Taylor closed his eyes. His voice was gruff as he whispered, “Second floor. Anna’s room was on the second floor.”
* * *
IT still looked the same.
Standing in the doorway, Taylor stared into the pretty white, pink, and gold bedroom that had been his sister’s. Yeah, it had been where she slept, but it had his mother’s touch all over it. Anna had been very much into the girly-type stuff, he supposed, but where their mother had tried to make her into a fragile hothouse flower, Anna, at her heart, had been a daisy. Bright, colorful, and cheerful.
Dez wandered through the room, pausing every now and then to brush her fingers along the dresser, the bed. In the center of the big poster bed, there was a doll. The sight of it was like a punch, right to the heart. There was a line of pristine, perfect dolls along the shelf above the bed. None of them had ever been played with for more than a few minutes.
But the doll on the bed…she’d been played with. Played with. Loved.
Swallowing the knot in his throat, Taylor took a step into the room. Then another. There was a fist around his heart now, one that wouldn’t let go. When he reached out to touch the worn, old little doll, his fingers trembled. Lowering himself to sit on the edge of the bed, he picked it up.
“I bought her this,” he said softly. “The Christmas before she died. She’d wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid but Mother wouldn’t buy her one. We didn’t get toys like that, you know.”
A shadow fell across him and he looked up, met Dez’s eyes. She knelt down, resting a hand on his thigh. “What in the world could have been wrong with a doll?”
“It’s not the doll.” He crooked a smile at her. “It’s a common doll. We got expensive shit. Collectible things—one of a kind or designer…things that would hold value or look pretty. Screw having fun with it.”
Emotion all but choked him as he remembered the look on Anna’s face when she unwrapped the present. “So I bought it for her. Me and Dad went out shopping and I asked if it would be okay. He just laughed and said, Just don’t tell your mother you asked me. She played with it all day long. It went with her everywhere for months after, and she slept with it every night.”
Dez touched the butter yellow hair on the doll’s head. “It looks like she took very good care of her.” She stood up and bent over, pressed her lips to his. “You’re a good brother. I would have loved to have somebody give me a doll. I never had one. Did she ever name her?”
He looked back down at the worn toy. “Yeah. Her name was Laura. Anna loved Little House.” He smoothed down the tiny dress and then he stood up. As the blood began to crawl up his neck, he pushed the doll into Dez’s hands. “Here. You take her.”
Automatically, Dez clutched the doll, even as she gaped at him. “Me? You want me to take a doll?”
“I can’t leave it here.” He looked around the room. Shaking his head, he said quietly, “You won’t find anything of Anna’s here. Except that doll. Everything else in here was my mother’s.”
“But…”
Looking back at her, he said, “Take it. Please. I…look, I can’t leave it here. I just can’t. Not anymore.”
Dez looked down at the doll, a soft sigh falling from her lips. Then she stroked a finger over the doll’s chubby cheeks, her smiling face. “She’s got freckles. And blue eyes. And blonde hair.” Abruptly, she started to laugh. “I’m thirty-four years old and I’ve finally got a doll of my own.”
Tucking her into the crook of her arm, she looked around the room and sighed. “You’re right about one thing. We won’t find Anna here. It’s…empty.”
* * *
TAYLOR was packing up when he heard the knock.
Not his clothes, not yet, at least. They’d be stuck in French Lick for a little while, he knew. But it was time he did something with his family’s things. If there were clothes to be donated, he’d do it. He’d pay somebody to come in and go through most of his parents’ stuff, but he wanted to keep a few things that had belonged to his father.
And nobody would touch Anna’s stuff. Not yet, at least.
In the middle of going through old, yellowed drawings, he heard the knock and looked up.
Dez was in the depths of the house, still trying to find something, he guessed. He didn’t see her as he jogged down the steps, although the doll he’d given her was sitting in the foyer. Dez’s sunglasses were in the doll’s lap.
The last person he thought he’d see was Joshua Moore.
