Charlie

by Elin Peer

  “A few days after. The question came up and he looked into it. Don’t stare at me like that. It’s not my fault you’re all trying to block out what happened.”

  “Why would you remember a detail like that?” River walked over to look closer at the snakeskin. “I remember it as a large python in size.”

  “No, it was a corn snake. I found it interesting because it’s one thing to place a snake in a boy’s bed, but it’s another as to whether or not Nathan was in actual danger from the snake. A corn snake isn’t venomous. In fact, it’s a common pet snake because of its docile nature and reluctance to bite. It does look similar to venomous snakes like the copperhead but it’s described as harmless.”

  “There’s nothing harmless about what Conor did to Nathan.” Lumi straightened up. “He placed that snake in his bed to control him through fear, and then he had the nerve to pretend he couldn’t see it when Nathan screamed for help. He made Nathan think he was crazy.”

  I sighed. “True. I was merely pointing out that it wasn’t Conor’s goal to kill Nathan and that he used a harmless snake rather than a deadly one.”

  “Don’t defend the man.” Maximum moved to the exit.

  “I’m not defending him. You were the one who asked what kind of snake it was, and I happened to know.”

  The others left the room and I made sure to turn off the light before I followed. We walked through bedrooms, bathrooms, and the kitchen before we ended up in Conor’s office.

  “I’m done with this house. Can we leave now?” Nathan was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.

  “The office no longer had a desk, but the reading chair was still in the corner and there were books scattered on the built-in bookshelves on two of the walls.

  Lumi and I both walked over to scan the titles and pulled out a book each.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I turned my head to Maximum, who had asked.

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “I was talking to River.”

  Instant worry filled me when I saw how pale and frightened she looked. “River, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know what it is, but that book makes me want to run away.”

  “What, this one?” I reached for the red book to pull it down from the shelf. It was stuck so I pulled harder.

  Click. A narrow opening appeared at the end of the shelves.

  Lumi, Maximum, and even Nathan moved closer, while River took a step back.

  “Don’t open it.”

  I frowned. “Why not? Aren’t you curious?”

  “I have a bad feeling. What if he had someone chained up in there and the person was never found?”

  With a snort, I pushed the door open and watched dust fall. My hands searched for a light and found it to my right.

  “Holy Christ!” We all stared into a room that was about the same size as the office we were in.

  “I don’t want to go in there.” River’s voice was brittle.

  “How did you know about the book? Have you been in there before?” I asked her with some confusion.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I can’t remember.”

  Maximum pushed past me and walked in, with me and Nathan right behind him. A day bed and two leather chairs were on the floor, but it was the walls that made my blood freeze to ice.

  “What the fuck is this?” Nathan scanned the walls with his face scrunched up. “Do you recognize any of them?”

  I studied the photos, pinned to the wall. Everything in Conor’s life had been well organized but these photos were placed in random order, some on top of each other. “Maybe Conor didn’t know this room existed. Maybe these are from a previous owner.”

  “No, I recognize this girl.” Maximum reached for a photo and took it down. “Remember Heather? She was my age and lived here with her mom for about a year.” He handed me the picture of a girl who sat naked against a wall, looking away. She couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve.

  “Hmmm.” I gave him the picture back and walked around looking at the girls and young women in the pictures. Several I recognized but in most of the pictures the girls had their back to the camera so it would be hard to identify them.

  On a low shelf, a combined TV and video stood and underneath it at least fifty videotapes were lined up.

  My hands tore through my hair. “Conor was a psychopathic killer who lied and deceived people, but he wasn’t a sexual child molester. We would know if he was. We were children living in his house.”

  Maximum looked around. “I don’t know. It’s all females. Just because he never touched you and me doesn’t mean he didn’t touch others.”

  I spun around to face Lumi. “Did Conor ever touch you?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I remember.”

  “River, did Conor ever touch you inappropriately?”

  River had never entered the room and still stood in the office looking in. “Do you see any photos of me?”

  “I can’t tell.” Using my phone, I documented what we’d found while Maximum began taking down the photos.

  “Stop, what are you doing?”

  He kept going. “We need to find the children. This isn’t right and they need to know about it.”

  “Maximum, stop!” I raised my voice.

  He already had five of the pictures in his hands when he stopped and listened to me.

  “None of these girls are children anymore. It’s been eleven years, which means every girl in those pictures is an adult now. Why would you tell them? What if they blocked it from their memory and are now living healthy lives? We don’t know what really happened but even if there are worse things on those videos, we can’t just show up with proof that they were molested. It might start a chain reaction and they could end up worse than before they were told.”

