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How is Eli’s father remaining so calm? How could he stand to work next to someone who’d done that to his own wife? Be in the same building where it happened?
Sarah had said Camellia made them an offer her family couldn’t refuse. Did that offer include the promise of a stable, well-paying job for her husband? A nice home and an education that could set her children up with the best possible chance at a bright future.
I meet her gaze and it’s telling. That’s exactly what she’d done. What she’d agreed to by taking that box.
Sarah’s forgiven Silas, I see that now.
It’s not because he deserves it, but so she can move on for her own sanity. Enjoy the rest of her life, while knowing her family is taken care of. Given the best opportunities.
Told you. There are lots of things people claim they want but safety and peace of mind, whether we want them there or not, are always at the top.
That’s why Sgt. Daniels put up with Silas. Not because he isn’t pissed—which any decent man would be—but because his wife asked him to move past it.
“So, you left, and she gave you this box and you come back?” I ask, rounding us back to the start. This has to be the whole reason why Lorna broke in.
“No, she didn’t reach out again until several years later. After I’d graduated and became a registered nurse.”
Her lids cushion in fondness, and it’s easy to tell she cared for Camellia. Thankful for what she’d given her family. For helping her that night at Hardin.
“Her visit was random, the same as it had been that night. Appearing like she somehow knew she was needed.”
“She was good at that,” Cole mentions, and with the hushed way it comes out, I don’t think he meant to say it aloud.
He’s been clinging to every word spoken of his mother. His bottom lip rolls as he pulls it through his teeth.
“She’d told me she needed my help and after she helped me that night, I couldn’t refuse her.” Sarah’s voice cracks at the sentiment.
Drawing attention away from her face, she lifts, shaking the front part of the box that isn’t pressed to her stomach.
“Said she’d give me and my family everything and more if I was patient enough to wait, and all I had to do in exchange is hold on to this box for her.”
“She never told you what’s inside? Mom, what if it’d been a box of drugs?” Eli asks, aghast.
Sarah scoffs at her son’s harsh words, refusing to humor him for even a moment.
“But you don’t have the key?” I ask.
Her head shakes side to side, sluggish.
“Well then, who does?”
“You never wondered what was in it?” Eli asks, overlooking Silas’s fury.
“I figured if she wanted me to know she’d have told me.” She exhales down the bridge of her small nose and the sound is painful. “I came home after dropping off your sister, and I heard the shouting, and knew it was time.”
Time for what?
Fortunately, she doesn’t make us wait long, answering as if she could read all our minds.
Her breath turns choppy. “Whatever’s in here is important.”
“Did she say if it was meant for anyone in particular?” Silas asks, already reaching for it. Sgt. Daniels shoots him another scathing look and his arms fall back to his side.
If the ice the man was on before was thin, now it has the flimsiness of a satin ribbon.
“I think the box was meant to be opened with this,” Cole says, reaching inside his pocket. His palm opens back up, and my eyes jolt.
The loss of his overheated touch makes me deflate more than it should. Our connection is too strong, that pull between us severe.
