Absolution (Sacrificial Duet Book 2)

by Riley Ashby

  “Let’s go inside,” she whispered, and pulled at my hand. “We’ll talk more once they have her free.”

  *

  We had some DNA collected to be run at a private lab, but the police came back with there results almost as quickly. Her name was Ashley Malone, and she was sixteen years old when she disappeared from her parents’ house in Brooklyn. Maddie found every news article he could on her disappearance, but she had come from a poor family, and her disappearance hadn’t held the public’s interest for very long. The police simply pegged her as a runaway.

  “We don’t even look alike,” I muttered to myself as I stared at her Missing Persons photo for the hundredth time.

  Maddie perched on the chair next to me, more on my lap than anything, and peered at my laptop screen. “She doesn’t look sixteen here. I wonder if they used one of those aged photographs.”

  “They used her school picture from that year. It was taken two weeks before she … left.”

  Maddie took the laptop from my hands and scrolled through the other photos. My mother had gone missing long before social media was widespread, but friends and family had uploaded scanned images over the years. There was a gallery of photos of her, from all angles, all meant to help find a woman who had been buried for over three decades. The most recent photo had been posted just earlier this year. Some people have never given up hope.

  “She played softball,” Maddie said softly, and I snapped myself out of my thoughts.

  “What? Where?”

  “It looks like she was on a league.” She pointed to a picture of a young woman in a yellow and green uniform, holding a bat over one shoulder and tossing a softball in the air as she smiled at the camera. The photo had been cropped to remove whoever was standing next to her, but the edge of someone else’s arm was slightly in frame.

  “That was why he didn’t want me to play. Because my talent was something that came from her, not him.” The realization, far from upsetting me, sent warmth through my chest. I’d never met this woman, but she’d given me something that had brought me immense joy throughout my life. The baseball field was one place I could be free from Conrad’s expectations. And because he had no interest in my success, he didn’t care if I had a bad game or blew a play. It was rare that he even came to my games.

  Maddie was beaming at me. “She would have been so proud of you. Her little boy, following in her footsteps.”

  My lips were ragged with how often I’d been biting them the past few days. “That is, if she wasn’t ashamed by my existence.” It was hard to imagine that she could love me, being the result of rape and her cause of death. Then again, Eva had so much affection for me. Even Anita had always been treated like her own child. But still, it wasn’t the same situation.

  Maddie didn’t get a chance to respond. The doorbell rang, and she closed the laptop as we stood and walked toward the door. Detective Brantley waited outside, and barged in without so much as a hello to get out of the cold.

  “They’re closing the investigation,” he said, blowing into his hands as we closed the door. “There’s nothing for them really to look at right now. You obviously weren’t involved in her death, and with Conrad dead, there’s no one to prosecute. Her family was relieved to have her body. You know when someone goes missing, they often have a hard time moving on. This gave them closure.”

  I breathed a sigh of somewhat relief. I was prepared to offer another bribe if necessary, but it didn’t sound like he even wanted one. But something was still missing, some sort of punishment. Or retribution.

  “Can I meet the family?” The words left my mouth before I finished thinking them. Maddie gripped my hand.

  “They said they’d rather not right now. They’re trying to cope with all the new knowledge they have about what happened to her.” He had the decency to look a little sorry for me. “I told them to call me if they change their minds.”

  “Give them my number,” Maddie said, and Brantley handed her his notepad. She scribbled her cell phone number on the paper along with her name and gave it to him. “They can call me if they want to talk about meeting him, but not talk to him directly.”

  “I’ll do that.” He tucked the paper into his pocket as he turned back toward the door. Pausing with his fingers on the handle, he spoke to me over his shoulder. “You did the right thing here, Schaf. I know that doesn’t mean a lot coming from me. But you should have seen how relieved they were to have her back.” He opened the door and left.

  I sagged a little with my exhale, releasing breath I’d been holding for far too long. Maddie bit her nails as she stood near the door, watching him leave through the window.

