Page 58 of Bad Blood
YOU
Five admires his handiwork as blood drips down your arms, your legs. It will be hours before the others return. Hours before they ask you if Cassie and her friends should die.
No. No. No.
That’s Lorelai’s answer. That will always be Lorelai’s answer. But Lorelai isn’t strong enough to bear this. Lorelai isn’t here right now.
You are.
There was a thin line between a warning and a threat. I wanted to believe that Kane Darby had been warning me, not threatening me, when he’d suggested I leave town, but if my time with the FBI had taught me anything, it was that violence didn’t always simmer just below the surface. Sometimes, the serial killer across from you quoted Shakespeare. Sometimes, the most dangerous people were the ones you trusted most.
Kane Darby’s non-confrontational manner wasn’t any morenaturalthan Michael’s tendency to wave red flags at any and all passing bulls. That kind of steadiness could have come from one of two places: either he’d grown up in an environment where emotion was seen as unseemly—and outbursts were punished accordingly—or staying calm had been his way of seizing control in an environment where someone else’s volatile emotions had served as land mines.
As I rolled that over in my mind, Dean fell in beside me. “I made a promise to the universe,” he said, “that if Lia gets out of this unscathed, I’ll go forty-eight hours without brooding. I will purchase a colored T-shirt. I’ll sing karaoke and let Townsend pick out my song.” He cast a sideways glance at me. “Did you learn anything from talking to Darby’s son?”
The answer to Dean’s question sat heavy and unspoken in my throat as we made our way down Main Street, past Victorian storefronts and historical markers, until the wrought-iron gate of the apothecary garden came into view.
“Kane said that he was the golden son,” I said finally, finding my voice. “He blames himself for that. I think staying in Gaither was a form of penance for him—punishment for, and I quote, ‘choices’ he made ‘long ago.’”
“You’re talking about him,” Dean observed. “Not to him.”
“I’m talking to you.”
“Or,” Dean countered softly as we came to a stop outside the garden, “you’re scared to go too deep.”
In the entire time I’d known him, Dean had never pushed me further into another person’s perspective than I wanted to go. At best, he curtailed his protective instincts, profiled with me, or got out of my way—but right now, I wasn’t the one that Dean would have given anything to protect.
“You came very close to remembering something back at your old house. Something that a part of you is desperate to forget. I know you, Cassie. And I just keep thinking that if you forgot an entire year of your life, it wasn’t because you were little, and it wasn’t the result of some kind of trauma. You’ve been through two lifetimes of trauma, just since I’ve met you, and you haven’t forgotten a thing.”
“I was a child,” I countered, feeling like he’d hit me. “My mother and I left in the middle of the night. We didn’t tell anyone. We didn’t say good-bye. Something happened, and we justleft.”
“And after you left”—Dean took my hand in his—“it was just you and your mother. She was all you had. You were her everything, and she wanted you to forget. She wanted you to dance it off.”
“What are you saying?” I asked Dean.
“I’m saying that I think that you forgot the life you lived in Gaither forher. I’m saying that I don’t think you’re the one that your brain was protecting. I think it was protecting the only relationship you had left.” Dean gave me a moment to process, then pushed on. “I’m saying that you couldn’t afford to remember the life you had here, because then you would have had to be angry that she took it away.” He paused. “You would have to be angry,” he continued, switching to the present tense, “that she made sure you never had that again. She made you the center of her life and herself the center of yours, and knowing what we know now—about the Masters, about the Pythia—I think you’re even more terrified than you were as a child about what might happen if you do remember Gaither.”
“And that’s why I’m using the third person when I talk to you about Kane Darby?” I asked sharply, stepping past the gates and walking the stone path of the apothecary garden, Dean two steps behind me. “Because getting close to him might mean getting close to my mother? Because I might remember something I don’t want to know?”
Dean walked behind me in silence.
You’re wrong. I’d done everything I could to see my mother through a profiler’s eyes and not a child’s. She’d been a con woman. She’d made sure that I had no one to depend on but her.
She’d loved me more than anything.
Forever and ever, no matter what.
“Maybe I did forget Gaither for her sake,” I said quietly, allowing Dean to catch up with me. “I was good at reading people, even as a kid. I would have known that she didn’t want to talk about it, that she needed to believe that none of it had mattered, that the two of us didn’t need anyone or anything else.”
My mom had let herself care about Kane Darby. She’d let him in—not just into her life, but into mine. Based on the rest of my childhood, she’d learned her lesson.
What happened? Why did you leave him? Why did you leave Gaither?
I came to a standstill in front of an oleander, its reddish pink blooms deceptively cheerful for a poisonous plant. “Kane said that Lia would be safe,” I told Dean, cutting to the heart of the matter. “For now.” I wanted to stop there, but I didn’t. “He also said that I wouldn’t be safe in her position.”
“Darby doesn’t know who and what Lia is.” Dean captured my gaze, unwilling to let me look away. “If you wouldn’t be safe there, she’s not, either.” This was Dean asking me to stop pulling back, asking me toremember. And all I could think was that he shouldn’t have had to ask.
I swallowed, my mouth dry as I began profiling Kane—the right way this time. “My mother once told you that she didn’t deserve you, but she didn’t know your secrets, the choices you had made.” Saying the words out loud made them real. I kept my gaze on Dean’s, let his deep brown eyes steady me, even as I could feel my entire life—my entire worldview—begin to shift under my feet. “You said that you didn’t deserve her, didn’t deserveus. But you wanted it—you wanted a family, and you were good at being there for her and for me.” Saying the words physically hurt, and I had no idea why. “There had to be some shred of that desire, some kernel of what it meant to be a family in your background. Setting asideloyalty,honesty,obedience, and any other buzzword that dominated your childhood, you cared about people. And because you cared, you did horrible things.”
