23. Chapter 23
Kylie
Erik’s car is already in his driveway as I pull into it.
He sounded a little off on the phone when he told me he was on his way back, so I made a quick stop at the supermarket for a bunch of comfort food.
Namely ice cream, chocolate, crisps, and grilled cheese ingredients that could last us for a week.
Abby runs ahead, tail wagging as she darts up and down his porch. Beckoned by her little tippy taps, Erik opens the door, only to immediately get jumped and stumbling a few steps back into his hallway. By the time I make it to his porch, he’s gently pushing Abby off.
“What’s all this?” He points at the grocery bags in my hand and the backpack over my shoulder, getting up from the ground.
“All in due time. Here.” I thrust one of the bag into his hands. “You sounded sad, so I brought some cheering-up food.”
“How did you...” He pulls the cherry and chocolate fudge ice tub out and holds it up. “Are you a mind reader? How did you know this is my favorite one?”
“Educated guess.” I shrug and lift my chin for a kiss. He obliges all too happily. “And also, if you take a peek at the other bags, you might notice I have bought one of every flavor.”
His lips pull into a grin. “And here I thought you were a little magician.”
“Alas.” I pat his shoulder and brush past him inside.
“No magic here. Though reading minds would make my life significantly easier sometimes.” I roll my eyes.
At least if I could read minds, I’d know what Zach wanted.
For now, I’ve decided it must have been a butt dial.
“Anyway...” I set my backpack down in his kitchen.
Abby runs past me, and when I glance at his living room, I find her curled up on his couch, in the exact same spot she jumped him on the last time.
“Tell me everything.” I toe out of my shoes and hang up my jacket. “Was it her?”
“No.” He shakes his head, a profound sadness weighing down his voice. “It wasn’t. But at least I got some bomb apple pie out of it.”
“You had bomb apple pie?” My eyes widen with jealousy.
“And your piece is in the fridge.” Ever so slowly, my face brightens up.
“Seriously?”
My heart dropped when he called to cancel our meeting at Caleb’s. For a moment, I was catapulted back 15 months, waiting at our kitchen table with a ready-made meal for Zach to come home, as promised.
Only he never did. At least not that day.
This is different, Kylie, I scold myself.
He thought about you. Hell, within the short amount of time we’ve known each other, he knew I’d be happy if he brought me pie.
I might still be a little butthurt, but even I can recognize the different level of dedication and how much more attention he pays compared to Zach. I’m not an afterthought.
“How are you doing?” I ask, walking over to him. Once I’m near enough, I reach for his hands and lace his fingers with mine. His eyes dart from my face to our hands, an inner fight going on whether to confide in me or not.
But I don’t push. Either he wants to tell me, or not. I only draw random patterns over the back of his hand with my thumbs and wait for his decision.
“I’m exhausted.” His voice is slow, barely louder than a whisper, and breaks toward the end. “Every time I get my hopes up, and then they’re shattered into a million little pieces I get to glue back together.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. My heart is breaking for him. He pulls his hand out of mine, but before I can question it, he puts his arms around my shoulders and pulls me into a warm and tight hug.
“I really want to find her,” he mumbles and takes a deep breath. I hug him back with the same ferocity and feel him positively melt against me. Maybe I can help him glue the pieces back together. I’m great at puzzles.
“My dad and aunt both want to find her so badly. And so do I.” He clears his throat. “But especially in my line of work, sometimes...” He lets the sentence fade into silence.
It’s okay. He doesn’t need to finish it.
I can imagine. If true crime documentaries have thought me one thing, it’s that kidnapping or missing persons reports seldom have a way of working out in a way you can call a happy ending.
“I’m so sorry, Erik,” I mumble against his chest and rub his back in slow, reassuring circles. Abby weaves around our feet, clearly feeling left out.
“One more moment,” Erik mumbles at her, without letting me go. She doesn’t quite want to listen, though, and gets on her hind feet, putting her front paws on his hip.
“I think she’s jealous.”
“Down, Abby,” he scolds her gently. To my surprise she listens.
“Kylie...” He clears his throat and steps back, running his palm over his face. “Thank you. I needed that.”
“Anytime.” I get on my tiptoes and press a kiss to the side of his jaw. “Come on. Give me the bag. The ice cream is melting.” He hands it over, eyes following the ice cream tub as I put it in his freezer.
