Page 97 of Fall Into Temptation
They filed into Beckett’s kitchen, and while Gia fussed with bottles of water and glasses of iced tea, Eva sat, face pale, lips tight. Donovan made sure to keep Beckett on the other side of the room. His friend had no idea how close Donovan had come to losing his cool. He was furious with Eva, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t stand between her and any threat.
“Who was it, Eva?” Donovan asked, keeping his tone calm, his voice quiet. Layla readied her notebook. It was highly unusual to interview a victim with so many other people present. But this way, Eva would only have to go through it once.
“Agnes.” Eva answered quietly.
“Agnes who?” Emma demanded.
“Is this some crazy fan?” Gia asked, sliding a glass of tea in front of Eva.
Eva shook her head. “Agnes Merill.”
Gia and Emma froze.
“Mom?”
“Ourmother?”
Donovan nodded subtly at Layla who scratched the name down on the pad and quietly left the room to call it in to Minnie.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” he suggested. He could see that his all-business tone hurt her. But that was something that would have to wait until later.
She began with what he knew. The depression, the drugs, Agnes’s downward spiral.
Emma and Gia, to their credit, sat quietly, flanked by their husbands, and listened as the story unfolded.
Emma shook her head slowly. “I knew something had changed in her. She’d just… I don’t know. Disconnected from us.”
Gia nodded, remembering. “I wonder if Dad suspected. He started making us spend our time after school at the restaurant instead of at home with her.”
“It explains a lot. I always assumed she’d been unhappy and met someone else,” Emma added. Niko laid a hand on her shoulder. Emma reached up to hold it.
“I thought I had done something to make her want to leave,” Gia confessed. “She was so angry leading up to her leaving. I hated even having a conversation with her.”
Eva was shaking her head. “No. Not you. It was me.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “You were eight years old. What did you do that was so horrible she couldn’t live with us anymore?”
“I was born,” Eva said matter-of-factly.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Beckett muttered. Donovan shot him a look. The man was skating on very thin ice, even if Donovan agreed with the sentiment.
“She told me, off and on, that I’d ruined her life. That there was an Agnes before me and a different one after me.”
“You have zero responsibility for post-partum depression,” Gia argued.
“I know that. At least I do now. But I didn’t for a long time. The first time she came to me asking for money, she reminded me that she’d left because of me. Because I’d ruined her life.”
“That’s bullshit,” Emma snapped.
“Yeah, well, I was nineteen and naïve.”
“So, you paid her,” Niko filled in.
Eva nodded. “She always came back. And if I balked or didn’t have enough, she’d threaten to come back.”
“What do you mean?” Beckett asked.
“She’d make promises about stirring up trouble. Things like paying you all a visit. She’d make comments about how well it looked like Emma was doing for herself in L.A., and she was sure you had some to spare for your poor mother.”
