Chapter 29
CADE
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Gravel crunches beneath the tires of the SUV as Tex pulls onto the long, winding drive. I stare out the tinted glass at the Harrington lakehouse and finally understand why she loved it here.
The house sits high on a hill overlooking a lake. It’s built out of warm cedar painted a deep navy with tall, white windows reflecting the afternoon light. The roof angles gently toward the water and hangs out over a massive screened in deck.
The cloud-like white canopies of waking Bradford pear trees fill the yard as the lake stretches out beyond it, blue-green and deceptively calm.
The cool water gently ripples under the spring breeze.
Along the banks, the birches are just beginning to bud.
Their pale-green contrasting against the dark and peeling bark.
There’s a narrow wooden dock at the bottom of the hill. It’s withered and slightly tilted from years of a little girl running and jumping off of it.
“It’s beautiful here,” I whisper, taking it all in.
“I get what she meant,” Lex adds. “This place being her calm.”
Bella always described this place as if it was her childhood sanctuary. Henry and Elise sipping their morning coffee on the back deck. Her running around barefoot on the cold planks. The way the mist would run over the water before the sunrise.
She always said it was more than just her home. It was the one place where she ever really felt safe. The only place where she could breathe.
As we step out, the cool, spring air hits me, carrying the scent of water and pine sap with it.
It brushes across my face, slides under my jacket, and for a split second I can almost imagine her standing here beside us.
Her hair flowing loose over her shoulders as she laughs and tells us all about how the lake looks different in every season.
My chest tightens. “It feels wrong to be here without her.”
“I know,” Lex says, reaching for my hand and interlocking our fingers.
We follow Tex up the stairs to the house. Knox, Sabine, and Roman following closely behind. Roman eases the door shut as we all step inside.
The house looks untouched. White shiplap walls rise toward vaulted ceilings, clean against the dark wooden beams. Light spills in from the wall of windows overlooking the lake and turns the marble countertops in the open kitchen into slabs of liquid silver.
It’s painfully beautiful. The kind of place you’d frame in a magazine spread and title Fresh Start.
A stone fireplace anchors the living room, its mantle lined with framed photographs of a little girl with steel eyes, onyx curls, and too-big smiles.
Bella at three with frosting on her cheeks.
Another one around five, holding a sparkler on the dock with Henry.
Her asleep on Elise’s chest as a baby. Dust has gathered at the edges of the frames and softened the glass like a memory left too long in the sun.
In the center of the room proudly sits a pink dollhouse.
My stomach knots when I notice an easel standing in silence next to it.
A half-used palette rests on the tray, dried streaks of blush and aqua still clinging to the wood.
The canvas lying on it is blank. Patiently waiting for me to create Luca’s next horrific masterpiece.
The television flickers on in the corner, the sudden harsh light fracturing the space.
“Uncle Jack, swing me higher!” A little Bella, maybe three or four, squeals from a swing set in the backyard.
“What the hell?” Lex grits, inching closer to the screen.
“Okay, Sugar Bear,” the sick bastard laughs as he carefully pushes Bella from behind, grinning wider each time his hand touches her.
Her giggles echo off of the walls as the video fades to black. “Nobody” by Dylan Scott replaces her soft, little voice as images of her and Luca begin to fill the screen. His idea of some sort of sick inside joke.
“That fucker,” Lex roars. “Using her favorite song for this shit.”
Photo after photo, once looking so innocent, now a piercing stab to my heart.
Bella on his shoulders, walking into Razorback Stadium in her maroon and white cheerleading outfit, her long hair tied up in a glittery bow.
Her hugging his neck and kissing his cheek at her seventh birthday.
Bella nearly ten, asleep on his lap on the dock overlooking this same lake.
His hand way too low on the small of her back.
The two of them reunited in New York this past year.
Her smile larger than life because she had finally gotten another family member back.
My stomach rolls.
Roman loses it when an image of Luca holding Bella as a baby in front of the fireplace pops up.
“I’ll kill him for taking my daughter,” he barks, fists curling at his side. “Twice.”
A few more sickening minutes of memory lane pass before the slideshow finally comes to an end.
The screen pauses on one image of a young Bella in this living room.
