Page 5

Elliot Crane

I have found some place called Cranberry’s that has fancy coffee.

What would you like?

Also breakfast.

Seth Crane

Doesnt matter

You need to eat.

Fine

Get me whatever

Elliot had gone out to find breakfast that wasn’t the weird not-food that was free hotel breakfast because he said he didn’t trust eggs that had the consistency of a plasma.

I wasn’t hungry, but I knew he was probably right that I should eat something —I hadn’t eaten much the day before, and I wasn’t likely to start feeling like eating any time soon, so I really needed to just force myself.

I dragged myself into the bathroom and was just drying off from my shower when I heard Elliot returning.

“You okay? Ish?” he asked me, leaning in the tiny hotel bathroom doorway.

I shrugged, toweling myself off.

“They had a salmon breakfast sandwich,” he reported. “And were happy to make their hashbrown thing without cheese for you.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“I brought you a soy latte. Lavender.”

“Thanks,” I said again, trying to muster anything resembling enthusiasm. Judging by Elliot’s small sigh, I hadn’t been terribly successful. “El?—”

“Don’t apologize,” he called back from the other room where he was rustling about, presumably unpacking breakfast.

I sighed, then finished drying my hair and beard with the towel and hung it back up.

We’d booked a week here, just in case, because I was pretty sure this wasn’t going to be a simple sign-some-paperwork thing.

And if we got to leave early—well, I wasn’t going to be upset about losing the rest of the week if that ended up being the price for getting the hell out of Appalachia for good.

Elliot hadn’t argued with my desire to drive to and from Staunton rather than try to stay in some sort of B&B in Scroope, if there even was one.

Staunton at least felt far enough away that I might actually sleep at night.

And it was close to Noah.

I’d debated calling the Augusta Sheriff’s Office this morning, but the thought that I might get called in for questioning kept me from doing it. I’d talk to Humbolt about what was going on first, then call to see if they’d let me see or talk to Noah.

I had texted Lulu to let them know that we’d arrived and to tell me if there was anything they needed. I hadn’t gotten a response yet.

I didn’t know if Lulu was here, or if they’d stayed in Richmond.

Mostly dry, I padded out into the room to find my clothes.

I noticed Elliot watching me from the un-slept-in bed where he was sitting with his food, but he didn’t make any of his usual lewd comments.

I was grateful, because I definitely wasn’t in the mood, and I’d feel terrible about turning him down.

I dressed in a short-sleeve light green button-down and a pair of grey slacks, since we were going to meet a lawyer, and I felt like I had to look a little more formal than a t-shirt and shorts, like what Elliot was wearing.

I wasn’t judging. He didn’t need to come in to see Humbolt, after all.

In fact, he probably couldn’t, since Momma wouldn’t have known he even existed, so he wouldn’t have been mentioned in whatever she wanted to give Noah and me—or whatever she wanted to require us to do.

My breakfast sandwich—sourdough, smoked salmon, egg, capers—was actually pretty good, as were the hashbrowns, which probably meant they were really good, since it felt like my tastebuds were as numb as the rest of me.

I didn’t particularly want to stay long enough in Staunton to test the theory, even if there was a place with good sandwiches.

And coffee. I had the feeling that I was going to need quite a bit of that, at least.

My watch vibrated, and I stopped the alarm I’d set to tell me I needed to go to meet Humbolt.

Elliot slid off the side of the bed, shoving the last of his sandwich in his mouth.

“You don’t have to come with me,” I said.

“Yes, I do.” He said it simply, as though it were a fact.

I didn’t have the energy to argue with him.

The Law Offices of Humbolt and Mallard were in that kind of quaint main-street-style building that had probably served as a storefront for the better part of the last hundred years.

The door led up a flight of stairs, and I winced my way up them, having convinced Elliot to go back down the street to get us both more coffee while I went in alone.

He’d clearly not been happy about it, but he’d gone, his jaw set.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want him with me… I did. I just didn’t know what Humbolt would say. Whether it would be a problem for me to have someone with me not mentioned in the will and who wasn’t family. Whether it would be a problem that I wanted to bring my shifter boyfriend with me.

