Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
River
The next morning, I barely touched my coffee.
It sat on the counter going cold, steam fading, while I tried to convince myself that sleep had been anything more than a suggestion.
My nerves were raw from yesterday’s discoveries, my mind stuck in a loop of Eleanor, my dad, the Benevolence Fund, and the way everything in this damn town seemed to be tied together with strings no one wanted to acknowledge.
Autumn had already taken over the kitchen table, surrounded by a fortress of town records. Legal pads, sticky notes, worn Civic Committee binders, highlighters. Her glasses slid down her nose, and she muttered under her breath as she flipped between pages and pages of Civic Committee minutes.
The morning light slanted through the curtains over her, making her look like a librarian sorceress summoning dark truths with bureaucracy.
“I found four references to the Benevolence Fund and that tree logo,” she said without looking up. “But none of them explains what it actually does.”
I stared at the page in front of me, though I wasn’t absorbing any of it.
My brain felt like static. “I know they funded a lot of mental health stuff,” I said.
“Hospital donations, covering psychiatric commitments, that sort of thing. Helped build the Habitat for Humanity site on the edge of town, too.”
Autumn nodded slowly, flipping another page. She was deep in her element now—research mode, laser-focused, dangerous in the quiet way only brilliant people were.
“Looks like Eleanor co-chaired a mental health subcommittee a few years before she disappeared.” She pointed to a name on the document. “With Lucas Grant.”
My stomach turned. “Of course she did.”
“You really surprised?” Autumn asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No,” I admitted. “But it’s like we keep tugging on different threads, and his name’s woven into all of them.”
Autumn tapped her pen against the page. “Strangely, you seem to be, too.” She shifted a document toward me. “Look here. This could be something.”
My eyes caught the name, and the words blurred for a moment. “Stonybrooke Estates,” I whispered. My chest tightened. “That’s where my mom was. It’s where she died.”
Autumn froze, then looked at me, her expression containing omething that knew what grief looked like when it slid in, unexpected and sharp.
“Shit.”
I swallowed, the paper blurring again. I hadn’t thought about Stonybrooke in years. I’d tried not to. The hallway smell of bleach and lemon cleaner. The way sunlight never seemed to make it inside. The empty chair beside hers on visiting days, because she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—speak to me.
“We need Libby,” I said, pushing back from the table. My chair scraped across the floor, too loud in the quiet kitchen. “If there’s a deeper trail, she’ll help us find it.”
Autumn nodded and started gathering the documents, her movements brisk, efficient, seemingly already forming a plan.
Libby arrived an hour later, laptop already open, her bag only half-zipped, hair still damp from what I assumed was the fastest shower in the world. She didn’t bother with greetings.
“Okay,” she said breathlessly, dropping into a chair. “I dug into the Civic Committee data going back eighteen years, though it goes back much further. The Benevolence Fund started under Mayor Charles Grant—Lucas’s dad—as part of a community enrichment program.”
Autumn frowned. “I thought it started as a housing initiative?”
“Eh. Same diff for all intents and purposes,” Libby said with a dismissive flip of her wrist. “But I think that was just the public spin. Check this out.”
She turned her screen to show us a grainy PDF. Numbers, columns, scattered entries that meant little at first glance.
“They used it like a slush fund,” Libby continued. “No transparent ledgers. Just authorizations rubber-stamped from the mayor’s office.”
Autumn leaned in. “Which means no oversight.”
“Bingo.” Libby zoomed in on a highlighted line. “They bought land, paid off debts. If you ask me, that sounds a whole lot like hush money. See this entry? There’s a lump-sum withdrawal tagged to Eleanor’s name.”
I leaned in. “That’s the year she stopped speaking out, wasn’t it?”
Autumn sat back, her eyes narrowing. “You think they paid her off? To keep her quiet? About what?”
“Or they threatened her,” Libby said grimly. “Maybe both. And if she pushed back...maybe that’s why she disappeared.”
A shiver ran through me, the dread crawling bone deep. My mom, Eleanor, my dad—every thread we pulled led back to the same dark root.
I pushed away from the table and stood abruptly. “I need to take this to Finn.”
Autumn and Libby exchanged a look—concern, maybe warning. But neither tried to stop me. Because they knew there was no stopping this. Not anymore.
The sheriff’s parking lot was nearly empty, frost still clinging to the grass along the edges. As I walked inside, the building smelled like old coffee, printer toner, and something spicy someone had microwaved and ruined the air with.
Finn was in his office, hovering over a map on his desk. Red pins marked hiking trails and access points to the forest. He was in a navy Henley, sleeves pushed to his elbows, tension coiled under his skin. When he saw me, he straightened immediately.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No,” I said honestly. “But that’s sort of the new normal, isn’t it?”
He didn’t argue. Just gestured for me to come in.
I dropped the folder onto his desk. “There’s a web of corruption in this town, and it goes back decades. Civic Committee. The Grants. The Benevolence Fund. It touched Eleanor. I’m pretty sure it touched my mom. And I’m starting to think it touched my dad, too.”
