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It wasn’t something he’d be able to tackle tonight, but he was going to get started first thing in the morning. By the time Eloise had calmed down enough that she might be willing to talk to him, he’d be ready.
He was going to make his life a clean slate and then lay his sins at her feet and beg for forgiveness. If he could do that, then he could explain to her where he was the night Kim was killed. She wasn’t going to be happy about him spending his nights in some back alley on the other side of town, pretending to do a little personal drug deal while he scoped out the back entrance of a check cashing place.
But it was a hell of a lot better than murder.
Maybe that would be enough to convince her that he hadn’t been a part of whatever might have happened at the bar. That gave him hope and he led Winston down the steps and across the lawn from Eloise’s front door to his own.
It never got any easier, walking into the house he’d shared with his grandfather. Eloise had described him as a nice old man, but that wasn’t the way Ethan remembered him at all. These walls held nothing but memories of hurt and disappointment. The night his own flesh and blood had laid hands on him in violence and told him he’d never amount to a damn thing in this life.
He’d carried that with him for too long, let it color his choices and set him on a path that he was no longer proud of as he jumped from one abuser to another, something he hadn’t even realized he’d done until Eloise came along. Looking back now, he knew he’d been seeing Dylan the way she’d seen his grandfather. The surface of acceptability that they presented to people other than their victims was hard to see through.
She’d taught him to view his life through different eyes, to value different things, and he was going to have to face what involvement in his life had done to her because he'd been too blind to protect her.
That meant doing more than just untangling himself from Dylan. He was going to have to make sure that Kim’s death wasn’t left unsolved. If Eloise had evidence and reason to believe that Dylan was involved, then they had to take that evidence to Detective Chen.
Doing that went against everything he’d believed for more than half his life, but he wasn’t going to let Eloise down. He wasn’t going to let Kim down. He’d protected Dylan and his secrets for a long time, but as often as they’d broken the law, they had never done anything like that. They lied and they stole, and sometimes they threatened people, but they didn’t commit murders. It was clear what he had to do and there was no room in his mind for the possibility of failure.
Twenty-Nine
She woke the next morning with a headache and regret. Nothing about the night before had gone according to plan. After talking to Jackson and David, she’d envisioned a conversation where everything remained calm and rational as she’d asked for explanations that he had seamlessly provided.
What actually happened had been closer to a train wreck than a controlled conversation. She’d lost her composure and blasted him with accusations when he didn’t understand at all what she was talking about. It wasn’t fair and she should have approached the whole situation differently.
Not that she didn’t still think she deserved answers, but it would have been nice if she’d given him a fair chance to provide them. If he was involved in any of this, she’d have to know, but coming at him presuming his guilt hadn’t been the best move.
Her house, which had felt like a place of solace before he’d barged into her life, now felt empty without him and she wandered from room to room cataloging the changes he’d made to her space. Winston’s beds and toys cluttered her floors and most of the rooms had a gift he’d given her on some surface or other. There were his books on the bookshelf, sci-fi next to her cookbooks. His toothbrush in the bathroom. His favorite salty snacks in the pantry and sweet tea in the fridge.
Had she started making a life with a monster? She didn’t think so, but could she have been so blinded by his charm that she’d turned a blind eye to the warning signs? He wasn’t exactly a rule follower, and she knew he was up to something with Dylan that he was determined to hide, but a murderer? Or someone that could help cover it up?
It made her sick to her stomach to think that he might have known all along what happened to Kim. He could have been keeping that from her while she slept with him, and she really didn’t have any way of knowing for sure.
Jackson and David were convinced he was in love with her, that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, but he was definitely hiding things and until she knew what they were, well, maybe it was best if they ended things.
She clearly couldn’t trust him.
Even if he wasn’t a murderer, he was certainly a liar. His charm had made it hard for her to hold onto her senses, but hadn’t she known from the beginning that something about him wasn’t quite right? She’d thought then that he was going to be the death of her, but now it seemed the death sentence had fallen on Kim instead.
That thought made her even more nauseous and she sat down at the table with a cup of peppermint tea and plain toast. She still had to go to work today, and she needed to get a hold of herself.
She rattled the teacup in its saucer when her phone rang and clenched her teeth when she realized it was her mother on the phone. Deborah seemed to have a sixth sense that informed her when her interruptions would be the most inconvenient and this time was no exception. Eloise still hadn’t responded to any of the many calls and texts since she’d hung up on her and for a while it seemed Deborah had given up.
If she was calling this early in the morning after all that, it might be an actual emergency. It probably wasn’t, it was probably an attempt to get Eloise to panic and answer the phone, but it might be. The idea of it was enough for Eloise to panic and answer the phone.
“Hel—”
“Finally.” Deborah started talking over her before Eloise could even begin speaking. “Do you know how long I’ve been trying to get in touch with you?”
“I do, actually.”
“You know better than to treat your mother this way. What has gotten into you lately? You owe me?—”
“I owe you? What? An apology?”
“At the very least an apology for treating me so disrespectfully.”
“Mother ...” Eloise bit it back, swallowed a mouthful of words that would have taught her the true meaning of disrespect. “I think I need to go.”
“Don’t hang up on me,” Deborah snapped. “Honestly, what has brought on this terrible behavior? It’s a man, isn’t it? I told you?—”
