Chapter Twenty-seven
Blaine
I’m going to throw up from car sickness if he takes another corner like that. “You’re going to kill us if you keep driving like a maniac.” I grab the bar meant for hanging a garment bag with one hand wincing as he side-eyes me, tearing around another corner.
Eden isn’t talking.
A watermelon in the back smashes against the side of the rental SUV. I’m driving back to the hotel. Enough of this fucking shit.
Before I can start harping at him again about his fatalistic driving habits, we pull up to a split level in a quiet roundabout. Three squad cars are parked on the street and in the driveway.
“Stay here… both of you please.” He leaves the SUV running.
Fuck that. I’m not being ordered to stay here. Both Eden and I follow, after I turn the SUV off, pocketing the keys.
Matt pulls his badge out to show the deputy at the door. He looks over his shoulder at us. “No. Please go back to the car.”
I shake my head and Eden’s glassy eyes survey past him into the house. When I peer in, I spot a plump, older woman in a housecleaners uniform sitting on the couch blubbering.
Matt is ushered in and we’re right on his tail. No one questions it. He looks back at the deputy who is almost as dazed looking as Eden.
“Where are her kids?”
My gaze lands on photos of two small children. They look so much like Eden I do a doubletake.
“Not here,” a different deputy answers, walking down the stairs. “Might be with a sitter.”
“Or… she was killed and the person responsible took the kids…” Matt says incredulously. “Mother fucking hell.”
I might be rubbing off on him.
Eden pulls my sleeve. “Look.” She points to a picture on a bookshelf in the living room area. “I know… I know that person.”
She steps up to the picture, her hand hovering before falling away. “Why would she have a picture of herself with Sinda?”
The picture shows the follower that volunteered at the roadside stand with her and Peterson. “Couldn’t they know each other? There aren’t many people living in this area, right?”
Matt follows the deputy back upstairs. I’m cool with not seeing that whole scene, so I stay by Eden’s side.
Eden looks over at the traumatized woman with the Happy House cleaner’s jumpsuit on and asks her, “Can I get you anything?” She’s always concerned about others, more than herself.
The housekeeper sniffles. “It’s not her normal cleaning day, and she called me to come. Said she had a friend stopping by.” She shakes her head and starts crying again. “I have a key and… oh, I wish I’d never seen that. Those poor babies of hers.”
My attention is pulled in the direction of Matt, who looks like he’s taken over the scene, the deputies keep asking him questions and taking his directives.
Even in shorts and a T-shirt he exudes authority. It’s fucking hot.
“How far away is the medical examiner?” he asks the young deputy who looks half sick.
Not even two hours ago, I’d had hateful feelings about Willa Peterson and what she allowed Eden to endure as a child.
Now the woman is upstairs dead, and all I can think about is two children without their mother. I glance back, to see Eden rise slowly from her seat next to the housekeeper staring at the door.
I turn to see a teenage girl carrying a baby and clutching the hand of a toddler. “I… I was supposed to come back when I saw the police cars.”
What the ever-loving fuck?
Matt and the nearest deputy react the same. Incredulous looks. “Who are you?” the young, lanky deputy asks her.
“I’m Stacy. Miss Peterson has me watch Waverly and Weston sometimes…” She lets go of the little girl’s hand as the toddler pulls away to wander over to a basket of her toys grabbing a baby doll and a brush. She brings it to me with a smile.
My fucking heart implodes. I squat down, accept the doll, and listen to her babble about its hair.
“What do you mean that Ms. Peterson told you to bring the kids back when you saw the police? That didn’t seem strange to you?” Matt’s tone is verging on heated.
I fight to hold back tears as this adorable little girl starts to brush my hair with the pink plastic brush.
“I… I… don’t know… she was….”
The gravity of the situation hits the babysitter all in one fell swoop. She puts her hand over her mouth and her eyes widen.
“She said she had a friend coming over and… what happened?” Matt steers her to the couch next to the housekeeper with a hand on her back.
Eden takes the teenager’s hand and asks her if her parents are home. I watch the sitter hand the baby boy who is sucking on his little fist to Matt. Who like some kind of natural, cradles him against his shoulder.
“Stacy, Deputy Marks has a few questions for you, and we’ll call your parents over, okay?”
“Wait, wait… she gave me this. I was supposed to give him this, because…” She bites her lip. “He would be here?” She takes a creased envelope from her pocket with the name ‘Matt’ on it.
