Page 53 of Won't Back Down

I wasn’t sure if either were intended slights or not. Willa hadn’t taken my name. There hadn’t been time, even if that had been her intention. Which, of course, it wasn’t. Even if this marriage had been fully real from the get go, I wouldn’t have expected that of her. Not when that part of her legacy meant so much to her. But Carson’s failure to greet me felt pointed.

Willa tightened her grip on my hand, the only outward sign of her anxiety, and we rose to follow the chief back to his office.

“Have a seat. Can I get you a cup of coffee or something?”

This polite civility was so far from how I’d seen this man behave toward me, toward Rios and Caroline. He’d accused Rios of murder after Gwen disappeared, and when Caroline had been stalked a decade back, he’d acted like she’d brought the whole thing on herself. And here he was offering my wife coffee. I knew it was because she was a Sutter. Because, in Carson’s eyes, she mattered in a way the rest of us didn’t. Part of me was grateful she wasn’t having to bear the brunt of his shit attitude. But I was sorely tempted to push the envelope and ask for coffee myself, to see how far this solicitude would extend. Instead, I kept my mouth shut.

“No, thank you. You said you wanted to see us? Is there news about… about the body?” Willa asked.

Carson leaned a hip against his desk. “Preliminary results are back from the ME’s office. Evidence indicates the remains are of an adult white male. It’s not Gwen Busby.”

Willa’s fingers flexed in mine, and she blinked, clearly trying to absorb the news.

“Then who the hell is it?” I asked.

Carson spared me a glance. “We don’t know yet. There’s no other documented missing person from the island. The investigation is ongoing, and further forensic analysis will take a lot longer. But I wanted to tell y’all in person, before you heard it through the island grapevine.”

Out of courtesy to Willa, or because he wanted to see our reactions? Surely he didn’t think we were somehow involved?

Willa remained gracious. “Thank you. Is there any sign of how old the remains are?”

“Not yet. That’s one of the details we hope to get from the ME’s analysis, so we can narrow down the scope of our search. If either of y’all thinks of anything that might be helpful, or if you find anything else in the course of storm clean up, let me know. Otherwise, I won’t keep you.”

Willa rose. “I appreciate you telling us. Is this information to be kept confidential for purposes of the investigation?”

“No. At this point, the more people who hear, the better. Maybe somebody will think of something. Thanks for coming in.”

Dismissed. I supposed that was a good thing. If he’d believed we had something to do with it, he’d have probably asked more questions.

I stayed quiet until we got back outside. “So… not Gwen. How do you feel?”

She scooped a hand through her hair. “I hardly know. Relieved? Horrified? Both? I was so sure it was her, and now it’s not. Some other poor guy was killed and buried on my family’s property for God knows how long. It means we still don’t have answers about Gwen. I guess a part of me wants to hang onto that. To believe that, somehow, she’s still out there. Which is crazy, because if she were still alive, why wouldn’t she come home?”

I didn’t have any good answers for that. The alternatives I could think of would probably be considered worse than death. If Willa hadn’t thought of them, I wasn’t about to put those images in her brain. “I don’t know. You ready to head over to O’Shea’s office, or do you need a bite first? We could swing by the bakery for pastries.”

“No, I’d rather get it over with. If he didn’t immediately share good news over the phone, I feel like this is going to be more bad news and a strategy meeting.”

The moment I clapped eyes on Roland O’Shea, I knew she’d been right.

He waited only long enough for us to settle into chairs on the other side of his desk. “Well, things didn’t go precisely as we’d hoped. I reported your marriage to the court, and rather than seeing it as a sign of your stability, your parents are suggesting it as evidence of your impulsivity and poor judgment. They allege you were not fit to consent, and that Sawyer used your fragile emotional state following your grandparents’ deaths to manipulate you into matrimony in the name of his own financial gain.”

Outraged, Willa shot to her feet. “That’s bullshit! All of it!”

I grabbed her hand. “Wren, he knows that.” None of this surprised me. John Hollingsworth had never thought much of me.

Willa visibly struggled to rein in her temper. She didn’t lose it often, but when she did… She looked back to O’Shea. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault.”

“It’s perfectly all right. They’re certainly putting you through the wringer with all this. In any event, I’m afraid we’re going to have to do a little more to prove the legitimacy of your marriage.”

Mama Flo had anticipated this. Thank God Dax was already working his magic on our digital paper trail. I squeezed Willa’s hand again, and she lowered back into her chair. “We’ve got nothing to hide. What all do you need?”

We went over the evidence we could and would voluntarily produce.

“The internet is still spotty since the storm, so it’ll take some time to pull together, but we can absolutely do that. What else do you suggest?” Willa asked.

“I also recommend that Sawyer sign a post-nuptial agreement wherein he relinquishes any claim on any of your assets. I would have suggested a pre-nup in the first place had I known your intention to marry.”

That was easy. “Done. I don’t want any of your family stuff.” And that would kill off some of the speculation that I was some kind of gold digger.

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