Chapter 8: Shadows

CHAPTER 8

Shadows

Iawoke with a start; it was still dark outside.

Briefly, I wondered if the regular 2:13 a.m. thump had jostled me from sleep, or perhaps Leo had finally returned home and forgotten that any noise he made in the kitchen echoed throughout the house like a cavern.

But then I heard what had pulled me from slumber. The scraping noises had returned, and they were coming from the corner of the room where a dark shadow loomed. Feeling my heart racing, I panicked, trying to figure out what to do.

I could run.

I could yell.

I could throw something at the shadow.

I ran through a list of items before realizing that something was missing.

The journal.

I knew I’d gone to sleep with it, but it was gone.

I patted around the bed, but there was nothing.

It could have fallen on the ground, but if a small scratching noise had woken me up, I assumed the thud of the journal on the hardwood would have as well.

The scratching continued, and I began to feel lightheaded as hyperventilation sunk in.

So I made the choice to run.

And I ran fast.

Skittering down the stairs, I almost ran straight into Leo, who was just as alarmed with my sudden appearance as I was to see him.

“Where were you!?” I cried; the terror of the shadow figure in the corner was still seeping into me.

“Whoa—slow down—what happened?”

“There was someone—something in my room.” I shuddered.

Leo’s face paled.

“It’s okay—I’ll check it out.” He darted into the kitchen and grabbed a large knife from the butcher block. “You want to stay down here?” he asked, trying to stay calm, despite the tremble to his voice.

“Alone!?” I yelped.

“Okay-okay.” He held my forearm, trying to reason with me. “Stay behind me—no sudden movements.”

Slowly, we made our way up the stairs, turning on every single light in our wake. If there really was a person up there, the house was old enough, we would hear them if they tried to go down the back stairs, and they would have to pass us if they tried to descend the front staircase.

“Hello? Anyone there?” Leo called out.

Nobody answered except my heavy breathing behind him.

Leo kicked the door to the pink room open and darted inside to switch on the light.

The room was empty.

My eyes snapped to the floor as I rounded the bed.

The journal was really gone.

I wondered if I’d imagined all of it. I opened my mouth to tell Leo what I’d discovered, but found that the words wouldn’t come out.

I needed to find that journal. He’d never believe me without it. It was all too outlandish, and terribly convenient.

“Where did you see them?” Leo asked.

I pointed to the far corner, next to the window. “It was a big shadow—it was making a scraping sound. I know I sound crazy.” I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

“Hey.” He grabbed my hand, squeezing it. “It’s okay. Whatever you saw, I believe you.”

I looked down at the floor, unable to meet his gaze. I felt like I was going insane.

“Let’s check the other rooms just to be safe,” he suggested.

One by one, we looked around the empty rooms and found nothing.

“I tried to call you,” I sniffled.

We walked back down the main stairs. Leo kept my hand firmly in his. The connection helped more than he knew.

“When?” His brow furrowed as he dug his phone out of his pocket, finally letting my hand drop as he tried to turn it on. “Shit—the battery died.” He looked up at me apologetically. “I’m so sorry, Pen.”

“It’s not your fault.” I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“I didn’t know.” He shook his head, plugging it into a charger on the kitchen island. “Are you okay?” He rubbed his hand up and down my arm.

I nodded, not trusting my voice to reply.

“I got home a little later than usual, and I found you asleep upstairs. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

I wanted to ask him if he remembered if I had been holding anything when he came up to check on me, but without the evidence, it was pointless. I shoved the urge aside.

“Did you eat dinner? I brought you sushi; it’s in the fridge.” He pointed behind him.

“I didn’t eat.” I shook my head.

“Go sit down in the living room, I’ll bring it over. And Pen?”

I turned back toward him.

“Breathe. You’re okay.” He smiled softly.

I let out a deep exhale, already feeling so much better that he was here.

I wasn’t alone.

I hadn’t been alone in that room either.

