Chapter 23
“I know you do,” Eden stated, her voice as warm and caring as the gentle energy floating closer and closer to Helen.
Eden could only imagine that Stefan was sending the energy of love to Helen, but Eden wasn’t sure.
She’d never seen anything like it before.
It was purely amazing to even see it now, but there was something about it, something magical and healing to it all.
Then she realized it wasn’t Stefan’s energy. She didn’t know whose it was, but someone was here, someone full of love and caring, someone who wanted to help. “Where’s your mother?” she asked Helen.
The older woman sighed, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I lost her in the house fire.” Her voice broke with that statement. “I was trying so hard to protect her, but I don’t think it worked.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Eden noted. “And do you think your mother would forgive you for that?”
Helen shook her head, tears in her eyes, and whispered, “I don’t see how. I can’t even forgive myself.”
Eden didn’t say anything, but she turned to consider the energy here, so full of some raw emotion that she couldn’t place it. “I think your mother would forgive you. I think maybe she was already worn out and in such a different form that you didn’t recognize her here beside you this whole time.”
Helen stared at her in shock. “What are you talking about?”
Eden pointed to the energy at Helen’s side and asked, “Is that your mother?”
Helen spun to see the same energy that Eden was looking at. She gasped. “Mama!” And then she burst into tears.
The two energies blended into one in an almost superhuman hug, a soul revelation coming together, two parts into one, as they blended in perfect harmony.
As soon as she did that, Eden tapped both energies, one with each hand. She felt Eric doing the same on the other side, and then two other warm loving energies wrapped around them both. She knew it was Stefan and whoever had come with him.
They were being filled from the inside out with love, a love that expanded and expanded and expanded. Suddenly another energy pushed into the circle, one of the children, and then another and another, until finally the circle was so big, so huge, and so full.
Eden lifted her head toward the infinity all around them and whispered, “And so it is.” And, with that said, followed by an almost magical clap, some resonating explosion came from within, and she lost consciousness, falling once again to the grass that she lay upon.
When she came to, she took several moments to recognize the blue sky and the sun dawning on the horizon. She sat up and looked around, a little groggy, a little worn out, and a lot disoriented. As she turned, she found an old man, squatted in front of her.
He looked at her with a frown and asked, “Are you okay?”
She realized it was Samuel, the gardener. She nodded slowly. “I think so.”
He shook his head. “It’s really not a good idea to be sleeping out here,” he shared. “Somebody passed away recently, right after falling down about here.” He looked around and sighed. “I don’t understand what the two of you were even doing here.”
She smiled. “Yeah, I’m not sure we do either.” She nudged Eric awake. “I guess just the beautiful morning, and since we both weren’t getting much sleep recently, we just … passed out for a bit.”
He nodded, but he stood up, stared at her, and added, “It would probably be a really good idea for you to go home.”
“Yes, it probably would,” she agreed. “And maybe it would be time for you to go home too, Samuel.”
He stared at her in surprise, his brows wrinkling.
She nodded. “It’s over.”
“Is it?” he asked warily, not sure who or what she was talking about.
“Yes,” she said, “it is. You have been guarding this place for a very long time, but they’re safe now, all of them, and they’re going home where they belong.” He stared at her in shock, but there was that little bit of hope in the back of his gaze, and she nodded again. “That’s what we were doing.”
He crouched beside her, his gaze turning to look from her to Eric, who was just now waking up. “Are they really?”
“Yes,” she stated, “they’re really safe.”
“She was my great-great-great-grandmother—I don’t know how many greats actually,” he admitted. “A little bit off her rocker, a little bit too possessive, a little bit too …” He stopped and shrugged, then added, “She loved very deeply.”
“She did indeed,” Eden confirmed, “but even she is home and now safe.”
He closed his eyes as the tears welled up, and he whispered, “I was told to watch over her and the others. I’m so tired.”
“I know you are,” she agreed, “but it’s over.”
He slowly looked around the gardens, tears in his eyes. “She picked a lovely place.”
“She did, except for taking other people.”
He nodded, turning to her. “Some I could save over the years. Some I couldn’t. …”
“Like the terminally ill lady who came to the seminar and fell in the gardens and died soon afterward at the hospital?”
He sighed, then nodded. “That goes for you too. Sometimes we can help, and sometimes we can’t,” he shared ever-so-gently. He tilted his hat at her. “Thank you for saving them.” And, with that, he walked away.
Even as he did, she wanted to call him back and ask a million questions. Yet, as he strode off into the sunrise, he seemed to walk literally into the horizon, and she knew that he was gone, really gone—as in he too had returned from whence he came.
Eric stared at her and asked, “Did that just happen?”
“Which part?” she quipped, with half a laugh.
He pointed to the horizon, where Samuel was nowhere to be seen.
“Ah, the caretaker, … yes.” She nodded. “That did just happen. It seems we released not only souls bound on the other side, but at least one soul bound on this side too,” she pointed out.
“Good God,” he muttered, “do we even know what that place was or if Helen created it or if someone else did? If so, why?”
“Nope, and I didn’t really have time to ask him,” she admitted. “I figured we had enough to worry about without getting into that.”
He chuckled softly as he slowly made his way into a sitting position, then managed to stand up. “Wow, I’m not sure what that was, but wow.”
She smiled. “It was definitely something.”
He turned to her. “Are you okay?”
“I will be,” she declared. “In a way, this probably needed to happen to me for a very long time, and, once I deal with the fallout, I think I’ll be just fine.” He eyed her carefully, as she looked over at him, shaking her head. “I’m fine.”
