Had Russell not been killed, Genevieve would not be alive. Her mother would have given birth to different children, Russell’s children. Genevieve was distinctly aware that she, the daughter who lived only because Russell had died, was not necessarily welcome here, in the epicenter of her mother’s secret past.
The house was set a good distance back from the road, nothing but desolate acres around it. She walked halfway to it, then stopped. Any farther, and she’d feel like an intruder.
Her phone dinged, startling her so deeply that she yelped. Sam had sent her a text.Your car hasn’t been at the guesthouse for hours. Everything okay?The Kitchen was closed on Mondays, so he wouldn’t have gone to the restaurant this morning. She knew him well enough to know he’d spend his day working on the farm instead.
Yes!she replied.
Where are you?
Genevieve paused. She wasn’t ready to divulge the long path that had brought her to Russell’s home. Plus, things were going so well between her and Sam lately. At the moment, she was technically trespassing, and if he found out she was pursuing the investigation to this degree, it might throw a wrench into things. And that, she did not want.
I’m shopping, she typed.
From this vantage point, she could see only one other structure. A simple house about a half a mile or so down the road. Angus’s house.
Genevieve lived alone, but here, her aloneness made her feel vulnerable. She swallowed against the unease scratching its way up her esophagus.
Her mother’s husband had died in this building, and the sorrow of that seeped up from the earth. The wind bemoaned the fact that Russell’s future had been robbed from him.
Troubled, she studied the plywood blocking the door.
Where had the Atwell family gone? And what did the writer of the mysterious letter know that Genevieve did not?
After grabbing lunch in Camden, Genevieve arrived back at the cottage during the long, lazy hours of the afternoon best suited to napping. She’d need to resist the urge to nap, however, because she intended to spend the rest of the day and evening catching up on the work she’d sacrificed this morning.
She let herself inside, tossed her purse on her desk, then froze when Sam straightened from the love seat and turned to face her, wearing a simple gray shirt and jeans. Her pleasure at seeing him stuttered when she registered the uncompromising seriousness of his face. What was the matter?
“I didn’t see your car,” she said stupidly.
“I walked.” He stared at her. “Where are your shopping bags?”
Shoot!“I ... didn’t end up buying anything.”
His jaw firmed in a way that communicatedhis disbelief.
He was going to see through her lie about shopping, exactly like he’d seen through her lies the morning he’d found her sleeping in this cottage. Her mind moved too quickly—darting in many directions—and too slowly, struggling to adjust to his surprise appearance. “D-did you let yourself in to search for Oxy?”
“Yes.”
“And you found none.”
“I found none,” he confirmed.
Back when they’d hashed out their rental agreement, he’d reserved the right to search her cottage. Given that, why did the realization that he’d been here, searching for Oxy, hurt so badly? Why did it feel like a colossal betrayal?
...Because almost two months had passed since he’d agreed to let her stay on his farm. In that time, she’d come to trust him, and she’d hoped he’d come to trust her, too.
This proved that he hadn’t. Whichstung.
“I’ve had a bad feeling all day,” he told her. “It got worse when you said you were shopping. If you’d wanted to go shopping, you’d have gone on Saturday or Sunday like usual.”
“I wasn’t shopping,” she admitted. “Nor was I in some dark alleyway getting high on Oxy. I was in the town of Camden researching my parents.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me that?”
Agitated, she thrust her fingers into her hair, fanning the heavymass around her shoulders. “I didn’t want to explain, and I didn’t want to risk upsetting you.”
“Upsetting me? Did I react badly the other night when you said you couldn’t tell me more about your parents?”
