When the harsh gagging stopped, I sat down hard on the stone bench. Let the coolness seep into me, become a part of me, as I wrestled with the information bombarding my brain.
I had to dig. That was the only option.
I sent the paperwork flying. The fear of not knowing spurred me on. Get there. Answer the question. Unmask Xavier once and for all.
“Hanna!”
I ignored Stella’s yell and Marni’s attempt to grab my arm when I jumped the small fence and dove into the wildflower garden Xavier viewed as sacred. My knees hit the cold ground and mud squished under me, coating my jeans. Bare hands clawed at the dirt with ravenous fervor.
An answer. I needed an answer.
Staccato breathing filled my ears. Mud caked my nails and the raw ground tore at my fingers.
“Hanna, stop,” Marni said in a harsh whisper.
“They could be here.” The realization buzzed around with increasing speed before settling in my head with a certainty I couldn’t escape. The horror wouldn’t leave until I proved my assumptions wrong. I needed to be wrong. To dig and find nothing but rocks and earth. To rid my brain of its wayward thinking before Jeremy stepped one foot on the property he could soon call home.
Noah. Victoria. Patrick.
They had to be somewhere. Xavier, the man who could call in favors and marshal resources, only made cursory, half-hearted attempts to find answers about his family’s disappearance after the initial frenzy. Why?
The answer flashed in red warning lights. He didn’t look because he didn’t need to. He already knew where they were... the dead and the living.
It was the only explanation.
I tore at the ground. Discarded flowers. Smashed them under my knees and the heels of my hands. The wind picked up. It beat against me, pulled me back, pushing me to give up. It was as if the property had become a fierce opponent, full of life and desperate to keep its secrets hidden beneath the soil.
Stella didn’t try to stop me because she understood the toll of not knowing. The price we all paid for our silence.
The land and this place pummeled me with unwanted reminders. I could smell Xavier. That scent he wore. Faint balsam wood. I could hear the echo of Victoria’s voice as she screeched and accused, blaming me for a nasty fight she’d started with Patrick.
Every memory. Every horrible minute in this house and over at the house Patrick and Victoria shared. The moments piled up, piled on, shoving me harder into the unyielding dirt that refused to cough up a road map to the dead.
Marni wrapped her fingers around my arm. “Stop. Hanna, we can’t do this.”
Her order broke through the roar of voices in my head, but her words didn’t make sense. Fifteen years’ worth of questions kept her rooted in place. She had to want more from life than this.
She tried to get me to stand up. To move. “We need to leave this alone.”
No. Wrong.We’d ignored our mismatched memories of that day long enough. Xavier’s death, his trust, the finality of it all delivered a much-needed wake-up call. The time for digging up the past and dragging it into the light had come. Now we neededto abandon the shadows and the superficial protection of going along.
We needed to take responsibility for what we’d done and what we should have done.
If Xavier killed his family, he needed to be exposed. If Aubrey was a killer, she needed to pay. If she was a victim, the whole town owed her an apology.
“Finding them here would implicate Xavier, which would lead to the kind of press coverage that could destroy Jeremy.” The words rushed out of Marni. “He’ll go from being your son, a Sato, to another Tanner male who should be avoided because he might be too dangerous to approach.”
Jeremy. My heart hammered in my chest. Thumped in my ears. I leaned back on my heels, trying to get a little distance. To breathe.
“Please don’t do this,” Marni begged.
She sat next to me, almost on top of me. Her desperation crashed into me like a rogue wave. Massive and deadly. Out of control and unsurvivable.
No, not Jeremy. The panic in her eyes wasn’t for my son.
“God, Marni. What did you do?” The harsh whisper tore out of me.
“We’ll know soon enough.”