Matt sighs, taking the envelope, he walks it over to the deputy that seems to be stuck in place near the front entrance.
“Fee. Siss is fee.” The little girl with blonde curly pigtails whispers to me. Then she holds up three sticky looking fingers.
My chest tightens. I want to blot this day out with a chemical coma of drugs.
“Yeah,” I say softly back. “That’s three.”
Matt hands the baby to Eden to hold. She looks like he handed her a grenade.
“I need to go upstairs,” he says gently to her, running a hand over the baby’s back.
He disappears up the stairs. The deputy moves Stacey and her now arriving parents outside, the housekeeper is dismissed, and the baby gets fussy.
“B. What do I do?” Eden asks me, distressed. “You’re better with kids than me. Little humans terrify me.” She gingerly pats his back.
His sister toddles over to the couch where she pulls out a pacifier that was stuck in a crack between cushions. She sets it on Eden’s lap and says, “Sis sucky.”
I grab it, moving to the kitchen to rinse it off, with the charming little moppet following behind me.
“Your name is Waverly?” I ask her looking down at her angelic face. Her disarming smile is accompanied by her hooking a little arm around my leg.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
My mind reels with the loss this child doesn’t even know has happened.
Once the medical examiner has removed Willa Peterson’s covered body all but one of the deputies follow suit.
Deputy Marks says to Matt, “I’m just waiting on the on-call social worker, she’s an hour or so away. I couldn’t find a single emergency contact or family contact in her papers. The neighbor doesn’t think she has any family.”
Eden looks at Matt in alarm and doesn’t even address the deputy. “They can’t go to a foster home.”
Trying to make her feel less shitty about the situation, I interject, “Ed, they aren’t going to a place like you did. Babies are usually taken in and adopted quickly.”
It’s bullshit.
I don’t know what type of placement they might have. I need to believe that, though since Waverly hasn’t left my side.
“I’ll get ahold of family,” Matt asserts.
He knows who her family is?
At this point, I’m on emotional fumes so I’m just thankful he has the wherewithal to handle things.
“I’ll give Donna a call and let her know. Can you write their information down, so I have it for my report?” The deputy hands a pen and torn piece of Peterson’s calendar to write it down.
Wiping his hand across his mouth, his irritation with the deputy is easy to sense from across the room. “It’s in the medical examiner's paperwork that I filled out for you.”
Without much more talk, Deputy Marks leaves.
“Now what?” I ask Matt as I notice Waverly has put her thumb in her mouth, her eyes keep closing.
“We’ll stay here overnight with the kids, get them packed up, and then deal with the rest of it tomorrow.”
He sits next to Eden to take Weston from her, laying him on his chest. “I’ll give their grandparents a call tomorrow morning.”
“I should text Caleb and let him know we won’t be back at the hotel tonight.” Hopefully, he can navigate being around Hutton on his own. Not that Caleb lets anyone else’s moods daunt him much.
I gently pick Waverly up to sit her next to Eden on the couch.
My heart stalls out as I pause. She looks like a miniature Eden. If anyone else notices, they aren’t commenting on it.
“Yeah, thanks,” Matt replies as he lets out a deep breath. “This happened because I paid her a visit yesterday. She was scared as hell. Now I know why.”
Eden leans against his side, fisting his t-shirt.
“How could you possibly know she’d hurt herself because you were questioning her?”
What a fucking selfish way to go.
“This wasn’t a suicide.” Matt looks down at Eden before he kisses the top of her head. “This was connected to Camp Carroll. Willa Peterson is Caroline Bradford. Rafferty Bradford’s younger sister.”
Eden bolts upright. “No. No way.”
Eden read and studied Lassiter’s book like she was going to take a test. I remember all the notes.
“How is that even possible? I’ve known her… since I was five?”
“Part of the reason I wanted to stay here with the kids tonight is to poke around. She may have more than just that picture you found of that follower of Clive’s hidden away in this house. Or some clue for me to find since she wanted me here.”
“What was on the note?” I ask him thinking he won’t tell us what it says.
“All it said was ‘Protect them.’ I assume she means her kids.”
Waverly turns over, I stare at her adorable little face, thumb still stuck in her mouth.
Christ.
I don’t want to hand them over to grandparents that they may not know.
Tears well as it hits—Eden’s past was hell… everyone failed to protect her. We can’t let these kids down.