  “I hope that’s the last we see of him for a long time.” She turned toward me but kept her distance, leaning against the cold glass. “How bad are you?”

  “I’m okay, actually. Better than before.” I ran my fingers through my hair to fix it, and straightened my shirt. “We can move forward now. Even if I never meet that side of my family, I have her name and her picture.” Joining her at the window, I wrapped my arms around her shoulders as we watched the sky turn from gray to black.

  Maddie

  We worked on the house, boxing up items we wanted to keep and handing off those we didn’t care about to an antiques dealer. Meyer wasn’t interested in most of the contents of the home where he grew up, but there were a few sentimental keepsakes he didn’t want to let go of. A wooden train missing one wheel. A couple of dog-eared chapter books with his name printed inside the front cover. All of these things he pulled from hidden places in his room, tucked behind furniture or under the false bottom of a drawer. Every once in awhile, he would check one of his hiding places and find it empty. He’d curse softly under his breath and sit back on his heels, hand over his mouth as he contemplated whatever it was he’d lost.

  “It’s really a miracle I saved anything at all,” he’d say nonchalantly, as if he didn’t care that his childhood keepsakes had been destroyed. “On to the next one.”

  There was one area we all avoided, the place no one wanted to volunteer to clean. We had to walk by the staircase every time we were in the kitchen, but the door was firmly shut. Not even Joshua would go up there. The ghosts of women Conrad had abused, both known and unknown, echoed down the stairs and warned us all away. No one mentioned cleaning up the blood, or hiring movers to handle the contents. I suspected Meyer would be satisfied to burn it all down without ever stepping foot up there again.

  The executor, a surprisingly young man named David Wallace, came to the big house to read Conrad’s will as Thanksgiving approached. Anita was technically supposed to be present, but with her behind bars, we would have to make do with the only Schaf sibling left in the house. We led him into the study, the same room where Conrad took his last breath, and positioned David at the desk. We had to drag over a few chairs so Meyer, Mom, Dad, and me could all sit in front of the desk. Joshua stood behind us, hands folded over his chest.

  “Thank you for having me here,” the executor said, pulling a manila folder from his briefcase and opening it across the empty desk. “After the will is read, of course, we may have to discuss any parts pertaining to Miss Schaf with her at her domicile.”

  Meyer snorted in laughter. I slapped his arm, but I couldn’t help grinning along with him. It was too much fun to think of Anita languishing in a prison cell, forced to wear an orange jumpsuit and let her highlights and manicure go to shit.

  David cleared his throat. “As I was saying…”

  The will was dry as hell, a lot of pomp and circumstance about what a great man he’d been in his life. I didn’t realize he cared so much what people thought about him after he died. He certainly didn’t care enough to donate any money to charity, though.

  “In terms of inheritance, there are certain conditions that must be met.” Meyer shifted in his seat. He could do without Conrad’s money; he’d earned more than enough through his own hard work. But this was the last opportunity for Conrad to sho
w him any affection whatsoever. “In short, all of Conrad’s children must agree how to split the $500 million in remaining assets.”

  Meyer grimaced. “That’ll be difficult. Anita is going to want far too much.”

  David frowned and pointed to something on the paper. “It says here that Mr. Schaf had three children.”

  We were all silent for a beat. “What?” I turned to Meyer. “Who else is there?”

  “There isn’t anyone,” he said. He cocked his head as he thought. “Anita is the only one.”

  I looked around the room wildly, as if expecting Meyer’s secret sibling to simply appear out of thin air and step forward to claim her inheritance, but of course there was no one in the room besides us. Meyer looked calm enough, but on my other side, Mom was practically vibrating, throat working as she held back a sob, or a scream.

  “That’s impossible,” she said. “Conrad took him away the moment he was born.”

  I gaped at her. There was no way. I had a half sibling? And she’d never told me? “Wait a second. You had another baby? While you were here?”

