Cordelia stared at the bourbon in her glass, the smoky gold liquid reminiscent of Gordon’s eyes. “I wish I knew,” she told him. She took another sip. “Our mom kept a lot of secrets. Sometimes, I’m not even sure she knew why she left. I always figured there must have been some kind of falling-out, but lately…”
“You think it was something else?” he asked.
She looked at him. “I think there’s more to it than that.” She cupped her glass against her chest. “Why don’t you believe the stories in town—blood in the soil? Seems a dark place to work.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “I told you my mother worked here,” he said. “That she died here.”
“That’s right,” she confirmed.
“What I didn’t tell you is that she changed before she died.” He took a breath. “My mother was the wisest, kindest person I knew, but the rheumatoid arthritis made her life difficult. When I started touring, I made her quit working. I was traveling a lot with the band—Marzanna; that was our name—and I couldn’t keep an eye on her. I worried. I didn’t need much for myself, so I saved what I made to take care of her. Until…”
Cordelia waited for him to finish.
“Everything fell apart at once. I got a stage injury. The medication became a problem—an opioid for the pain. I was supposed to ease off the pills after my procedure, but I found them hard to let go of.”
She was surprised he was admitting this to her.
He folded his arms. “This stuff got ahold of me. I was a mess. There were personal issues playing out as well. I was involved with our lead singer—Leila. The relationship was volatile. The pills made everything worse. A couple of months later, they asked me to leave.”
Cordelia sighed. “That must have been so hard.”
“The worst part is,” he continued, “I stopped talking to my mother during that time. I didn’t want to hear that I was an addict. I was supposed to be sending her money.” He looked up at Cordelia from beneath the thick mantle of his lashes.
She understood now. His mother took this job because he’d stopped supporting her. “Is that when she came here?”
He nodded. “I came home, but I couldn’t kick the addiction on my own.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “So, I went into a rehab facility in Greenwich. It took all my savings and then some. This job was all she had to take care of herselfandme. I was so close to leaving the facility when she started slipping.”
Cordelia stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“She started forgetting things, getting confused. She would go into town and rant to people about things that didn’t make sense, mostly to do with this place, your family. She left me voice mails I could barely understand. It happened so fast. One minute she was the woman I always knew and loved, the next she was paranoid and hysterical. She shouldn’t have been on her own. Before I could check out, she was gone.”
Cordelia remembered he’d told her his mother had been afraid of someone on the property before she died, a person she never named, but this sounded more like delusion, less like reality. She held her drink out to him. “I think you need this more than me.”
“You asked me if I believe the stories,” he said darkly, ignoring her offer. “I don’t. Not exactly. But I believe this place changes people. It changed her.”
She swallowed, the bourbon firing her throat. “Then why are you here?”
He shrugged. “My mother is gone. My relationship is over. The band replaced me. I have no family left in Bellwick—my dad died years ago—but I need to be here. For the same reason you do.”
“Which is?” she asked, wondering what he thought she was doing here. She wasn’t even sure herself most days.
He neared her, taking the cup from her hand. He swallowed a sip of bourbon. She watched his throat move, overcome with the longing to run her fingers over it. This close, he towered over her like a god, too bold to be real. He handed the cup back to her. “Answers.”
She held her breath until he stepped away.
“I don’t like to talk about what happened, how she ended up here,” he said. “People think less of me.”
“Someday I’ll tell you all about my failed marriage and doomed career. It’ll make you feel better. Promise.”
Gordon laughed. “It’s a date.”
She liked how that sounded a little too much. “Can I crash here tonight? I, um, don’t think I can go back in that house before the sun rises.”
He faltered.
“The couch is fine,” she was quick to add, not wanting the memory of her face buried in his sheets to make him think she was asking for anything else.
“Sure,” he said quietly, moving up the stairs. He came back down carrying a pillow and blanket. “But tell your sister. I don’t want her to worry.”