The shadow was gone…but so was the journal…

Something warm moved beneath me, bringing me to a somewhat conscious state. My sleepy gaze met Leo’s. I had fallen asleep on him, in the living room.

“What time is it?” I grumbled.

“Early enough—you want some coffee?” Leo’s husky morning voice was a rare treat.

I nodded, leaning back into the sofa, running my hands over my face.

“Sorry,” I said without thinking.

“Why?” Leo slowly stood from the couch—had he slept too?

“For falling asleep on you—how embarrassing.” I chuckled.

“So embarrassing.” He laughed with me, simultaneously dismissing my concerns.

“I need to change,” I thought aloud. I was still wearing jeans and a blazer from the day before.

“Coffee will be ready in five,” Leo replied.

In the gray morning light, the upstairs didn’t look as scary as the night before. It didn’t hurt that Leo had left all the lights on overnight. I turned them off one by one as I walked through the second floor, also searching for the lost journal. I really was beginning to wonder if I’d made up the entire thing.

I spent most of the day nervously searching the rest of the house with no luck, while Leo watched me from afar, unaware of what I was doing, and while he seemed to be concerned with my state of mind, he let me proceed without hindering my efforts.

I turned up absolutely nothing.

By the time a storm rolled in, late afternoon, the house had begun to get dark, and I no longer felt safe wandering around alone, so I made my way back to the living room, where Leo had been reading most of the day, when he wasn’t tending to a roast he’d been watching scrupulously in the slow cooker.

Sheets of rain and wind pelted the wall of windows in the living room, startling me more than once before Leo relented and decided to close the curtains. We had an arrangement that they would remain open during daylight, but since the storm had brought twilight early, I didn’t argue with him. But we could still see the flashes of lighting through the transom windows above the larger windows, which weren’t covered by curtains, as well as through some of the frosted glass windows around the front door.

Over a glass of wine, and Leo’s delicious dinner, he could sense that something was still amiss. “You sure you’re alright?”

“It’s the storm—my nerves are shot.” I gave him a half-truth. And right on cue, thunder rumbled across the sky, angrily agreeing with my assessment.

“I’m worried about you,” he admitted, “You can tell me what’s going on.”

Just as he’d told me that night in the library, when he’d confessed I was the only person he trusted…he could see right through me. Lying was a pointless game. But I wasn’t ready to spill everything. I still held out hope I could find the journal.

“I don’t think I can sleep in the pink room again.” I sighed in defeat.

Leo smiled softly. “You don’t have to go back up there—you can sleep in my room for as long as you want.”

I hadn’t expected him to put that on the table. “Really?” The thought of getting a good night’s sleep in his soft, warm, comfy bed that smelled like him made my heart soar.

“Sure—after what happened last night, I don’t blame you. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable here.” He took another bite of his food. “You want another glass?” Leo pointed to my empty stemware.

I nodded, smiling for the first time in a while. I wasn’t sure if it was the thought that I wouldn’t have to be alone, in the dark, in that awful room anymore, or simply the wine, but I felt the familiar warmth tingle through me.

I think maybe Leo was feeling the wine too, because when he came back over to the couch with two more glasses for each of us, he surprised me when he said, “It’s been really nice to have you around the last few weeks.”

“I’m very grateful you opened your home up to me when I had nowhere else to go.”

He nodded, signaling that he wasn’t fishing for compliments, but appreciated them nonetheless. “It’s been really hard since Dad died—honestly, since before then too...”

“You mentioned you were kind of running away from some stuff when you decided to come back to Willowbrooke.” I recalled our conversation the night he had made pasta for me. Would I finally find out the truth of what he’d left behind, and why?

“I spent most of my twenties networking and building up relationships and word of mouth to find new opportunities consulting for startups,” he began. “I wouldn’t have said it then, but it’s obvious now that I was trying to make a name for myself—trying to show my dad that I didn’t need him. Trying to prove him wrong.”

“How did you get into that in the first place?” I asked.

