Page 7 of Mine to Save

CHAPTERTWO

Trinity ignored the half-dozen text messages from her friend Kathy at the yoga studio, along with a few other friends.

They all wanted to know the same thing. While the answer appeared obvious, it wasn’t.

She sat on the edge of the sofa in her mother’s family room, gripping her mom’s hand. A picture of her biological father flashed across the screen. She barely recognized him, and if she were being honest, she wasn’t sure she could have picked him out of a lineup even if he hadn’t grown an eight-inch beard and had hair down past his shoulders.

She didn’t remember her father. Not really, anyway. She’d been told he’d died shortly after her first birthday. All she had of him were photographs, and even those were few and far between.

But the truth was, her father had gone to prison for manslaughter. There had been no trial. He’d pled guilty to the charges, and the judge had sentenced him to the maximum under penalty of law. He served eight of those fifteen years in prison, and then seven living in a halfway house while on parole.

When he finished out his sentence and left Pensacola, Florida for good, she’d only been sixteen. But before he left, he’d reached out to her. She’d wanted to see him, so had agreed to meet with him. By then, she knew that he wasn’t dead thanks to an article that’d come out revealing all the dirty little details.

But that had been the last time she’d seen or spoken to her father, and she’d had some harsh words for him that day.

She’d been a teenager with an enormous chip on her shoulder. One who had just learned that all the adults in her life were liars, and that her biological father wasn’t dead, after all.

Nope. He’d been in prison and then on parole because he had a wicked temper and had beaten a man to death with his bare hands. She’d wanted to see what kind of man could do that with his child sleeping in the other room.

Of course, she had anger and resentment toward her mother, as well. The worst had been hearing about how her mom had been screwing some other guy, and how her husband had walked in on them and then went ballistic.

In a way, Trinity almost couldn’t blame her dad.

But he’d killed a man. There was no excuse for it. And on the day she’d met her father, she’d told him that she wished he’d died for real.

Now, he was legit dead.

She’d said those same words to her mom and Ben, but she’d had time and space to heal those wounds and had taken it back.

She hadn’t gotten that chance with her biological father, and she’d wanted to change that. A few years ago, she’d hired a private investigator to find him, but when the PI found her dad, she could bring herself to contact him.

And now she’d never be able to say what she needed.

She glanced in her mother’s direction. “There’s no way he could have done what the police are saying, is there?”

Her mom swiped at her cheeks. “Your father was a lot of things, but a serial killer? I don’t think so.”

“I have to agree with you, Mother,” Ben, the man Trinity had calledFathersince the age of five, said as he handed her a cup of hot tea. “I spoke with your dad the week he left town. He was bitter. Angry, even. But at himself. No one else. Well, maybe your mother for her actions and for letting you believe he was dead.”

Trinity had forgiven her mother long ago. However, twinges of that anger bubbled to the surface. While she understood that her mom had thought her lie would protect Trinity, the reality was that she was simply hiding the shame of her affair and what it had done to their family. She hadn’t wanted her only daughter to know that perhaps she’d had a hand in what’d happened.

Well, no matter what her mother had done, Paul Lewis hadn’t deserved to be murdered by her father.

But her dad hadn’t killed sixteen other men. Trinity felt that certainty deep to her core.

“No. Your father wasn’t a murderer. Not the way they are saying,” her mother said softly. “At least, not the man I knew.”

“He tried to contact me.” Trinity hadn’t known what to do a few months ago when a random call had come in from a social worker at a homeless shelter in South Florida. But by the time she’d gotten the nerve to call back, her father had left. Trinity had left her contact information, but her dad never called again.

“Are you serious? Why didn’t you say anything?” Ben asked.

She shrugged. “I figured you’d both try to talk me out of calling him back. And, honestly, I wasn’t sure I was going to. But it was too late anyway. He’d already moved on.” That had been the second opportunity she’d had in her adult life to reconnect with her biological father.

“Oh, sweetheart,” her mother said. “I’m sorry.”

“Where is Lighthouse Cove?” Trinity asked.

“It’s about a half hour north of West Palm Beach,” Ben said. “Why? You’re not thinking of going there, are you?”

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