Chapter 24
Two Weeks Later
Eden stood at the grave site, staring at the new headstone she’d managed to get delivered and put in place for Debbie. The mercurial Deborah Lee Kingston, her best friend, only wanted to love and to be loved back.
Instead she found a killer. Eric told her how the interview went, how Rinaldo got jealous that Richard was getting so close to Debbie, and it affected the brothers’ extracurricular activities, making Rinaldo unstable enough to lure Debbie to talk about Richard, insinuating that he was mentally unstable.
Right about the time that seminar was ending, he offered her a glass of wine, mixed with his chosen special time-release pills.
She never knew what hit her. The bastard followed her ride home, then carried her away in a suitcase, still alive but unconscious, intending to rape her, but she died soon afterward.
So he set up the suicide theory when he got her back home again.
Even as Eden stood here where Debbie had been buried, a sense of calm filled Eden, the same sense of peace that she’d felt earlier, after freeing everyone from Origin.
She desperately needed that peace both here and back then, when she thought about that chaotic night and all the pain that everybody had gone through.
Debbie had been subconsciously healing from her abusive boyfriends, until the fight with Eden. That fight had separated Debbie from her healing energy, making Debbie even more vulnerable. Eden refused to believe Debbie died because of her, but Eden might have contributed.
Eden reached out a hand, her fingers immediately grasped by Eric, standing at her side—the one person who stood with her through all the shit. Not counting Stefan of course.
“Are you okay with this?” Eric asked quietly, with a nudge toward the gravestone.
She smiled and nodded. “Yes. I think she would have liked it.”
He laughed. “I’m sure she would have preferred being alive.”
“I’m not sure that was even a choice.”
“According to Stefan, some things we just can’t change, no matter how much we may want to,” he shared with her.
“Her medical history stated she’d been ill for a very long time and had lived longer than anyone thought, all possible because of you.
And, because of you, we had the tox screen widened to include heart-specific drugs, good and bad, and that definitely helped to lead us to the brothers.
They knew the evidence was solid, so they cooperated, gave us statements. ”
“I know that Debbie was a live in the moment gal, and, in many ways, I don’t think she would be all that upset at the way this turned out.”
“Particularly now as you also know the part about the why.”
She continued. “Yes, I do know now. However, I wish I’d known back then, before she ran off into the arms of a rapist-murderer duo.
I was doing my darndest to help her, but she wasn’t making it easy.
I doubt she even realized how bad her heart was.
From what we found out in her medical history, she wouldn’t go to the doctor, wouldn’t get the offered treatment.
Not much anyone can do if someone refuses any medical help. ”
“Other than your brand of healing,” he pointed out. “However, in this case, it was not to be.”
She smiled, then nodded. “I guess I can’t really change people, can I?”
“No,” he agreed, “you can’t, and you shouldn’t have to. People are people, and they’ll make their own decisions based on a variety of things.”
She nodded. “I wonder how Richard would feel if he only knew that Debbie had a heart issue and wasn’t expected to live very long.”
“I don’t know that he would have changed anything.
I think in many ways he did love her, but he didn’t get a chance to get that far because of his brother,” Eric theorized.
“Even if he had managed some semblance of normalcy, in the end, he was just as guilty as his brother. Even if he didn’t kill Debbie himself, he still participated in the rape and murder of dozens of women across half-a-dozen state lines. ”
“Destroying families,” she murmured.
“Not just families but those we love, those we take for granted, those who love us, their needs, our needs,” he added. “Sometimes I think it’s just a big mess.”
“Sometimes?” she asked, with a laugh in his direction, “More like all the time.”
He wrapped an arm around her and asked, “Shall we?”
Nodding, they headed out of the cemetery where Debbie was buried. It was a quaint little place that Eden knew her friend would have loved. If one had to be buried somewhere, this was a better place than many.
“She didn’t have any family left,” Eden muttered. “It always feels sad to be at a grave site with nobody there.”
“You were there for her,” he noted. “Don’t ever forget that.”
She didn’t say anything because sometimes, well, …
sometimes it just hit her harder than others.
Sometimes it was just life. She wasn’t sure what she would even do from here, but life had resumed somewhat of a normal state.
They’d had to give multiple statements, but both Richard and his brother had ended up providing written confessions.
