Lilith House must love them too. The screams in the walls had faded. The rooms felt light. The house was happy that love lived there.
Haddie knew that there was lots of dark in Farrow. She’d felt it that first day. But now, many places felt light, as if the darkness had been swept away. Mommy said that her new daddy had become the biggest sheriff, and that he was finding all the bad and making them leave Farrow. Her new daddy was very tall, so that’s maybe how he did that.
A man appeared at the edge of the forest, large and horned, and Haddie’s face broke into a grin. “Alonzo!” she called, grasping the hem of her dress and rushing toward him as he whooped with joy and ran toward her.
**********
Camden grinned as he watched Alonzo race toward Haddie, that deep, snorty laugh filling the air as he picked her up and twirled her around, her yellow dress flying out around her. They were close. Even closer than he and Alonzo, but that was because Haddie understood him on a level no one else did. Haddie had a gift that surpassed his understanding. She confounded him. And awed him. He couldn’t wait until she was old enough to explain the things that went on inside her extraordinary mind. She didn’t have the words yet, but perhaps, in the same way she’d learned to speak to Alonzo, that was a language she’d need to teach them when she was able.
They’d initially enrolled Alonzo in several programs where he could interact with others like him, but he’d become withdrawn, even depressed. He’d never lived in the outside world and he didn’t take well to it. His brother very obviously felt most comfortable, most himself in the woods, so they let him come and go as he pleased. He was still “home,” but he was no longer alone. He had all the love and affection he could handle and sought it out often. Thanks to Ruby Sugar, he had all the cake he could handle as well and that seemed to be quite a bit.
Haddie took Alonzo’s hand and they began conversing in that unique way of theirs, hurrying toward the shed near the back tree line to tend to the healing creatures the way he once had.
Inside the house, Camden headed for the kitchen. Scarlett was taking a bride and her mother on a tour of the grounds and he spotted them out the window, standing by the gazebo, chatting and laughing. He picked up one of the first apples that had come from the small orchard they’d planted, and bit into it, smiling as he chewed. If they booked—and he was confident they would as almost a hundred percent of the people who traveled to view Lilith House in person did—Scarlett would need to hire another few employees.
Glancing down, Camden noticed one of Scarlett’s lists sitting on the counter. He grabbed a pen and added two line items to the bottom:
Be ready at seven for dinner in town with the sheriff.
Do the swirly thing to your husband.
With a self-satisfied smile, he set down the pen, noticing the pile of mail nearby, a letter from Georgia on top. She could have emailed him, of course, but whenever he suggested it, she laughed and asked if he could blame her for being “old school.”
He opened the envelope, scanning her letter quickly. Because of the files Kandace had stolen and then hidden, he, Mason, and Georgia had all been able to locate and contact their mothers’ families. Each of them had sadly assumed their daughters were dead and had been shocked to learn they’d birthed children.
Georgia had healed physically from the gunshot wound she’d sustained, the one that had been removed by the doctor a town over who Mason had managed to get her to in the nick of time. Emotionally . . . well, that was still ongoing. But testifying in the trials of the few remaining men who’d been arrested in connection to what happened at Lilith House and in Farrow had helped her heal.
Georgia’s grandmother was especially involved in Georgia’s life. Georgia was in the South spending a few months with her. Her letters, including the one he’d just read, sounded . . . hopeful. More hopeful than Camden had ever known her to sound. Mason had moved to LA six months before and was working with a company who restored old homes. His mother’s family had embraced him as well, though from afar, and Mason sounded happy too.
Camden’s family had flown to California immediately upon finding out he and Alonzo existed. There had been an overwhelming reunion and although Camden was still getting to know them, they were good people he knew would be a constant in his life. In Scarlett’s and Haddie’s and Millie’s lives, along with the baby on the way.
He’d let his mother’s family know it was because of her—because of the knowledge that she’d tried so hard to rescue them—that he’d gathered every ounce of his strength that night he’d been shot, and continued on.
The trials for the crimes of the remaining guild members—the ones who hadn’t perished at the bottom of Novaatngar—and guilty parties in the town of Farrow, were still being splashed across news articles nationwide. He believed justice would be served, at least that which was handed down by man. He also firmly believed they’d have an additional price to pay when their time on earth was done.
Camden set Georgia’s letter on the counter, turning his head to gaze out the window at the forest beyond. He still pictured the way the sheriff—his father—had flown off that cliff. Had the sheriff wondered why God had forsaken him and sent a horned demon to drive the spear of an ancient people straight through his heart and toss him into the canyon where their ancestors had once been cruelly murdered?
As far as Farrow, where evil had once presided over it, now new people were moving in. The town was growing, though slowly. Some were still apprehensive to begin a life in a place that held so much tragic history. In ways both big and small though, the remaining citizens were reinventing their town, and he loved what it was becoming. Scarlett’s business was helping in that effort. It brought traffic, tourism, happy events. It was a small slice of heaven in what had once been the midst of hell.
Ruby Sugar. Right there at Lilith House. Kandace would have liked that. She would have liked that a lot. Her daughter grew more beautiful by the day and despite the grief of losing the woman who’d raised her, Millie was thriving. She was an integral part of their newly-formed family.
They’d found something else among the proof of who their mothers were that Kandace had smuggled out of Lilith House. The proof that had it not been for her, would have never come to light. A letter, dried blood staining the edges of the piece of paper, had been placed inside the bag later, one penned in Kandace’s own shaky hand. Last words that had probably been written as Kandace lay moments from death after just having delivered Amelia in a cave on the side of a cliff. A cliff where an ancient midwife had made a perilous climb and attended Kandace in her final moments. She had not died alone.
Dreamboat,
I tried. I tried so hard. Somehow, a boy who looks just like you carried me. He’s strong and gentle. He saved me. They both saved my baby. She’s beautiful, tiny but perfect. I wish I could tell you everything. I wish I could know my daughter. I wish. But I’m fading now. I did all I could. I hope you know that someday.
Promise me you won’t stop being brave. No matter what, promise me you won’t hide your heart, even if that seems like the easier thing to do.
You’re stronger than you think. That’s what Scarlett told me and she was right. She was right about me, and I’m right about you.