Page 30 of Cruel Riches

Laurel leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I’ve heard of Thunder Bay. Isn’t that where the Blackthorne Butcher lived?”

Ruby nodded. “He lived a couple of streets over from me. My dad used to play golf with him, and his daughters went to my school.”

“Really?” Laurel’s eyes were like saucers now. “Did you know them?”

“Not really. One was five years older than me, so I never saw her. I think her name was Sophie. Or Sarah.” Ruby shrugged and went on. “The younger one was closer to my age. A year older, maybe. Alexandra. She was nice. She used to write this cute little neighborhood newsletter and stick it in our mailbox every month.”

My heart pounded as she spoke, and I could feel my cheeks flushing. What were the odds that I’d end up at a table with a girl who grew up two streets away from me?

“You said you lived really close to them. What’s the house like now?” Laurel asked. “Does anyone live there?”

Ruby shook her head. “No. I don’t think the family could sell it, so it just sits there, totally empty. No one ever goes near it.”

She was right. The property still belonged to my family, because no one was interested in buying a house that once belonged to a man who’d supposedly massacred thirteen people in the middle of a freezing winter night.

“It’s like our town’s very own haunted house,” Ruby went on. “Sometimes kids will dare each other to run up and knock on the front door, but they’re usually too scared to do it. They think the Butcher’s ghost will fly out and cut them into pieces.”

Laurel knitted her brows. “What was he like?” she asked. “I mean, you must’ve met him, right?”

“Yeah. He used to pick up my dad every second Saturday morning so they could drive to the golf club together. He always brought me a treat to have before they left, like lollipops or cookies.”

“What a creep. He was probably a pedo as well as a killer,” Laurel said, wrinkling her nose.

I gripped the edge of my seat until my knuckles went white. They don’t know any better, I told myself. Just breathe.

Ruby shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. He was just a nice guy.”

“Nice enough to dismember thirteen people and hang them from trees right here at Blackthorne,” Laurel said, raising a brow.

“I meant he was nice before that,” Ruby replied. “We were all shocked when it happened. No one had any idea that he was actually a total psycho.”

I felt rage boiling up inside me. I’d seen, heard, and read about people’s opinions on my father’s mental state for years. They called him crazy, a lunatic, a psycho. A monster.

He did have a mental illness, but it wasn’t like people thought.

Long before Sascha and I were born, Dad was offered a position as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East. He didn’t want to leave my mom alone on Avalon for too long, but it was a big career boost for him, considering he was working at a small local paper at the time. Eventually he agreed to do an eighteen-month stint—twelve months in Iraq and six in Yemen.

Even though he wasn’t in the military, he still witnessed a lot of atrocities while he was over there covering the conflicts and uprisings. One of his colleagues was killed in a bombing, too.

When he returned, he wasn’t the same man he used to be.

My mom had told us all about it over the years. She said he was still the nicest guy she knew, and he never treated any of us badly, but it was like he left a piece of his mind overseas. Sometimes he would sleep for far too long before waking up in a sweat, hyperventilating and shouting. On other occasions he would freak out and jump a mile if he heard sudden loud noises.

He was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. It could happen to anyone who’d experienced or witnessed traumatic events, and it didn’t mean he was a ‘batshit-insane psychopath’ who fantasized about committing massacres.

I couldn’t stand how people talked about it, as if every single person with a mental illness was nothing more than a ticking time bomb. It was so ignorant and fucked up. So grossly unfair and untrue.

“Sometimes they hide it really well,” Laurel said. “But I guess he couldn’t hold it in forever. The worst psychopaths rarely can.”

I narrowed my eyes. “He wasn’t a fucking psychopath!”

The words were suddenly out there, like a grenade slipping from my hand. Laurel and Ruby turned to look at me with wide eyes, clearly shocked by my outburst.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap,” I said hastily. “I’ve, uh… I’ve had a really long week. I guess it’s made me grumpy.”

“Oh. It’s okay,” Ruby said. She was looking at me curiously now, and I knew I needed to do something else to save the situation.

“I just meant to say that he wasn’t a diagnosed psychopath,” I said in a much softer, warmer tone. “I’ve read a lot about the case. Apparently, he was diagnosed with PTSD over a decade before the murders. But he didn’t have any other mental illnesses.”

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