Lovely Darkness (Creeping Beautiful)

“No! I want to know what they’re up to.” I push past him and go down the hallway. I briefly consider waking McKay up and telling him that Adam is gone again, but McKay is like Nathan. They both let Adam do whatever he wants. Especially when it comes to Maggie.

I stop at the top of the stairs and listen for more noise. Nathan stands next to me. We wait for several seconds, then he says, “She’s fine.”

“Fine? She’s six years old, Nathan. And she’s out in the middle of the night with a very bad guy.”

Nate scoffs. “Let’s go back to bed.”

But just as he says that we hear one of the French doors in the back of the house open and close. I point at him again. This point says, I told you so, which earns me another eye roll in the hazy darkness.

I go down the stairs, my bare feet naturally silent as I creep my way down the hallway towards the kitchen and then smack right into McKay’s bare chest.

“Fuck’s sake, Indie.” He pushes me off him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Maggie’s missing.” That’s Nate.

“Yeah,” McKay says. “I heard Adam get up and I followed them.”

“Did they leave in the truck?” I ask.

“No. They’re on the boat. Fishing, I think.”

“Fishing?” This one word drips with disbelief. “Come on. Fishing?”

McKay shrugs. “What? He takes her fishing like every day. It’s a thing they do.”

“Every day,” I sneer. “Not in the middle of the night.”

“It’s practically morning,” McKay says. “Lots of people leave to fish at this time of the night. Right, Nate?”

Nate is yawning, slowly and cavernously, like he hasn’t got a care in the world. “Yep.”

“How come the two of you don’t care that he takes her out in the middle of the night? I don’t get it. If that were me”—I poke McKay in the chest—“you sure as fuck would have words with Adam about it.”

“Name one time,” McKay drawls in his Southern accent, “Adam Boucher took you fishing as a child.”

“That’s not nice.”

“Indie.” I’m on Nate’s last nerve now. I can hear it in his voice. “Can we please go to bed now? Maggie and Adam are fine.”

“So neither of you cares that he just assumes that I am OK with his… possessiveness of her?”

McKay cocks an eyebrow at me. “You don’t want to fight this battle. Not yet, anyway.”

“Why not yet? Why should I wait?”

“Indie.” Nate grips my arm. “Bed. Now.”

“No.” I pull away from him. “I want an answer. Why do I have to wait to have an opinion on how my own daughter gets raised?”

Again, McKay cocks that eyebrow. “You want a list? Fine. Number one. You tried to kill Adam—”

“McKay! What the fuck?”

But McKay shakes his head. “You know why you don’t have any rights to Maggie right now, Indie. But I’ll make that list if you need reminding.”

“But we’ve been back for months now—”

“Months aren’t enough.”

“So he’s the king, then, right? We all have to do what Adam says because he’s the king.”

McKay takes a deep breath. For a moment he’s looking at me, but then his gaze wanders over to Nate. They have some kind of secret, silent conversation about me. Then Nate says, “Indie, we need to think about Donovan first. OK? Once we have Donovan back, we can start to sort all the other things out.”

“Because you guys don’t trust me. And you think once we get Donovan back, he can go inside my head and make sure Carter didn’t plant any more triggers.”

“Yes.” McKay just says it. No hesitation. “You want the truth, that’s the truth. I’ll talk to Adam about the nighttime trips. See if he’ll back off a little. But if he says no, Indie, I’m not gonna take your side on this. Like it or not, you disappeared for four years. He’s her family more than us. I don’t like it either. I kinda want him all to myself. That’s why I followed them. But I’m not gonna ruin what they have to make myself feel better. That’s the definition of selfishness.”

I deflate and even though McKay is annoyed with me, he loves me most and he doesn’t want me to deflate.

He grabs my shoulder and squeezes. “I know it’s hard. I get it. I want you and your daughter to have all the special things that mothers and daughters have with each other. I hope that happens. But we are not regular people, Indie. We don’t have regular families. You have never been a part of a regular family.”

“That’s my point,” I say. My words are soft and low now. “I want that. I want her to have that. And pretty soon, it’s gonna be too late. She will just be…” I sigh. “Me.”

CHAPTER FOUR - MERC

I can’t sleep.

First, this mansion is creepy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very nice. Very old money and I can see why it’s called Old Home. It feels like a place of generations. It has a history and that history is long, and thick, and deep. Kinda like the woods that surround it.