Page 32 of Walking in Darkness

The dread that scorched through my chest told me it had to mean something.

“Not sure there’s a world that small where that could be a coincidence.”

She turned away and looked down, and I knew she was staring at the cell she had clutched in her hand.

I could feel her reticence. Like she wished she could squeeze her eyes closed and all this would go away.

That she’d finally—finally—wake from this nightmare.

But this nightmare was our lives, and I eased up to her side, bringing us shoulder to shoulder.

Vapor puffed from our mouths as we stood out in the glacial cold. Tension bound us, chains of uncertainty and trepidation, before she blew out the biggest sigh and tapped into the search bar on the phone.

She typed in the few details we knew about Abigail.

Abigail Watkins, painter, Tearsith.

The painting titledTearsithpopulated first.

As if the chains had been loosened, Aria hurried to click on it, then clicked directly on Abigail Watkins’s name; then from there, she scrolled down her history to her family’s listing.

Abigail Watkins was an American painter.

Born: February 16, 1871, in Pendleton, South Carolina

Died: March 4, 1902, in Charlotte, North Carolina

Known for: Painting

Spouse: Ambrose Watkins

Parents: Robert Ray Smith, Beatrice Louise Remington

Ambrose Watkinswas hyperlinked, and Aria stalled for only a beat before she clicked on it.

There was little information.

His name and date of birth.

September 2, 1863.

But there was a picture. A faded black-and-white picture that still held the power to punch the air from my lungs and sent Aria’s free hand clapping over her mouth, though her whimper was clear.

“Oh my God, it’s him.”

Chapter Eleven

Aria

I shivered as I sat with two of the car’s vents pumping in my direction, trying to thaw what had gone cold inside me. It felt as if I’d been frozen from the inside out.

Seeing Peter murdered.

Remembering where I’d heard the name Ambrose before. That thread that had dangled in the periphery of my mind finally knitting into awareness.

But getting the confirmation that he had actually been married to Abigail was what had made me feel as if ice had formed around every organ inside me, a flood of bitter cold rushing from my spirit and spreading out to saturate every cell of my body.

A tremor rolled through me, and Pax turned his vent my way, too. Concern radiated from him as he put the car in reverse, then pulled back out onto the road.