A flash of light and a huge clap of thunder temporarily prevented him from responding. The wind and rain were still wailing outside the house. I assumed being up on top of the cliff made conditions worse at Willowbrooke.

“I have a business degree and got an MBA right after. I worked at a handful of startups, trying to help with operations and finances, but I noticed a pattern that the make-or-break moment for each of them was whether or not they could scale their business. Whether the business idea was scalable, or whether management was the problem—scalability was always the core issue.” He took another bite of his dinner.

“That was awfully clever of you to see so early in your career and take advantage of it to build your own brand.”

“Maybe growing up around Dad and Uncle William finally rubbed off on me.” He chuckled. “But the more companies I consulted for, the more I became jaded by a lot of it. So many of these startups were run by rich kids—trust fund babies who were playing around with money like it meant nothing.” Leo paused.

“I was one of them once.” He leaned back into the couch. “I mean, I’d like to think I wasn’t a brat about it when I was younger, and I hate to admit that Dad pretending to disinherit me actually worked by teaching me the value of money, but it was more about how they didn’t see that the decisions they made affected people who couldn’t afford to just move onto the next project as easily. There were lives at stake, and they didn’t care. It got harder and harder to keep going. So I was ready to figure something else out when everything changed.”

Even though I had grown up in an upper-middle-class home, because of how my parents treated me, I’d always felt a drive to fend for myself. They made it clear early on, when they refused to support changing my major from architecture to interior design, that I was on my own. And as the office manager at the firm, although it was nepotism that got me the job, I barely scraped by, which they knew. But I refused to ask them for help.

I preferred to struggle instead of admit defeat. Not with them.

Leo was the same.

“And then there was Quinn…” Leo sighed heavily, then took a large pull of wine.

I waited quietly for him to continue. Seeing Leo this bare, this exposed, I knew I needed to let him speak in his own time.

“She worked at one of the startups where I was consulting. She was bright, gregarious, and we had so much in common. We were together for over two years when I proposed.”

I nearly spit out the sip of wine I’d taken, but managed to swallow it instead.

“When Margot quietly reached out to me after her divorce, she took quite a liking to Quinn. They became very close, and it felt like Quinn was the daughter she’d never had. I think Quinn really helped Margot process her divorce and was a good distraction while she was picking up the pieces.

“But after a while, I could tell something had changed. And when Margot told me about Dad being sick—Quinn pushed me to go home and reconcile with him, which was weird because she knew how much I’d gone through because of him.

“After being home for a while, the veil kind of lifted, and I started to see her in a different light. She barely called, visited maybe once or twice, and only asked if things had gotten better between us. And it dawned on me that the whole time, she had only been with me for money—for status.

“I think at some point, Margot told her I’d been disinherited, and that’s why she was so keen on me reconnecting with him. When I realized that, so many things started to make sense, little things that I had noticed and tried to ignore. And once I understood what I really was to her, there was no putting us back together.”

“That must have been devastating,” I commented delicately.

“I hadn’t felt so betrayed since Dad basically told me I was on my own.” Leo looked down at his wineglass while he swirled the remaining liquid. “Margot was destroyed when she found out I broke off the engagement.

“Quinn denied everything, but so much fell into place; I didn’t believe her. Like she was always bringing me to these awful black-tie events under the guise of networking, but she wasn’t trying to help me, she was trying to help herself. I saw her for exactly who she was, and everything she did was for her own benefit.

“Margot tried to interfere—tried to help mediate, but I was done. That trust was broken and was never going to be repaired. And what’s funny is that I knew it was the right thing because when I told her we were over, I felt so much lighter. I’d never felt more free in my life. Even Dad could see that a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

“But it wasn’t until I met you that I realized how lonely I’ve been the past couple years.” His voice was soft…yearning. “Or how nice it is to be with someone who actually cares about you with no strings attached…”

I looked up at Leo then, not realizing how close his face was to mine.

