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There’s nothing left to go back to.
Hopping back in my car, I head down that way anyway. What do I do? Knock on the door? See if the current owners have seen a redhead lurking through the property?
Then it hits me. Something she said to me back in my apartment when I woke from my nightmare.
“I get them too.”
“About…Troy finding you?
“About my parents…that…they didn’t really die.”
The car screeches as I steer in the other direction and head to that lake just outside of town.
My boots crack the leaves along the path down the hill. It’s colder here by the water. I’m not far from town. A twelve-minute drive. Probably just under thirty minutes by foot. I’ve never been here but recognize it from the photos all those years ago.
I find her kneeling in the dirt just a few feet from the water. People come here to look at the mountain view. But she’s not looking up. She’s face down. Her fingers smoothing the sand like she’s looking for rocks or lost jewelry.
She doesn’t turn when my footsteps near. But I don’t advance any farther. “Pepper.”
She frowns. “Did you follow me?”
“No.”
She looks up quickly, barely meeting my eyes, then back down.
Ripping off my jacket, I put it over her shoulders and bend my knees, lifting her face. “Baby, it’s cold. Let me take you home.”
There’s a brief tenderness in her eyes, but then she shakes her head, moving her fingers back into the sand. “I was so good. I had straight A’s. Didn’t stay out past my curfew. Never asked for more than I got.” She sucks in a breath and sniffles, turning from me. “They knew about my plans for New York—they knew I’d be alright.” She nods, as if reassuring herself. Then her face scrunches and she sobs, falling into herself. I catch her and hold her.
“Pepper,” I whisper. “What happened to them was tragic. A tragic accident.”
Another headshake.
“Pepper. Look at me. Stay with me.” Resigned, she looks up at me with red, tired eyes. “They wouldn’t have left you all by yourself. The car…it lost control, they wouldn’t have—”
“They did. They left me. They got in this car,” –she points to an empty space on the field– “and then disappeared.” She struggles free from my hold, and I release her, giving her space.
There’s a beat before she speaks again. “I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough for them to take me with them.”
My heart rips to shreds. That’s enough. I catch her face in my hands. “Look at me, Princess. You are enough. You’ve always been enough for them. They gave you everything under the sun, and it must have destroyed them to have it all taken from you after the trial. But I promise you, they would have never left you. You saw them, Pepper, you saw their bodi—”
“No, I didn’t,” she shouts. And it’s shattering. Almost deafening.
Because I clearly remember reading that their daughter, Pepper Woods, identified the bodies that were burned in the car fire.
“What are you talking about?”
She sobs and falls into me. “It wasn’t them, Chase. It wasn’t them. It wasn’t them. I know. I know my parents. It was their car. Their belongings. But not them.”
After a moment of holding her, I pull back and look into her eyes, careful with my words. “Are you sure?”
A nod. “A girl knows her mother’s face. And that…wasn’t…hers.”
I hold her gaze briefly before pulling her against me. There’s no mistaking the agony. The abandonment she’s felt all these years. She’s crumbling in my arms, and there’s nothing I can do. There’s no mystery I can solve. No peace I can offer.
Suddenly, everything about Pepper makes sense. The pity she hated, the condolences she refused, the rejection she suffered. The need to run. No matter what anyone tells her, she’ll always think of herself as a burden.
We stay there until the sun sets behind the mountains. Pepper falls asleep on my shoulder, but it’s grown colder and I need to get her home.
