Page 58 of The Forgotten (Echoes from the Past #2)

FIFTY-TWO

London, England

Quinn set aside the cross, not wishing to see any more.

Petra was happy, her future secure as long as she didn’t allow Avery to interfere with her plans.

She’d made the right decision, as far as Quinn could tell, but something was lurking just out of sight, something that would lead to her death.

It was at moments like these that Quinn truly hated her gift.

It wasn’t a gift at all, but a curse, designed to suck her into the lives of people she couldn’t help.

As an archeologist, she dealt with death every day, but the people she dug up were long gone, their bones dusty and brittle.

Few of them had died of natural causes or reached old age, but dying of an illness or being slain on a battlefield wasn’t the same as being murdered, and Quinn had no doubt that Petra and her son had been murdered.

Her heart went out to Petra, but it was Edwin who made her wish she could just call Rhys and tell him that she’d changed her mind and didn’t want to do this anymore.

She thought she could retain a sense of professional detachment, but how did you keep your feelings in check when you watched the emotional and physical suffering of a child and knew that he would never grow up to become a man or experience all the things that made life worth living?

For some reason, it would have been more bearable had Petra and Edwin died during the coming storm.

It would have been tragic, but not personal .

Someone had targeted those two, and not only killed them, but made sure that they would not have peace even in death.

To bury them face down just beyond hallowed ground was cruel and unforgiving.

What could someone as ordinary as Petra have done to invite such malice?

And what of Edwin? Had he been in the wrong place at the wrong time when someone attacked his mother?

Had he tried to protect her? He thought himself a man, but his cheeks had still been rounded and smooth, and he had yet to experience the growth spurt that usually came with puberty.

His eyes were full of innocence and trust, and the understanding of what life could inflict on one was still years away.

Of course, there were other factors at play, and other people.

Quinn could only see what happened to Petra, and experience her point of view, but other forces were gathering “off-screen,” as Rhys liked to say.

A part of Quinn wished she could just lose the cross, accidentally on purpose, and never find out what happened to mother and son, but she supposed, being a historian, that she needed to know how the story ended.

It went against everything she learned to leave a job unfinished, and of course, she was still under contract with the BBC.

There was one more episode after this one scheduled for the program, and then she would be done.

Rhys might wish to renew her contract, if the ratings were satisfactory, but she wasn’t open to the idea.

This job was proving to be one of the hardest tasks she’d ever undertaken, and one of the most emotional.

Perhaps, now that Emma had come into their lives, Quinn was even more sensitive to the feelings of a child and a mother’s need to protect them from harm.

Quinn sighed and replaced the cross in a drawer.

Gabe was sound asleep next to her, having read Emma three stories and sworn that Mr. Rabbit would be there when she woke up.

Tomorrow was Monday, and Emma was feeling a bit anxious, as she did before each new week at nursery school, which was still new to her.

Quinn was feeling anxious too, but for somewhat different reasons.

She’d been feeling unwell the past few days, and her moods seemed to be swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other, like a pendulum.

One minute she was wonderfully happy, and then suddenly she was barely holding back the tears that threatened to flow for no apparent reason.

The smell of bacon, which she normally found appetizing, nearly drove her out of her favorite cafe only that morning, and her breasts felt tender and swollen.

She often felt a bit weepy and achy before her period, but she was a week late, and that was worrying.

She had been late several times before, but it happened mostly on foreign digs.

The time difference, change of climate, and hours of painstaking labor sometimes threw off her cycle, but she was at home now, enjoying all the cold and damp that an English spring had to offer.

She’d never really worried about pregnancy.

Luke had been fanatical about using protection, knowing full well that if Quinn found herself pregnant, she’d plead with him to keep the baby, and he had no wish to find himself in that position.

Babies had never been at the top of Luke’s list of priorities, and neither was she, as she’d discovered.

Gabe was always careful as well, but there had been that one time in Edinburgh, when they’d both been too overcome by their emotions to think of practical matters and just went at each other like two sex-crazed ferrets.

Quinn counted the weeks in her mind. It was just over six weeks ago, or maybe seven, so this would be just about the time a pregnancy would make itself known.

Her period in February had been unusually light and short, but she hadn’t given it much thought, being preoccupied with settling Emma into her new life in London and her new school.

Quinn stole a peek at Gabe. He looked tense, even in sleep.

These past weeks hadn’t been easy on him, and he was just beginning to settle into the role of fatherhood, which had been thrust upon him so unexpectedly.

Gabe, being the stoic that he was, would embrace the idea of another child and make things work, but was he emotionally ready?

He’d proposed only two months ago, and at a time when most men secretly battled a case of cold feet, he was learning to become a dad, doing his best to support Quinn in her ill-fated quest to find her father, and running the institute with the help of his PA and the other department heads, who, being archeologists, were not the most practical bunch, or the most budget-minded.

Quinn stared into the darkness. She wasn’t ready for this.

Any of it. Everything seemed to be happening backwards, her carefully thought-out life plan going up in flames.

She could almost hear the cackling of the Three Fates, laughing at her as they spun, measured, and cut the thread that was her life.

It was an occupational hazard for her to deal with people’s failed plans and truncated lives.

What made her think she was any different?

Life came at you, like a great storm, and you did your best to prepare and weather it, hopefully coming out on the other side stronger and wiser, if a little worse for wear in some cases.

Not everyone weathers the storm , Quinn thought drowsily as she began to drift off, images of Petra and Edwin filling her with dread.