In the dim light, the shadows of insomnia gathered below his eyes were more pronounced. Leo didn’t just look physically tired, he looked mentally exhausted. Grieving his father had not been kind to him; I wished there was something I could do to comfort him through his loss.

Our eyes locked for a brief moment, hazel on blue, before I involuntarily closed the gap between us.

If I thought the warmth I had felt at his fleeting touches and attention were satiating, it had nothing on the sparks that flew the moment my lips met his.

Surprised by Leo’s immediate acceptance of my advances and hungry reciprocation, what started as a quick, intense, and passionate kiss turned languid, soft, and sweet. He tasted only of the wine we had imbibed, and smelled like the salty ocean air.

My senses were so completely overwhelmed. I felt lost in the moment, but never more glad to be so.

Leo and I clung to each other, desperate to get closer as the kiss deepened. His hands were firmly wrapped around me, one pressed against the base of my neck, while the other was at the small of my back. I snaked one of my arms around his torso, allowing my fingers to grip his shoulder muscles along his back; the other was pinned between us, my fingers splayed across the scruff at his jawline.

We separated briefly, both gasping for breath, before he leaned in again, powerless to stop himself, as the glass separating us from this taboo had been irrevocably shattered. I was both unable and unwilling to deny him.

His hands went to my waist, and I leaned forward, balancing precariously on one knee while I swung the other across him, allowing me to straddle him. I felt his fingers graze my stomach as he tugged at the hem of my shirt. I could feel how much he wanted me as I settled on top of him, unable to stop the rocking movement my hips made against him.

I wanted Leo with every fiber of my being, and with a couple of glasses of wine in my system, I was ready to throw all caution to the wind, jeopardizing everything I had worked so hard to achieve, just to have a taste of what life could be like with him.

I was prepared to surrender myself to the feelings that had been building for weeks, if not months, but had been suppressed so vehemently that they now crashed over me like a tidal wave, threatening to break me at any moment.

But just as quickly as everything began, it ended.

The room plunged into darkness as the lights in the house shuttered in the storm. Leo panted against my neck, trying to catch his breath. “The breaker is in the basement…”

With shaking legs, I extricated myself from his lap, leaning back on my heels. “I’m sorry…” I stuttered, unsure of why I felt the need to apologize, as I tried to both remember and forget what it had been like to have Leo’s mouth and body pressed against mine. “I should go to bed…”

I could feel Leo sigh before I heard it escape his lips.

Was he disappointed?

Frustrated?

Embarrassed?

Angry?

In the dark, he was next to impossible to read. I hated that I felt so compelled to dissect even the smallest reaction. Why was I so desperate to understand him?

Without another word, Leo got up from the couch and made his way toward the basement stairs.

I worried I had made a mistake, initiating that kiss, lighting that fire. Could it be put out now? I had everything to lose.

I paused a moment before confirming the decision to go to his room, and leave this future in the past. Another crack of thunder made my heart pound faster.

Storm or not, I couldn’t bear the thought of being rejected by Leo when he returned, so I’d deal with facing a different fear…alone.

The next morning, I felt like I had a mental hangover, trying to wrap my brain around why I had been stupid enough to freaking kiss Leo West.

What had I been thinking?

And the worst part was that I was going to have to face him again, sooner rather than later. What was I supposed to say? That I had been drunk? I mean, I had been tipsy, but I knew exactly what I had been doing. He’d know I wasn’t telling the truth if I lied and said I had been too drunk to remember.

But the worst part was the unknown. How was this going to affect us moving forward? Would he be mad? Feel taken advantage of? Embarrassed? Would he take the job from me?

Without realizing it, I’d missed our normal morning coffee as I spiraled, sitting in his bed, surrounded by him, but unable to move.

Eventually I managed to get myself dressed and peeked my head out the door. He wasn’t in the kitchen. I couldn’t hear him close by. So I chanced it, and quickly crossed through the living room toward the library, hoping he wasn’t lying in wait for me there.

