Page 54 of Queen of Ruin

He reaches into one of the boxes and grabs a stack of cards, holding them out for me.

“What’s this?” I hold the cards in my hand, noticing the top one is a crayon drawing of a family.

I look over at Darren not wanting to flip through them, because even though he handed them to me, it still feels like an invasion of privacy.

“I found them in the drawer of my father’s desk.” He points to them, deep lines furrowed on his forehead. “I never knew him to be sentimental, and I’m not sure what to make of it that he kept all the cards I’d made him as a kid.”

I turn the cards over in my hand and flip through them, but I can see clear as day what Darren can’t. I hand them back to him. “Because he loved you.”

“How do you know that?”

“I used to get in trouble at school to try and get my mother’s attention.”

Darren raises an eyebrow.

“She’d show up at school, more annoyed that she was missing her favorite show than angry at whatever I did.” I shake my head, and then pierce Darren with a stare. “Even if those cards don’t convince you, then trust that every time he wanted to know what you were going to do with your life, it was because he cared to know.”

Darren takes a deep breath. “I don’t like your mother very much,” he says plainly, a little darkness in his eyes that causes me to shiver.

“I don’t tell you these things for you to hate her.”

He pierces me with angry green eyes. “In no universe where someone treated you the way she did would I not wish harmful things upon them.”

Only Darren can threaten someone and make it sound like a nineteenth century poem.

“She was right about one thing – I did marry a rich client.” I shrug and laugh at the irony, even though deep down it still stings. “Which is what she said when I told her what I did for a living.” Admitting it isn’t as hard as I imagined, but I can see the flames of anger in his eyes.

“Do you still talk to her?” he probes.

“Not if I can help it,” I admit truthfully. “She didn’t choose me, and I made peace with it a long time ago.”

He slides me off the desk and onto his lap where I wrap my arms around his shoulders. “I’m sorry, I must be all sweaty and gross.” Even though it was cold out, I’m still sweaty underneath my clothes.

Darren just holds me closer and smiles up at me. “As if that would ever stop me from wanting to be near you.”

I run my fingers through his hair, pushing stray pieces off his forehead and look at him thoughtfully. I realize how hard it’s been for him to be here, to sit in this library and go through his parents' belongings.

The police report that Rausch gave him is sitting on the edge of his desk. Tracking my gaze, he reaches over me and grabs it.

“What are you going to do with it?” I ask.

“Do I really want to be involved in all of this?”

“It’s from thirty years ago. A lot can change in that amount of time.”

“And yet, my father still didn’t have a relationship with him or any of his family.”

The fact that it was sitting on the desk and especially after going through his father’s things, I can only come to one conclusion.

“You want to go there,” I say, pointing to the address.

He looks up at me, and I can feel his hand grip my waist tighter. “Lynchburg is less than two hours from here.”

“You don’t have to do this, Darren.”

“I was supposed to go with them,” he admits quietly.

“And you feel guilty.”

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