Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see East scrubbing his hands on his jeans, flexing them against the fabric as if he were trying to fight against reaching for me, but I was glad he didn’t. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to touch me right now.
“On the night of my twenty-first, I was in Portland with some friends. That’s when I met Derek. We’d gone dancing.” There were things that I wasn’t ready to share. Maybe that I’d never be prepared to talk about. I’d been with Derek for a big chunk of my life. Way more than seemed reasonable given what he was capable of.
I cleared my throat. “At first, he was a nice guy.” I shrugged. “I’d never had a boyfriend before, but I wasflattered. He lived over in King Creek, and even when he struggled, he bought me little presents. He wanted me to stay with him. He never wanted me to talk to my friends. Said he just wanted all my time.” That should have been my first red flag. “After a while, I found out he had a temper. I stayed with Derek too long,” I started. “When I finally left and came home to Grams, he would show up at stupid times and threaten me.” I flinched and stopped. The memory of him on my porch, the way his voice had gone flat, made bile rise in my throat. “He wasn’t fond of the word ‘no.’”
“That’s enough, right?” Easton cut in. “She doesn’t have to keep talking about it.” His palms gripped his thighs, the tendons taut on his forearms, nails digging into the denim of his jeans.
“No, she doesn’t,” Briggs agreed. “We don’t need details, Lila. I have the reports here for domestic violence involving Mr. Burnett. You’ve been pretty adamant that you didn’t think he was involved.” He cleared his throat and looked down at what was probably the reports I’d filed against Derek. “Can you tell me why you’re so sure?”
“When he was angry, he liked to make sure I knew it.” The memory wasn’t so old that it wasn’t fresh. “The reason I came home was because Grams was having a harder time with the shop. She’d been needing more help, and even though I would come a few days a week, it hadn’t been enough. It had been a good push for me to leave him. Derek was more than mad, irate about it, but he always liked things up close and personal.” I picked at a cuticle so I didn’t have to look any of them in the eye. “Hewouldn’t have been secretive about something like this. I don’t think.” Biting my lip, I tried to reimagine things with Derek as the person behind the actions, and I just couldn’t. I hated him, but it just wasn’t in his makeup to not be close enough to see me afraid. “And the person who was in my house was older. It definitely wasn’t him. Heavier set.”
“All of that helps.” Briggs made a few notes. “Like Wade said, he’s been seen in town.” He was watching me carefully.
“He hasn’t come to see me.” The knowledge that he was in town came as a surprise to me. Not in a good way. He wasn’t a good person. “I wouldn’t want to see him. I’d tell you.”
“We understand.” Wade nodded. “Is there anyone that might have access to your house that you can think of that might know how it was set up? We’re thinking about someone who might know how the layout could affect the spread of the fire. If the goal was to make sure you were gone and make it look like an accident, that takes time and knowledge.”
“Just Sage.” I shrugged. “Maybe the person who broke in. Grams didn’t have people over very often.” Wade and Briggs both made notes as I racked my brain.
Briggs’s pen tapped. “We’re working on the theory that the person who broke in and the person who set the fire are the same person. We’ll check property records and inheritance ties too,” he said casually, an investigator’s phrase that landed in my chest like a fist. “If someone seriously wanted to benefit, they would research the chain of title.Motive is often financial. It gives us something to check against your suspects.”
The room felt constricting. My mind darted to the attic trunk with Gram’s ledgers. I saw, for a breath, the feed of old receipts and a yellowed deed tucked into a cigar box. I thought of the way her mouth pinched when I asked about my father. He’d left when I was tiny, and my mother had brought me to my grandmother’s, where she’d taken us both in. He had been gone for decades. Sometimes I told myself he was long gone in every sense. But property records did not care if someone was gone. My hands went damp on my knees. Nora Merrick hadn’t been the most organized woman in the history of Wildwood Meadows, but she had made a will and named me as the person to inherit her shop and the little blue cottage. I wasn’t sure how legal and tidy her handwritten wishes were, but nobody had been around to say otherwise, and when I switched over the deeds, there hadn’t been any resistance down at the county office.