He flipped through the documents in silence. I watched the shift in his expression as he read—the tightening jaw, the faint crease between his brows, the way he stopped breathing once or twice.
“This is a hell of a start,” he said finally. “You guys are doing real work here.”
“It’s not nearly enough yet.” I hesitated. “But we’re getting closer.”
He gestured to the couch. “Sit?”
I nodded and lowered myself onto the edge. The hum of the overhead fan and the police scanner filled the silence with white noise.
Finn leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I need to ask you something, and I want the truth,” he said, voice low and even. “Why did you really come back?”
I blinked at the abruptness. “You mean besides the fact that I didn’t really have any other options?”
He didn’t react. Just waited. So, I let out a breath and told him.
“After Asheville, I needed something—anything—that felt like solid ground. The house was here. I knew I could set up my practice here. I could...function.” I swallowed.
“At least until I figured out my next steps. And yeah, maybe I needed to come back to look some things in the eye, too. My dad’s name. The rumors. All the silence.”
“You never believed he was guilty.”
“No. You know I didn’t. But not believing and not knowing are two different things.
” I picked at a loose thread on my shirt sleeve.
“I think I wanted closure. I still want it. Maybe even some warped version of redemption. But not just for him. For me. For what I didn’t say. For what I couldn’t stop.”
Finn was quiet for a long beat. “You were still young. And you weren’t in control of any of it.”
I shook my head. “But I was there. I saw things and ignored them. Explained them away. I heard my mom crying through closed doors and never pushed her to talk. I heard my dad whispering on the phone and never asked him what it was about. I told myself it wasn’t my business.
And when you came to me with what you’d found, I slammed the door in your face.
If I hadn’t tried to pretend like it didn’t exist, maybe I could have found the truth.
Done something.” My voice wavered. “Before it was too late.”
He stared at me, something flickering behind his eyes.
Not judgment. But not forgiveness, either.
“When Eleanor disappeared, I was still a newbie,” he said quietly.
“When I was told to look away, I did. Figured someone else would handle it. But that and other cases like that have never stopped eating at me. And then when your dad—” His jaw locked.
He exhaled through his nose, the shape of a hundred regrets tightening his shoulders.
“I’ve made a lot of choices I’d undo if I could. ”
I nodded slowly. “So have I.”
We didn’t touch. Didn’t reach across the space or say something pretty to smooth it over. We just sat in that suspended ache, where grief and guilt folded together into something almost comforting in its honesty.
It wasn’t healing. Not yet.
But it was real.
The quiet between us didn’t last long. Just as I was about to stand and thank him for not pushing, the police scanner let out a burst of static—someone reporting a disturbance near the highway. Finn glanced toward it but didn’t move.
“You hungry?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Too wired.”
He nodded like he understood and rose to his feet, stretching his shoulders before picking up the folder again. “Mind if I hang onto this?”
“Of course not.”
I reached for my purse, but something caught my eye—a worn manila envelope half-tucked under the couch. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing.
Finn crouched to pick it up. “Not sure.” He flipped it open and pulled out a stack of photos.
Black-and-white. A little grainy. And disturbing.
Each showed a boarded-up building. Some I recognized from around Maple Ridge—old county-maintained sheds, abandoned storefronts, graffiti-scarred walls others had written off as “just kids being idiots.” Others I didn’t.
But it wasn’t the structures themselves that made my skin crawl.
It was the red paint scrawled across the boards in every image.
That crudely drawn eye, sometimes with a slash through it.
Other times with the number seven beneath.
“Where the hell did this come from?” I whispered.
Finn didn’t answer at first, just sifted through more.
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure this couch hasn’t been moved since before I took office.
” He shuffled some more, then squinted in concentration.
“This is the back lot behind the old hardware store.” He pointed to one.
“And this one’s the maintenance shed out by Elk Creek Park. ”
I felt a cold ripple move down my spine. “Do you think this is connected to the stuff we’ve been uncovering? There’s that damn eye again.”
He didn’t answer right away, merely kept looking. Then he paused and held up a photo. “This one’s more recent,” he said, flipping it over. “And there’s a timestamp.”
I leaned in closer. “Where is that?”
Finn’s eyes narrowed. “The old Lodge Hall. On the south side of town.”
I swallowed. “That place is barely standing.”
“Exactly.” He looked up at me, voice low.
My mouth had gone dry. “So, what’s the tag? A message? A warning? But to whom? Do you think someone’s using them? Like for…I dunno…unassuming safehouses or storage or something?”
“Maybe something worse.”
The silence that followed said we were both thinking it. Not just vandalism. Not just kids. Not just a coincidence. A network. A system. A threat with organization and intent.
I shivered. “Let’s stake it out,” I said, before I could second-guess myself.
Finn hesitated for only a second, then nodded. “I should say hell no. You’re not law enforcement. But I don’t really want to derail my people from what they’re working on either. Especially not with the Eleanor evidence now. And not until I know more.” His gaze held mine, storm-dark. “So…tonight?”
I nodded, pulse thudding.
I wasn’t sure what we were walking into. I wasn’t sure what it would do to us. But I was too far in to turn back. Too invested. Too close to the truth to stop now.