Page 9 of Strict Confidence (Rochester Trilogy 2)
Feather-light blonde eyebrows rise. “We’ll ask who?”
“The innkeeper.”
“I thought we were going home.”
“No,” I say gently. “Remember we talked about this? Home is going to need work. Construction work. It will take a long time. In the meantime, we’re going to stay at the inn.”
Her face turns red. I’ve seen this color before. Exactly one time before.
We were at the wake for her parents. She had made it through the funeral with grave obedience. Stand here. Walk there. Say goodbye. All the times when I would have expected her to rage, she held her composure. It was only at the end, when families gathered at the Coach House, when they offered empty words of consolation and casseroles, that she lost it.
“Get out,” she had screamed, her face red and splotchy, tears leaking down her cheeks. No one could console her. No one could reprimand her. In the end they left, one by one, darting glances of worry between me and her. In the hollow house, once everyone had gone, she beat her fists against me and sobbed into my chest for hours. Until she fell asleep in my arms.
She looks the same way now. Mutinous. Angry.
Consumed by grief.
“I want Kitten.”
“She’s at the vet, remember? We’ll pick her up soon.”
“I want mac and cheese. And I want to go home.”
Despite my general ineptitude as a guardian, I’ve tried. I’ve read books and listened to podcasts. Don’t raise your voice, they say. Lower your voice, and the child will mimic you. “We can’t go home,” I say, my words quiet. “There’s yellow tape everywhere. It’s a crime scene.”
This, despite the books and the podcasts, is the wrong thing to say. I know it when her eyes turn wide. I see the whites around her blue pupils. Her little nostrils flare. “No,” she says. “No. No. I’m not going anywhere else. I’m going home.”
We’re seconds away from the edge. I can see the waterfall—the long drop and the sharp rocks at the bottom, but I don’t have a fucking paddle.
Jane turns back in her seat, her dark hair falling like silk over her shoulder. “Paige,” she says. That’s all. Paige. There’s a wealth of emotion in that one word. Sorrow and sympathy.
Paige’s lower lip trembles. “I hate this.”
“Yes,” Jane says.
“I don’t want to stay at a hotel. I want to go home.”
“You want to go home,” Jane says. “Where it’s safe. Because you’re afraid.”
“You don’t understand,” Paige says, her voice wavering.
“Then tell me,” Jane says, coaxing. “Why do you want to go home?”
“If I’m not there, my mommy won’t know where to find me.”
The whispered words make my throat tighten. Christ. As if the child didn’t have enough to worry about with a goddamn fire destroying her home and belongings. She also thinks her mother’s coming back? I’d fight a goddamn army for her. I’d dive under an eighteen-wheeler if it would keep her safe, but I can’t protect her from false hope.
“Your mother always knows where you are,” Jane says, reaching back. After a short pause, Paige holds her hand. They stay like that, linked. “She loves you, wherever she is. Wherever you are. Nothing can stop that. Not a fire, not the ocean, nothing.”
A sniffle. A sob. And then Paige does break.
She doesn’t scream at everyone to leave her house. Instead she cries quiet tears, her small hand clenched around Jane’s so hard her knuckles turn white, as if Jane is the only steady thing in a stormy sea. It’s an awkward position, Jane turned around in the passenger seat, but she doesn’t try to right herself. Instead she rests her forehead against the leather seat, a tear sliding down her cheek. This is a bond they share, both of them orphaned. It doesn’t matter that I love Paige like my own daughter. Or that I’ve fallen for Jane. This is something outside my experience. They’re both grieving right now. Both finding hope in that tether.
They stay that way the entire ride to the inn, Paige quietly drowning, Jane keeping her afloat. I can only watch from the outside, useless, unable to protect either one of them. I wasn’t lying when I told Jane it wasn’t her. It’s me. My love is dangerous. It’s dangerous to Jane. It’s dangerous to Paige. I should keep my distance from Paige for her own sake.
This feels like more than a moment. It feels like a portend.
Like the fire was only the beginning.
Someone may have set the fire in that house. The fire chief suspects as much. I have no idea who lit a match, but I know one thing: There were no bodies found in the charred remains.
Whoever set the fire is still out there.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jane Mendoza
From the outside, the Lighthouse Inn looks like a large cottage. White columns hold up a wraparound balcony. Thick ivy with purple flowers climbs up the side. A picket fence guards the grassy path down to the beach. Once you get up close, once you get inside, it feels less like a cottage. There are no embroidered pillows or roughened wood surfaces. Dark wood planks on the floor gleam. Waterford crystal glasses sit beside a pitcher of cucumber water. The owner, a slender woman named Marjorie, checks us in personally. She comes around the marble countertop to shake Beau’s hand.