He smiled. “I hear you. I’m just worried.”
She smiled as she reached out a hand, and he helped her to her feet. “Thank you for being worried,” she said, “and for caring. It’s been a very long road.”
He wrapped her up in his arms and muttered, “Does this solve everything now?”
“Nope, it doesn’t, but it does solve a lot of it.”
“And Debbie?”
“Yeah, Debbie’s a whole different case,” she stated, “and, for that, we’ll need to talk to the men.”
“What men?” After they turned and headed to the hotel, she told Eric, an odd tone in her voice, “I don’t want to stay here much longer.”
“It’s definitely not as peaceful as it was.” Then he stopped, as if listening to something, and clarified, “No, that’s wrong. It’s more peaceful now.”
“It is, but I still don’t want to stay,” she muttered.
“You want to go back home to solve Debbie’s death?” Eric asked.
“I’m not exactly sure what happened to Debbie, but I do know that it’s connected to your murder-rapist cases.”
He stopped and stared.
She turned back when he didn’t keep up with her and held out a hand. “As I mentioned, we need to talk to the men.”
Even as they got closer to the hotel, they saw the two brothers loading up their luggage, ready to leave. They stopped and stared as the two of them walked over.
“What happened to you two?” Rinaldo Santino asked, with a snicker. “You look as if you slept outside.”
“It’s not that we slept outside, but maybe we had a nap,” she clarified. “Not to worry. You’ll have a lot of time to have a nap yourself, … once you’re in jail.”
He froze and stared at her in shock. “What are you talking about? I don’t have anything to go to jail for.”
Richard turned to his brother, then back to her, and asked pointedly, “What are you talking about?”
“She’s just bitching,” Rinaldo snapped, spitting mad. “You really need to get some help,” he declared as he turned to Eden. “You do know how sick you are, right?” Then he turned to Eric. “You need to get a leash on her, or I will.”
“Right.” She nodded. “As if someone could touch me without having their hands broken. As for my bitching, I do know. And it might be time for me to get some therapy. I mean, Debbie’s death has been rough on me, you know?”
“Yes, it’s been difficult. I’m so sorry,” Richard interjected, frowning back at Rinaldo.
“I’m sure you are. She was a very special person,” Eden replied with a smile, but tears filled her eyes as she nodded. “You know that, right, Rinaldo?”
“Yes, she was a very special person,” Rinaldo agreed, his tone soft and silky.
“Then why did you kill her?”
*
Eric stared in shock, watching as the color drained from Richard’s face. Rinaldo, on the other hand, looked more pissed than anything. He glared from one to the other. Richard stood rooted to the same spot, while his brother started to back up.
Eric stepped forward, grabbed Rinaldo, and brought him to stand beside Richard and Eden. He looked at Eden with a big question in his eyes. “You want to explain that?”
“The reason you haven’t caught the rapist is because it wasn’t just one. It was two.”
Eric swore as she went on.
“They were picking their victims as they could, as they wanted and needed. Not necessarily even from their roster of people who attended these retreats. But they had to be careful, so they cast their nets wide. Plus, they had the perfect cover. It allowed them to travel from city to city, where both brothers were always present.”
“Is that true?” Eric asked, but Rinaldo continued looking pissed, while Richard remained rooted in place, yet his eyes were glassy now.
“If you check the list of rapes versus the locations of their retreats, you’ll find a lot of matches,” Eden suggested. “They have been quite busy, if that’s what you want to know. Plus, you likely didn’t widen enough to check other cities, other states.”
“I want to know more because I’ll need more than location matches,” Eric pointed out.
She nodded and turned to Richard. “Richard, it’s time. It really is.” His bottom lip wobbled, and she nodded. “You know it’s time. You can’t keep this up.”
“I didn’t kill Debbie.”
“No, you didn’t,” she stated, patting his hand.
“He did.” She turned to look at his brother.
“He did it because you were falling for her in a way that would have changed everything, and he couldn’t have that.
He liked what you guys were doing. He loved the games, the chase, and the fact that, because both of you were involved, the police were always in the dark and way too far behind,” she shared.
“So, yes, it’s time to come clean. Why not just get it off your chest?
He killed Debbie because you loved her.”
He turned to his brother and cried out, “Did you? Did you? How could you do that?” He stared at his brother in horror.
Rinaldo snapped, “How could you? How could you fall for that tart? How could you take everything we were doing and throw it all away, … just like that?” He snapped his fingers.
“You know that tart would have ended our ruse, and no way could this end like that. The ruse was the best part of living right now,” he declared.
“And you would throw it all away for a sorry piece of ass.”
“I loved her.”
“You wanted her is all.”
“I still don’t understand how she died though,” Richard added, turning to Eden. “He didn’t have any weapons or anything to kill her, not when traveling recently.”
“No, he didn’t. But you do use drugs, don’t you?
Hard-to-detect drugs? Debbie had a weak heart, since she was a kid.
Almost died several times. She was on heart medication already.
As long as she took it religiously, she seemed completely healthy otherwise.
Pretty easy to find a drug that would interact negatively with her regular meds to stop her heart. ”
When Richard stole her a sideways glance, she knew she had hit the nail on the head.
“She really loved you. She was ready to throw away absolutely everything in her world to spend her life with you—until your brother decided that her story had to have a different ending,” she stated, with a sad look for Richard. “I’m so sorry, but you’re both going to jail for a very long time.”