“Exactly,” she agrees as though I made her point. “Nothing in this house seems to be to do with me at all.”
The awkward conversation might be stilted but it’s still a break from the turmoil going on inside my head. I grab a glass of ice and water from the dispenser on the fridge and take the stool next to her.
“You fit in here better than I do,” I assure her. “And thanks for your help with my mother. You really tipped Trent’s dad into helping.”
“Trent’s dad,”she mocks, shaking her head. “I can’t believe he hasn’t even introduced himself. No”—she holds up a hand—“scratch that. I caneasilybelieve it. He’s called Anders, and I wasn’t any help. He barely listens.”
She looks so sad that I’m drawn to her. Curiosity firing on all cylinders. “That doesn’t seem true from where I’m sitting. He only reacted after you appealed to him.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” She shakes herself, going from maudlin to cheerful in the flick of a switch. “Are you home for the rest of the day? I was thinking of going for a spa treatment. Massage, body scrub, mud bath, the works.” She pauses for a moment during which I’m too gobsmacked to answer. “Or if you’re home tomorrow, we could go then. Make a whole day of it.”
“Tomorrow would be good.” I don’t want to explain too much, definitely don’t want to frighten her, but keeping her within the house seems like a smart idea. “Can you show me how to work the television? I’m not used to something so fancy.”
“Yes!” Her overenthusiasm makes me wonder how lonely she gets during the day. “Would you like to watch the new Jane Austen adaptation? I’ve heard the newest Mr Darcy puts the others to shame.”
“That sounds good.”
She leads the way into the entertainment room, glancing at the security screen as she does so, then frowning and moving over just as it buzzes. “Do you recognise that man?”
Dread encases my feet in treacle, every movement slowing to a crawl as I turn. The three steps to join her take an hour. Millenia pass as I squint at the tiny screen.
For a second, my mind overpaints the camera feed with my uncle. The same way he looked in the video that I would have traded my next decade in earnings to prevent Trent from seeing.
Then I blink and the image resolves to a hunched, battered man, wearing a crumpled suit.
My body relaxes with the recognition. “That’s Trent’s private investigator, Edwin. You can buzz him in, he’s fine.”
That he’s here instead of Trent could mean anything but I immediately seize on the most worrying. That Trent can’t be here himself because he’s currently having his fingernails ripped out, his teeth pulled without anaesthetic, his fingers chopped off to find one that unlocks his phone.
By the time I’ve reached the front door, Trent’s died in a half dozen awful ways; his friends meeting the same dreadful fate. All of them deaths that can be laid straight at my door.
The moment I yank the door open, I scrutinise Eddie’s expression. Trying to work out how bad it is so I have a split second to prepare.
“Hey, Rosa. Can I come in for a second?” When I don’t immediately step back, he adds, “Trent sent me to collect you.”
“Collect her for what?” Sashe asks when my mouth doesn’t work. “Where’s Trent?”
“He’s…”
Edwin’s gaze turns to me, eyebrow hooked up, asking how much to divulge, and I finish, “He’s involved with a job right now. Where are we going?”
“To the hospice.”
My stomach drops to the floor. “What? Is my mother—”
“She’s fine. It’s a precaution.” He tilts his head to the side. “Trent said something about your uncle having an issue with her, too.”
An issue.
What a polite way to say that, working together, we put him away for over twenty years.
Not that it was just us. There were others. A cabinet full of recordings and only a few of them mine.
Girls who were just as easily talked into doing things that didn’t feel good, didn’t feel right. Girls who also had mothers too distracted by the constant battle to earn enough money they didn’t ask what their boyfriend pimp was up to when he offered to babysit.
Questions they couldn’t afford to ask.
“You have your phone on you?” At my surprised expression, he explains, “He could use it to track you. Just like he did with your computer.”