  Dad was looking at her as if he’d never seen her before in his life. This information was clearly as new to him as it was to me. Mom reached for him subconsciously, gripping his fingers so tightly her knuckles turned white. “For all I know, Conrad had him killed. We’ll never find him.”

  “I think he already found us,” Meyer said. I spun to stare at him, but he wasn’t looking at me or even my mother. He was staring behind us at Joshua.

  “No,” I breathed. “I would have recognized him.” I squinted across the room at the man I’d spent so much time with over the past few weeks. We had similar hair and eye color, sure, but lots of people had brown hair and brown eyes.

  Joshua just blinked at me before looking at Mom. She rose from her chair with Dad’s hands around her waist, holding her steady.

  “I didn’t even get to hold you,” she said, and when her voice broke on the last word I knew it was true. Still, I couldn’t accept it.

  “No. No, Mom, it’s not him. He betrayed us!”

  “Because he wanted to destroy Conrad himself.” I hadn’t even noticed Meyer get to his feet. He walked around the chairs, his stride casual, but I could see from behind just how rigid his back was. He was making himself a shield between Joshua and my family. “Or maybe you wanted to hurt her—” he jerked his head a Mom— “as much as I did.”

  No one said anything. I bit my tongue, willing it not to be true. If no one spoke, we’d never have to know for sure. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut.

  “Your first guess,” Joshua said. His upper lip twitched, halfway to a sneer, before his impassive expression slipped into place.

  I screamed. “No! You stood and watched while he tortured us, Joshua, all of us.” I tried to get up. I wanted to rush him, beat my fists against his chest. But my legs wouldn’t work. My knees were locked in place. “You could have helped us! We’re your family!”

  “A family I never met.” He sounded like Meyer when I first met him. Voice hard as stone; face immovable even when confronted with the paint of others. “I don’t owe any of you anything.”

  Mom was crying, trying to go to him, but Dad was still holding her back. She held out her hands as far as she could. “You have to understand. He didn’t want to keep you because you looked like me. He only cares about the children that get his genes. And your eyes…” She sobbed, doubling over in her pain. Through it all, Joshua just stood there impassively. “Your eyes were brown right from the beginning. I didn’t even get to hold you.”

  Not a single trace of emotion crossed his face. He stood tall, as stern and uncompromising as ever, but in his eyes I thought I saw something. A flicker of understanding, of just how devastating this knowledge was. “It wasn’t personal,” he said. “Especially after I read the letter you gave Madeline, I knew you had no choice. But I had to stay focused on one thing.”

  “We could have died!” I jumped over my chair as my legs finally began working again, giving Meyer a wide enough berth that he couldn’t grab me. “You knew the truth the entire time and you watched it all happen like none of it mattered!”

  “I didn’t owe you anything,” he repeated, but I thought I saw something flash over his face for the briefest instant. I was one step away from him when Meyer finally got his hands around my arms.

  “You’re my brother! You’re our brother!”

  He turned his head to the side and stared out the window.

  “Joshua, please, I don’t care about anything that happened.” Mom was the complete opposite of me, barely contained but still nonetheless under control. She appeared at my side, Dad’s arm around her shoulders comfortingly. How could he stand there and be so calm, when he almost attacked Meyer a few weeks ago? Joshua was as complicit as he had been, maybe more. But he didn’t confront Joshua at all, just whispered in my mom’s ear. She drew in a shuddering breath. “Can we go somewhere and talk? Just for a minute?”

  I froze, waiting to see what he said. I was pissed enough at him as it was, but if he upset my mother even more, I was going to rip his head off. She couldn’t handle this, not after everything else. He was being so cruel and it didn’t even matter anymore. There was no one for him to impress.

  He inhaled deeply, then sighed. “Fine.”

  Mom visibly relaxed. “Let’s go to the kitchen. I could use a glass of wine.”

  He nodded and opened the door, letting Mom and Dad walk out of the room ahead of them. Before he left he looked at me over his shoulder, just once, and then he turned away.

  “I need a fucking shot,” I said the moment the door closed behind them.

