-wrist on me.
And his hand. My god, was it large. It swallowed up my willowy hand like it was never there in the first place.
“Eddy,” he said. “Wish I could say it’s nice to meet you, but under these circumstances…”
I scrubbed at my face once he released me, feeling my minimal makeup smudge.
I was both hot and cold, and I felt like I would throw up the small bite of scone I’d been able to choke down earlier before he’d come in the door.
My appetite, which was usually very low to begin with, had been downright nonexistent lately.
Today, especially, it’d been nil.
“Do you want to talk here or…”
I stood up and grabbed my large jacket off the back of the chair. “We can go talk outside.”
This wasn’t a conversation I ever wanted to have in a public place.
He followed me out, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans as we made it outside.
I didn’t feel the cold, which was probably a first for me, as I said, “There’s a park bench over there.”
He wound his way around a few parked cars before we crossed the street and headed to the park bench that overlooked the bubbling stream that ran through town.
Usually there were all kinds of ducks and geese down here, but today it was completely empty of all living life forms, as if the planet knew that we needed absolute privacy for what we were about to talk about.
“Sheriff Black talked about you and the fact that you were in the military,” I said quietly, not sure where to start.
“I was a SEAL,” he said simply.
I searched for what to say next, but the words seemed like they were lodged deep inside my throat.
“I saw the video.”
I closed my eyes as disgust, loathing, and horror washed over me.
To know that this man knew what kind of sick fucks my parents were…
“I’m nothing like them,” I rasped.
For freaking years, I’d done everything in my power to distance myself from them.
So had Nettie.
My parents, Minnie and Barton Wheeler, were pastor and pastor’s wife to one of the biggest church communities in the area. Everyone loved them. Man, woman, and child.
My dad played stupid Santa for every public event in Sawtooth, Jawbone, and Bear Pass. My mom was on the school board for the county schools. My dad was at every single high school sporting event. My mom visited the sick and elderly every week. They both volunteered at the shelter.
Seriously, two people couldn’t appear better on paper.
But they’d never been that great to me.
“When I was twelve, my father backhanded me across the kitchen because I was talking to a boy,” I said softly.
“When I was sixteen, he caught my sister having sex in the high school parking lot with a boy he’d told her never to talk to.
He beat the both of us within an inch of our lives because I’d lied for her, and she’d lied to him. ”
The man turned to look at me, and I felt like a thousand suns were shining directly on my face.
“Men like that are cowards,” he responded. “But I’ve known you for all of two minutes, and I can see that you’re nothing but good.”
I snorted. “It’s about to not matter.”
“It’ll matter,” he promised. “Tell me what you saw that day, please.”
So I did.
“I walked in and they weren’t upstairs. I meet with them once a week to play the dutiful daughter that cares. I don’t. But appearances are everything, and if I show up and visit for an hour once a week, they mostly leave me alone.”
“Okay.”
I closed my eyes as I replayed that day in my mind.
“I heard them in the basement, so I went down there. When I got down there, there was a door open that I’d never seen before. And I’ve lived in that house for nineteen years of my life, Mr. Grant.”
“Weaver.”
“Weaver,” I said quietly. “When I went into the open doorway, at first, I wasn’t quite sure what I was seeing.”
“Take your time,” he said when he watched me wipe sweat from my brow.
“There were a bunch of photos of kids. I thought it was us at first. They were all ages and sizes. And at first, I thought they were innocent enough. Babies, toddlers, older kids. All in half-naked states.”
He grunted.
“I was confused at first, because none of those babies were us. I knew what we looked like. Remembered every hellish family photo session we attended because my dad freakin’ hated taking photos.
And we had to take a lot of them for appearance’s sake.
” I licked my dry and chapped lips. “I didn’t see them at first, too busy trying to figure out the photos.
Then I moved my gaze toward the corner of the room where they were sitting on a couch with each other.
My mother was su…” I gagged. “Performing fellatio. On my dad. And my dad was watching a video on the TV across from him. A video of a child in a bathtub….”
I couldn’t finish the rest.
It was just too much.
“I took a video for as long as I could stand it. To get proof. Then I left,” I elaborated. “I haven’t been back since. My parents are pissed as hell, too. I’ve come up with all kinds of excuses but they’re not going to work for much longer.”
“We’ll get this finished today,” Weaver stated matter-of-factly. “You won’t ever have to talk to them again.”
“Good,” I said. “Because I don’t want to.”
He reached out and squeezed my hand but stopped almost immediately.
“What’s going on with your fingers?” he asked worriedly.
I gently pulled my hand away from his and showed him my fingers. “Oh, nothing. Just freezing my ass off.”
He studied my fingers, then took my hand in his once again and closed his warm hand over mine.
Instant heat suffused me.
“Do the parents know that their children were filmed?” he asked. “From the church?”
I’d been trying really hard not to go there, hoping that my parents hadn’t been creeping on the children of their church.
“I’m not even one hundred percent sure that the children I saw in that video and in pictures on the wall were them,” I admitted in disgust. “I tried really hard not to focus too hard on the photos themselves.”
But still, a lot of the photos were burned into my brain.
“Don’t blame you,” he admitted. “What is your plan here?”
“I’m going to go to their place, and whoops, I got something stuck in the socket downstairs. I’m going to call you in because I’m worried about it catching fire,” she said. “And you find a reason to get into that room. Maybe you’re looking for the electrical panel down there.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s head over. Give me a call when you get done with your breaking and entering.”
I smiled, but it didn’t reach my eyes. None of my smiles had in months.
I was sure that my soccer girls at school thought I’d gone into menopause based on my mood swings.
“Okay,” he said. “You get there first. Do what you need to do. Then call me in.”
I shivered as he pulled me up out of my seat.
My feet didn’t want to move.
“Come on,” he said. “You’re strong. You can do this.”
I swallowed past the bile. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
He pointed to a trash can, and I turned woodenly to it.
When I got to the empty bin, I stared at the sludge at the bottom of it and tried to breathe through the feeling.
I shouldn’t have bothered.
I threw up what little there was in my stomach into the sludge.