The Ghost Files 2 (The Ghost Files - Book 2) (12 page)

“I’m sorry.”

And I know he is, that’s why this is so hard. He’s truly sorry. I can see it shining out of those liquid brown eyes.

“Please, Mattie, I can’t lose you.”

I didn’t want to lose him either, but I didn’t see how we could go from here. He’d broken me just a little and I needed to heal. I couldn’t have him around if I had a shot of that.

“I want you to leave, Dan,” I force the words out. “Just leave me alone, please.”

“Squirt…”

“No, Dan, I mean it. I want you to leave.”

“No. I need you to forgive me, to talk to me.”

“I can’t forgive you, at least not yet. Maybe one day, but not right now. It hurts too much.”

“Shh, Squirt, don’t cry, please.” He yanks me to him and I bury my face in his shirt, soaking it. I missed him so much.

“I can’t help it,” I whisper. “You were the one person I thought would never throw me away. I believed you when you said you were in it for the long haul. You made me believe you, Dan. No one’s ever got past my defenses, but I let you in and you broke me.”

“God, Mattie, shh,” he soothes. “I’m not throwing you away, can’t you see that? I just fell in love with someone. I couldn’t help that. You and I, we’re all messed up…”

I push him away and go back to staring out the window. He’s right about us being messed up. We are, but hearing him say it makes the pain even worse. I’m just a screwed up mess that no one can ever love, not really. Why did I ever let myself hope I could find a little happiness? Pointless.

“What did you find out from your PI?” I ask, changing the subject. I won’t talk about this anymore. “Why did he want you to come down?”

Dan stands there for the longest time. I have no idea what’s going through his mind, but I can’t care about that right now. I have to have a little self-preservation. He’s caused me too much pain as it is.

“He wanted to show me something,” he says at last. “While he was looking through your mom’s past he found something out about my mom.”

“Your mom or your birth mom?” I ask. Dan had never really wanted to look for his real parents, content in the fact his adopted family loved him as much as any biological parents could.

“Both,” he whispers, almost too soft for me to hear. The agony in his voice has me turning to face him. That haunted look has come back into eyes. He looks like a little boy whose puppy had just died in front of him.

“Dan?”

“My mother didn’t give me up for adoption,” he tells me. “She died.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I ask. At least he wasn’t abandoned.

He shakes his head and he takes a step, but he stumbles just a little. I reach out and grab him, leading him over to the settee. It’s not often something knocks Officer Dan off his game.

“Mom told me when I was little that she’d gone through hell and back to find me. I always assumed she just meant that my biological mother had issues giving me away. I never thought…” he trailed off before taking a deep breath. “Phil knows some pretty seedy people and in trying to track your mother, my mother’s name came up. He…he found out a lot of stuff.”

I had a feeling this was so not gonna be good.

“We never knew Mom had a sister until she died. I was about nine years old so I remember the day she got a phone call and burst into tears. She cried for weeks. Dad knew she had a sister, but they’d never met. Mom said all the pictures of the two of them were destroyed in a fire and since they’d grown up, they didn’t really spend any time together. They’d had a falling out and she hadn’t spoken to her sister in years.”

This is hard for him. He’s practically forcing each word out of his mouth. I can feel his pain just as I felt the pain from the ghosts I do my best to ignore. He’s hurting right now and he’s hurting a lot. My first instinct is to hold him, to try and help him, but I resist. I let my own self-preservation instincts kick in. I can’t let him in any more than he already is.

“Phil discovered a check my mom had written to a Claire Hathaway.” Dan looks me straight in the eye as he drops his little bomb.

“What?” I whisper. His mom knew mine? Had given her money…my eyes widen. No, it can’t be…no.

“Claire Hathaway, born Amanda Sterling, was my mother’s sister.” Dan jumps up and walks over to the window. “She helped your mom take you, gave her the money to start over.”

That’s why his mom freaked that first day she met me and why she’s gone out of her way since then to avoid anything to do with me. She knew who I was. Did she blame me for her sister’s death?

“I don’t know what to say,” I say softly.

“It gets worse.” His voice is flat, dull. He turns away, staring at nothing.

Worse, how much worse can it get?