  Meyer nodded, drawing one hand down his face. He was pale as a ghost. “Yeah. Me too.”

  He shot the executor a pointed look, and David bowed slightly before stepping out of the room through the same door. Meyer went to the wall and pulled at one of the paintings we hadn’t packed up yet, revealing a safe built into the drywall. He spun the dial on the front and it opened to reveal a stack of cash as well as a hefty decanter of amber liquid.

  “This is at least twenty years old,” he said as he lifted it out. My eyes bugged as he simply slammed the safe shut again, ignoring the hundreds of thousands of dollars just sitting in the wall.

  “How did you know the combination?”

  “I found it the other day and I’ve been trying different numbers. It took awhile, but I figured it out.”

  “What was it?”

  He paused speaking as he poured us each a hefty measure. “My birthday.” He chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “I didn’t even know he knew the date. We never celebrated.”

  My heart broke a little more. “Oh, Meyer.” After all that monster had done to him, some corner of his heart still found one small way to be his father. Even if it was inconsequential.

  “It doesn’t mean anything.” He downed the contents of his glass before handing the other one to me, then poured himself another. He stared at the liquor, swirling it around in the glass as if it could show him the future. Or maybe an alternate past, one where he had two parents who loved him and a sister who wasn’t a psychopath. “He probably just thought I’d never guess that was the combination. He was almost right. I tried everything else I could think of before I guessed it.”

  I took a large drink from my glass, wincing reflexively as it went down. But the liquor was smooth, sliding down my throat as easily as water. I downed the rest and held out my glass, which Meyer refilled dutifully. We ambled over to the window with our drinks and looked out over the lawn. A few tiny flurries swirled in the wind, but nothing was sticking to the ground yet.

  “Do you want to see the letter your mom wrote me?”

  I started. “I didn’t think you had it anymore.”

  “It was still in my office the day I went back.” He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. We both heard his unspoken words. The day I left you.

  “Do you want me to read it?”


  He pondered as he drained the glass again, then set it on the windowsill. “Honestly, I’m not sure. It feels wrong to keep it from you. I want to give you something.”

  “You keep it, Meyer. That was for you.” I raised his hand to my mouth and kissed it. “You don’t have to give it to me.”

  He dropped my hand only to wrap his arm around my waist, holding me against his side. “Conrad put that stipulation in the will to keep any of us from getting money. He thought Joshua was in the wind, and we’d never find him. But Anita will be the real problem.”

  “I can’t believe it.” I have a brother. One who’d grown up separate from both families he belonged to. A brother who saved me from drowning and then turned me over to Conrad, who held Meyer down while their father attacked him. And Conrad never had a clue.

  “It makes sense now,” Meyer muttered. This thumb moves absently across my hip. “He sent me his resume. I hadn’t even been looking for security. I thought at first Conrad had sent him to me, as a spy. But I couldn’t find any connection between the two of them. Because Conrad wasn’t using Joshua. Joshua was using me.” He was breathing too heavily. “I’ve been played my whole life.”

  “Don’t panic,” I soothed, setting down my glass and placing my hand on his chest. “He’ll explain. Mom will figure it all out. For both of us.” Meyer didn’t look entirely convinced, but nodded and kissed me once.

  I didn’t know if I would ever forgive Joshua for what he’d done, but then again, I’d spoken those words in the heat of anger before. This was my brother. Family I never knew I had. I’d grown up wondering why I didn’t have grandparents or cousins like the rest of my classmates, only to find out it was because my parents had been in hiding my entire life. And now I had a sibling. If he was willing to make an effort, to help my mom overcome the pain she suffered in losing him, I had to give him a chance.

  The doors opened behind us, and when we turned around Mom, Dad, Joshua, and the executor were all walking back into the room. Mom’s eyes were red, but clear. I couldn’t read anything on Joshua’s face. He glanced at Meyer and me once, but said nothing. I took a deep breath and opened my mouth, a million questions on my tongue, but nothing came out.