Rylee frowned as she clipped the ends of Harper’s hair. “Yeah. As soon as I got back. Some woman passing through town, right? I heard someone said it was a boyfriend she might be traveling with or something?” She shook her head. “Seriously awful. But what does that have to do with your parents?”
“Nothing. Well, sort of nothing.” It was all seemingly connected to Lucas—some in bigger ways, some in smaller. Some in ways she possibly didn’t understand, because he wasn’t the most forthcoming man. But Lucas stood right in the middle of everything that had happened or come to light in the last couple of weeks. What does that mean? Does it have bigger implications than—
“Earth to Harper.”
“Sorry.” She began telling Rylee about Agent Mark Gallagher, about Isaac Driscoll, about Lucas, and then about the necklace and how he’d led her to her parents’ wreckage, including her mother’s backpack. When she mentioned her mother’s notes on the Count of Monte Cristo, she left out the way he’d treated them as though they were the Holy Grail. She wasn’t sure why, it simply felt like something that should remain between them. Now who’s the secretive one, Harper?
But Harper had always had secrets. She was used to keeping them.
Rylee continued trimming her hair, her eyes wide, a look of disbelief on her face when Harper was done. “Wow.”
“I know. It’s . . . crazy.”
“So, if your Tarzan has been ruled out for the moment, there are no suspects in either of the murders?”
Tarzan. Harper rolled her eyes. “He’s not my anything. And no, not as far as I know, although I’m not really privy to every single lead the police are working on. Agent Gallagher’s been nice enough to keep me in the loop about my parents’ case, and has answered a few questions I had about Lucas, but it’s not like I’m actually working every angle of the investigation.”
“Even so”—she smiled—“your dad would be proud.” She used her hand not holding the scissors to squeeze Harper’s shoulder, her smile dimming. “I know I’ve mentioned it before but . . . my dad’s still sorry he didn’t take you in,” she said softly. “He regrets it. I can tell by the way his mood shifts whenever he asks about you.”
Harper shook her head, making a small sound of denial. “You were barely making ends meet. The loss of your mother was still fresh, Rylee . . . I get it. I get why it wasn’t an option. I don’t blame him.” Was that true? She hadn’t really worked that out in her mind. She didn’t want to blame anyone, but
the real truth? It had hurt. From what she knew from school reports and things her parents had always said about her, she hadn’t been unruly. She’d been well behaved. Subjectively, she couldn’t understand how no one in her community, people who had known and cared about her parents, had been willing to keep her.
The years she’d spent in the foster care system were at times terrifying and lonely, and she’d wished with all her heart that her parents hadn’t been torn from her, and that she didn’t have to suffer the additional trauma of being placed in the home of a stranger—a stranger who had been anything but safe. Her uncle had been in college and then beginning his life, so he hadn’t been able to offer her a home, and her best friend had lost her own mother to cancer six months before, leaving her father to raise two daughters by himself while grieving the loss of his wife.
Some people felt guilty, she knew that too. It was why Dwayne always offered her jobs that came up at his office, for instance. Why Rylee’s dad had insisted she stay at their home during the summers in high school and then bent over backward to help her start her guide business, even securing her first several clients, ones who’d booked with her again and again.
But, she understood why they hadn’t offered to adopt her after the accident, she did. Or at least, the adult Harper did. She just didn’t know how to explain it to the little girl inside her who still ached when she revisited that time in her life. In her heart of hearts, she still felt like the little girl no one wanted.
She didn’t like to think too much about the first several years after her parents died. But later . . . well, later she’d been placed with an older woman who had been kind to her. She’d settled into a new school and . . . she’d been okay.
Rylee pressed her lips together, the look that always came over her face when she talked about Harper going into the social services system.
“Anyway,” Harper said, wanting to change the subject, “I’m still waiting for the coroner to release their remains, and then I’m going to have a burial.”
“The whole town will be there.”
“I hope.” Harper mustered a smile. “My dad would have liked that.” Her smile widened. “My mom would have wanted to stay home reading.” Harper was such a combination of them, she realized with gladness. Outdoorsy like her dad, and a lover of books like her mom.
Rylee moved in front of her, bending forward and holding the ends of Harper’s hair up on both sides of her face to measure the evenness of the trim she’d just finished. She met Harper’s eyes and smiled. “She did love her books, didn’t she? I remember her asking me if I missed the characters when I told her we’d read Charlotte’s Web in class. I had no idea what she was talking about. She literally missed people who didn’t exist.” She straightened, stepping back to assess her work.
Harper smiled. Yes, that sounded exactly like her mother. She had loved literature. And she had inspired others to love it too. That thought brought Lucas to mind, the way he’d looked so sorrowful as he’d handed the backpack to Harper containing her mother’s notes, giving them to her to keep.
I should have left them with him.
Yes, of course she should have. What had she been thinking? Well, she’d been thinking that it was another precious piece of the past she was desperate to hold. Something tangible. But, it seemed that those notes had sustained Lucas when to her, they were a special keepsake. Had she just done the same thing to him that had been done to her? Taken away something cherished that brought light? Her heart sank.
“So what’s going to happen to Lucas now?” Rylee asked as she peeled the Velcro apart and removed the cape from around Harper. “Is he going to stay in the woods?”
Harper’s brows came together as she again met Rylee’s eyes in the mirror. “I don’t know that he has a lot of options. I mean, the guy has no family that he knows of, no formal education or job experience . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t know. But . . . there’s something about him . . . God, it’s hard to explain. He’s this combination of wild and, I don’t know, innocent? No, that’s not right. Thoughtful?” She shook her head, frustrated that she couldn’t describe him accurately, or do him justice. “Sensitive.”
“Your eyes are all funny right now,” Rylee noted and when Harper looked at her, she saw that her friend was watching her with an expression that was half-puzzled and half-amused.
Harper rolled her eyes. “All right. He’s an enigma.”
“Well yeah, of course he’s an enigma. He grew up on dirt and snow and class notes on The Count of Monte Cristo. He’s probably confused as hell.”
Despite that it felt slightly mean, Harper laughed. “Who wouldn’t be?” she asked, attempting to defend him, though she knew Rylee was mostly kidding. “Can you even imagine, Rylee? The loneliness he must have lived with all these years? I don’t know if I could have survived.”