She’s kneeling on the floor next to Luca as he assembles the pink dollhouse.
She’s smiling up at him while placing stickers all over his forearm.
“Welcome, boys. To the most haunted house in all the land,” Luca’s voice flows through the speakers. “Even though it probably looks rather grand.”
He lets out a soft chuckle.
“I always despised these polished beams and quiet lies,
All dressed up in pretty, bright blue skies.
The mother’s death was a mercy, how it moved things along.
But I couldn’t leave Izzy where she didn’t—”
“Enough with the poems, Luca!” Lex cuts in from beside me, seething at the screen.
“Ahh, Lexie,” Luca laughs. “Where’s your sense of fun?”
“What do you want?” Lex grits.
“What I want,” Luca’s deep voice snaps, the sound bouncing off the walls. “Is for you to sit down, shut up, and let me continue.”
Roman grabs Lex by the shoulder before he can lunge at the screen.
“Alright Cade,” Luca continues, all smug and glee.
“Let’s throw a party inside these painted little walls.
Where my Izzy’s laughter politely calls.
So many rooms for one little bride.
Tell me Artist, where will she hide?
Pick her a bedroom, a kitchen, a stair.
Dress her in memory but place her with care.
Because every small choice that your trembling hands make.
Becomes the masterpiece you’re about to create.”
I glance behind us at the dollhouse, now looking more like a ticking time-bomb than Bella’s favorite childhood toy.
Kneeling down in front of it, I notice a small little doll lying face down in the living room floor.
Onyx hair, steel eyes, cherry-red lips, and naked.
Three dresses are sprawled across the black couch behind her. Black silk, blood-red, and pale-blue.
“Dress her in memory but place her with care,” Sabine’s soft voice echoes Luca’s words. “I think that monster means for you to set the scene, chéri.”
“Which one do I pick?” I whisper.
The scent of lavender and rosemary fills the space between us as Sabine crouches down next to me. Her black silk dress brushing against my legs as she sits.
“Now I can’t make that choice for you,” she says, her voice smooth as honey. She loops her arm through mine. “But I’ll stay right here beside you while you make it.”
“Anytime now, Cade,” Luca’s smug voice sounds from the tv. “I’m getting bored.”
“Don’t let that fool pester you,” Sabine says. “Take your time.”
I nod, reaching for the doll, trying to weigh my options.
“Whatever color I pick,” I start. “Do you think that’s what he’ll have her wear?”
She nods slowly.
“So don’t pick black,” Lex says through gritted teeth. “And for the love of God don’t you dare sit her in that bedroom.”
Flashes of Bella in that black gown with Zeke lowering himself on top of her fill my vision, nausea rising fast. I shake out of it and reach for the red dress. Then stop myself.
“What’s wrong?” Sabine asks.
“I just,” I mutter. “I don’t know which one to pick.”
“What does your soul say?”
“My soul?”
She reaches over and picks up the blue and red dresses and gently places one in each of my hands.
“Yes, Cade,” she says. “What do these shades say to your heart? Where do they take you?”
“Well, um… I guess red makes me think of blood,” I admit, tears filling my eyes. “Anytime I see it now, I’m immediately brought back to Miami. I-I’m back with Lex in that cage. Hopelessly watching him bleed out at my feet.”
Lex shifts behind me, scratching his shoulder in the sling.
“And the blue?” Sabine asks again. “What do you see?”
“Water,” I whisper, the word catching on a deep exhale. “I see the water.”
She hums. “Where she’d sink her worries deep in the clay and watch as the darkness floated away.”
I nod.
“Then you have your answer,” she whispers, removing the red dress from my fingers.
I carefully dress the little Bella doll in the blue dress.
“Now, where do I place her?” I ask quietly, looking between the rooms in the house. The bedroom, the bathroom, kitchen, all places where Luca and Zeke could do terrible things to her.
“That’s it!” Luca shouts. “Pick a room right now, Cade. Or I’ll pick for you.”
I sit the little doll down quickly on the couch and step back from the dollhouse.
“Very good choice,” Luca chuckles. “I’m looking forward to this one. Go ahead and get yourself ready, Whitmore. We’ll be right back.”