Thankfully, the library was empty when I arrived.

But it didn’t stay that way for long.

“You’re avoiding me,” Leo accused, standing in the doorway.

The sound of his voice cutting through the quiet startled me, causing me to drop the book I’d been holding.

I spun around, expecting him to be angry. But he wasn’t mad—he looked hurt.

I said nothing, unable to feign ignorance or give some half-assed excuse.

“Or maybe you weren’t in the mood for coffee?” He sighed, slowly approaching me.

I nodded, agreeing with him.

“Liar.” He sulked.

I gulped. I didn’t know what to do to diffuse the situation. I didn’t even know what I wanted anymore.

That was another lie. I knew what I wanted. I wanted Leo. But it was too risky.

“We need to talk about last night,” he said calmly, trying to gauge my reaction.

“It can’t happen again,” I replied instinctively, unsure of the words as they passed my lips.

“Why?” Leo’s voice cracked, his brow furrowed. He continued to move toward me with slow, even steps.

“This job—it’s too important to me. You’re my boss—you sign my paychecks,” I managed.

“I’d never take this project from you.” He shook his head defensively. “Whatever happens between us—I wouldn’t do that to you.”

I watched him, mere steps away.

“But there is something between us—I know you feel it too.” His tone was pleading. He needed me to validate that he wasn’t alone in feeling the way he did.

I remained silent, unable to confirm or deny. I knew if I spoke, my voice would betray me. My thundering heart might have already tipped him off if he could hear it beating out of my chest like I could.

“If I wasn’t—if there wasn’t…would things be different?” Leo needed to know if the job was the only thing standing between us.

Was he falling for me, like I had already fallen for him?

I felt like he couldn’t let me go, but he didn’t know how to move forward. I understood that he didn’t want to hurt me.

I looked up at him to find he had closed the distance between us and was standing directly in front of me. My eyes pleaded with him.

Of course there was something between us, but I couldn’t admit it—not out loud. If I did, there’d be no going back.

But maybe I was already too far gone. Was I in denial?

“It’s different for women—you know how quickly gossip spreads in your circles. I’ll get a reputation for sleeping with clients,” I argued, though it was pointless. But there was a part of me that had concern over both the short- and long-term potential for my career if we took things too far and they didn’t work out, or even if they did…people would talk.

“But we haven’t even slept together yet,” Leo argued.

“Yet…?” The word hung between us like an albatross.

Unable to hold himself back anymore, Leo leaned toward me, wrapping his arm around my waist, stopping just far enough from my lips that I had to move forward to consent…which I did.

Pressed against the bookcase, I was helpless to deny him.

“Penny, I want you,” he whispered against my skin, running his lips over the nape of my neck, then my jaw, then finally returning to my lips.

I was lost in him.

“I’ll do anything,” he breathed against me.

In a brief moment of sanity, I gently pushed him away.

Leo stopped immediately; he studied my face. “Pen…”

But the words died on his lips, because the moment he said my name, I couldn’t help but pull him back to me. I was unable to do anything but give in to my desires.

His hands were everywhere. I needed every bit of him, and he was willing to give me whatever I wanted.

Breathless, we separated for a moment, panting against each other, our foreheads still touching.

“I’m not trying to fuck up your life, Pen, but I can’t stay away from you,” he professed. “I can work on getting you legal, contractual job security, so you don’t have to worry about keeping the project. I’ll do whatever you want. I just—I can’t lose you…” I felt his lips graze my cheek.

“I need to take things slow…” I tried to find some part of my sanity to help me communicate properly.

Leo nodded against me. “Can I be close to you—when we’re alone?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation.

I could feel Leo smiling against me at the speed of my response.

“But when other people are here…you need to be careful—we both do. How we are around each other—nobody can even get a whiff of anything going on between us,” I said more firmly. I didn’t like the idea of having to constantly be on guard when we weren’t alone, but it was a means to an end.