“So, are you going to tell me what’s in that giant backpack of yours?” He stops right by it and eyes it curiously.
“Oh, you know. Change of clothes. Work for you.”
“Work for me?” He turns to me and arches an eyebrow. I buy some time by hiding my face behind the door of his fridge as I Tetris-pack the ice cream in there.
“Well, I mean maybe for us,” I clarify and close the door to his freezer. “You know, I was at Caleb’s and I ran into Harry, and he took me to Wayward Hollow’s archive, and guess what?”
His forehead wrinkles in a frown. “What?”
“O’Brien used to own the land where my house is.” He still seems confused. Am I seriously the only one making the connection?
“I know Bobby sold it as some kind of rumor, but hear me out. What if the bones we found in my yard are Elizabeth’s?”
“Why would they be? Isn’t she buried at the cemetery?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.” I point at the backpack.
“Harry let me borrow a bunch of files. Land owner records, and...” I pick it up and rummage through it until I find it.
“Here.” I hold up a notebook. “It’s some kind of diary from Nicholas O’Brien.
I also got the cemetery records in here.
” I pull out a file. “You know, the boring stuff. You can have a look at those.”
“So you want to find out if Elizabeth was buried on his property, which is now yours.” He walks closer, a teasing grin tugging at his lips. “You know this is kind of my area of expertise, right? You’re meddling in police work, babe.”
I pull my lip between my teeth. I like it when he calls me babe, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. It caught me off guard when he did it on the phone earlier, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.
“Just helping where I can.” I wink and push the cemetery files against his chest.
“You know I would’ve gotten there eventually too, right? I’m only prioritizing identifying her.”
“Sure you would have, Erik,” I tease him and pat his solid chest. “But I’m way too curious to wait for you to come around. So I thought we could make an evening out of it.”
Boom.
I jump, as does Abby. “Holy fuck.” I clutch my shirt, heart beating faster than a kick drum at a rock show. “What was that? A gunshot?”
The hair on the back of my neck is standing up.
“A thunderstorm,” Erik mumbles and rubs my shoulders until they relax under his fingertips. “Didn’t you check the weather forecast?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Boom.
Another one. I don’t think I’ve ever heard thunder this loud.
“Okay. Let’s make an evening of it,” Erik states and starts carrying everything over to his couch.
“Great! Give me a minute, I’m going to slip into something more comfortable.”
“Are you staying over?”
“Yep,” I declare confidently. “The storm and all that.” I wave my hand towards the sky.
He breaks into a chuckle, eyes softening. “The one you didn’t know about?”
“Exactly that one.” I shoot him a cheeky grin and grab my pajamas out of my backpack.
He points me to his bedroom. Dangerous to let me in there alone and give me a prime snooping opportunity.
It might be the most boring room out of his house. There’s a queen-sized bed, a wardrobe, some books strewn about and a door leading to an en-suite bathroom. No pictures to snoop, no crime board or anything nefarious to satisfy my curiosity.
When I return to the living room, he’s sitting on the floor in front of his couch and papers scattered on the ground around him. Abby is on the couch, breathing into his neck, and he absentmindedly has his hand over his shoulder, scratching the side of Abby’s throat.
“Did she banish you from the couch?” I ask amusedly and pad over to his kitchen to get myself a glass of water.
He glances up, then does a double take and lets his eyes slide over my pajama-clad form appreciatively. Maybe it’s the low-hanging jogging pants or the giant shirt with a collar so wide it reveals one of my shoulders.
“No, she didn’t,” he mumbles and runs his hand through his hair. “I’m just a ground kind of researcher.”
“Well, that’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear.” I plop onto the couch. Wordlessly, he hands me the journal. “We don’t have to do this tonight,” I mumble and take it. “If you had other plans, I’m flexible.”
“My grand plans for the night involve you. As long as you’re here, I don’t care if I’m reading one of my books or a file. And this is important to you.”
“It is,” I admit, emotions dwelling in the back of my throat making it hard to swallow. “What book are you reading at the moment?”
“Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett. I’m doing something of a buddy read with my dad.”
“Oh, how fun! My English teacher in high school used to sing that guy’s praises.”