I knew that would be a problem with the Community, but I didn’t know how much sympathy Humbolt had for their views. Whether Momma had chosen him because he shared their beliefs—or some of them, anyway—or because he didn’t.

Because that had occurred to me, too. The idea that maybe Momma, who had always looked away when Father or one of the other senior Community leaders had taken me or Noah to task about something, wasn’t as dedicated to the Community as she had been in the past. Maybe she’d wanted to find us because she wanted to leave.

Or because she wanted us to know that she was sorry.

That she really did love us, despite all we’d been put through.

That was the fantasy I had, anyway.

One that was pretty much ruined by the fact that even if that had been what she was doing, now she was dead. Maybe she had reached out to Humbolt because she was dying. Or maybe she’d been killed because of it.

Either way, I wasn’t ever going to have a mother who loved me for me.

I pulled a mask out of my pocket, plain navy blue, because I also didn’t know how Humbolt felt about shifters, and I didn’t want to put him off either because of that or because he might think I was rude for not wearing a mask if he assumed I was human.

I let out a soft grunt as I mounted the last step, hating my body and the pain that it carried around with it constantly. It was better today than it had been when I’d half-fallen out of the car last night, but I wouldn’t call it one of my better days.

The door at the top had one of those little plastic signs that hung on a hook stuck to the glass pane on the door. It said Open, Come on in!

So I did.

I stared down at the document Humbolt had given me.

“I—don’t understand,” I said slowly.

“To be quite honest, I don’t, either,” the lawyer admitted.

“Not completely.” James Humbolt looked to be nearing retirement, with pale skin that hadn’t seen nearly enough sunlight, light grey eyes that tended to squint behind metal framed big lenses, and thick grey hair he’d swept to one side.

He wore a grey suit, plain white button-down, and a solid tie in an inoffensive shade of grey-blue.

His mask was grey, but a slightly different shade than his suit, which told me he probably didn’t care all that much about color-coordination.

He seemed tired, his body the kind of soft that said he hadn’t so much as gone for a walk for exercise in at least a decade.

I wanted to invite him to walk down to the coffee shop with me just to get him outside.

Because James Humbolt actually was a nice guy—and he didn’t at all seem to be part of the Community.

He hadn’t said any of the buzzwords I’d have expected to hear from someone who was, and he’d put aside Momma’s will for the first two hours to talk with me about what was happening with Noah.

Who had twenty-six hours left before the Augusta County police had to release or charge him.

Humbolt determined that Noah did, in fact, have a lawyer—someone from Richmond whom I assumed Lulu had hired, which was good, because Lulu had the money to hire a good lawyer. I hoped that would mean good things for Noah.

So Humbolt couldn’t actually talk to Noah, but he did manage to get more information.

While the police hadn’t found anything to directly implicate Noah, apparently his fingerprints had been found on a glass in the kitchen and on the front door. Which meant that he’d either lied to Lulu or had kept the fact that he’d gone to see Momma from them. And from me.

That hurt.

The worst part was that Humbolt told me that my mother’s body had been mauled by some sort of animal—which was delaying determining cause of death, if it hadn’t been the cause of death itself. That was the real reason they were holding Noah.

Because to the cops, he was an animal.

And so was I.

I hadn’t told Humbolt that. Not yet. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but I wasn’t ready to trust him with my shifter identity within the first few hours of meeting him.

So, instead, I asked him what my mother had wanted. What she’d left or what it was I needed to do. Why he’d insisted that I come back to Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley.

“Your mother, Mrs. Mays, left you this,” he said, and put an envelope down in front of me on his desk. I opened it, and found a single sheet of paper.

The piece of paper I was staring at, trying to make sense of.

If anything should happen to me, please contact my children, Seth and Eleanor Mays.

To Eleanor I bequeath my grandmother’s onyx brooch and pearl necklace, and the table linens embroidered by my mother.

To Seth, my father’s tools and toolbox, and the crocheted bed-spread from the master bedroom, made by my aunt.

To both my living children, the land bought with the money I brought to my marriage to Bartholomew Mays.

Please see that my children read the following.

There was empty space below that, and then the words continued. This was where things got confusing.

To the only true loves of my life,