“I can do that…” Leo pulled back slightly, his palm cupping my cheek. “Any other terms?”

“I can’t think straight…” I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but the knowing smile it garnered from Leo was worth the admission.

He leaned down, kissing me gently one last time before releasing me. He sighed as he severed contact, taking a step back from me. “I should leave before I do something stupid to mess this up,” he joked, running his hand through his hair nervously.

“Wait—there’s something I need to talk to you about.” I didn’t want there to be any secrets between us. And in a matter of two days, this one had gnawed at me so profusely I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer.

Leo took another step back and gestured to the seating area beside us, inviting me to sit down.

Were his legs as shaky as mine?

I felt much more composed, sitting down, and at least a foot away from Leo.

The lust and tension between us was still palpable but dissipating as Leo seemed to read the urgency in my tone.

He leaned forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his legs. He was listening.

“I found something on Friday.” I hesitated, unsure of how to tell him exactly what had happened. I realized I’d just have to start from the beginning. “I was sorting through the library and I came across a journal.”

Leo raised a brow, intrigued.

“It belonged to your mom.” I swallowed, waiting for the anger to come.

“Really?” He sounded surprised.

“I tried to call you,” I said defensively.

“It’s okay.” Leo reached out, placing his palm on my forearm. “Where is it?”

I sighed. “I had it with me in my room when I fell asleep that night, but when I woke up, it was gone. I’ve looked everywhere, Leo. I’m so sorry.” I could feel my chest tightening with anxiety.

Leo gently squeezed my arm. “Pen, it’s okay. I’m not mad. But what do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. When I woke up, that shadow was in my room—”

Leo’s face paled. “There really was someone in your room that night…”

“I thought it was just my imagination—or a trick of the light, but it felt like something was in that corner—maybe it was a person…” I tried to run through what I remembered of that night, but it was all such a jumble of nerves I could only remember the fear I’d felt when I’d woken up and the relief when I’d found Leo downstairs.

We both took a beat.

“Do you think it was the same person who got into the solarium?” I asked.

“Maybe—I don’t like the idea of someone knowing their way around this house better than me,” Leo said anxiously.

Another pregnant pause enveloped the room.

“Did you read it?” Leo asked hesitantly.

I nodded slowly.

Leo sighed in relief. “Thank god—what did it say?”

He wasn’t upset. I hadn’t expected that. I’d spent two days convincing myself that he’d be furious with me. But he’d been understanding, open, and kind. I needed to work on giving him the benefit of the doubt more often.

I hadn’t realized how much trauma I was carrying from my relationship with Adam—he always blamed me for everything. I just defaulted to protecting myself.

Leo wasn’t like him—in fact he couldn’t be more different.

“You okay?” Leo’s hand slid down my arm to take my own.

“Yeah, just a little overwhelmed with everything,” I said honestly.

Leo smiled gently.

“It started a few months before her death,” I began. “It was normal at first. I wondered if maybe she was writing it for you, or to remember how you were when you were younger.”

The idea perplexed Leo. So much of his mother must be an enigma to him. Everything he knew about her was through other people—their ideas of her, their perspectives. Leo hadn’t been old enough to be able to make his own impressions of her.

“She loved you. She loved your father—she wished he was around more often to spend time with you, but the first half of the journal was mostly talking about your milestones, and what she was up to around the house, who she had lunch with in town, just everyday kind of stuff.”

Leo sat enthralled as I told him more about his mother’s state of mind, her regular routines, how she’d spent her time. I felt so guilty he couldn’t read it himself.

“She often referred to someone with a symbol, instead of their name. I couldn’t figure out who it was; she used gender-neutral pronouns.”

“A symbol?” Leo’s brow furrowed.

I got up from my chair and grabbed a notepad and pen and drew the symbol that looked like the narrow “X’s” in a row, the tops and bottoms of the letters connected: XXXX.

Leo stared at the symbol. “They were skinny like that,” I pointed out.

