Chapter Twenty-seven
Beckett
I sat in Darius’s living room with my siblings gathered around.
We waited for Jimmy to arrive for this meeting he’d requested with us.
Conveniently, Mom was in Canville, helping with a seminar on animal care over at Silver Moon Wolf Sanctuary.
My brothers and sister still didn’t appear to have an inkling about why Jimmy wanted to meet.
Or if they did, they weren’t admitting to it.
Whatever. I could hardly think about anything but Sadie’s disappearance yesterday afternoon.
Hank had suggested we go to the police, but that arrest order was proof police had already been involved—ones from Verdalach.
Apparently, when you were a runaway princess, your home country sent out its own officials to collect you.
And why would I want to find someone who had lied to me?
“She’s wanted for something back in her country, which, I guess, is no surprise.
If she could lie so convincingly to all of us, she is probably capable of engaging in quite the caper,” I’d said to Hank as I’d gestured to the official arrest order he’d pieced together.
Sadie’s—pardon me—Princess Aislinn’s name wasn’t on any of the recovered scraps of paper, but she wasn’t here so she had to have been caught and brought back to Verdalach.
I was pissed she’d lied to me, but I was also upset that she’d left without contacting me.
Not a single fucking word. Did Verdalach not allow its criminals one phone call upon arrest?
More likely, the princess didn’t think she owed me the courtesy of letting me know what had happened.
I was, after all, way beneath her station.
Just some dude she’d met in Vermont, pretended to have a relationship with, and easily left behind when the law had caught up to her.
I hope she’d had fun with her stupid little game.
I was angry with myself too. Shouldn’t I have developed a better nose for liars by now? I’d had enough experience with women putting forth false versions of themselves that I shouldn’t have fallen for it again.
But Sadie—Princess Aislinn—had been skilled in the art of deceit. She’d masqueraded as a simple girl with a great business idea and an interest in me and I’d fallen for her act.
Fallen hard. Too hard.
“Hey.” Isaac came to sit beside me on Darius’s couch. “Why do you look like shit? You never look like shit.” He gestured to my feet resting on the coffee table. “Your socks don’t match.”
I glanced to my feet and he was right. I had on one black sock and one gray sock.
“I wasn’t paying attention this morning when I got dressed.” Because I hadn’t slept at all as visions of having fun with Sadie morphed into her outfitted like a medieval princess who was pointing and laughing at me.
Isaac opened his mouth, no doubt to ask more questions, but the doorbell rang.
Darius walked to his front door, opened it, and returned with Jimmy.
The man was dressed in a brand new, charcoal gray suit.
The work boots or muck boots he frequently wore had been replaced by polished dressy boots.
His shirt was a crisp white and the tie around his neck was swirled with harvest colors.
His hair and beard had been freshly trimmed as well.
Aside from the anxious wringing of his hands and the darting of his gaze around the room at all of us, Jimmy Slater looked as if he’d stepped out of a fashion magazine.
Vanessa whistled. “Wow, Jimmy. You look amazing.”
“Thank you.” He bowed his head, a bashful air about him. “And thank you all for agreeing to meet with me.”
“Sure,” Darius said. “What’s this all about, Jimmy?”
The rest of my siblings echoed that same question, but I knew. I could see it in the old man’s eyes. Love had made him bold.
While love had only made me a sucker.
“Well, I’d like to . . .” His voice cracked a bit and he appeared to catch himself fidgeting with his hands.
He shook them out a bit, smoothed them down the front of his suit jacket, and drew in a deep breath.
The movements reminded me of Sadie because they were definitely an attempt at Jimmy centering himself.
The man’s aura right now was a little chaotic, but something else radiated from it too.
Determination.
“I’d like your permission to ask your mother to marry me.” Jimmy let his gaze stop on each of us around the room.
For at least a count of fifteen, no one moved. No one spoke. Hell, no one breathed.
I wanted to be happy for Jimmy and Mom, but I couldn’t help thinking that now I truly would be the last Hartley to find a soulmate.
And now I didn’t have any prospects because the woman who had stolen my heart had done so by lying to me.
I was here, grieving the loss of Sadie Rodgers when Sadie Rodgers hadn’t really existed.
