Stirred (52 page)

Sean grinned. “Looks like you’ll be solving—what—five murder cases? You can thank us with a wedding gift, Detective.”

Reed pointed a finger at him. “Don’t be so cocky. He may have admitted it, but your boy never named names. We’ll still need to tie him to each case, each victim.”

Sean’s jaw dropped a little.

With a roll of his eyes, Reed pushed away from the car. “Don’t look so worried. You and the misses are free to go…for now. Just be sure you drop by the precinct tomorrow. Until then…enjoy your honeymoon.” He held out his hand out.

Sean hesitated for a second, but accepted Reed’s peace offering and shook his hand. Reed made the same overture to me, which I accepted with a confident smile and he returned with a judicious wink. After, he turned and walked away. Sean and I watched him as he spoke briefly to a few of the uniformed officers milling around before hopping into his unmarked car and driving off.

“You folks ready?” one of the EMTs asked, and we both nodded.

Six long hours later—and after a crush of phone calls from frantic family members—a taxi picked Sean and me up at the hospital in Issaquah and dropped us back off at The Salish Lodge. We’d agreed to return to pick up our belongings, but it was more an effort to avoid arguing about where we’d go from there. I wanted to collect my son from his girlfriend’s house and return to Medina, the only home Ian and I had ever known. But Sean wanted to take me back to his downtown Bellevue condo. He said it was more than big enough for all three of us, and there were no bad memories or ghosts of an unfaithful husband and disloyal best friend lurking around every corner.

It seemed we were at a stalemate, our first as a married couple, and while I respected Sean’s position, I felt it necessary to be a parent before a spouse, something I’d been selfishly remiss of late. So, with heavy hearts and promises to call before going to bed, we left our treasured lodge and took separate cabs back to our respective homes. I had my driver pick Ian up on the way. But although he was relieved to see me and hugged me like he thought he might never again, there was a great sadness lurking within him, and I felt positive I’d made the right choice to come home alone, without Sean.

I missed Sean every moment, but that ache, as bad as it hurt, was a welcome indication I didn’t regret our hasty marriage and still longed to be with him. Knowing I had that to look forward to, I set about healing any damage done to Ian during this sordid affair.

With the media finally gone, Ian and I holed up at home alone, spending hours on end just talking, mostly about his father and Ivy, but also little everyday things, like how he thought he’d done on his first attempt on the SAT, and which colleges he’d decided to apply to. That way, things never got too heavy for too long. Until I brought up my marriage to Sean.

At first, Ian just kept saying, “Whatever makes you happy, Mom.”

It was then I discovered my son had not been completely honest with me about accepting someone near his own age as a stepfather. He’d only said that because he thought that was what I’d wanted to hear. And he was right. At that moment, it was, and I was sad I’d missed the obvious cues he wasn’t truly happy with my decision. Even after nearly eighteen years, I still had a lot to learn about being a mother.

At the very least, I’d raised a son who was willing to try to work things out. Those first three weeks weren’t easy though. But, in the end, he came to terms with how unhappy I’d been with Declan, what this second chance meant to me, and that Sean had no desire to replace his father. Sean proved this himself when we had our first meeting together, just the three of us at the dinner table. To say it felt strained was an understatement. But Sean was persistent and companionable, focusing solely on Ian and finding things they had in common, not difficult for two young adult men. Especially considering their passion for video games and Major League Baseball.

By the end of the fourth week, Ian seemed more relaxed as the two of them compiled virtual baseball teams and went to battle on Ian’s PlayStation, all while bantering back and forth on player statistics and whatnot. They had quieter moments, too, when Ian showed Sean what he’d learned to play on his acoustic guitar, and Sean shared his fondest memories of Trinitee. That proved to be what finally brought them together, as friends at the very least, and as family during the most profound moments.

DNA testing and some investigative digging verified Trinitee was indeed my daughter, Ivy. Afterwards, Sean was careful what he shared about Ian’s sister, and for that, I was eternally grateful. But because Sean was the only one of us who knew anything at all about her, he also helped us understand her pain and how she’d been manipulated into using that. Having mourned her death for so long, finding and losing her in a span of minutes was difficult for me, to say the least, and I’d be haunted by that for the rest of my life. But burying Ivy in the place I’d always grieved for her helped me come to terms with her life, if not her death. I could only pray that would come someday, as well.

As it was, without Sean’s guidance, Ian and I might never have been able to heal following Ivy’s death. With it, however, we grew closer to becoming a family in nearly every way possible. It would take time to fully realize that, of course, but I was sure we would.

In the meantime, we had a lot to learn about each other and the people who’d brought us all together.

“So, did you finish reading it?” Sean asked.

I looked up from my seat on the family room sofa and locked a sorrowful gaze with his solemn one. With a pensive nod, I confirmed I had.