He tensed, ready to shut the door fast if he had to, wishing he wasn’t hampered by the broken arm. Cautiously, he said, “Yes?”
Joshua looked down and then looked back up. “Can…can I come in?”
“Why?”
The other man grimaced. “I’ve a few things to say to you. Would rather do it where it’s not freezing, but…”
“Just give me a minute.” He shut the door and went to the front parlor where he’d kept most of his things. In his briefcase, he had his weapon. He checked the safety—awkward doing it one-handed, and left-handed at that. He tucked it into the back of his jeans. Not ideal, but he didn’t have a holster he could wear and still manage to draw it with his left hand.
Not that he anticipated needing it, but too many things he hadn’t anticipated had happened over the past week. With Dez in the house, he wasn’t taking chances.
It took under two minutes. When he returned to the front door, Moore was pacing restlessly on the porch. “If you want to talk, come on in.”
“Oh, want isn’t the word I’d use,” he said gruffly. “But things just need to be said.”
Taylor remained silent, gesturing to the parlor.
Joshua walked along, hands in his trouser pockets, head bowed. In the parlor, he wandered absently while Taylor settled behind the desk. He casually palmed the weapon and slid it under the desk, ready, but out of sight.
“How’s your wife?” he asked stiffly. He didn’t want to ask—but Anna had cared. He had to remind himself of that, damn it.
Joshua shot him a narrow look. “How can you even ask?”
Taylor lifted a brow. “Excuse me?”
Joshua laughed bitterly. “Oh, come off it. I know what she did. I know…” He closed his eyes. Abruptly he jerked his hands from his pockets. Taylor tensed and then relaxed, seeing the empty hands.
His tension returned in three seconds flat, though, as he watched Joshua press the heels of his hands against his eye sockets. A harsh, ragged sound escaped him, almost like a sob. He took a breath, held it.
“I’ve spent most of the morning at the hospital, with Jacqui. She’s been committed for a psychiatric evaluation,” Joshua said, lowering his hands. He stared at Taylor. “She asked for this. And while she spoke with the psychiatrist, she asked that I be in there, told me she was tired of carrying all of this—felt like she was sometimes two different people. My wife…and somebody with all these secrets. How much of that is real, how much of that isn’t, I don’t know.”
Taylor frowned, not certain why he was being told this. He didn’t want to hear this. He had to summon every last bit of self-control he had, every last bit of human compassion, to say, “It sounds like your wife went through a very trying time with that bastard who happened to father her. She might need a lot of help to deal with it.”
“Help. Fuck. Yeah, you could say she went through a trying time.” Then Joshua shook his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about, either.”
He reached inside his coat, and until Taylor saw the sheaf of pages in his hand, he held himself rigid, ready to do whatever he had to if Joshua Moore showed any sign of danger.
But it was just paper.
“I know what she did, Taylor.”
His heart stopped as he stared at Joshua Moore. Blood roared in his ears, a cacophonic noise that drowned out everything else. He didn’t ever hear Dez enter the room. Until her hand touched his shoulder, he didn’t know she was there. He laid the gun in his lap and reac
hed up, convulsively gripping her hand.
“What are you talking about?” he rasped.
“Anna.” Joshua looked at the sheets of paper he held. Then he looked up at Taylor, ignoring Dez altogether. “I’m talking about Anna.”
Carefully, Taylor put the gun’s safety on, then, just as carefully, he slid it into a drawer. He wasn’t ready to hear this—wasn’t ready, wasn’t ready…Standing up, he turned away and stared out the window. He braced one hand on it, staring outside. His gaze fell on the spot where Anna had last been seen. By the fountain. She’d loved that spot. Almost as much as she’d loved their game room—their one place.
“I don’t want to hear this,” Taylor said, his voice rough, ragged. It felt like he was speaking through a throat lined with broken glass. “Get the hell out.”
“No.” Joshua’s bitter laugh rang through the silence of the house. “Look at it this way: you owe me. My son’s paralyzed, in part because of your actions. You can damn well stand there and let me tell you what my wife wanted me to tell you.”