Jimmy turned pleading eyes to Darius. My brother got the message that, as the oldest Hartley child, he had the ability to get the rest of us onboard this marriage proposal train. I was already onboard, but I didn’t have the energy to say it right now.
Darius lifted his hand to Jimmy. “Of course you have our permission, Jimmy.” They shook hands as Darius swept his gaze to the rest of us and motioned with a slight angle of his head for us to speak up.
Vanessa was the first to follow and offer her consent and congratulations then she hugged Jimmy. Isaac and Joshua agreed at the same time as they often did as twins and shook Jimmy’s hand as Darius had.
Logan stepped up to Jimmy next. He had his arms folded across his chest as he stared at the man. “If you do anything to hurt our mother, we will hunt you down and do things to you that are far worse than the most gruesome rumors about you being a serial killer, Jimmy Slater. Understood?”
Jimmy’s lips tilted up at one corner. “Understood.”
Logan shook Jimmy’s hand then looked back at me. “What do you say, Beckett?”
“I’ve been ready to call you Papa since the beginning, Jimmy,” I managed to say as I got to my feet and shook Jimmy’s hand. “You have my blessing.” I couldn’t be happy, but at least my dear mother would be.
“Thank you.” Jimmy glanced around the room. “Thank you all. I promise to always take good care of your mother.”
“When are you planning to ask her?” Vanessa asked.
“This weekend. At some point during the All Hallow’s Eve Walk.
” Jimmy plunged his hand into his pants pocket and produced two items. One was a small velvet box that had a simple silver band with diamonds embedded in it.
It was perfectly Beth Hartley because our mother worked hard with her hands around Hartley’s Nest. She didn’t like flashy or bulky jewelry and would adore the practicality of the one Jimmy had picked.
The second item was a pendant necklace on a leather cord. I instantly recognized it as one of Sadie’s—Princess Aislinn’s—creations.
Jimmy held it so it dangled by the cord. “I’m giving this to Beth too. I had your Sadie make this, Beckett. It’s a rock Beth and I found together.”
“Sadie is not mine,” I blurted. “She’s not even Sadie.”
Everyone—except Logan—looked at me, surprised with curious arches to their brows.
“Sadie is a princess.” Logan said, and that sentence released a blizzard of questions so I recounted what Hank and I had found at the cabin.
“This is crazy.” Vanessa had come to sit beside me, her hand resting on my knee in a comforting gesture.
“It sounded crazy as I was saying it all out loud,” I admitted after scrubbing a hand down my face. “Like something in a video game.”
“So what are you going to do?” Joshua asked.
“Do?” I frowned at him. “There’s nothing to do. I fell in love with a lying, criminal princess who got shipped back to her home country.” I huffed out a breath. “I think the only thing I can do is hope for sudden amnesia so I can forget this ever happened.”
“But do you want to forget Sadie?” Jimmy asked.
I shot to my feet. “Sadie doesn’t exist! She was a role Princess Aislinn played. And I was the fool who believed she was real.”
“She seemed pretty real to all of us,” Isaac said.
“And watching the two of you together seemed pretty real,” Logan added.
“Yeah, well . . . I guess we’re a pack of gullible idiots, all of us.” I jammed my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, wanting to be done with this conversation.
The doorbell rang again and Darius went to answer it. A police officer stood outside.
“What can I do for you, officer?” Darius asked as we all gathered around behind him.
“We’ve tracked that vehicle here.” The officer pointed to Jimmy’s pickup truck. “It belongs to Mr. Elijah Jameson Slater III. Is he here?”
Jimmy wiggled to the front of the group so the officer could see him. “That’s me.”
“Your name is Elijah?” Vanessa asked.
“Yes,” Jimmy said. “As was my daddy’s and my granddaddy’s, hence the III. I’ve gone by Jimmy since I was a boy because it was easier than being a third Elijah in the house growing up.”
I thought about the rumors involving Jimmy. Had keeping his real name from all of us been a part of his serial-killing lifestyle? I’d recently learned that a name change could be synonymous with being a criminal.
“Mr. Slater, what do you know about the disappearance of Sadie Rodgers?” the officer asked.
Jimmy looked at me. “Only what Beckett here has told us all today.”
The officer turned his gaze to me. “Which is?”
