Page 61 of If The Fates Allow
The slice of a shovel greeting the earth finally registered through the buzzing in Willa’s head. Consistent and strong, it carried like a metronome through the quiet, and she stepped to the side to see who was making the sound.
Beyond the black wrought iron fencing, beyond the high arch with its sharp spikes, mounds of disturbed dirt lay in piles throughout their family graveyard. Her brother’s golden head would emerge from the earth every so often, synced in time to the sound of metal greeting the ground. Sweat covered his brow, and a second lantern hanging precariously from a post gave his features an eerie glow.
“Cal?”
A whisper in the wind tickled her ear with a reply. A song—a warning—there the whole time.Go,it said.Run.Leave this place and never return.
But she hadn’t listened.
“Cal, come here and get this business over with,” Margaret called out, nudging her dead husband’s body with a booted foot. “I might not want this bastard buried in the same graveyard as our girls, but we don’t have much of a choice.”
Our girls.
Grace and Bonnie’s baby.
Surprised that her mother knew Bonnie and her father’s secret, Willa blurted out the first thing that entered her mind, “You knew about their baby?”
Margaret’s brows shot up, her sharp eyes landing on Bonnie, who merely shrugged. “I brought her up yesterday during Willa’s attack,” Bonnie explained. “I wanted—needed—to see if he’d gained any remorse before we followed through with this, but no. He repeated the same story he’s been spouting for the last twenty-seven years. He sat there and still pretended that my beautiful baby…” Her voice shook, the gun trembling in her hand. “That she didn’t die by his hand.”
The blood drained from Willa’s face. Noah had snuck closer, and she clutched his arm to steady herself. “What?”
“And he would have killed Grace, too.” Her mother approached, stepping over her husband’s body as if he were nothing more than a dead animal in her way. “Had we not come in time, he would have murdered her just as he did poor Tommy.”
“But he tried to save her!” Willa didn’t understand why she was defending him, but she could recall clearly how distraught her father had been that day. “He mourned Grace.”
Bonnie and her mother cackled together, their faces appearing grotesque in the moonlight. “He wasn’t mourning Grace. He was mourning his freedom, thinking he might lose it if he were caught for killing Tommy,” Bonnie said. “Stephen was selfish right down to his rotten core.”
Noah calmly drew Willa away from her mother and Bonnie. “Why didn’t you turn him in?” he asked. “If you wanted him gone, why kill him? Why not just turn him over to the authorities?”
Margaret ceased laughing, utterly appalled by his suggestion. “And endure a scandal?”
Bonnie shook her head. “No, that would never do. Certain scandals you can come back from, perhaps even pull a little sympathy due to the situation, but having Stephen outed as a murderer is not one of them.”A slow, calculating smile tipped the corners of her mouth. “So, we made plans. Yet, we couldn’t move forward until the final piece of our puzzle was filled by you.”
Frowning, Noah forced Willa behind him. “What do I have to do with this?”
“Well, in all honesty, we didn’t know what to do with Wilhelmina,” her mother answered coolly. “She’s quite a lot of work, Dr. Anderson, and I hope you know that now that you’ve spoiled her for any other husband, we’ll not be taking her back.”
“We were going to let her go to Richards and hope for the best,” Bonnie said. “But you are a much better alternative.”
The blouse she had chosen to wear suddenly felt tight, and Willa choked on a sob. Noah spun around to cradle her face in his hands. “Look at me, Willa. We’re going to be alright,” he promised. “They’re not going to hurt you.”
A crazed look entered her mother’s eyes, and Willa smartly quieted, having seen it before on the day Grace died. “This is what we mean. She’s quite a bit of work.” Marching to her husband, Margaret violently stomped on his face. “And it’s all your fault,” she screeched down at him. “You did this to her! You destroyed my daughter!”
Another strike, and then another. Over and over until Willa thought she might vomit every time her father’s large body jarred from the impact.
“He said my baby couldn’t breathe. I was nursing her, and Stephen asked if he could hold her when she was finished,” Bonnie said, remaining composed through Margaret’s crying. “Of course, I let him. He was her father. He would never hurt her.”
Margaret ceased her battle with a dead man, huffing hard. Her hair had come loose from the nighttime curlers she often used, and she blew a strand from her face. “Tell them the rest. Tell them what he did.”
“He said he wanted to take her outside and be the one to show her the world for the first time. I was so tired, you see, and couldn’t go with them, so I took a nap while they were gone. When I woke,she was dead.” Bonnie’s chin lifted, a single tear slipping down her cheek. “Six hours old, she was. My baby was six hours old.”
“Did you see him do this?” Noah demanded. “Or are you just assuming that’s what happened?”
“She didn’t see him do it, but he confessed to it.” Cal stumbled through the graveyard’s archway and down the small incline to where they were all standing on the path. “Right around the time he confessed to what he had been doing to Willa.”
“What he was doing to me?” Willa refused to hide behind Noah any longer, but he wouldn’t permit her to move, holding her behind him in a vice grip. “What’s Cal talking about?”
Cal stopped directly in front of Noah. “Do you love my sister?”
