A different nurse approaches Mattie and me. “Do you want to say your goodbyes?”
“I did that yesterday,” I say, not mentioning that my goodbye was also a fuck you. It’s what he deserved.
“No.” Mattie is still, not crying, but I can feel her trembling. The nurse leaves, and Mattie turns to me. “What’s going to happen to Mom?”
“What do you think, Sparkles?” I ask gently, dragging my eyes from the cops quietly deliberating outside the door.
Tears well in her eyes. “She’s going to jail, isn’t she?”
I don’t answer. There are no words that make this easier.
Reed steps into the hospital room in his street clothes, his badge held high. “Trevor Westerhouse?”
That’s not what I expected to happen.
My brother nods. “That’s me. Arrest her. She just murdered my father.”
Jessica steps forward, wrists together. But instead, Reed grabs onto my brother, locking one wrist in cuffs before my brother freaks out.
“You’re under arrest—”
“What the hell are you doing? I’m a government official!” Trevor shouts. He tries to step away, but bumps the bed, jostling our father. His head slumps to one side, and disgust makes it through my apathy.
“For the trafficking of minors,” Reed continues, Jessica’s gasp audible as my brother fights his natural inclination to throw down when threatened.
Reed continues his spiel, then hands a furious Trevor off to the uniformed officers, his threats about lawyers and publicity following him all the way off the floor.
Then Reed sits beside my stepmom, waiting for whoever is going to join him to bring her in.
“I did it,” she says.
I rush forward. “Jessica. Don’t say anything without a lawyer present.”
She looks up at me, eyes watery. Then she shrugs. “But I did.”
Mattie and RJ follow me, and with a nod from Reed, Jessica pulls Mattie to her, crying into her daughter’s hair. But her voice is clear. “My beautiful girl. So brave. So strong. I can’t help but wonder if she’d have been the same.” She holds my sister’s cheek.
“Who, Mom? You’re not making sense.” Mattie’s voice wobbles as she speaks, and I’m forced to remember that as tough as my sister is, she’s still a kid. A kid who’s survived more shit than most adults will in a lifetime.
“Your big sister, sweetheart. The one your father beat out of me once he found out she wasn’t another boy. She wasn’t the first.” She switches her gaze to Reed. “There’s a baby cemetery under the rose garden. He is—was—digging it up, trying to get rid of the evidence before the police figured it out, the bastard. We’d made a deal. I wouldn’t tell anyone about those poor girls; I’d keep everything else I gathered over the years from the feds if he just let them rest. He reneged on our deal.”
Anger flares in her blue eyes, the color the same as Mattie’s, and just as fierce. “His life for all his unborn daughters. It’s too little. But it’s what I could do.” Then Jessica’s tears overtake her anger, and she holds Mattie close, leaving Reed, RJ, and me to share a horrified look.
He’s gone. Good riddance.
Chapter 88
Clara
Walker’s surgery went well, and by the time we brought him back to our temporary home, Trips and RJ had bought more mattresses, a couple of couches, and a TV. They’d also gotten a bunch more clothes that kind of fit. Not perfect, but honestly, I don’t think any of us cared.
What did matter, though, was that they put all the mattresses in one room, pressed together to make a giant bed. Walker had flopped onto the mattress second from the side, saving the middle for me, but leaving a space that Jansen claimed later.
Something tight in my chest relaxed when we piled in that night. Because I wasn’t the only one who wanted to keep us all close. Even Trips and Walker, my two guys who struggled the most with this giant, messy relationship—one due to jealousy, the other due to fear—crowded together without complaint.It was beautiful.
There was one solo mattress in another bedroom though—for Mattie. We considered moving onto the Westerhouse estate, but honestly, we couldn’t do it. There were too many bad memories for Trips, Mattie, and me. Plus, it became a crime scene almost as soon as we considered it.
We knew what we’d planted in that house, but the evidence we’d smuggled in ended up barely registering with the scale of the investigation that followed. Even Jansen’s accidental find of the buried bodies from early in Trips’ father’s career did little in the end. The man’s crimes were worse than we could have pinned on him, and more damning than Walker’s forgeries and stolen WWII jewels—although the guys had tossed in a ‘if lost return to’ sticker in the bags with the address of the house they robbed. That ‘collector’ was served a warrant a week later, but he was happy to give up all kinds of information on the Westerhouse operation for a fine and no jail time—because Trip’s father had fingers in many pies. The cops had more leads than they knew what to do with; the investigation would probably take years.