  “What can be worse than not knowing?” Maximum argued.

  I shifted my balance. “Taking an overdose or drinking yourself to death in order to forget is worse. Look, it's not like we can put our dad in jail. The man is already dead.”

  “But what if they have all sorts of issues but don’t remember why? This is a piece of a puzzle. They deserve to know.”

  My hands were shaking. “Do any of you want to go through another round of publicity? You know the press would be all over this, and then what?” I gave Maximum a direct stare. “You and I are the sons of a mass murderer and now you want to tell the world that he was a pedophile too?”

  Pain crossed Maximum’s face before he looked away.

  “With dad gone, who do you think the press is going to come for?”

  My brother didn’t answer. While I’d been shipped to the US after it happened and few at college had known about my back ground, Maximum had been younger and stayed here in Ireland. For him school had been a nightmare with all the bullying and exclusion from people who judged him as the son of Conor O’Brien.

  Lumi’s voice sounded from behind us. “I say we burn it all. This room is a shrine to misery and evil, and nothing in here deserves to be spread or seen by anyone.”

  “Yes. Let’s take all the photos down and burn them. The tapes too,” Nathan agreed.

  “No, I need to document this and see what’s on the tapes,” I objected and stuffed four flash drives from the pile of videotapes into my pockets.

  Maximum, Lumi, and River were now all taking down the hundreds of pictures in the room while I snapped pictures with my phone. What they didn’t understand was that I’d been searching for answers for eleven years and those pictures could hold information that I needed.

  Once they were done taking down pictures, they took the videotapes, and if it hadn’t been that River’s pile was too high and she dropped two of them on the floor, I would have never gotten to see what was on them. While the others left the room to burn everything in the garden, I took the videotapes and closed the door.

  I tried to distance myself from what I might see, and turned on the TV as I pushed in the tape.

>   Please let it be a Hollywood movie.

  The sound of my father’s voice made the hair on my arms stand up. I only had to see a few minutes of my father’s gift of persuasion to be sweating like I’d run a marathon. Not even the young girl’s giggles and assurances that she wanted him to touch her made the bile in my throat lessen.

  I had come here to prove to myself that Conor O’Brien held no power over any of us any longer, but as I stopped the tape, I stood with a feeling that he was right behind me, hissing low into my ear. “You can never outrun me, son. You’re my blood and I live on inside you.”

  As if I’d felt a physical touch to my neck, I shivered and rubbed my skin, and then I hurried to the others in the garden.

  “There was still split wood in the shed and lighter fluid,” Maximum told me when he stepped back from the fire he had made.

  “Cover your noses. Burning plastic isn’t healthy,” Lumi warned and threw the first tape on the fire.

  I didn’t like the smoke. “What if the neighbors notice the smell?”

  “This is Howth. Nothing happens after midnight.”

  “Nathan is right,” Lumi said. “It’s December. They’re all sleeping inside with their doors and windows closed.

  We stood for a while throwing tapes onto the fire and watching them melt. I had been one of the first to throw my two tapes and there was a sense of relief when the fires engulfed them.

  “I’m sure we’re breaking all sorts of environmental rules right now.” River was just about to throw another tape on to the fire when she hesitated and her eyebrows drew close together.

  “What is it?” I was terrified she had read her own name or Lumi’s on a tape, but she looked to Nathan.

  “Wasn’t your last name Hamilton before we all got adopted?”

  “Yeah?”

  “And wasn’t your mom’s name Sandra?”

  I swallowed hard as all our eyes were on Nathan. His hands folded into fists. “Is it from the night he killed my mom?”

  River held it out to him. “It could be.”

  Nathan took the tape and looked completely lost.

  “Do you want me to look at it first?” I offered although I had zero desire to see what was on that tape.

  “No, I’ll do it when I’m ready.”

  Maximum, Lumi, River, and I all moved over to stand around Nathan, our hands on him to offer our support.

  “Don’t watch it alone,” Lumi whispered. “At least let us be there for you.”

  Nathan was looking down with tears making his eyes wet but he nodded as a silent promise that he wouldn’t watch it alone.

  Without words, we gathered closer around Nathan and gave him a group hug. When we moved back, he squatted down in front of the fire and used a stick to stir up the flames.

  "We should burn down this whole house. No one will ever want to live here anyway."

