Chapter 30 #2
Later that night, the party had reached the stage where people stopped standing in clusters and started sitting wherever they could find a flat surface. Lawn chairs, porch steps, and chairs pulled from the kitchen and dining room.
Ben and Kelly had drifted to the edge of the property, where they could still see all the guests but had a moment or two of privacy.
"My whole family already adores you," he said.
"I think my mom wants to adopt you since you've fallen out with your own parents. She's already talking about our plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Spoiler alert. They want to come to us in the city for Thanksgiving, but want us here for Christmas. Don’t be surprised if you have your own Christmas stocking with your name printed on it.”
Kelly blew out a breath and shook her head.
"Are you okay if I steal your family from you?"
"I'll happily share," Ben said.
And he meant it. His family was big enough, loud enough, and chaotic enough for one more person. They always had been. The Reillys operated on an open-door policy that had been in effect since before Ben could remember. You showed up, you got fed, you got loved. Simple math.
"How's your family?" he asked.
He'd been waiting for the right moment to bring it up. A party surrounded by people who genuinely liked her seemed like safer ground than most.
Kelly was quiet for a beat. Not the uncomfortable silence of avoidance. The considered pause of someone choosing her words with care.
"Celia apologized," she said. "After she heard the whole story.
The real story, not the version she'd constructed in the parking lot where everything was somehow my fault.
" A dry note entered her voice. "Trevor's parents were apparently very impressed by the whole crime-solving thing. His mother was especially impressed, saying her son married into a family with a real-life detective.”
Ben waited. There was more. He could tell by the way her jaw set before she continued.
"Mom and Dad are hiring Rob a lawyer. A good one, because of course they are.
But he's no longer their golden child. That particular pedestal has been permanently vacated.
" She paused, and when she spoke again, there was an edge of dark humor that Ben recognized as her particular brand of coping.
"Mom and Dad are busy blaming each other for how he turned out.
Funnily enough, they are now saying that their two daughters got all the brains in the family. "
The irony of that statement could have filled the entire county.
The Batemans, who had spent decades propping up their son and diminishing their daughters, now retroactively claiming the daughters as their successes.
Ben supposed that was how the Bateman machine worked.
Rewrite the narrative. Adjust the scoreboard.
Pretend the past happened differently than it did.
"What did you tell Celia?" he asked.
"I said that I'm not ready for any reunions. Celia can be the favorite. I'm planning to keep my distance for a while."
Her voice was steady. Not angry. Not bitter. Just decided. The voice of a woman who had drawn a line and was standing on the correct side of it.
Ben leaned closer. His lips found the space near her ear, and he whispered, "From everyone?"
He felt her shiver. Not from the cool evening air. The night was warm.
Kelly turned her face toward his. They were close enough that he could see the gold flecks in her brown eyes, the ones that only appeared in certain light. Her expression softened, the careful composure giving way to something open and unguarded that she only showed him.
"Not everyone," she said quietly. "Not...you."
Ben whispered that he loved her. Three words. Simple and direct and completely inadequate for what he actually felt, but language had its limits, and he'd accepted that. Some things were bigger than vocabulary.
They kissed, briefly and gently. They took their time, having nothing to prove and nowhere to be.
When they pulled apart, Ben's gaze drifted across to the house where his parents were standing on the back porch.
Looking at Ben and Kelly, and not bothering to hide it one little bit.
Presley was tucked under Seth's arm, both of them watching Ben and Kelly with expressions that required no interpretation.
His mother's smile was the satisfied kind, the one she wore when something she'd been hoping for finally happened.
His father's was subtler, a slight upward tilt at one corner of his mouth, but on Seth Reilly, that was practically a standing ovation.
And Chase. His younger brother stood by a picnic table, his grin so wide it threatened to split his face. He raised his coffee mug in their direction, a silent toast, and took a sip with the smugness of a man who believed he had orchestrated everything.
"Your brother looks like he's happy for us," Kelly said.
"Chase pushed me to get out of my comfort zone," Ben admitted. "Said I was hiding behind spreadsheets and avoiding real life. I think he might have been right."