“She’s not Sadie Rodgers,” I said. “She’s Princess Aislinn Síomóin of Verdalach and she’s been arrested and taken back to her country. That’s all I know.”
“That’s all you think you know,” Vanessa pointed out.
Ignoring her, I said, “How did you know she was missing?”
“Hank Faraday called us to say he was concerned that she’d disappeared,” the officer said.
“He saw the arrest order, same as me,” I said.
“He expressed concern for her safety,” the officer explained. “Then a client of Miss Rodgers called to say she didn’t show up for an appointment. The client was upset because they pre-paid. Accused Miss Rodgers of swindling her.”
Join the club, lady. The royal princess had swindled us all.
“What does Jimmy have to do with this?” Isaac asked.
The officer pulled a small rectangle of torn paper from his vest pocket. “We found this in Miss Rodgers’s mailbox. The mailbox was open and the paper got wet in the rain last night so some of it was destroyed.”
I took the paper where the words I’ll get you were scrawled across it. The paper’s bottom half was torn away from getting wet, but at the top it said From the Desk of Jimmy Slater.
“Did you write this note, Mr. Slater?” the officer asked.
“Well, yes,” Jimmy admitted, “but the note had more to it. I wrote I’ll get you the money later because I lost my wallet.
” He looked around at the rest of us. “Honest. I stayed overnight in New Hampshire on a logging job and I left my wallet in the hotel room. My buddy is still there and he’s bringing it to me when he wraps up his work.
” Jimmy showed the officer the pendant necklace.
“The money I owe Sadie is for this necklace she made. I picked it up from her mailbox when I got back to Vermont early this morning.”
“Right now all we have on Miss Rodgers’s disappearance is the incomplete arrest letter Mr. Faraday gave us,” the officer said, “and this note from you, Mr. Slater. A note that sounds threatening because we don’t have the rest of it. You’re going to have to come to the station for some questioning.”
We all talked at once, but the officer whistled and we clamped our mouths shut.
“If I don’t question the town’s rumored serial killer,” the officer said, “the gossips in town will have a field day. If Mr. Slater is innocent, great. He’ll be free to go. If he’s not . . .” The officer’s voice dropped off.
“And the best way to clear Jimmy’s name,” Darius began, “is to have Sadie—or whoever she is—make a reappearance, right?”
“That would be the easiest way, yes,” the officer agreed. “If she’s not missing, we don’t have anything to investigate.”
All attention turned to me, and Logan said, “Dude, you gotta go find her. For Mom. We can’t let whatever Sadie is dealing with and this misunderstanding that Jimmy has something to do with it keep Mom from getting that engagement ring.”
“If you find her and bring her back,” Vanessa said, “you might solve two problems. Jimmy’s and yours.”
“I don’t have a problem,” I said.
“Yeah, you do.” Joshua came to stand in front of me and rested his hands on my shoulders. “You’re in love with Sadie, aren’t you?”
“I can’t be in love with her!” I shot back. “She isn’t real!”
“You don’t believe that,” Isaac said. “In your heart, you don’t believe that.”
“She was more real than any other chick you’ve gone out with, wasn’t she?” Logan asked.
“You chose hanging out with her over your phone, your computers, your video games,” Darius said. “She may have lied about who she was, but what you felt while you were with her was authentic.”
“And you owe it to her and to you and to Jimmy to find out the whole story,” Vanessa said. “As the only female in the group here, take it from me. Sadie or Princess Aislinn or whatever she calls herself wants you to fight for her. For what you were building together.”
“But she lied to me,” I said.
“And you need to know why,” Isaac said.
“Come with me, Mr. Slater.” The officer looked at me. “We’ve reached out to Verdalach, but so far there has been no response so if you find Miss Rodgers or Princess What’s-Her-Name, let us know.”
Jimmy followed the officer to the squad car parked in front of Darius’s house. The sad look he gave me just before the officer ushered him into the back seat assaulted my battered heart. I couldn’t let my mom’s chance at happiness go to shit when I could do something about it.
“Fine,” I said, stepping into my shoes by the door. “I’ll go to Verdalach. I’ll find Her Majesty, but for Jimmy and Mom. Not for me. I can’t trust someone who lies to me and then disappears without any contact.”
I didn’t care what her reasons were. I would not fall for Sadie Rodgers again.