“Wait,” I said, breathless. “You mean like next of kin? Like who?” Although I knew exactly who that might be. Words were spilling from my mouth without my permission, and I wanted someone to slap a hand over my mouth. “My father… he left. He was never in the picture. It couldn’t be him, right?” I looked wildly from Wade to East. “My father never cared about me when I was alive, but he wouldn’t actually try to kill me …”
Right?
Briggs’s mouth hardened in a line. “You never know. People have a way of reappearing.” I wondered if he hadpersonal experience with that. “In the meantime, we’ll treat everyone as a potential piece of the puzzle. This has all been amped up now. The break-in was initially treated as a separate crime, but this has all escalated. We need to find this person.”
I risked a glance at East. His jaw clenched and shifted. He didn’t seem to like any of this, and it made me wonder why he was even bothering with this mess. Sure, Wade was involved because he worked for the police department, and Sage was my best friend, but East didn’t have to be. I’d thought earlier that we’d been starting something, but I wasn’t sure now. Maybe that date would never happen.
Over the years since I’d broken away from Derek, I’d worked hard on myself to be the woman I wanted. Free and secure in the knowledge that I was worth the time. Knowing that someone was out there trying to jeopardize all of that work I’d done to find that space made me angry, and more than a little scared. Still, I wasn’t going to let a man make me feel small again. Not even one that made me feel all tingly.
“For now,” Briggs continued, “we secure, we canvass, we interview, and we follow leads. I’ll start pulling footage from nearby businesses with cameras.” He looked skeptical that there’d be any. (He was right.) This wasn’t the city. “I’ll let you know if we find anything. I’ll come by your place too.”
Briggs Carter did not appear alarmed. He appeared efficient. He was someone you wanted on your side. That eased me a little. There was still a rawness in my chest thatwhispered I shouldn’t feel safe with what was going on right now.
Wade folded his arms. “We’ll be looking into Derek.” He gave East a pointed look. “But we’ll be checking out anyone who has been showing unusual interest in your property, or any old connections that might be a problem.”
“You think someone is trying to take the shop?” There were many things I could take, but losing the shop would be one of the worst.
Wade hesitated a second, then said, “I don’t have proof yet. But maybe? We’re going to look at everything, Lila.” He looked at East. “Are you going to go over to the cottage to see what structure can be salvaged? Cole cleared it already. Briggs is going to head over, too. Make sure everything is documented.” He looked at me, gentler. “And Lila, we will do everything in our power to keep you safe. I promise.”
The sentence landed differently than it would have a month ago. It did not scold. It offered. It reminded me of what Maggie had said the night of the book club: it is okay to need help. I clung to the thought like a rope.
East’s posture shifted in a way that made my skin prickle. He pushed up from the chair, then held out his hand for me in an offering. He was so close that I could see the fine lines that were starting to form in the corners of his eyes. I was still a little cranky that he’d brought up Derek, but we’d have that conversation later.
“If you want to do a salvage, I’ll run it. I will be there if you go back today or tomorrow morning. I will patch windows. I will board up whatever we need.” His wordswere action, not sentiment. They sat heavy and steady. “We’ll fix it.”
Placing my hand in his, I wanted to lean into him until the world shrank to just his frame and the rise and fall of his chest. Last night felt like days ago and replayed in my mind like a film I didn’t want to end. I felt that electric ache that had made me reckless, just like when that stubble of his had made itself known against the softness of my skin.
“I appreciate it,” I said, because I couldn’t say what I wanted. It would be a betrayal of my own caution. One of the things I’d told Sage was that I was worried my picker was broken.
He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. His eyes said enough. “You’re done with the questions now, right?” He was steadily moving more towards the door, a move I was eager to make. “We can head on out?”
Wade cleared his throat. “Yeah. We’ll begin the query into financials and relatives. Lila, you staying at the farm tonight?”
My brain was still trying to catch up because this sounded like an awful lot. Was the house that bad? Could I not stay there? I didn’t think that the rest of the house had been affected.