"Might have been?"
"Was. Definitely was."
"And that worked out pretty well?" Kelly asked, one eyebrow lifting.
"Pretty well," he agreed.
She stared at him.
He amended. "Okay. Very well."
"Better."
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, the party continuing around them. There was so much love and happiness that it was difficult not to feel it deep in his bones.
Someone had put music on, something old and slow that his parents probably danced to in their kitchen when they thought nobody was watching. He’d seen them when they were supposed to be doing the dishes, and he was supposed to be in bed.
"So what do we do next?" Ben asked. "Do we plan carefully? Make a spreadsheet? Assess the risks and potential outcomes like responsible adults?"
Kelly turned to him with an expression he'd come to know well. The nose wrinkle. The slight scrunch of her face. The look that meant she was thinking hard about something and had already arrived at an answer she liked.
"There are more cold cases out there," she said. "More families who don't have answers. More stories that deserve endings."
She took his hand. Her fingers laced through his with the ease of long practice, though it hadn't been long at all. Just long enough.
"Want to solve another murder with me?" she asked.
Ben looked at her. Auburn hair in the pine-filtered light.
Brown-gold eyes bright with purpose and possibility and the particular stubbornness of a woman who had spent her life being underestimated and had turned it into fuel.
She was imperfect and fierce and kind and brave, and she was asking him to leap.
He thought about the company he'd lost. The career he was rebuilding.
The future that stretched ahead without a spreadsheet, a business plan, or a five-year projection.
He didn't know what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
That question was still open, still unanswered, still sitting on his desk like an unsigned contract.
But he knew who he wanted to spend it with. That question had been answered in a parking lot under a floodlight, and every moment since had confirmed it.
All he'd had to do was take the chance.
A few weeks later…
“Diana, I have a question about these budget numbers for next quarter. Do you have a minute?” Brianna Wright asked, poking her head around the corner of the accountant’s office.
She was still on her first cup of coffee, so that might explain it, but these numbers didn’t look quite right to her.
She hadn’t been running the investigations firm for years and years like her dad and uncles, but in the short time since she’d taken over, she’d found that she had a head for business and numbers.
Who knew? She sure hadn’t. It was as much of a surprise to her as it was to her friends and family.
Of course, her parents had always believed in Brianna’s abilities; they’d put her in charge of their thriving business, after all.
But she had a funny feeling they hadn’t expected her to do so well, so quickly.
“I’ve got time,” Diana said, looking up from her laptop. “What’s up?”
Stepping into the small office, Brianna held out a spreadsheet she’d printed off earlier for review.
“There are a few open cases missing from the budget. The Whitaker case is gone, the Templeton case, and the Bryson case.”
Her dad and uncles kept an eye on the two remaining Bryson daughters. They had for years. Just in case. So far, neither of them had decided to follow in their father and brother’s murderous footsteps, thankfully.
But you can’t be too careful.
That was Brianna’s motto, anyway.
“Jason had me remove the Templeton case,” Diana replied. “A few days ago, I think. Whitaker was pulled yesterday per Reed’s instructions. Those investigations are being ended and closed.”
It happened from time to time. If an investigation wasn’t making progress, the client would end it. Business as usual.
“And the Bryson?” Brianna pressed. “That’s an evergreen case. It’s been on the budget forever.”
Diana cleared her throat and looked down at her desk, fidgeting in her chair. Brianna wasn’t an expert in body language like a few of the employees here, but she was pretty sure that the question made her co-worker uncomfortable.
Very uncomfortable. Which raised a whole set of new questions.
“I was told to remove it.”
“By whom?”
This time, Diana did look Brianna in the eye, almost defiantly.
“Your father asked me to.”
“I see,” Brianna replied carefully, keeping her expression as neutral as possible. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll discuss this with him.”
It was no secret at the firm that Brianna had been taken hostage by the Bryson son, Jake, as bait so he could kill her father, Logan Wright. The younger Bryson had wanted revenge for his own father’s death.