“Yes,” I said, closing the well-worn journal in my lap and placing it on the coffee table. I brushed a stray tear away with a sigh. “I’m glad we have more answers, but…it doesn’t make it any easier to accept.”

Sean lifted my feet and slipped under them, sitting next to me while caressing my skin in comforting strokes. “No, you’re right, it doesn’t, but at least we know I wasn’t crazy.”

“I never thought you were. I knew there had to be a reasonable explanation for those blackouts. She used some powerful drugs on you, both times. It’s no wonder you couldn’t remember.”

I pulled a folded manila envelope from the back of Trinitee Marsh’s journal and slipped out the toxicology reports Detective Reed had also forwarded to us, one for Declan, another for Sean, and a third from Trinitee’s apartment. We both knew about Declan, but the other results were startling.

“Ambien, Rohypnol, Propofol, plus Flumazenil to counteract them,” I read aloud from his bloodwork report.

“That last explains the cotton-mouth,” Sean said. “They said it was likely administered by a lozenge under my tongue.”

“Amazing she knew about those drugs, and the ones she used on Declan.”

“I’m not all that surprised, to be honest. Trin had textbooks on general medicine and pharmacology, and she was smart, Eden, and highly motivated. Factor in their money, and it’s no wonder she and Frankie achieved what they did. I should’ve recognized that something was off. God knows there were clues. I just overlooked them.”

“Come on, Sean, you couldn’t have known you even went to her place that first time. She roofied you. That was the point, so you wouldn’t remember.”

“Yeah, but I should’ve picked up on things. She wasn’t surprised to see me all covered in mud, and she let it slip that she’d already cleaned up once earlier. I should’ve put that together.”

“You were confused from the drugs!” I insisted.

He shrugged it off. “Well, the second time I knew she’d probably done something. I just couldn’t figure out what.”

“Well, who’d ever suspect their best friend of coating their glass with sedatives and muscle relaxants? Be real, Sean. There’s no way you could’ve known what was happening to you and why. And look at this,” I said as I picked the journal back up and fanned through hundreds of handwritten pages. “She’d obviously been planning this for a very long time. I’m just sorry she used you to get to me.
I
was her target, but
you
were her pawn.”

Sean took the journal and thumbed through the first few pages. “Yeah, but for how long? There’s nothing in here about Hayley or Robbie. I’m no closer to figuring out what her dying apology meant. I can only imagine she had a hand in it somehow, but why? To make me vulnerable? So I’d trust her and welcome her friendship?” He threw the book down and scraped both hands down his face.

“She had to start grooming you at some point, I guess. I just wonder if there were any others before you, guys who didn’t work out, you know? I’d hate to think she had any other victims.”

“
She
was a victim, too, Eden. Remember that. Of Frankie, but especially Declan. We were
all
victims of Declan Ross.”

I nodded and dropped my gaze in shame, because all this started with Declan and whatever obsession he’d had with me back when I was with Jacob. And so many had been affected by his actions—Ian and Ivy, first and foremost, but also Ivy’s adoptive parents, all the way down to Aurelia. Even some of my students were affected when their parents pulled them out of school after hearing my name and seeing my face splashed across the TV and Internet.

Sean pulled me in for a hug, his hand at the back of my head as he whispered into my ear.

“We can’t change what’s happened, Eden. We can only move forward. And with Ian back on track now, I think it’s time we focused on us, on getting our marriage back on track.”

He was right. While Sean visited every day, he was still living at his condo. We’d put all our energy into Ian, then the investigation. Now we needed to face how everything had affected our relationship and determine if we could muscle through it.

“Let’s go back to the lodge,” Sean suggested. “To where
we
started. We need to face our demons head-on. We need to come to terms with everything, so we can focus on
our
future,
our
forever.”

And so we did. On President’s Day, we returned to our suite overlooking the falls, where the frigid weather turned the mist-covered cliff face white with ice. But while we both once considered it someplace akin to hallowed ground, now it was tarnished by the ugliness of all that had happened here. Whereas Sean prayed he could continue to look at the falls as a place of hope and love and the beginning of our future, I would associate it as where I’d lost Ivy forever—who, before any of this, had occupied a space of reverence and innocence within my heart. It was impossible to accept that she’d lived such a difficult existence, and that I, as her mother, hadn’t somehow sensed that. I had to face that in order to move on and let Sean completely back into my life. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure I was capable.

“I should have known. I should have
felt
it. Felt
her
,” I confessed to Sean as we sat on the edge of the bed and stared out the window at the falls. “I realized early in my marriage that Declan was far from the knight-in-shining-armor he’d wanted me to believe, so why didn’t I ever question his version of events that night I went into labor? If I had, maybe I could’ve hired someone to find Ivy.”