Chapter 36 Robyn
ROBYN
The paramedics examined Lachlan where he sat on the open end of the ambulance. He answered their questions with irritated impatience, and my gut churned with the events of the day.
Forensics were all over the shack on McCulloch’s land. The coroner had just taken off with Fergus’s body.
Lucy was loaded onto an ambulance—with a police escort.
Mac stood near the shack porch talking solemnly with the DIs. Jock, Gillies, and Smithy watched me from their spot near two Range Rovers.
“You all right, lass?”
I jumped and cursed myself for it.
Hard not to be jumpy after the day I’d had.
I glanced up at the big man beside me. “I don’t know what I am.”
McCulloch nodded grimly. “It was quite the betrayal. From both of them.”
“How did you know we were here?”
“Jared saw you riding up the trail. Came back to the farm to alert me you were on my land. This used to be where the old farmhouse was. My father demolished it after he built the new one but left the shack, which used to be an old woodshed for my mother. It was once furnished with her things. She liked to escape out here to read and craft. I kept it for sentimental reasons. Now I’ll have to demolish the thing, tainted as it now is. ”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered hoarsely, feeling guilty.
“For what?”
“For thinking it was you because of what happened to your sister.”
The farmer exhaled heavily. “My only issue with Adair is the land. I let go of what happened to Maryanne a long time ago.”
“You let it go?” I frowned. “Lachlan doesn’t think so.”
McCulloch’s gaze pierced through me. “His father not only lost his sister, too, he lost his bloody wife. If that man did owe me a debt for what happened to Maryanne, he paid it twice over in grief.”
I nodded, ashamed I’d gotten him so wrong.
He seemed to understand. “You followed motive. It’s done. Move on.”
Move on?
I found Lachlan again, his eyes downcast as the paramedic spoke to him. He looked haggard. Lost.
How did you move on from that kind of betrayal? How did you move on when you’d been so utterly deceived by someone you cared about?
How would he ever trust again?