Fallen

“Thank you.”

Five minutes later, she was pulling up to the curb next to a small, somewhat generic tan house with a picket fence surrounding the yard, while Camden pulled into the driveway. The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac, an empty lot on one side, and a copse of trees on the other. He was right, it was private. She couldn’t imagine it got much traffic, if any. She got out and walked slowly up the front path, climbing the three steps, and meeting him on the porch. Inside, three dogs of varying breeds and sizes scratched at the window and whined in excitement at seeing him. Camden leaned toward them. “Go lay down,” he called, making some movement with his hand she couldn’t see. The dogs looked briefly crestfallen but turned away.

“I’m assuming it was their food you didn’t buy at the pet store?”

“I’ll go back later.” He nodded to two chairs and they both took a seat.

“Tell me about the bunny,” he said, taking her off guard.

“The bunny? That’s what you wanted to talk about?”

“Not only, but that first.”

She screwed up her face, shaking her head. “What’s there to tell about the bunny? My daughter found it in the woods. It was half-dead and abandoned. I’m its mother now.”

Camden pressed his lips together. “She found it?”

“Yes, I mean, what else? She didn’t steal it from its den. She knows better and she’s not cruel.” Although, you’ve been wondering lately about that, haven’t you? The thought brought her shame.

“That’s not what I meant,” he mumbled. “And it’s burrow.”

“What?”

“Rabbits. They live in a burrow, not a den.”

She shook her head, frustrated that they were talking about burrows, and dens, and motherless baby bunnies, rather than things that actually mattered between them.

“I have questions for you, Deputy.”

He looked at her sideways. “Yes?”

“That story you told me about Taluta? How did you know about it?”

His eyes narrowed and he looked just as confused as she must have looked when he asked her about the bunny. “The legend’s well known around here.”

“Not the legend about the indigenous woman who passed away and turned into a red fox. Not even the reports of drumbeats sounding from those woods.” She shook her head. “I found all that online. What I didn’t find was the brutal background of those stories. There’s nothing at all about any of that.” Maybe it was local knowledge, lore that somehow hadn’t made it on to the Internet, but she needed to know if that trunk had belonged to him as she suspected, or if someone else had owned it. Someone who coincidentally created the same rare and intricate art using reeds of grass, a craft she’d never heard about, seen, or even imagined, in her entire existence.

His gaze slid away from hers and she could see his wheels turning. When he looked back at her, he asked, “Why are you asking about that?”

Scarlett hesitated. Why play games? Why not just come out and ask him? “I found a trunk,” she said and watched as his body stilled. “I found a trunk that contained the personal account of Taluta, translated by Narcisa Fernando. It also included Narcisa’s story. The trunk had books and photos in it, and inside one of the books was this.” She reached into her purse at her feet, retrieved a small notebook, and took out the grass art pressed between its pages, holding it up for him to see.

Camden swallowed, his gaze lingering on what she held carefully in her fingers.

“I think this is yours,” she whispered. “I think that trunk was yours too. And I want to know why it was in the basement of Lilith House. I want to know why you didn’t tell me you were planning to buy the house before I did.”

He closed his eyes for a second, exhaling a long breath. When he opened them, he stared at her for so long she wondered if he was going to speak at all. But finally, he said, “That trunk was mine. I used to live at Lilith House. I grew up there.”

For a second, Scarlett was shocked silent. “You . . . what? How is that possible?”

Camden scrubbed a hand down his face and then stared behind her, his jaw rigid. “I was born to one of the students who attended Lilith House. I was never given any details, only that she signed her rights away and then left me behind.”

Scarlett frowned, her heart giving a small twist. “Oh,” she said. “So then who adopted you?”

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.”