32. RHETT #2
“You said I don’t know what crossed your mind, but…” A haunted look shadows the sunshine I love, the light that Avery radiates. “I’m at the point where…”
“You want justice.”
A tight scoff pushes out of her. “No.”
“No…”
“I want to see someone bleed. Maybe it’s wrong, but I don’t care.” Spinning the USB drive in her hand, she says, “I left my laptop in the car.”
While she puts the music jewelry box back in the safe, I head back to the rental car and grab it.
I’m dashing back up the long steps to the house when movement in my periphery halts my momentum.
The familiar Suburban rolls slowly away from the open gate while one of the asshole agents stares at me out from behind his ridiculous sunglasses. It’s not even sunny.
Taking the last couple of steps up to the stoop, I don’t look away as I wait for them to disappear from sight.
“What are you looking at?” Iris comes to stand beside me, looking between me and the gate. “You’re being weird.”
“I am not!” I wrap my arm around her waist and hoist her up, carrying her under my arm to her hysterical giggles. I close the front door and make sure it’s shut properly.
“Okay! Okay! Put me down!” she snorts as I take the marble steps up to the parqueted first landing. “You’re not being weird. I swear you’re not!”
“It’s too late now, champ! You can’t take it back…”
“But I do,” she coughs with laughter. “I do. I promise.”
By the time we reach the top floor and I put her on her feet, she’s threatening to pee herself.
“Don’t do that,” I tell her, opening the door to the bathroom beside her grandmother’s sitting room.
Iris walks straight in; she’s gotten so comfortable that she doesn’t even close the door as she heads for the toilet.
“Make sure you wash your hands, okay?” I remind her as I walk away, back to Avery.
Pausing in the open doorway, I watch while she listens to the music.
She’s standing by the safe in a trance while she stares up at one of the shelves blankly.
When I come closer, I realize that she’s studying all the photos on that particular shelf.
There are so many different frames, but there’s one in particular she keeps going back to.
There’s something about the way she’s studying the small circular frame held up by a smiling cherub.
The photo itself is too dark for me to make out any of it until I’m standing behind her.
“My uncle,” Avery murmurs, stroking over the angel. “He was killed in a boating accident when I was a baby. I don’t remember him, but Mom used to tell me about him all the time. They were twins.”
“Twins…” I whistle, trying to find a way of bringing some levity back because I hate the way her somberness feels in my chest. It’s this awful stabbing and throbbing ache that feels like cracking concrete.
“I always wanted a sibling, but I don’t know…I guess they didn’t want any more children. Sometimes it got really lonely.”
“I’d say you got lucky not to end up with a clown like Rowan for a brother.” That makes her chuckle, so I carry on. “He always liked to push my buttons.”
“I think he still does.”
“He once cellophaned the toilet in the night so that in the morning…it’s was gross. Like that time he put craft glue in my body wash and it looked like my skin was peeling. It fucked my hair so bad that Mom thought she would have to cut it all off.”
“Oh my God!” Avery laughs freely, and I’m almost grateful to have that story to tell her.
Perhaps there are some things in life that happen for a reason. Seems as though Rowan’s stupidity that I have cursed most of my life actually served a purpose. If only to simply make my sunshine shine again.
“I got him back—”
“How?” she asks before I can finish, sitting back at the writing desk and taking her laptop out of the satchel that’s still hanging from my shoulder.
Opening it up, she’s a little shaky. It’s evident from the way she’s rapping her nails lightly over the keys and bouncing her leg.
While I know her jitters are only going to get worse, I try to keep her good humor going as I tell her, “I told her where he kept his favorite grown-up reading material.”
“Oh!” Surprise lightens her drawn brows when she glances up at me in question because Rowan’s told her his version of this story a couple times now. “I thought it was—”
“For cookies?”
“Yeah.”
“No, it was payback for my hair. The cookies were to appease me for having to let her cut a few unsalvageable inches off it. It took me forever to grow it out.”
Avery’s laughing again, her chest vibrating with her mirth as I hand her the USB adapter for her to be able to check the drive.
As much as this place is stunning and although both and Avery and Iris look at home for the most part, there are moments where they seem lost. Especially Avery.
She looks around as though looking for something she’s misplaced.
I think a part of her is waiting for her father to appear.
“Photos?” she asks, confused, and I glance at her screen. We spend a while going over all of them. There are only seven photos, but as we go through them over again, it feels like more. “Why would he leave me photos of random people? There’s no explanation or anything.”
“The documents in the file made no sense either.” I tell her about the random printouts. “But none of it is random. I’m guessing they all link together.”