“I’m not sure I’d be making it a duet. It’s fun, but maybe he’ll be up for a thriller as our next book.”
Boom.
Another thunder makes me jump. “That’s what I get for trying to escape ghost jump scares for an evening,” I mumble and open the heavy book, about to start reading when suddenly, it’s dark.
“What the—”
“Don’t panic.” Erik gets up and turns on the flashlight on his phone. “Power outages are not unusual during a thunderstorm here.”
“At least it means I didn’t bring the ghost with me, I guess.”
“Here.” Erik throws me a matchbox. “Can you light the candles?”
“Sure.” I turn on the flashlight on my phone to find them. It takes me several tries to light the match, so when I do, it takes everything in me to not break into a happy dance and extinguish it.
“Let me see if I can get the generator running.” Before I can protest about him leaving me alone in the dark, he runs outside.
“To be fair, it’s kind of romantic. As long as I remind myself this isn’t a horror movie,” I whisper to Abby as I light the remaining candles one by one. “Crime research in the candlelight.” I let out a dramatic sigh. “What a perfect date.”
When Erik returns, he makes a beeline for the kitchen, pulls out one of the ice cream tubs, and hands it to me.
“Not a chance,” he lets out a sigh. “The thing already didn’t sound so well the last time I had to throw it on, and now it finally met its maker.”
“Well, there are worse things.” I open the ice cream tub and spoon he hands me. For now, I set the journal aside. There’s no way I’m risking dropping ice cream on it accidentally.
So instead, I lie down on the couch and read the cemetery records along over Erik’s shoulder.
“I don’t see her name on there,” I mumble, reading the names one more time. Erik nods slowly.
“You’re right.” He turns to the second-last page. This is where O’Brien's name appears. I set the ice cream aside, because a brain freeze announces itself right behind my temples, and I flip through the first few pages of the notebook. Erik grabs it and starts eating.
“Erik, look.” He turns to me, spoon in his mouth. “There’s a picture of her.” I pull it out of the notebook and hand it to him.
“Perfect.” He takes out his phone and takes a quick picture of it with flash. “I’ll send it to Logan.”
“Logan?”
“Our forensics guy. Maybe there are some comparisons he can draw. Skull form and all that. Apparently, the sketch and clay artist who usually give skulls their faces are too busy with current cases to have a look at a skeleton as old as the one you found.”
“Abby found her. Credit where credit is due.”
I flip through the pages, eyes gliding over the neat handwriting, when I turn to an almost completely white page except for three short sentences.
I got the call today. There is no more light in my life. I couldn’t even be there to hold her hand.
The words settle heavy on my heart. Such few words, but the pain in them is palpable and downright suffocating. I read the following pages with more attention.
“He was in the middle of nowhere for work when he learned of his wife’s passing,” I explain, voice heavy.
“Oh god, this is heartbreaking. He couldn’t go home for her funeral or he wouldn’t have been paid for his entire time there.
The poor guy, it sounds like modern day slavery.
He had to stay there for what looks like another three weeks so he could even afford her funeral.
And she was already buried when he arrived, he couldn’t even say goodbye. ”
Hot tears threaten to overflow.
“It doesn’t say where, though.” I hand the journal to Erik. As he wraps his fingers around it, an envelope falls out of the thick notebook. Erik picks it up, opens it, and reads it silently. I watch him in the flickering candlelight sending shadows over his stern expression.
He’s adorable when he focuses. All jaw clenched, and little wrinkles appear between his eyebrows. Suddenly his eyes turn glassy.
“Oh no, this is going to be sad, isn’t it?”
He shoots me a glance and holds up the paper, backside facing me. “It’s the final letter he wrote to his wife. He never got to send it before she died.”
“Oh no.” I bury my face in my hands. “Yeah, no, I can’t take that today.”
“I get it.” He folds it back together neatly and returns it to the envelope, then slides it back into the journal.
“I hope they find each other again in another life,” I mumble and lay my chin on his shoulder, just like Abby did not too long ago. Erik lifts his hand, running his fingers through my hair. “Then again, probably not if she’s still haunting my house.”
“Right,” Erik mumbles, barely masking his amusement. “Get Lauren and Nic to take you to Amanda’s sometime. Maybe she can find out what’s going on with your ghost.”
“I’ll do that.”
Boom.