  When none of us answered him, he turned his head, “No, actually, we should blow it up. Once and for all. One giant explosion to get it out of our lives.” He lifted the burning stick in his hand and it made me take a step forward.

  "Don't. Arson is a crime and you don't want to go to jail.”

  River frowned. “How can it be arson if you and Maximum own the house? It’s not as if you’d press charges against him, would you?”

  “No, but what if the fire spreads? Burning down the house isn’t going to solve anything.”

  Nathan had been small for his age back when we were children, but he’d grown into a large man with a muscled body from his obsession with sports. It saddened me to see the proud man he’d become, dry his nose and scrunch his face. “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t feel a sense of satisfaction from seeing this place burn to the ground. We all hate this house and him."

  I raised both palms. “You’re right, but we aren’t mindless teenagers, and setting the manor on fire would be reckless. If you need to see it burn down, then I’m fine with it, but we’re doing it the right way.”

  “And what way is that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the local fire department can do it for practice.”

  “No! I want to set the torch.”

  “I’m sure that can be arranged, Nathan. But not tonight.”

  He threw the stick back onto the fire and took a step back.

  Lumi was right there to give him another hug. “Atlas is right. We don’t know if there’s something that could explode inside, and the neighbors are sleeping in their houses. It’s not safe.”

  Nathan stabbed his index finger at me. “I want to see our childhood and this fucking haunted house in ashes.” He stormed off in the direction of the car and River ran after him.

  "Are you happy now?” Maximum tucked his hands in his pockets next to me and rocked back and forth on his feet. “That speech you gave us about proving to ourselves that Dad doesn't hold any power over us…” He scoffed. “The man planted so many phobias and traumas in us that he’ll continue to hold power for as long as we live. We’re cursed people."

  “No!” I refused to believe that. “We can get past it. ”

  “How? We’re all fucked up in one way or the other, and you know it.”

  My tone was defensive. “That’s why I’m searching for answers. We just need to understand what he did to you and then we’ll know how to fix it.”

  Maximum stared at me and gave an incredulous chuckle. “What he did to us? Don’t you know that you’re as fucked up as the rest of us? You’re the one obsessing about needing to understand what happened, but you never will. Dad was crazy, Atlas. Crazy and evil!” He nodded to the melted videotapes on the fire. “I wish we hadn’t come here tonight, and I wish you wouldn’t insist on digging for answers. All you find is more dirt and depravity.”

  “Maximum, I…”

  He cut me off. “That research project you’re running; who is it for?”

  “It’s for us and anyone else who is broken by someone like Dad.”

  Maximum shook his head. “I know you’re trying to fix the situation, but you can’t. No one can.”

  “Give me time.” I took a step forward but that only made him back away.

  Shaking his head again, my younger brother walked away while I stood back with a heavy heart, promising myself that I would dedicate the rest of my life to finding a way to heal what my father had broken.

  “Typical.” Lumi came to stand next to me.

  I gave her a sideways glance. “What’s typical?”

  “Others start the fire and leave it to us to put it out. It’s the curse of being the older siblings that we always get left with the clean-up.” Her brown eyes, which always shone with her sharp intelligence, told me we weren’t talking about the fire in front of us.

  Feeling grateful for the support of my strong adoptive sister, I gave her a sideways hug. “Then we’d better get to it.”

  Click here to get your copy of Atlas – Cultivated #2 on pre-sale.

  You will save money and get it delivered straight to your e-reader the minute it goes live on December 7th.

  Books in this series

  For the best reading experience and to avoid spoilers this is the recommended order to read the Cultivated series in.

  #1 Charlie

  #2 Atlas

  #3 Lumi

  #4 Nathan

  #5 River

  #6 Maximum

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  Have you read all of my books yet?

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contemporary romance stories dive into the theme of opposites attract.

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  Expect some dark scenes and steamy sex.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  With a back ground in life coaching, Elin is easy to talk to and her fans rave about her unique writing style that has subtle elements of coaching mixed into fictional love stories with happy endings.

  Elin is curious by nature. She likes to explore and can tell you about riding elephants through the Asian jungle, watching the sunset in the Sahara Desert from the back of a camel, sailing down the Nile in Egypt, kayaking in Alaska, river rafting in Indonesia, and flying over Greenland in a helicopter.

  After traveling the world and living in different countries, Elin is currently residing outside Seattle in the US with her husband, daughters, and her black Labrador, Lucky, who follows her everywhere.

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