Taylor spun around, fury blistering inside him. “What, how she killed my baby sister?”
“She didn’t.” Joshua’s voice, quiet and soft, couldn’t quite penetrate Taylor’s fury.
But Dez could. She reached up, laid a hand on Taylor’s shoulder. “We need to listen, Taylor. Come on, now.”
He stared at her. “I can’t do this—I…I can’t.”
“You can.” She reached up and laid a hand on his cheek. “You can. And I’m right here, I’m staying right here.”
“She didn’t kill her,” Joshua said again. “I…” He gave Dez a dark look before he continued. “I don’t know what she is telling you, but Jacqui didn’t kill Anna. Anna fell.”
Anna fell—
“She fell…” Taylor, stunned, turned his head and stared at Dez.
Joshua gave her an ugly look. “You’re a fucking user, Lincoln. Maybe you do have a gift, but—”
He didn’t get anything else out of his mouth beyond that except a strangled ugh. Ignoring the pain shooting up his arm, Taylor pressed the cast against Moore’s throat. “Shut up,” he said gently. “You just shut the fuck up now and maybe I won’t beat you senseless. I’m trying to remember what you’ve been through. I’m trying to remember you don’t know Dez. But if you say anything else…it won’t matter what you’ve been through, or what you don’t know.”
“Taylor.” Dez curled a hand around his shoulder. “Ease up. Let him breathe.”
The other man’s breath whooshed out of him as Taylor eased back, staring at him.
“She’s trying to tell you that my wife killed your sister and you don’t want me to be pissed?” Joshua snarled, his voice ragged and hoarse.
“I don’t know all of what happened, Mr. Moore. I just knew your wife was involved.” Dez’s voice was cool. Her gaze dropped to the pages clutched in Joshua’s hand. “And she was involved. Wasn’t she?”
The anger drained out of him. As though somebody had replaced his bones with water, he sank to the floor. “She took her. Right out of the front yard. I…she heard your mother yelling at her, wanted to make the pretty little angel happy. And something scared her. Anna took off running. They were out near the cabin Jacqui’s mother had left her—it’s on Meyer’s Hill, close to…”
“The field. The well where she dumped my sister. Like she was garbage.”
“Yes.” Joshua looked up at him. “Yes. Anna ran. She fell. Her neck was broken. It…she kept calling her…”
“My angel. My pretty, precious angel.” Dez spoke up when his voice trailed off.
He looked at her, his face white. “Yes.”
Dez looked over at Taylor. “That’s what her father always called her. She didn’t want to hurt Anna. She…she just wanted somebody to love. I think something inside had been broken since he killed her baby. And when she saw Anna being yelled at, she just wanted to love her. She didn’t realize that Anna already had people who loved her.”
She cupped his cheek in her hand. “But she didn’t hurt her. I know it doesn’t undo her loss. It doesn’t take it away. But Anna wasn’t hurt.”
Taylor reached out, hauled Dez against him. Pressing his face against her neck, he struggled not to cry. He wanted to know why—why Jacqueline couldn’t have told anybody. Why she’d hidden it.
But Dez had already given him that answer.
That woman had already been broken inside.
“Anna needed for that woman to find peace,” Dez whispered, her voice so quiet only he could hear it. “Her father won’t ever have the chance to hurt her again, and maybe she can get justice for what he did to the baby. But she didn’t mean to hurt her—in her mind, she was helping her. In her mind, she loved Anna. I think she still does—at least she loves what she thinks she knew of her.”
Taylor shuddered. She wouldn’t say it. Fuck, he knew she wouldn’t. But he also knew what he needed to do. Not so much for her—Jacqueline Moore. But for Anna.
Lifting his head, he stared down into Dez’s face. Dark, warm eyes met his. She stroked a finger along his lip. “Are you okay?”
“No.” He pressed a kiss to her finger. “But I’ll manage. Just…just don’t let me go, okay?”
