Leave Me Love (Call Me Cat Trilogy #2)(28)

"Everything you're feeling is completely normal, Catelyn. I know it doesn't feel like it, but it's true. You have a lot of people around you who love you and want to help, and you have one of the best attorneys in Massachusetts. It's not hopeless."

I sat back, pulling my legs up and hugging them like a child. "How was my mom before she was killed? Did she behave any differently?" I'd been thinking more about my mom lately, how she might have been, what she was like as an adult. Until recently I'd always seen her through the eyes of a child, or young teen, but now I was starting to look at her through the eyes of an adult and it made me curious about what she was going through. Did she suspect something bad was going to happen?

Lauren paused for a long moment before speaking. "I suppose it can't hurt to share with you about her. She's dead and you are her next of kin." Lauren's eyes unfocused to something in the past and I waited for her to compose her thoughts. "Alice was scared in the last few weeks of her life."

My heart pounded in my chest and I dropped my feet to the ground, sitting forward, attentive, soaking up each word in hopes it would loosen some secret that would help me figure out the truth.

Lauren took a bottle of perfume out of her desk and dabbed her wrist with it. The sweet scent filled the room again. She was lucky I wasn't sensitive to smells, but some of her patients would have been. I wondered if they ever said anything about it.

She settled back into her chair and frowned. "She started having doubts about some of the people closest to her."

When she didn't continue I prompted her. "Did she ever say who?"

Lauren shook her head. "No, she just said she worried that a close friend had betrayed her, but she wouldn't give me any details, though I pressed. I think she was worried that if anyone else knew, their life would be in danger."

She didn’t say any more, and our session ended. I left Lauren's office with a prescription for antidepressants and more questions than I'd had going in.

Which of my mom's friends killed her?





Chapter Twenty Four


Memories of Better Days


ASH AND I spent the evening talking through every possible murderer while drinking really expensive wine. Probably the wine was contra-indicated with my medication, but I didn't care. It felt good and tasted good and I liked how the dark burgundy liquid looked in the fancy wine glass as I swirled it around. The wine had 'good legs.' That was the term, right? A wine connoisseur I was not, but it didn't matter. I could still enjoy the taste of it and the fire crackling in front of us. The smell of burning wood and flames made me think of camping, the trips we'd taken as a family before my family died.

I closed my eyes and leaned back into Ash's arms, memories dancing behind my eyelids. Memories of s'mores and sleeping under the stars and my dad telling ghost stories even as my mom scolded him not to be too scary. But I never had bad dreams from his stories, even though my mom did. I never had bad dreams until after they were murdered.

"Cat?" Ash's voice held worry and I opened my eyes and looked up at him.

"Hmm?"

"I think I lost you there for a minute."

I set my empty glass down though I couldn't remember finishing it. "Just thinking about the past. About my family and my life as a child. Do you have any good memories of your childhood?" He didn't like talking about his family, which I understood, but it couldn't have been all bad.

"Sure. Everyone has something good, I suppose. Well, most people. My brother and I used to build fantastic forts in the woods behind our house. We'd find large leaves, branches, rocks, anything we could carry, and create these magical fantasy worlds where nymphs and fairies and dragons lived. We'd make swords from branches and train as knights." He stared at the fire, mindlessly running his hand through my hair. "We were so close in age that for along time we were each other's best friend."

"What happened?"

His eyes snapped back to the present and he finished the last of his wine and stood. "We grew up. Grew apart. Found that we had less in common than I'd thought. It happens."

There was more to the story, I could tell, but it could wait.

We locked up the house, turned off the lights and found solace in each other's arms, making love to the sound of a light rainfall outside and falling asleep holding each other.

***

The next day, Professor Cavin picked me up and we drove the two-and-a-half hours to his cabin. Ash wanted to come along, but I insisted against it. This was something I had to do myself. I had no idea what we'd find when we arrived, if anything, but a buzz of anticipation built in my stomach the closer we got to our remote destination.

The last leg of the trip we bumped along a dirt road that wouldn't have made it to any maps or GPS systems. Surrounded by oak, hickory, cherry and birch trees, with nothing but nature everywhere, it felt like stepping into another world. When the cabin came into view, it looked just as I'd imagined it. Cozy, small, made of polished logs, situated between the woods and a private lake.

I inhaled deeply as I stood on the porch waiting for Professor Cavin to unlock the front door. Nothing smelled as good as this—except maybe Ash. Clean air, wild flowers and a hint of the musky foliage decomposing under layers of forest floor. It smelled raw and natural, free of human pollution and toxicity.