Page 45 of Bed of Roses

“And why do you have Neil’s legal stuff?”

I scowl. “Finders keepers.”

She blinks at me. “You’re telling me you found something that the cops didn’t?”

I nod. “In the floorboard.”

Leaning forward, she rubs an eyebrow and sets her celery stick back into the container of mixed vegetables. “You should have turned that in by now.”

I cringe a little and set the paper neatly back in the binder. “I plan to. Calm down.”

She looks at me for a long moment before sighing. “I know you. You’ve poured over what you’ve found so far, and you have no intention of turning it over until you’ve seen it all.”

“And your point?”

She circles a hand in the air. “Tell me what you’ve found.”

I shrug a little. “An unfiled restraining order against Derek Wordon.”

Her hand flops down to the desk. “Wait, seriously?”

I nod again. “I guess Derek was threatening him, although it doesn’t say why. But according to everyone, they hated each other, so maybe that hate just grew.”

“Normally,” she begins, drawing out the word, “when siblings hate each other growing up, they either move far away from each other, or they learn to find common ground. Things don’t escalate unless there’s a reason.”

“What do you think the reason was?” I ask as I turn over the vet bill to look at the next document. When I do, I suck in a breath.

“What?” she asks as I read the first paragraph.

I hold up a finger, and when I’m satisfied that I’ve read enough to know exactly what this is, I look up at her with wide eyes. “It’s a living will.”

Surprised, she juts her chin and then swiftly stands from her office chair and makes her way around the desk. When she’s beside the coffee table, she squats to look at the paper with me. She quickly reads through, and after she’sdone, she turns a frown at me. “Neil left everything to his stepbrother?”

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” I whisper, as though the walls have ears.

“Oh god,” she whispers back. “This is bad, Tegan.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she says, setting the paper neatly back in the binder on top of the papers I haven’t read yet. The way she handled it was as though it could combust at any given moment. “If the sheriff learns that everything Derek has is actually his, you could be out of a place to live. Hell, Cole will be out of a jobanda place to live, because according to you, they hate each other.”

“Shit,” I murmur, looking at the binder as if it might bite me. “What do I do?”

“Well.” She blows out a breath and stands fully upright. “You can’t turn that in. Not if you care about Cole.”

I scowl. I shouldn’t be surprised that she said that, but I am. “You want me to hide possible evidence from the authorities?”

“Yes,” she says, bobbing her head. “At least for now.”

“And if I get caught with the evidence?” I do see her point because, selfishly, I want to know everything about the man who died in that house and is now haunting me, but I also know, on some level, it’s wrong.

“Look,” she says, heading back behind her desk and taking a seat. “You have a choice to make. Either you pretend it doesn’t exist to keep your place and Cole keeps his job, or you turn it over and have both of you lose everything.”

The thought of Cole being homeless and jobless twists my insides. And I would be the one who would cause it. I’m not worried about myself. I’d find a way to survive,maybe even move in with Tori, but he would have nothing and nowhere to go. I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t be the reason he loses everything he’s worked so hard for.

“Fuck,” I grumble.

A sly smile is turned my way. “Exactly. Because you have feelings for him, you have to do what’s right by him.”

---