He shook his head. “No one. The school took charge of me. Ms. West . . . my tutor was the closest thing to a mother I ever had. We were kept downstairs, forbidden from interacting with any of the students. After the fire and school closure, she took me with her to San Diego. I took her name. She got sick, and I cared for her for several years until she died. Then I moved back here to start a life in Farrow.”
“You always do that,” she said. “You leave things out. Give me half stories.”
“What do you want from me, Scarlett?”
“The truth. Why is that so hard?”
He made a small hissing sound in the back of his throat. “It isn’t entirely mine to give,” he mumbled. He glanced quickly up and down the street. “Maybe we should go inside.”
“Why?” She glanced around as he had done. “Are we being watched?”
“I don’t think so, but . . .” He swore beneath his breath. “Listen, there are things you don’t know.”
“Then tell me,” she said, frustration causing her to raise her voice. “Tell me what I need to know about Lilith House. Tell me who you’re worried about seeing us talking. Is it the woman whose house I saw you leaving the other morning?” She cringed internally. She hadn’t intended to bring her up. The last thing she wanted him to think was that she was jealous and trying to stake some claim she had no right to because of a bit of flirting and one stupid kiss.
“Georgia,” he said. “That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.” He paused. “What you saw . . . it’s not what you probably think it is. I . . . she needs someone to be with her sometimes. We’re good friends. That’s all.”
Friends with benefits, apparently. She didn’t care, not one bit. At least that’s what she told herself.
Although as she thought about it, she wondered how they were good friends if he’d grown up at a reform school and only recently moved back to town. Admittedly, Scarlett didn’t know him well, but she knew enough to guess that Camden West didn’t make friends all too easily, much less “good friends.” The sudden flash of those three rooms in the basement came to mind, the metal beds in each one . . .
“Oh my God,” she breathed. “She grew up at Lilith House with you.” She remembered back to the day at Mason’s hardware store when she’d heard them all arguing in the back. All three of them.
Camden, Georgia, and Mason.
She could tell by the look on his face that she’d just uttered the truth. She could tell. Scarlett swallowed, blinked. “Mason too. The three of you grew up together at Lilith House? You lived in those basement rooms.”
He let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t want to drag you into any of this.”
“Drag me into what?” She shook her head, her mind reeling, thinking about what the sheriff had said. “You wanted to buy the house. Why?”
“Because there might be something inside that will tell us more about who our mothers were and why they left us behind.”
Her thoughts were spinning in all directions. “Aren’t there records of who attended the school? Surely you could use those to track down the women who, date wise, could have been your mothers? Why do you need the house to do that?”
“All the school records went missing sometime after the fire. No one knows if they were lost during the cleanup and subsequent estate sale of the contents of the house, or misplaced . . . stolen. But in any case, they’re gone. Poof.” His hand rose quickly, fingers flying open as he gestured the word. “It’s as if no one ever attended Lilith School.”
She frowned again. Weird. Spooky, even. “Okay, so . . . you were going to . . . what? Buy the place and then commence searching behind its walls?”
He looked away from her, using his hand to massage the side of his jaw, his lips set in a thin line. Her gaze moved to the breast pocket of his T-shirt where she saw the distinct outline of what looked like a small, oval stone. Like the one he picked up at the stream the day he’d kissed her. It took her off balance for a moment. Why had he kept it? “Something like that,” he muttered after a minute, bringing her smack-dab back into the moment. “All three of us were going to live there. To search it, yes, but also, to own it. We were going to make it ours. I was the only one who left Farrow. Georgie and Mason, they waited for me. We’d all waited a long time, Scarlett.”
As more of the picture formed, emotions warred within her, mixing, twisting together so that she couldn’t separate one from another . . . despondency, indignation, shock, and sorrow.
“That’s why you befriended me,” she said, her voice rough, a pit opening in her stomach. “It’s why you recommended Mason for the job. The house wasn’t yours, but that way, you could still have access to it. You could still be present while the walls were torn down, and the floorboards demolished. Mason’s been searching even as his crew worked.”
The look on his face confirmed what she’d said. To his credit, he obviously felt at least moderately ashamed. But it didn’t change the fact that he’d deceived her. Used her. Was that what the flirting had been about? Even the kiss? She’d thought him unpracticed at both, but maybe what he was doing was pretending. God, she felt embarrassed. He’d tried to get close to her as a means to an end, but he hadn’t quite been able to go through with it. Whether that was because he had a scrap of honor, or whether it was because the lie of his attraction toward her was too difficult to sustain, she didn’t know. And really, did it matter?
“It’s the reason you installed the lock and sealed up the crawl spaces? You were worried about them searching the house while I was there? They didn’t listen to you, though, did they? You fought about it. You were fighting that day at the hardware store. Why? Why did you care? Did you think you’d get caught?”
He cast his eyes downward. He had lied to her over and over and over since the moment they’d met, so why couldn’t she feel angry? Why was her overwhelming emotion hurt? She let out a long breath and then she stood. He came to his feet immediately as well.
“Scarlett—”
“No.” She held up her hand. “I get the picture. I’m sorry I ruined all your plans. Obviously, I can’t have Mason working at the house anymore. He’s more interested in his own agenda than in seeing my goals for the house to fruition. If I find anything that might help in your efforts to locate your families, I promise to hand it over. I’m sorry for the suffering the three of you endured and I wish you well. But let me make this perfectly clear: Lilith House is mine. I’m going to run a business from there, I’m going to build a life for me and Haddie there. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
She knew she must be imagining the glint of respect in his forest-green gaze, because his allegiance to his two friends would have prevented something like that. It didn’t matter though. She didn’t care what he thought of her anymore. Scarlett turned on her heel and marched down his steps, getting in her car and peeling away from the curb.
When she glanced once in her rearview mirror, she saw him standing on his porch, leaning on one of the pillars and watching her as she drove away.