She twined her fingers in his. “Don’t plan to.”
Gripping her hand, his palm pressed tight to hers, he looked over in time to see Joshua finally climbing to his feet. “I can’t say that I can forgive her. I’d be lying. Just…hell. Tell her that I loved Anna—she was a wonderful girl. Tell her that Anna wouldn’t have wanted her to hurt like this.”
He looked back at Dez. He couldn’t do much else, not without lying.
She smiled at him.
As Joshua passed by them, Taylor made himself look at the man. “What’s going to happen with your son?”
“I don’t know.” The other man looked ten years older—no, twenty years older—in that moment. “I just don’t know. I gave the journal to the police. I had to.”
Both Dez and Taylor stared.
Joshua’s humorless laugh rang hollowly through the foyer. “What else could I do? He killed another boy—Tristan Haler—earlier this summer. I read it, in black and white. After I read it, I went to the bathroom and puked my guts up. I turned it in to the cops—I fucking had to, because that boy’s family deserves to know the truth. Then I went back and stared at him, hating myself because part of me still loves him. He’s a monster. He’s my son. And I love him. But I can’t ignore what he did.”
He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “I just don’t know what will happen. He may go to jail and I’ll tell him that he needs to at least try to work out a plea agreement. But he needs rehab, he needs counseling, and he looks at me with hatred in his eyes. I don’t even know if he’ll let me help him.”
“I’m sorry,” Dez said quietly.
He shot her an unreadable look, then shifted his gaze away, not responding.
Taylor pressed his lips to her brow and then eased back. There was little indecision as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He handed it to her and said, “I need the card for Greg Moeller.”
She cocked a brow, then shrugged. As she rifled through his wallet, he kept his gaze focused on her hands. Not on Moore, not on the pages he held—for once, Taylor was perfectly happy in not knowing every last detail. Once she had the card out, she gave it to him.
He in turn gave it to Moore. “I’m calling my lawyer. He handles the financial affairs for my family estate—I’m going to set up a fund for the kid’s health care costs—only the health care costs.”
Joshua shook his head. “No.”
“Yes.” Taylor glanced at Dez and then back at Moore. “Your son brought this on himself. You and I both know it. People may damn well try to spin it otherwise and I’ll deal with that when it happens. But…if I’d exercised more caution, perhaps he wouldn’t have been hurt.”
“Pe
rhaps?” Joshua stared at him.
“Perhaps.” Taylor kept his voice cool. “I don’t know. He took off running, and he didn’t have to. We both know that. Something else we both know—if he’d gotten out of the house that night, it’s very likely he would have hurt people. He got too much pleasure from doing it. I can live with what happened to him, knowing nobody else was hurt that night. But you’re going to have your hands full, just helping your wife get through what she’s going through. You don’t need the burden of figuring out how to care for his health needs—and they’ll be many.”
Joshua gripped the card. “So this is…what, a way to mitigate your guilt?”
“No. It is exactly what I said it is.” He turned back to Dez and wished Joshua Moore were ten thousand miles away.
So he could break.
CHAPTER TWENTY–THREE
THEY slept in a guest bedroom.
In the morning, Dez planned on asking Taylor if they could go back to the cottage. She didn’t figure it would take much to talk him into it. She also hoped they wouldn’t have to stay for long. They had to see to Anna, but after that…
She missed home.
She missed her home.
She was kind of hoping she could maybe talk him into making it his home, too. His house would be too chaotic for her. There would be too many imprints from others and she couldn’t handle it.
For now, though, they were together in the silent emptiness of a graceful, sad manor with a heartbreaking past and Dez lay curled against the chest of the man she loved.
With the heat of his body pressed to hers, she didn’t notice the change in temperature right away.
And there wasn’t that desolation, either.
But something about the currents in the air when she finally opened her eyes made her realize…she wasn’t alone and Anna had been in there for more than a couple of minutes.
She was sitting on a chair, swinging her legs back and forth, something any child would do.
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