“Phil started to look into my mom’s past to try and figure out where they took you from. He found out my mom…she…she…”

“Dan?” What is so awful he can’t say it?

“She murdered my birth mother,” he whispers brokenly. “My mom, who has taken care of me since I was born, murdered my birth mother and stole me.”

Oh God, it did get worse. I don’t even have words. Instead I wrap my arms around him, nestling my face into the warmth of his back. It’s the only thing I know to do.

“She killed her, Mattie. Held her hostage until I was born, then killed her and put her in a car and forced it off the cliff. The car caught fire and the damage was so bad, the police only found shards of bone. They didn’t even blink when there wasn’t a baby. The fire burned so hot, they assumed any traces had just burned to ashes.”

“I’m so sorry,” I tell him. “I…what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, Mattie…she’s my mom…” He shakes his head. “I know what I
should
do, but she’s
my mom
.”

“Are you sure about this?” I ask. “Maybe he made a mistake…”

”No, Mattie, he didn’t make a mistake. Phil talked to people that helped her.”

“But why?” I ask. “Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know. What do I do, Mattie?”

I have no idea. “Did Phil tell you anything about your birth mother?” I need to distract him from thinking about his mom. It’s tearing him up inside. Later, I’ll let myself react to the fact his mom helped steal me from my real family, but right now, he needs me. Even if I can’t forgive him, he needs me and I won’t just turn away from that. Not now.

“Yeah, he told me her name. It was Amelia Malone.”

“The hell you say!”

We both turn to see Caleb and Eli staring at us, shocked, angry, and confused.

Oh, Lord, this is not going to be good.

Chapter Fourteen

Looking from Dan to Caleb, it is so obvious they’re brothers. I’d been comparing them all day, convincing myself I had been seeing Dan only because I missed him so much. There is no denying the truth, though. Dan has just found his family.

Not that everyone appears happy about that fact. Dan has his arms crossed, his cop face firmly in place. Eli looks like he wants to hit someone and Caleb just stares. I’m not sure what Caleb is thinking. He has a pretty decent cop face himself.

Mr. Malone had a completely different reaction when Caleb told him about Dan’s revelation. He can’t seem to stop staring at Dan. I can tell he wants to hug him, but he’s restraining himself. Dan isn’t exactly being very talkative, either. He’s refusing to answer questions and I know why. He doesn’t want anything to happen to his mom. Dan shut down once Eli said they needed to call the police and start an investigation.

It has to be very hard for Mr. Malone. He’s just been informed his wife was murdered, his son stolen. The need for justice, for revenge, has to be burning inside, but he, too, is restraining himself. They’re discussing the woman who raised his son, loved him like her own, but Ann Richards is also the woman who took everything from him, from Caleb. I’m not sure how he’s keeping it together, honestly.

Dan dropped a huge bombshell on me too, and I’m not handling it at all well. Mrs. Richards helped her sister take me from my parents. Who’s to say she didn’t kill them, too? I hadn’t been able to ask Dan anything else about it once Eli bellowed and brought his dad running, but that question has been running around and around in my head. Does Dan know who my parents are? I want to be selfish and demand answers, but I’m doing my best to be as un-Mattie-ish as I can. He needs to talk to the Malones.

When Mr. Malone begins to talk, I slip out of the room. They need to be alone. I go hunting for Doc. He said something about going to the control room. I figure it has to be on the main floor. Problem is, the main floor is freaking huge. I wander down a hall and find myself in a library. The shelves go from floor to ceiling with books older than any I’ve ever seen. The pages are yellowed on one whole section. The furniture is dark cherry wood and there are two oversized stuffed chairs in front of a massive fireplace. I could live in this room.

I trail my fingers across the books as I walk the length of the room. They feel so soft, so old. This is what I always imagined a library should look like. It’s what I plan on having some day. I love books and have recently started writing. No one knows how much I love books, not even Dan. Bookworms aren’t “cool” so I pretend I hate them. Since I can’t draw, I’ve been writing things down. It’s slow as it’s still hard to hold a pen or pencil for any length of time, but it helps me get some of my anger out and to keep my fingers from stiffening up. Who knows, maybe I’ll write the next
Twilight
or something.

“How are you holding up, kiddo?”

