Written with You (The Regret Duet #2)(20)

“Her sister’s name is Willow.”

My stomach rolled, and as I threw out a hand to brace myself against the wall, Doug’s words crashed down over me like a boulder caught in an avalanche. This couldn’t be happening, but I had to ask anyway. “Was she at the mall that day?”

Ian let out a loud cuss behind me, but I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to spare him a glance.

“Was she?”

“Who? Hadley?” Doug asked.

“Willow!” I boomed. “Was she at the mall too?”

“Jesus, Caven, what the hell is going on over there? Hold on and let me see if it says anything about her sister.” There were several seconds of silence. “News reports mention that they were at the mall as a family that day. Why does this matter? The sister passed away a few months back.”

My vision tunneled as that little girl from the mall flashed on the backs of my eyelids. I’d done everything I could to save her that day, and the thought of her being gone now nearly brought me to my knees. The phone fell with a clatter as her voice from all those years earlier played on a loop in my head.

“Let them help you, Caven, and I’ll forgive you. I promise. I will.”

She was Hadley’s sister.

My daughter’s aunt.

My guardian angel.

And she was dead.

Ian retrieved the phone from the floor. “Talk to me.”

Not including the thundering of my heart, there was silence as Doug filled Ian in on my latest nightmare.

“Shit. Right. Okay. Email me that report. I’ll get back with you in a few. Yeah. He’s… I’ll call you back.” Ian ended the call and stepped in front of me. “What are you thinking right now?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

“Did she ever mention this sister to you? Is it possible she knew your connection to Willow the whole time?”

I scrubbed a hand over my face, trying to ignore the gaping hole in my chest for a kid I hadn’t seen in over eighteen years. “I don’t know.”

“Why else would she sign Willow if she didn’t know?”

Denial broke inside me. “We don’t even know if it’s the same Willow. It’s completely possible that there was more than one Willow that day. Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe she’s still alive. Maybe—”

“Caven, stop.”

But I couldn’t stop. It couldn’t be true. And there was only one person who would know the truth.

“Stay with Rosalee,” I barked as I darted toward the front door.

Ian followed, matching me stride for stride. “Where the hell are you going?”

“Hadley will know if it was her or not. I need to know, Ian. I have to know if it was her.”

“What makes you think she’s going to tell you the truth?”

“Because she will.”

“She signed a dead woman’s name on a damn contract. I’m doubting she’s going to—” He abruptly stopped talking, his footsteps no longer echoing on the wood behind me. “Oh, fuck,” he groaned and then repeated, “Oh, fucking fuck.”

I was a man on a mission, but there was something in his tone that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. I put my chin to my shoulder as I reached the door. “What?”

“Did Doug have our lab pull DNA on her, or was it her lab?”

I shot him an incredulous glare. “Of course we had one done.”

“They have to be identical, then.” He raked a hand through his hair, his gaze flicking around the room at nothing and everything. “Holy shit,” he whispered. “Where’s the note? The one that was in Rosalee’s blanket. Where is it?”

I had no clue what was going on, but it wasn’t often Ian got worked up about something.

“In the safe. Why?”

I’d considered lighting that damn note on fire at least a dozen times over the years. But at the time, I’d thought it was all Rosalee had left of her mother. It wasn’t mine to burn.

He turned on a toe and hurried back to my office. I was emotionally hanging on the edge of a cliff, but I trusted Ian enough to follow.

He knew the combination and was already cracking the door open when I entered the room. There wasn’t much in there—some cash in case of emergency, our passports, Rosalee’s birth certificate. But I’d find what he was looking for far more quickly than he would.

Reaching over his shoulder, I pulled the manila folder out.

He snatched it from my hand, peeling the brass clasp back before sliding it out and carrying it to my desk. He placed it next to the nondisclosure agreement signed as Willow and then stepped away like a fucking detective examining evidence.

One read:

Caven,

I’m sorry. I never meant for this to happen. This is our daughter Keira. I’ll love her forever. Take care of her the way I can’t.

Written with regret,

Hadley

The other: Willow Banks.



Not exactly the best handwriting sample to compare.

But it was enough.

The Ls didn’t match. The two in Willow were loopy and large. The one in Hadley was nothing more than an angled stick. The slope of the letters was different too. Hadley’s note was slanted hard to the right and messy to the point that it was almost illegible.