Page 76 of A Killing Cold

“Theo?” Connor reaches up. I flinch, but he only presses the pad of his thumb to my face, wiping away a tear. He looks at me, a line between his brows. “He was a good man, you know. He was always so patient with us. Gentle. He never even raised his voice, and he taught me to help people. He said that’s the point of being in the world. To help each other. He wouldn’t have done that.”

“Then who did?” I ask, but Connor is staring at me, doesn’t seem to hear. His lips part.

I reach for him. “Connor—”

“Oh my god,” he says. “Teddy. Her name was Teddy.” He stands up abruptly, hand over his mouth, and my hand falls back to my lap. He looks at the photo on the table, then back to me. I sit with my elbows on my thighs, body pinched together.

“I didn’t know,” I say.

“It’s true?” He has one hand on his hip, the other running through his hair, a look of utter bewilderment on his face. “You’re her. How—but—did you arrange this whole thing?”

“How could I? You’re the one who tracked me down, remember?” I point out.

“You said I looked familiar. The day we met, you said you thought you knew me. Because—”

“Because we’d met before,” I tell him. My voice cracks. “And because you look so much like your father.”

He shakes his head. “But you had to have known who I was. You must have—wait. You said you were adopted when you were four. That doesn’t make sense.”

“I was small for my age. They were guessing. Connor, I didn’t remember anything about my life before the Scotts until I came here with you. I didn’t remember you or your father or my own fucking name. Rowan Cahill. My mother called me Teddy. And I was here.”

I was here. It was real. I came from somewhere, and I was someone.

There are tears running down my face. Useless things, but I can’t stop them. I scrub at my cheeks with the heels of my hands, and the bandage still wrapping my palm scrapes my skin.

Connor watches me, silent. Then he sits slowly, lowering himself to the edge of the coffee table. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, gaze to the side. “Explain it to me,” he says. He looks directly at me. Anger simmers behind his eyes.

No, not anger.

Fear.

“I know only bits and pieces,” I say slowly, deliberately. I have just one chance to explain this so that he’ll believe me. “It started with the cabin—Dragonfly. I remembered being there. And then I found a photo of myself.” I get up and walk to the bedroom, returning with the photo, which he holds in both hands, studying it intently. “Trevor told me about Mallory. That your dad had her here, that she had a daughter. I started to remember things. Nothingsolid. But I remember…” I trail off. I ball my hands into fists. “My mother didn’t run off after your dad died. She was killed. Murdered, I think. And then I somehow wound up on the other side of the country, and the Scotts got paid a bunch of money to take me in and not ask questions.”

“You think my father did it,” Connor says hollowly. “You think he hurt her.”

“The man in my dream. It’s him,” I say, and I don’t have to tell him which dream I’m talking about. “Connor, Alexis told me that your father didn’t die from a fall. He killed himself.”

He recoils, his face contorting in shock. “What?”

“Paloma confirmed it. She said Alexis knew but someone—presumably your grandparents—made her promise not to tell you or your mom,” I say, as gently as I can.

Connor is shaking his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know it’s hard to hear—”

“No, I mean it genuinely does not make sense,” Connor snaps. “When I was eighteen, I got a copy of the autopsy report. I thought it would bring me closure, or something like that. The cause of death was listed as hypothermia and an epidural hematoma—a blow to the temple. He would have lost consciousness briefly, and probably woken up and thought he was all right. That would last a few minutes. But the blood would have been building up in his skull. Eventually, he’d collapse again. They couldn’t definitively state if it was the cold or the bleeding in the skull that was the definitive cause of death. He fell and hit his head. That’s what happened.”

“He could have jumped,” I suggest.

“Even the lodge is only two stories,” Connor points out. “Shitty way to kill yourself. Good way to break a leg.”

“Mr. Vance… he said it was a broken neck,” I remember. “But wouldn’t he have known? He’s the one who brought the body down. What did they tell you back then?”

“Nothing. An accident. He fell,” Connor says.

“There was blood on his face,” I say. Connor looks confused. I raise a hand, gesture in a vain attempt to explain as I fumble for words. “I went to find my mom, and she—she was dying,” I say. Hand to my throat, fingers tracing the path of the blood. “She told me to hide. So Idid. But he found me. He came in the door and I screamed, because he looked like a monster. The antlers behind him and his face—”

Half of it dark. With shadow and with blood. Not hers. His own.

---