We’d quickly gone over some things about the project she was now working on for me, and then I’d absolutely refused to discuss business for the rest of the weekend.
I’d fed her lunch and we’d strolled out to the barn because Lauren wanted to know more about the Arabians and my breeding plans.
“I know,” I told her as I snagged her around the waist and pulled her next to me.
I really didn’t want to talk about it, but since she’d asked, I was pretty sure she was going to want an answer.
We’d been about to watch a couple of movies that we both wanted to see and chill out for a while.
Lauren tossed the remote back onto the coffee table. “Who’s flying them?” she asked curiously.
Yep.Apparently she was definitely going to require an answer.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to share things with Lauren, but we’d just straightened everything out between the two of us.
I’d just wanted one damn day to relax with my woman.
“Asher is using a company that utilizes LIDAR,” I explained.
Lauren sent me a curious glance. “Light detection and ranging,” she said in a perplexed tone. “That’s pretty high-tech. What in the world is he looking for?”
“Notwhat,” I explained. “We’re looking forsomeone. We’re trying to find my mother in the one place that we haven’t looked for her yet. Now that I think about it, it was probably always the most obvious place, but Asher and I didn’t want to go there for a long time.”
Lauren’s eyes widened. “You think she’s buried somewhere on the ranch? I thought she left when you and Asher were little.”
“We thought so, too, for a long time,” I told her. “But we never believed that she took off with another man. Asher thought my father forced her to leave. We started looking for her when we were both adults, but there wasn’t a single trace of herafter the day our father swore that she left the ranch. No paper trails. Nothing digital, either.”
“That’s not good,” Lauren said solemnly.
“We actually stopped actively looking for a while, but we always came back to check for any new information. There was no activity, not a single reason to believe that she was still alive. A few years ago, Asher and I finally admitted that we both thought that our father killed her. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lauren said softly. “Has the search turned anything up?”
“Hey,” I said in a lighter voice. “It happened over thirty years ago, Lauren.”
Her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears, and I hated it.
She shook her head. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt. It obviously bothers both of you if you’re still searching.”
“It does,” I admitted. “Probably Asher more than me because he remembers her more than I do. I think he’ll look for her until he runs out of places to search. It would give him some kind of peace to finally find her. I think we both want some kind of closure. We knew our father was an abusive asshole, but I don’t think either of us wanted to believe that he actually murdered our mother.”
“Have the LIDAR searches turned up anything?” she asked again.
“Plenty of false alarms, but that’s not surprising,” I said. “It’s a lot of acreage, and we’re basically flying blind. There are all kinds of ground disturbances on the property, but none of them turned out to be a body.”
“What happened to her things when she left?”
“That stuff is long gone, angel. If there was anything left, my father got rid of it. The only thing Asher and I have is a few photos.”
She frowned. “There has to be some way to narrow down the search area.”
“If there is, Asher and I haven’t figured it out.”
“Do you mind if I poke around a little?” Lauren asked. “I can talk to Millie and see what she knows.”
“I haven’t gotten around to talking to Millie yet. I don’t mind if you talk to her. Feel free to tell her what we suspect. I’d planned on explaining what Asher and I were thinking anyway. Just don’t get your hopes up, Lauren. Asher and I have been going through this for years. We’ll never stop looking if we can, but we stopped letting it make us crazy a long time ago. We know we’re probably going to have to accept the fact that we’ll never know what happened or where she is.”
“I lost my parents, but at least I know what happened to them,” she said solemnly. “I’ve always had a place to mourn or to go and talk to them. I was eight when my parents died. About the same age as Asher when your mother disappeared. I can’t imagine never knowing what happened to them or where they went. That must have been horrible for both of you.”