As Eric told her, the anger between the brothers had erupted time and time again, each one needing the other in a very twisted relationship that they wouldn’t get out of anytime soon, if at all.
So, for that, she was glad. If there was one positive thing to have come out of it all, it was the knowledge that the brothers couldn’t continue doing what they had been doing to so many young women.
As for Helen, the woman who had tried to save her family by torching her large home and boarding house with all of them in it, they hadn’t heard anything else from her. According to Stefan, everybody who had been caught up in that nightmare had well and truly moved on to where they belonged.
As for Eden, she was seeing a therapist and was working on all that guilt she’d kept inside for so long, finally letting it go in a healthy way.
She was also working as a volunteer for Dr. Maddy now in her spare time, although Dr. Maddy was trying to convince her to come work for her.
Eden wasn’t sure how that would work, but Dr. Maddy declared that Eden was too strong of a healer to be wasted in an office job, designing book covers and fashion ads.
So, if she wanted to do something positive and healthy for everyone, then Dr. Maddy would very much like for Eden to do that at her facility.
“Have you thought about Dr. Maddy’s proposition at all?” Eric asked.
Eden turned to him and shrugged. “I was just thinking about that. I haven’t decided, but I must admit it would be a lot more fulfilling than what I’m doing.”
He smiled and tucked her a little closer. “I think you would be fabulous at it,” he stated.
“I don’t know. It’s weird stuff.”
He burst out laughing. “It’s definitely weird stuff, but, of all the people who do weird stuff, I think Dr. Maddy would be the one who I would want to work with the most.”
Eden had to admit that Eric had a point.
From what she’d seen, Dr. Maddy was incredibly gifted and was so very open and so very capable of teaching things that nobody really understood, except for maybe Stefan.
Eden had entered a wild and wonderful world that she hadn’t really known existed, and yet she’d been walking in that world for a very long time.
“Coffee shop?” he asked, as they both headed to his car.
“Sure,” she replied with a gentle smile.
“And then what?”
“And then home,” she said.
She’d moved in with him a couple weeks ago, and she was still getting used to it. After a lifetime of being alone, living with him had proven to be educational, inspiring, and, at times, downright irritating. She looked over at him and smiled.
“You’ll get used to me,” he quipped.
“If you say so,” she muttered, as they walked to his car.
“Hey, we’re doing great together,” he pointed out. “I mean, neither one of us are exactly easy to get along with.”
“Whatever do you mean? I’m perfect,” she teased. When he burst out laughing, she grinned at him. “Okay, maybe not perfect,” she corrected, “but I come from the heart.”
He nodded, leaned over, grasped the side of her face, and kissed her gently. “That you do,” he agreed, “and that is worth everything.”
It wasn’t long before they parked and soon were inside the coffee shop. She stopped for a moment and smiled. He looked over at her with a questioning expression.
She shrugged. “Something is very freeing about my life right now.”
“Good.” He nodded. “That’s how it should be.”
“Maybe. It just feels as if I always had secrets before. It’s exhausting keeping secrets. I always had to keep everything locked down and quiet. Now … it just feels different.”
He smiled, then led her over to an empty table closer to the back wall, and she nodded. “One day I want to sit up closer to the front,” she shared, with half a laugh.
“Maybe someday I will too,” he noted with a smile. She stopped, looked at him, and he nodded. “I always sit at the back.”
“It’s just one of the safest things to do, I guess,” she murmured. “I hadn’t really considered the things we do automatically.”
“No, because, for us, we will always do certain things because we feel they are necessary, and staying safe is one of them,” he explained. “That’s okay too, so don’t worry about it.”
She laughed as she took her seat. The waitress came over, and they ordered coffee. She nodded and took off.
Eric leaned in and said, “My partner wanted to stop by and say hi, if you don’t mind.”
“Cody? Sure,” she said. “He probably wants to know if a complete nutcase has moved in with you.”
He burst out laughing. “Maybe,” he muttered, shaking his head. “On the other hand, I’ve also told him a whole lot about you.”
She looked at him in alarm. “All good things, but nothing about, you know—”
“Nothing, I promise,” he vowed. “I wouldn’t dare. Besides, I couldn’t explain it if I tried.” He smiled. “I will continue working with Stefan though.”