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“I’d like to say something,” Meredith said stiffly.
“Make it good,” Saul warned.
“I don’t know how you found Caera or why you’re with her, but I pity you. She might be sweet and beautiful on the surface, but it’s a façade. The demons in her head will drive you every bit as crazy as she is. Maybe you think you can help her, just like we did, but she refuses to help herself. She’ll drag you down into the pit of hell she wallows in, because she likes the company. She just wants someone to suffer with her—you’ll realize that soon enough.”
Caera pushed away from Saul, blinded by the sheer fucking agony of her mother trying to ruin anything she had that was good in her life, but he simply lashed his arm around her waist and held her while she struggled.
“The only façade I see,” Saul responded in a brutally cold tone, “is the one you’re wearing. There’s no motherly instinct inside you, no love for the daughter you raised. Was she a means to an end, an object to be exploited for sympathy and pity from your friends? I know your kind, and as far as I can see, she’s suffered more than enough at your hands to last her for the rest of her life. She’s no longer your concern.” He rubbed his cheek over Caera’s hair. “Ask what you want to know, little rabbit. This conversation needs to end.”
God, she couldn’t think, let alone speak. Someone had stood up for her. No, not just someone. Saul. He wasn’t listening to the filth her mother was trying to feed him, and he was…dismissing her as though she held no influence over him.
“Bunny,” he whispered in her ear, “one little question and you’re done.”
She nodded, swallowing to ease the constriction in her throat. She’d controlled the tears so far, but they were waiting. But when she spoke, when she found her voice, the question popped out completely different to how she wanted to phrase it. “Why didn’t you tell me I was adopted?”
Meredith harrumphed. “Finally found out, did you? Well, I suppose that washes us clean of any further responsibility for you.”
Saul growled again.
“Fine. We wanted a child. We went through the process for adopting, but we were impatient, and Virginia had a minimum six-month processing time. In hindsight, we should have just let the state do its job.” The sneer in her voice was like a hot knife sliding through Caera’s flesh. The implication was clear—she hadn’t been worth their impatience. “An acquaintance of ours put us in touch with a woman who’d been left with a small girl, evidently dumped on her doorstep with a note saying the child needed to be protected. The woman had her for over six months, but the girl couldn’t stand to be touched. There were scars, physical and mental, and she didn’t have the time to deal with a troubled child.”
Meredith spoke as though she was telling a story that wasn’t the foundation of Caera’s life. It was flat and unemotional, as though young Caera’s pain was inconsequential. “We decided to meet on the Carolina side of the state line. Some roadside diner where questions wouldn’t be asked. We could see the scars, the trauma, and being naïve and desperate to be parents, we convinced ourselves that we could be her salvation.” She snorted indelicately. “Not knowing the full extent of her history or why she needed to be protected, we made the decision to uproot our entire lives. My family has never left North Carolina, and Samuel is one of the only Huxby’s to leave Maryland. But we thought that taking Caera as far away from Virginia as we could stomach was the best for all of us.”
It was becoming increasingly obvious that her parents placed a lot of blame on her for the road their lives had taken. She was the reason they’d moved to Arizona, away from the close-knit family unit. That alone was reason enough to hate her, it seemed.
“We pulled some strings, got her a birth certificate and all that nonsense sorted out before we moved. We were told her name was Caera, so we continued to call her that because she responded to it. We didn’t want to confuse her by changing more than what was necessary, considering she was just another abandoned child.”
Just another abandoned child.
That was all she came down to, wasn’t it? Defective, flawed, abandoned.
Goddamn it, she was never going to escape it.
“Do…do you know where I came from originally?”
Meredith sighed like she was already bored of the conversation. “Not for definite. The woman you were dumped with had tried to find out your origins, but the note was quite insistent that the less questions asked about you, the better. You weren’t reported as a missing child.” She sniffed. “However, there were rumors that there was some kind of orphanage in Clintwood. Very clandestine. No one ever saw children on the grounds, they didn’t attend the local schools or doctors. It was believed that the couple who ran it were catering to wealthy families looking to adopt.”
Saul’s back went ramrod straight. His eyes found Caera’s, and the horror in them scared the spit out of her mouth. “I think that’s all we need. Say goodbye, Caera.”
She couldn’t even form the word before he ended the call.
“You k-know s-something,” she stuttered.
“Yes. I’m afraid I do.” His fingers slid through hers, creating an unbreakable bond as he twisted slightly on the swinging bench. “It’s time to go home, little rabbit. There’s someone you need to meet.”
*
It was almost dark by the time they returned to Phoenix.
The last few hours had been a rollercoaster of anxiety, dread, and periods of tense silence. While Caera packed, Saul had made a phone call to Connie, telling her that he needed to see her as soon as they got back, and that she should bring Jasper with her.
He'd refused to divulge anything over the phone because, frankly, his suspicions had the potential to rock the foundation of Avalon and throw everyone into chaos. That wasn't the sort of news that should be delivered through a call. It required personal interaction.
Caera had made him promise that they would return to the cabin soon. Once he dropped the bombshell, her entire universe would implode and reform into a strange world he wasn't sure she was ready for. Hell, truth be told, he wasn't fully prepared for the fallout of what was coming.
On the way home, he realized he didn't know where Caera lived, but it didn't matter. The state of her when he found her in the cabin told him that her home was probably in need of some care of its own before she returned, and if he was completely honest with himself, he really didn't want her to go back. He'd gotten used to waking with her every morning, their quiet talks and disagreements as they walked through the forest. Her presence was enlightening, her laughter—when he could tease it out of her—was infectious, and she was everything he'd been missing for the last thirty-six years of his life.
She was the kind of girl he'd have asked to marry him when he was five, while pushing a sticky gummy ring on her finger.
