Davis nods. “That’s what I was thinking, too. Then I realized, even if they do find something, it could very well be from an animal.”
I uh-hmm in agreement, but my gut is telling me otherwise.
“But then he told me something I didn’t expect,” Davis says. I freeze. “He said whatever the car hit, it rubbed yellow paint on the bumper.”
The realization hits me. “Adaire’s banana bike.”
Blood or hair evidence would be nice, but they could match the yellow paint to the bike. Which I’m pretty sure Wyatt put in their tool shed out back.
This piece of news lights a hot flame in me. “I knew it,” I say through gritted teeth. “I knew that bitch killed her.”
“It’s enough to reopen Adaire’s case and interrogate Lorelei,” Davis points out. That and the fact he and I discovered Adaire wasn’t even hit in the location where the accident happened. Not to mention Stone’s car doesn’t have a scratch on it.
Davis and I quiet up when Deputy Rankin strolls past us into the hospital. What is that asshole doing here? I think to myself.
“There’s more,” I say after the deputy is inside. I tell Davis about walking the veil and witnessing the sins of the dead. Sure, it’s not evidence for a court, but it definitely confirms that what I saw in that Sin Eater Oil haze was true. Lorelei mowing Adaire down with her car like she did.
“Why?” Davis shrugs. “Why would she have it out for Adaire? What’d Adaire ever do to her?”
That’s a great question. And, before today—with my grandmother dying—I probably couldn’t have answered that.
“I can’t talk the death out of kin,” I say to Davis. “That’s why I couldn’t save my grandmother.” At Davis’s scrunched brow, I add, “What if it’s why I couldn’t save Ellis Rutledge? It’s never not worked before, and Bone told me about the rules with kin.”
Davis sways back slightly at this. His eyes bold with shock.
“Maybe Adaire figured something out that got her killed. I think she found evidence that could prove Ellis was kin. Did you bring the package?”
Davis nods. From his EMT bag, he pulls out the brown paper package Adaire hid for him before she died. The birthday gift he believes was meant for him to find months ago.
Both of us stare at the unopened package like it’s a ghost.
“Open it.” It’s a gentle request, really. In my heart of hearts, if I believed this was some private gift for Davis, I wouldn’t be asking him this. But I think Adaire hid it in his toolbox, knowing she was going to die and preserving the evidence for when she did, because she knew he’d believe me, knew he would help. And she couldn’t risk Grandmama finding it somewhere at our house.
Davis’s throat bobs with a single swallow, and he pulls the ribbon off the package, unfolding the brown paper and revealing a stack of papers. We each take one off the top and begin to read. They’re letters, written in the same handwriting as the one I saw Adaire with in that dream as she stood in Stone Rutledge’s office. Beautiful, soulful writings, each signed by or addressed to the same two people.
Love letters between my mother and Stone Rutledge. If I was a betting man, I’d guess Adaire found them at that farmhouse in that old button tin. There’s fifteen or so letters. We sit in silence, reading each one.
They had loved each other for a time. Both acknowledged they lived worlds apart; her a simple country girl, him with a family fortune off studying law. He seemed torn about which life to live, but leaving his family would mean cutting ties financially. My mother worried that would make him bitter in time.
“She was nine when they first kissed.” I smile at the thought and hand Davis the letter so he can read it. “A graveyard kiss.”
Remember our first kiss? I was nine. Your grandfather had died and Bone Layer took me with him to dig the grave. It rained that day, just like it should at a funeral. A slow drizzle that guaranteed you’d feel the sadness all the way down in your bones.
There was something mesmerizing about your green eyes. Cool crisp color that shivered me plum through.
At the close of the service, I watched your father nudge you. It was a tough nudge like he was saying enough was enough with your crying. It felt wrong the way he yanked on your arm before you were done saying your goodbyes. Like he was embarrassed by your grief.
I don’t know what made me do it.
I suppose love, though I didn’t know I loved you yet.
But something bit me, like a horsefly in the heat of summer, and I popped off Bone Layer’s truck bed, and plucked one of those perfect white long stem roses from a flower spread and ran it over to you.
Your mama looked at me like a leper with my muddy bare feet and scraggly jean overalls. Her smile, lemon-puckered and strained at the sight of me. There I was looking like a feral child and all y’all were dressed in your best black clothes. I was flooded with embarrassment, ready to hightail it out of there, tuck and run. Then you kissed me. Quick as lightning. Lips to lips. You stole my heart that day.
I stood there, feet sinking into the graveyard mud and watched as your shiny black Studebaker drove away. You looked back at me through the window. The white rose tight in your fist.
I knew right then I was going to love you for the rest of my life. But I think it’s time I let you go.
As the letter goes on, my mother tells him a long-distance relationship probably isn’t the best, since Stone was a few years older, already in college. So she breaks it off with him. I wonder if my mama was just trying to beat him to the punch, fearing he’d choose wealth over her in the end.
Months later, Mama found out she was pregnant, around the same time Stone got engaged to Rebecca. Happened quick—like he was trying to heal his broken heart.
“Stone told your mother Rebecca fit his family’s lifestyle better than her. Ouch,” Davis says. “He told her it was too late to go backward and he had already moved on.” He’s not wrong, but I can see—there’s hurt in his words, too.
Davis finishes reading the last letter. “Do you really think Stone is your father?”
I shrug. “It sure looks like it.”
“Okay.” Davis nods, digesting this. “You’re Stone’s ‘illegitimate’ child. Who cares? Why kill Adaire for figuring that out? Rich people always have skeletons in their closets. The Rutledges are so established and in deep with this town, would it even scathe their reputation?”
“I don’t think it’s about preserving their reputation,” I say with the shake of my head. “Those letters prove my mother and Stone had an intimate relationship. What if it’s more than the letters? What if Stone had wanted to take care of my mother, give her some money or something?”
“Or,” Davis began slowly, the thought forming as he spoke, “what if he left some money for you?”
“Me?”
“Look, it seems like your mom and Stone couldn’t be together, not in the way they wanted, right? He was engaged already, clearly this was something they kept hidden. And if he knew about you, but couldn’t be there for you in any concrete way, maybe he wanted to be there for you in the only way he could—with some money.”
