Melody took her tea and started to turn. “Have a good day now.”
“You, too.”
Raelyn saw the next clerk who’d take over at the counter. Her shift was over.
Good. She needed to get out of here and get her mind off Mom. Adam texted her, saying he’d meet her at a local bar near where she worked.
Perfect.
She didn’t drink like her dad had, and never would. He’d set a fine example of what not to become. Try as she might not to think about that last year living with him, the memories filled her anyway. Whenever he got drunk, which was every night, he got angry. At first, she’d tolerated it. Without her mom, she’d been so lost and sad. The awfulness had consumed her. She’d come home from school and go to her room and cry every night. Her grades had slumped. Luckily, summer had arrived and she’d had a few months to get past the worst of it.
Dealing with her dad hadn’t helped. He yelled at her all the time and made her basically take care of him, cooking and cleaning. She’d hated him for that. She lost her friends because he demanded she be home. Then one night, he’d gotten so mad that she hadn’t made dinner yet, she’d lashed out at him and yelled back. He’d smacked her like he had her mom so many times.
She’d packed a bag and left. She went to one of her friends’ house. But she couldn’t live there for a year so she’d had to go back home.
Her dad had apologized but the violence had returned. She’d barely graduated from high school but made sure she had scholarships for college. Between that and two jobs, she’d paid her own way through school.
She hadn’t really had a chance to grieve the loss of her mother. In college she had. But the one thing she never lost was that deep, aching resentment over her mother taking the coward’s way and killing herself. Hadn’t she thought of her daughter? Why couldn’t she have just taken her and left her dad? That had gnawed at her ever since the day her dad emotionlessly told her of the suicide.
For the longest time, she couldn’t believe it. She refused. Her mother would never leave her that way. But she had. The coroner had sealed the truth of it when he’d stopped by to tell them. While Raelyn had broken down in tears, her dad had gone to a bottle of whiskey.
Leaving home for college had been one of the happiest days of her life. Now she never wanted to see him again.
Aunt Kendra? She didn’t know if she could see her, get to know her. It was just too painful. Now a woman she only knew through the news had told her Aunt Kendra had hired a detective to look into her mother’s death.
Raelyn did not welcome the ray of hope trying to butt its way past her control. If her mother had been murdered, that would mean she hadn’t intended to abandon her. But what did that really change? Nothing. She’d still lost her mom and that still made her really, really angry.
“What, exactly, did Kaelyn say to you when she mentioned another lover?” Roman asked Kendra as they headed up to his room at Chesterville’s boutique hotel. She still couldn’t explain to herself why she’d agreed to come here. Maybe distraction over connecting the prosecutor’s son to her sister’s mysterious second lover. Yes, that’d do it. She didn’t want to be curious about what made Roman avoid his parents. He had such an idyllic childhood from all he’d told her. Was he aloof? Kendra had trouble with secretive people. If anyone had reason to keep secrets, that usually meant they were not very genuine.
The plush elevator stopped at the fourth floor and she walked down the hall with him. “She asked me to meet her here, in Chesterville, on one of her many trips to see her adoptive mother.” This town seemed more home to Kaelyn than with her husband, which was probably why Raelyn moved here after her death. Her sister had a much different experience with her family than Kendra had. “I thought it was odd she wanted to meet here. She explained she’d have more time to spend with me in Chesterville. We spent five days here. First we met for lunch, then went shopping, and then I met her mother and father. I stayed there the last three nights and it was like being kids again.” She smiled as she felt the same joy she had felt back then.
As Roman opened his hotel room, Kendra recalled playing dolls with her twin. Kaelyn had always been the doer, the one to start things going and to lead the way. Kendra had been more leisurely. She took more time before delving into projects. Not Kaelyn. She dived right in.
“You do have a strong connection to her,” Roman said as Kendra passed him on her way into his room. “Even separated all those years, you were still close.”
Kendra took in the gray-and-blue decorated living room and small kitchenette. “Yes.” She wouldn’t try to explain what it was like between her and Kaelyn. Being born at the same time as a sister, growing up with them—even if for a short time offered the ingredients for closeness, but there was more of a connection, an inexplicable one. Had she and Kaelyn bonded in the womb? Had they bonded as babies and toddlers? Who knew?
She put her purse on one of the two chairs in the kitchenette. Through a door she could see a king bed and a bathroom. She faced Roman, who’d gone into the kitchenette to find some glasses.
“When I first met her,” Kendra went on, “one of the things I noticed was her somberness. Kaelyn was not a quiet girl. Everyone grows up but it just seemed a light had been doused in her. She seemed...sad.” She hated that memory and threw it off her conscience, watching Roman pour two glasses of red wine. “The last couple of days, she started to perk up and I started to see the old Kaelyn. She laughed loud and talked excitedly about the two of us living in the same town, having families and always being together.”
He left the kitchenette and handed her a glass. “Did you ask her about her life in Toledo?”
She met his glowing wolf eyes, momentarily lulled by the ruggedness of his facial features. “Yes. I asked about her husband. What he did. How they met. She answered almost mechanically. She smiled but her eyes didn’t sparkle. Then she made a comment that he was a little insecure and he had to approve her friends at home. She said she came to Chesterville a lot because she could be herself here.”
“That must have raised some red flags for you.”
She nodded, not liking that memory, either. Turning, she walked to the window with a view of a strip mall. There was a nice restaurant there and people had gathered on a latticed patio full of trees and flowers. Early summer in West Virginia. The humidity was most bearable at night. She sipped some wine, hearing Roman sit on the gray sofa. She liked how he didn’t invade her space.
“I finally came right out and said to her, You aren’t happy with your husband, are you?” Kendra faced Roman, not feeling like sitting. “I watched her close her eyes, and then open them with such anguish and despair. She wasn’t happy. That’s when she told me about Jasper. The transformation in her was amazing. She said that even though she didn’t think he was the right man for her, he gave her an idea of the kind of man who was. She loved him for that, for giving her that insight. She told him she wanted to leave her husband. When I asked her why she hadn’t already, she wouldn’t answer. She kept changing the subject.”
“When did she tell you about Bear?” Roman asked, putting his glass of wine onto the coffee table.
Although all of the furniture in the hotel room were probably constructed of inexpensive materials, they made the room look expensive with artful, coordinated colors and textures. Kendra had always been the artsy one compared to Kaelyn.
“Shortly before she died, when I pressed her once more about her husband. I suspected he might be mistreating her. After telling me not to worry, that she planned to move back to Chesterville and I should plan to do the same,