Whirling, I see Doc standing a few feet away. I hadn’t heard him walk up behind me.

“You scared me,” I say and turn back to staring at the books. I really don’t want to talk about my feelings with anyone. Well, I would with Dan if I was still on good speaking terms with him, but since I’m not, I’m stuck with just me.

“I know Dan is center stage right now, but you got handed some pretty heavy news, too,” Doc continues, ignoring my hint that I don’t want to talk. “To find out your mother isn’t really your—”

“I already knew that,” I interrupt him.

“How?”

“She told me,” I whisper. In all the years I’ve had this gift, my mom’s ghost had never visited me until that night in the hospital after the kidnapping. “That’s why Dan was looking into my past. He was trying to find my parents.”

“Do you want to talk, Mattie?” he asks.

“This is a bunch of BS!” Eli storms into the room and hurls himself onto one of the couches.

I sigh. I should have known my little hideaway wouldn’t last.

“You don’t think Dan is your brother?” Doc asks.

“He looks just like Caleb,” Eli spits out. “What’s BS is the fact that he won’t even talk about calling the cops.”

“It’s his mom,” I tell Eli. “Of course he doesn’t want to call the cops.”

“She’s not his mom! She freaking killed his mother!”

I sigh. Eli is so angry, he’s not thinking it through. “Yeah, I get that, and so does Dan, but she is his
mother
,” I stress the word. “She raised him and he loves her. Despite everything, to him, she is his mother.”

“She—”

“Shut up!” I interrupt. “What if we were talking about your mom? What if you found out today the woman you call mom murdered your birth mother? You’ve spent the last seventeen years in her care. She’s loved you, been there for you, and to you she’s your mom. Would you want to turn her in? Just think about that before you judge Dan or anybody else.”

“Why are you even defending him?” Eli demands. “After what he did to you—”

“He’s still my family,” I say. “No matter what Dan does or doesn’t do, he’s family. I may never forgive him for what he did, but he’s family.”

“I thought you’d already forgiven him.” Eli frowns at me.

“No,” I whisper. He thinks being with me is hard. Dan just keeps hurting me whether he realizes it or not. I’m done being hurt.

“What the hell did he say to you in there before Caleb and I got there?” Eli’s eyes are narrowed on my face. My expression must have given something away.

“Doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “Dan and I are done. I’m not sure we can even be friends anymore.”

“Mattie…”

I look up into Dan’s big old puppy dog eyes, burning with pain. I want to take the words back, but I can’t. I won’t. Caleb and Mr. Malone are standing behind him in the hallway and I turn away, unable to bear the look in Dan’s eyes. “So Doc, tell me about the house. I came here to help you, so tell me what I’m looking for.”

Doc heaves a sigh. I think he really wanted to talk about my feelings. So not going there, Doc.

“Let’s all have a seat,” Doc says. “We might as well be comfortable as none of you have heard this story and it will take a while to tell.”

I walk and sit on the opposite side of the couch Eli is on. Dan heads for the open spot beside me, but Caleb gets there first, which earns him a glare from Dan. I really, really want to know exactly what I said while I was out.

Once everyone is seated, Doc goes to stand by the fireplace. I think he does it unintentionally, but he always seems to find the one place to sit or stand that makes him mesmerizing, impossible to take your eyes away from him. And when he starts to speak, you’re hooked like a crack mule.

“I was sitting at home about a month ago in front of my fireplace going over some old texts I had just acquired from an estate sale in Dublin when my phone rang. It was a rather bizarre call. An old friend of mine I hadn’t heard from in a while was babbling on the other end about evil. It took me almost an hour to calm Stew down enough to talk to him.”

Doctor Olivet shifts and leans into the mantle. His face is soft, inviting, but it’s his voice that’s so hypnotic. We’re all listening intently to his story.

“Stew and I are old college buddies. We don’t talk as much as we used to since he and his wife moved to England. I only get to hear from him sporadically, which was why his call at midnight was so startling.” He shakes his head and stares out the window. “He and his wife inherited a property back here in the States and they decided to sell it. Stew had just been laid off and they needed the money. He came back state-side to get the estate ready for sale. It hadn’t been occupied in over ten years, but there was a trust set up that makes sure repairs and maintenances were completed regularly.”