“It wasn’t their home. It was Uncle Robert’s home. Django never secured a home for him and Sarah Christine.”
“You didn’t like him?”
“I hated him.” Carson was sitting on the ground, one knee up, the other bent, holding a stick. He dug it into the mud. The monotonous tone of his voice never varied.
Peyton had to strain over the blood rushing in her ears to hear him. She also had to remain calm. Not one of her better attributes.
“He was planning to take Sarah Christine away. Cameron heard them talking.”
“Cameron? How old was he, Carson?”
“Mother hated it too. She didn’t want Sarah Christine to move. None of us did. We only wanted Django to leave. I hated him.”
“What really happened to Cameron, Carson? As I recall, he wasn’t much older than you.”
His voice dropped to a husky low. “He was nineteen. Like I said, he heard them talking. He burst into the library and shot Django. He didn’t see Sarah Christine at first, then she screamed. Cameron panicked and shot her.”
Mother screamed. “Django. God, Cameron, what have you done?”
“Aunt Sarah?”
Caitlin huddled against Papa’s legs. She wanted to cover her ears, but she couldn’t let go of Papa. He needed her.
Footsteps pounded the wood floors of the old home. She hated this house. All its dark, smelly wood.
“Dear heavens,” Aunt Patricia breathed. “Cameron, what have you done?”
“He was planning to take her away, Mother. He was taking her away. To America. He had it all planned.”
Cameron wasn’t sorry at all, Caitlin wanted to yell, but the words would not come.
“Get your father, Cameron. Right this minute. Now!”
His steps clattered away.
Cailin gulped a sob.
“Oh my God. Caitlin?” Aunt Patricia’s face peered beneath the desk. “Come, darling. I’ll take care of you.”
Caitlin crawled from beneath the desk, turning her face away from the blood surrounding her mother’s head.
Peyton’s stomach churned, and she swallowed back bile. “Why did she put me up for adoption?”
Carson tossed the stick on the fire, disgusted, and stood. “She didn’t put you up for adoption, you fool. She put you in foster care. She wanted you moved from home to home. Apparently, you didn’t remember anything. You didn’t speak at all.” He kicked at the fire. “But someone took a notion to you right away. Someone with lots of pull and connections. Before Mother could intervene, you were whisked away and the records locked down.” He smiled a derisive, evil, and weirdly deprecating smile. “Then the will was read. Not the one that Mother and Sarah Christine had spoken of over the years. No, this was a new will. One that left everything to you as sole heir. All of Sarah Christine’s art. It was worth millions, of course, especially when word of her untimely death was announced.”
“Sarah Christine’s art?” Peyton’s heart pounded.
“S. C. Beck,” he said with a derisive snort.
Something tickled at Peyton’s neck. She couldn’t swipe at it with her hands bound.
Carson leaned over and touched the place then looked down at his thumb. “Don’t you get it yet? S. C. Beck was your mother. She was married to a gypsy.”
It was blood. Her neck was bleeding. Peyton rolled to her back. “Cameron wasn’t killed on a motorcycle, was he?”
“He was incarcerated. Mother was devastated. She was hospitalized a couple of time for mental breakdowns. I tried to help her.”
Peyton squeezed her bound hands into fists. “How?”
