Chapter 14
Bryan hadn’t slept well for a few days. He kept having nightmares about the Gibsons.
The blood. He’d seen the bloodstains after.
He’d tried to scrub them up himself back then, before he’d given up and called an actual crime scene cleanup team out of Indianapolis.
Sometimes, he still remembered how his hands had turned red from the soapy water and… the blood.
Damn it. He’d known where that innocent little boy had died. He remembered that bloodstain every time he passed that spot on the stairs in that damned house. The wooden floor, the carpet runner, the drywall he’d repainted himself. The nightmares…those stains were ghosts he just couldn’t escape.
He had kept that to himself—Cass was extremely sensitive to violence and always had been. Since she’d been sexually assaulted when she’d been nineteen. Before Bryan had first met her.
It had taken a long time for her to trust him not to hurt her back then. The loss of the Gibsons had hurt her. Deeply. She and Aimee had served in the nursery at the church together. They had been friends, too. Aimee had fussed over Cass a bit, during her first pregnancy. Helped her get through.
No one had ever understood how someone could murder an innocent family like that.
People in town, on social media, they had all speculated like they were off of CSI or something.
Speculating motives and theories. Saying all sorts of things about Derek and Aimee that Bryan had just known were lies.
Derek and Aimee…they’d been good people.
They hadn’t deserved what had happened to them at all. They just hadn’t.
Cruz and Terra definitely hadn’t. Bryan would always remember those kids’ names.
Their faces. They’d always greeted him when he’d stopped by; Derek preferred to hand over the rental check every month personally.
Hell, Bryan had always just suspected Derek had liked having someone to shoot the shit with, while the kids played.
Bryan had always ended up staying there a little longer than he’d intended, just talking with the other man.
Or they’d do something to the house. Or Derek would help with some of the other houses Bryan owned in the neighborhood.
Or…they’d end up helping the neighbors, too.
Even if Bryan hadn’t owned those houses.
Derek would ask, and Bryan would help. It was what good people did.
They took care of each other. The way it was supposed to be.
Terra…Terra had always wanted to play with B.J. back then, at church and things. She’d treated him like a little doll. Bryan had never forgotten that.
He liked kids. He always had. He and Cass had four, and God willing, they’d grow up to give them grandkids someday. He’d been a little older than most people around here when he’d finally married. Bryan would be an older grandpa, but he was going to make the most of it.
He hated that Derek and Aimee wouldn’t have the same. Someone had stolen that from them. And it wasn’t right.
“Daddy, you’re like all broody again,” his daughter said.
He had three boys and one girl. That girl ruled the house, no denying that.
She was looking at him like he was a bug—from those big blue eyes she’d gotten from her mama.
Cass and Asa—they were his heart and soul. His boys, too. “What’s wrong?”
“Just memories, mostly. The FBI are in town. They are investigating what happened fifteen years ago.”
“Yeah, Mom told me they were here. It’s really cool that the FBI is here.
Maybe they’ll find out what actually happened.
What if there’s a killer walking among us?
” Asa was thirteen. She was into everything almost morbid.
She’d binge-watched CSI-type show episodes for years.
He’d drawn the line at her watching some of the other things out there—some of them were damned dark and too much, even for him.
Bryan didn’t want to focus on the bad in the world.
He far preferred the good.
Like his daughter and his sons. They were the best of him, he’d go to his grave believing that. “Then I will protect you. It’s what a good dad does.”
“You are a good dad. I think.” She grinned at him, that dimpled grin she’d gotten from his mother.
She was bits and pieces of all of them. All of the good had melded into this little monster in the skateboarding unicorn covered hoodie in front of him.
Skateboarding. With Asa, it was all about skateboarding.
Her older brother Devin was the one into dance and theater.
Tristen, his youngest at eight, was all into sports of any kind.
B.J. was more into building things with his hands.
Talking about buying his own rental houses someday.
His kids were beautiful, wonderful and unique, and he appreciated the gifts they were every single day.
Bryan just pulled his baby girl close. A father…a father just wanted to protect his family. Fight all the ghosts, the monsters. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to protect his kids. There just wasn’t.
“You are squeezing me too tight again.” But she hugged him back, smelling like berry shampoo or something, or candy.
She was just a mix of little girl and teenager-who-thought-she-knew-everything now.
It stung sometimes, seeing how fast the kids were growing up.
“I love you, Daddy. Lots and lots. I’ll tell you what Evan said to me at lunch today later. ”
Evan. The boy from two streets over. The fourteen-year-old boy who had been making eyes at Bryan’s daughter for a few weeks. The one that came over to walk her to the skate park sometimes. That Evan.
Bryan did not want to know what Evan had said to her at lunch today. He just wasn’t ready for that yet. He just wasn’t.