Page 91 of The Secrets She Keeps

“Will make us trust him to actually help us with anything?” Joy was looking at Mac like he was naive. Hell, maybe he was. Life in Hughes Heights was different from life in the real world.

“First thing he did that day was open his mouth and pick a fight withCara.Because, you know, a twenty-three-year-old woman with autism terrified of crowds and still afraid of thedarkis a fair target for a forty-year-old asshole billionaire,” Hope said. “If a Coleson needs protecting, it’s Heather, Norm, and Summer who are in charge of that. And the rest of us will be right behind them, ready to defend our family with slingshots, rocks, and sticks when we have to. That’s the way it is in our world now, dude. That’s just the way it is.”

“We have done exactly that before, you know,” Joy added, rubbing her arms as if she felt chilled again. Gunnar studied herfor a moment. He could see the scars on her neck where Gregory Eastman had hurt her the day he’d killed her husband. “Settle down a bit, Hope, you’re getting flushed. And I think Heather hearsyou right now. She’s getting agitated. Sit back down.”

Hope plopped into the recliner, probably faster than she should.

Joy checked her youngest sister’s pulse. “Your heart is beating a bit too fast for my liking right now. Lay back and stay quiet.”

Miguel shifted, moved right next to the two sisters. His entire stance told exactly what he thought.

“Just tell us, who would have a grudge against your sister for almost twenty years?” Daniel asked, stepping between Hope and Mac. Mac’s surprise was right there on his face. Gunnar was just as damned shocked. Why hadn’t Heather at least told him what was happening to her? Told Jarrod or Murdoch? Someone who could help her.

Then it sank in.

Heather didn’t trustanyof them at all. That was why. She probably never truly had. Even him. She truly had believed she was facing the TSP alone.

Except for Miguel. A man she’d known for a decade, that was it.

How terrified she must have been made him almost sick to even think about. That she had trusted Gunnar even a little mattered. “Hope, Joy, we just want to find the guys who did this. If they are coming for Heather again, I want to make sure they don’t get to her first.”

“Yeah, because keepingHeathersafe is the TSP’s top priority,” Hope said, anger right there, hard to miss. She wasn’t like the little happy gremlin he had met before. How could she be?

“They won’t ever get to her again,” Daniel said. “I’m going to make sure of it. But we need answers first.”

Joy stared at him, obviously weighing whether she could trust him. Then she sighed and looked at Miguel. Miguel nodded. Joy turned back to Gunnar and looked at him from those eyes that could destroy a man. “I don’t have a clue. You have to understand those were dark days back then. We lost our parents violently, andeverythingchanged overnight. Not to mention us being the new freaks in town too. No one new had moved to that town in thirty years, and then therewewere. And most of us are not normalby society’s standards. We all know that too.”

“No one knew what to think about a house with eleven girls living together,” Hope said. “I remember people staring at us every time we went to town. I remember that stupid post office woman telling Bonnie-mom she wasn’t doing us any favors the first time we ever went in there to get our mail. She yanked me closer like she was going to take me away and keep me too. This was even before we had Eddie, Sam, and Summer living with us full time.”

“Hope was only four that day, and that woman terrified her so much Heather had to hold her on her lap for hours after we got home,” Joy said.

“It wasn’t the last time someone said that right to our faces, either,” Hope said.

“No, it wasn’t. And it was…culture shock for us, as well. We’d been raised in a very wealthy household; we had different plans for our lives—then we had to watch Angela just…fade right before our eyes. Within two years, Bonnie went from having just Cara and Cashie, to adding the four of us, then Angela’s three girls, and then Crispin.”

“Did your family anger anyone during that time?” Gunnar asked.

“Not that I can recall. We stuck close to home. There were people watching that new family with all those girls very closely at first. It got worse when Angela’s girls came to us too. And then Crispin. Judgmental and sanctimonious, just waiting for one of us to screw up so they could gloat. It took a little while for the town to adjust tous.For us to find our place, really.”

“Most didn’t think Bonnie-mom had any business keepingallof us,” Hope said.

“Then there was gossip because we were all supposedly ‘too smart for our own goods’ and ‘thought we were too good for the school like the rest of the kids,’ or stuck-up and uppity, even though we were dirt poor and should ‘know our places,’ that kind of thing. Some people even said Crispin was Heather’s baby, and we’d hidden that fact since Heather was so young, that Bonnie-mom had delivered her at home so the cops wouldn’t take the baby away, that Heather had quit school because she was pregnant. Even that Heather was older than what we’d told people, and we were just lying to get state money for her and her baby. So we older girls stayed close to each other.” Joy wiped her cheeks lightly.

She was a very expressive woman, he had noticed before. Miguel pulled her close and hugged her for a moment.

“It took all of us to make it work. We didn’t have time to anger anyone. We did our homework, did our chores, watched over the younger girls, worked in the garden, that kind of thing. Or the two of us were sewing up holes in the girls’ clothing or sewing cloth diapers for Crispin. Heather was busy making meals and doing the laundry or giving some wild little kid a bath and tucking them in, and then cleaning up any messes that had inevitably happened. As soon as I was old enough to drive myself, I had a ninety-minute drive to the on-site classes each way and was taking every class I could online. I was barely home, it seemed.”

She felt guilty. Gunnar could see it in her eyes. That guilt…had been years in the making, he suspected.

“Heather was working three jobs between the grocery store, cleaning houses, and teaching dance and private piano classes in town. When we were home, Heather and I were busy—from the time we woke up until the time we went to bed. Bonnie and Marcia were twice as busy as we were. When would we have had time to anger anyone? And other than for Cashie, Crispin, and Hope—doctor visits were very rare. Bonnie-mom just took care of us at home if needed because we couldn’t afford it. How could Heather have angered anyone?”

“There was the evil social worker,” Hope said quietly. “But we left him behind in Garrity, right? He never did follow us? You’re sure?”

“He didn’t follow us,” Joy said. “We never saw him again, Hope. I promise. Heather thought he was too afraid of Grandpa Otis to come looking for us after that.”

“Evil social worker?” Mac asked.

“Most kids have a boogeyman. Our younger girls were afraid of the Evil Social Worker. The face for all their fears. Especially for the younger girls. I suppose it could have been him, but he wasn’t a doctor or anything. The only doctors we interacted with at thirteen or fourteen or so were the ones who worked at Dad’s hospital. And that very rarely happened either.”

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