The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(80)

The Eddisons’ eyes flick to me, track to one of the pictures of Faith up on the wall, then back to me.

“Ian saw her on the news and brought us information on several other disappearances he’d been researching, where all the girls looked alike and vanished the same time of year.”

Bran’s knuckles gradually turn white with tension as I walk his parents through a very sanitized version of our discoveries. I’m not sure if they’re speechless or just choosing not to say anything yet, but without interruption they let me get all the way through to why we’ve come to Tampa.

“This girl, Brooklyn—she’s okay?” Xiomara asks as soon as I’ve stopped. “She’ll recover?”

“Completely. She’ll be in the hospital for a few days, and they’ll be monitoring her blood work for a while even after she’s home, but the doctors are confident she’ll have a full recovery.”

“Good,” she says with a nod. “Good.”

Paul scrubs a hand across his face, a gesture I’ve seen so many times in his son it’s almost eerie to see it in him. “And Faith is . . .”

Dead, but somehow I can’t bring myself to say the word. There’s something about how hard those d’s are, the sound that makes the word so harsh.

“We believe she’s buried in Omaha,” I reply. “We’ll head there tomorrow, and they’ve agreed to wait until we’re present.”

“We?”

“The two of us, Dad,” Bran clarifies, speaking for the first time since we sat down. “Plus Ian and Sachin.”

“Sachin? Why—oh, dear,” Xiomara murmurs. “His sister’s friend.”

“Erin Bailey,” Bran says. “We think she’s buried here in Tampa. He’s coming here for her, and then flying up to Omaha with us. But we wanted . . . we thought . . .”

“We’re trying to make sure all the girls are located and identified, and the families notified, before it breaks to the news,” I finish for him. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll be executing a search warrant on the property Davies rented while he lived here. Very likely we’ll be digging up part of the yard. We wanted to make sure you knew what was happening before that started, especially given what we expect to find.”

“Erin Bailey,” Paul says softly. “Someone’s little girl.”

“Yes.”

“And this man, he . . . what does he do with them?” asks Xiomara. “Does he . . . does he touch them?”

“As far as we can tell, he does not. They’re replacements for the daughter he lost to cancer.”

“Replacements,” she echoes. “Then why—why does he kill them?”

“Because he lost his daughter to cancer. He wants to do it over, do it better, have the happy life with his daughter they should have had, but she died. The trauma of her illness, of losing her, has completely reshaped him. It’s literally rewritten his brain. He can’t escape it.”

“Do you feel sorry for this man, Eliza?”

“Yes,” I say simply, and I feel Bran’s knee knock against mine as he shifts and resettles. “It doesn’t excuse what he did. It absolves him of nothing. I don’t know that it earns him any forgiveness, and I don’t know that it should. But yes, I feel sorry for him. His daughter’s death shattered him, and he couldn’t piece himself back together into a life of anything more than sorrow. That incites pity.”

Tears stream down Paul’s weathered cheeks, perpetually sunburned because he never remembers to put on sunblock before running yet can’t ever manage to tan. Xio isn’t crying, but her eyes are bright.

“I know it’s not the answer you hoped for—”

But Xio cuts me off with a brisk shake of her head. “It is an answer, Eliza. At long last, it is an answer, and our daughter is coming home. We hoped,” she continues ruefully. “How could we not? But it has been many years since we truly believed her to still be alive.”

Paul hiccups, burying his face in the hand not clinging to his wife.

“At least . . . at least she has not been suffering all this time. There’s mercy in that. Esos peque?os consuelos.” Her lower lip and chin start to quiver. “My baby. My baby girl.”

Bran shoots off the couch, stumbling to his knees in front of his parents. They fold into him, his arms around their backs. I can see Xio’s shoulders shaking as she weeps.

I silently excuse myself and head out to the porch, where Alberto sits with the candy. He grins at a clutch of boys, probably just old enough to cross from sidewalk to porch without their parents. I can see three adults talking together at the end of the yard, watching them. As soon as the boys are gone, though, Alberto turns to me with a solemn expression. “Is everything okay?” he asks anxiously. “Tío Brandon never comes back for this week. He’s not sick, is he?”

“He’s not sick,” I reassure him, hopping onto the rail next to him and turning so my back is against a post. “I know you’re family, but I can’t really talk about it yet. You’ll know soon.”

His eyes fall to the gun at my hip, the badge at my belt. “It’s about Tía Faith, isn’t it?”

“You call her tía?”

“Papá said we don’t stop calling someone family just because they’ve died or gone away. Bisabuelo died years ago, but he’s still Bisabuelo, sí?”