“I have no idea.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“Whoever they were, they were close to Christine—she told them everything. Do you know who your mom was friends with back then? Would William know? Maybe Val?”

“Maybe…” I could see the gears turning in Leo’s head, trying to think of who XXXX could be, or who would know Christine’s mystery friend. “Why use a code?”

“I thought the same thing. I wondered if maybe she was worried about someone finding the journal.”

“So a friend she wouldn’t want my father to know about?” Leo suggested.

“Or maybe the friend themselves, because halfway through writing in the journal, their relationship changed. Christine found out something X had done. Do you know anyone named Thomas and Mary?” I asked.

“My grandparents—paternal,” Leo replied.

My eyes widened.

“Whoever X was, they did something to Thomas and Mary. Christine said they didn’t deserve what X had done. She said if your dad found out, he’d take revenge on X, and she was terrified he’d get arrested and be taken from both you and her.”

Leo remained perplexed. “Okay, so not Dad for sure then—who else was she close to?”

“Leo, nothing about this journal read as suicidal—your mom said in her last entry that she’d started to hide the journal around the house because she was scared X figured out that she knew what had happened. I think that’s how it ended up in the library.”

“You think she was killed.” He choked.

I nodded slowly.

“Why was everyone so sure she wanted to kill herself, then?” Leo’s voice trembled. Had everyone lied to him his entire life, or had none of them known Christine well enough to realize that she would never abandon him?

“Maybe they were trying to find logic to explain an illogical death,” I tried, knowing that even if that was the truth, it didn’t make up for everything Leo had gone through. Both of his parents had likely been murdered.

Then Leo spoke aloud what I had been silently wondering. “Do you think it was the same person…?”

“I don’t know…” I shook my head. “I just know that if that journal really was Christine’s, she loved you, and she never would have left you. There was nothing in that diary that made me think she would have ever considered taking her life,” I said honestly.

I knew in the back of my mind, there was still a small chance that something had changed between her last entry and her last moments on Earth. Maybe I was giving him hope that would later be taken from him, but I truly believed that she hadn’t left this world willingly.

“Do you think you could get access to the police report for her death? Maybe it has more information that will help you figure out what happened, now that you know more,” I suggested.

“Maybe Margot or William knows someone at the station…”

“I don’t know if you should involve them—we still haven’t ruled them out completely,” I said hesitantly.

“Right…” Leo leaned back in his chair. His world was falling apart around him, and I was the only thing helping keep him upright.

“I’m so sorry I lost the journal—if we had it, we could go to the police, maybe you’d see something I missed.”

“Penny.” Leo again reached for my hand. “You didn’t lose the journal—someone snuck into your room while you were sleeping and took it from you. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t overwhelmed with all of this new information. It’s a lot—it was already a lot when I thought it was just my dad who had been murdered, but now…” He paused to take a deep breath.

“This isn’t your fault either. You couldn’t have stopped any of this from happening.”

“Not Mom, but if I’d kept a closer watch on Dad—”

“Then whoever wanted him dead would have found another way. How could you protect him from something neither of you saw coming?”

“I know you’re right.” He sighed. “Val and Carl weren’t much help when I asked them about what happened to Dad, but I know they both liked my mom. Maybe they’ll remember something about her that can help.”

“Good,” I agreed.

Leo’s face suddenly shot to attention. He reached into his pocket. Someone was calling him. “It’s the PI,” he told me before answering the call.

“Hey Greg,” Leo greeted him.

A muffled response from the PI followed.

“You found her?” Leo’s face lit up.

I leaned forward in anticipation.

But then Leo’s face dropped. “What?” He stuttered. “When?”

I watched his expression as he grew confused, then determined. “Keep me posted. Thanks,” he said curtly before ending the call.

“What happened?” I asked timidly.

“Nurse Julie was killed last night in a burglary gone wrong.” Leo scowled.

I felt my heart drop. “That’s awfully weird timing…”

“My thoughts exactly.”