Page 26 of One Last Touch

“Oh my.” Ms Weathers sighed deeply. “Well, I suppose there’s no helping it now then.”

The kettle wobbled at my back, the hot steam billowing out the top and I took a moment to just breathe before I bustled around filling my cup.

I sat down at the table next to Sage and opposite Ms Weathers, clenching and unclenching my hands until Sage took one of them in his. It was an odd sensation. I could see his hand, I could even half-feel it, but it wasn't the same as touching someone who was… alive. I pulled my hand away after squeezing his in thanks. I didn’t want him to waste his energy on stupid shit like comforting me.

I took a deep breath and asked the question that was at the forefront of my mind as I looked into Ms Weathers’ eyes. “Did Edward Alswell murder you?”

“No,” she said simply. “It was his brother. Jared.” She hesitated and I bit my lip nervously. “To understand our fates, you need to know what happened. From the beginning.”

I nodded quickly, impatient, but then stilled as I realised this was perhaps the first and possibly only time that they had been able to tell their story. Ms Weathers smiled knowingly as she watched me settle.

“When Edward met Natalia, he was instantly smitten. I’d never much believed in love at first sight until I saw those two together. Edward came from money but he also ran the business side of things at the cemetery before the family decided to partially sell it to the local council. Your mother, as I understood it, was working as a translator when they met. She could speak several languages fluently and often spent her time travelling, she once told me she’d never felt the need to stay in one place until she met Eddie.”

Eddie. I wanted to ask if he was my father, if I had assumed correctly, but I didn’t want to interrupt—it was the kind of knowledge I would have killed to have as a child. They were finally telling me the truth and I was getting the answers I’d long craved. But more than that, this was about them. Jared’s victims. I didn’t want to take this away from them and make it about me.

“They were wed very quickly and everything seemed perfect, until Edward’s twin brother came to visit. He’d missed their wedding, what with it occurring so abruptly, and had come to finally meet the wife of his beloved brother. The only problem was that once Jared laid eyes on Natalia, he coveted her. Soon, he was finding all sorts of reasons to visit and became a semi-regular fixture around the manor. Eddie was blissfully unaware of his brother’s feelings but Natalia… she always was a good judge of character.”

The pictures. Two men who appeared identical but in one she had been filled with joy and with the other…

“Jared became obsessed. He’d convinced himself that Natalia loved him and if not for his brother, the two could be happy together. He began to impersonate his brother, and at first, Natalia did not think anything amiss. It was Edward that eventually worked out what had been going on. It was small things—Natalia mentioning conversations they’d had that he couldn’t remember, or plans they’d made that he’d had no hand in. Of course, then came the bigger clues. Big enough that Natalia came to notice too how Eddie’s temperament, his anger, would change throughout the day. Her sweet husband in the morning and her raging lover by the evening.”

My face paled and Ms Weathers noticed, patting my hand as she nodded. Realising what I’d put together. My mother had visited me in the dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream and when I’d asked about my father… she’d said she didn't know. I never could tell. Oh god.

“It’s okay,” Sage whispered, leaning in close to my ear. “It’s alright.”

I nodded, breathing in and out slowly and Ms Weathers waited until I nodded before continuing her story.

“When Eddie found out what was happening, he was furious. He banned Jared from the house and the fight they had… Oh, it was awful. I’d thought for sure that one of them would end up killing the other. But in the end, Jared left the manor and we all breathed a sigh of relief. He was not a kind man—maybe he had been, once. But love, though powerful in the right hands and circumstances, can warp the mind as easily as it can free it. The former was the case for Edward’s twin.”

I glanced at Sage and found his eyes already on me. To live through this much suffering… I gave him a watery smile and turned abruptly back to Ms Weathers as she continued.

“Your mother was distraught, of course, and by then she had realised something frightening that normally would have been a cause for joy. She was pregnant, unbeknownst to us all. Though knowing what I now do—” Ms Weathers smiled at me. “The signs were all there. I think she had planned to stay at Alswell, to raise you as Edward’s, regardless of your origins. But Jared came back.”

I shook my head, blowing out a breath as anger stung my insides. Anger at Jared, yes, but also at my mum too, for never telling me any of this. For making me find out this way.

“Edward had gone off to a meeting with the council and Jared burst in. He thought this was his chance, that Natalia would want to ‘escape’ with him and when she refused, he grew volatile. I called Eddie and left him a voicemail, but in the meantime, Natalia had taken matters into her own hands. She had knocked him out with a blow to the head and ran. Of course, at the time I thought this a little callous of her. Leaving her home, her husband. Now I know that she ran to protect you, deeming Jared too great a threat to risk him finding you both.”

“When Jared awoke, he flew into a rage. I attempted to soothe him, to assure him we would find Natalia and contact Eddie, but he had gone mad. He killed me and then Sage for attempting to stop him. By the time Edward arrived home, the house was in disarray, his wife missing and his gardener and housekeeper slaughtered in the sitting room.”

I blinked rapidly. It was hard to hear, I couldn’t imagine what it had been like to live through. It was made harder by the fact that they sat here in front of me, despite knowing they did not make it out of this story alive.

“Jared lay in wait for his brother. He had searched all afternoon for Natalia after his rampage and nobody had been able to give him any information. She had run, and in turn doomed us all to his rage. Edward found Jared in the sitting room, pacing as if our bodies didn’t phase him. He ranted and raved and when Eddie took a step forward, Jared took the hunting rifle mounted on the wall and shot him once through the heart and then turned the gun on himself.”

I gasped and Ms Weathers nodded sadly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Sage said and logically, I knew that. But this man who had done these terrible things might have been my father. Sage seemed to read this thought straight off my face. He shook his head. “We are more than what our blood makes us.”

“I hope so.”

Sage slid his hand over my cheek and cupped my jaw. “I know so.”

I gazed into his eyes for a moment longer than was probably wise, knowing that anything between us was over before it began. But the heart wants what it wants and I had started to fall for a ghost.

Chapter Eleven

“Why didn’t she come back til now, do you think?” I asked Sage and Ms Weathers, anxiously drumming my fingers on my leg as it bounced up and down a little later on when I’d had some time to think.

“I honestly think she didn’t know. Jared, and the Alswells more generally, were powerful allies but also frightening enemies to have. They had money, connections, she probably didn’t want to do anything to tip him off as to where she was, not realising that he was dead.”

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