Hayle, Tristin, and Leo Sharpe might be the death of me.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Thea
If she was a crappy mother, why do you care so much about how she died?
Hayle’s words replayed on an almost constant loop while I was in class the next day. I’d assured him that she loved me, had tried to do right by me. But, deep down, I was starting to wonder if even I believed that.
It had been easy enough to block out all of the bad memories over the last eight-plus-years. Except, now that I had allowed that one memory to seep into the forefront of my consciousness, more kept popping up like prairie dogs on the plains of Kansas.
They were making me question everything—namely, why I’d come back to Moss Harbor in the first place. If I was sincerely determined to solve the mystery of my mother’s death, why was I dragging my feet? Why hadn’t I confronted Vincent about the threatening letters and Green Industries already? About the conversation I’d overheard all of those years ago?
I didn’t have a good answer, but I did have an answer. One I wasn’t particularly fond of.
I’d convinced myself that solving the mystery was the only reason I’d accepted Vincent’s offer. That I couldn’t refuse my one chance to discover what really happened to my mother.
But, when I reached down into the shadowy depths of my soul, I knew better. Returning to Moss Harbor wasn’t about my mother. Not really. It was about me.
I’d wanted nothing more than to float away, and Vincent had handed me my golden ticket. I hadn’t needed a hot air balloon. All I’d needed was a wealthy man from my past who felt guilty about his part in covering up my mother’s murder, at the very least.
Don’t get me wrong. I still wanted to know what really happened. I wasn’t going to just let it go. But finally acknowledging that my intentions weren’t as pure as I’d been pretending made me feel strangely better. It gave me the freedom to live this new life I was building here without shame. I was allowed to have friends, a boyfriend, and aspirations that had nothing to do with my past.
My world didn’t have to be gray. It could contain all of the colors in the rainbow and even the ones created by mixing them. The options were practically endless.
Arriving back at the mansion, my feet carried me straight to my bedroom and the back of my closet, as though they knew something I didn’t. Peering down at the box of my mother’s things I’d stashed there, I sat on the floor and opened it right there.
Though I’d already sifted through most of the items, I’d never gone back and looked through the packets of photographs. I’d been avoiding them, something I was damn good at. But if I was already letting memories in that I’d previously suppressed, I might as well get this over with as well.
I opened the first packet and dumped the photos onto the lid of the box. At first glance, there was a little bit of everything. Several of my mom and her friends from before I was born. A few of my baby pictures and a couple terrible school pictures from elementary school. Me standing in front of the Grand Canyon and on the Golden Gate Bridge. Plenty of scenery from all over the western half of the United States.
As I sorted them into piles, I waited for emotion to build up in my chest—any kind of emotion. But I didn’t really feel anything as I glimpsed the moments from my past. Maybe I was numb to it. That wouldn’t surprise me.
When I came across a photo of a five-year-old me on Christmas morning, a giant grin on my face as I held up an art set, I couldn’t resist a smile. The pink case had opened up to trays filled with colored pencils and crayons, and those lifted to reveal markers, watercolors, chalk, and even more crayons. I was pretty sure it had been the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen at that point in my life. The set had been my most prized possession until it had mysteriously gotten lost in one of our moves a couple of years later.
And, then, I’d cried. Which I kind of felt like doing now just remembering. Maybe I wasn’t completely numb, after all.
Moving on to the second packet, I found more of the same. There were very few pictures of me