Page 39 of Scarred By Sin

“They aren’t here for you, Gwenyth.” Dale shot Brook an expression that bordered on incredulous. “They’re here to find out who murdered those women. For all we know, it could have been your father.”

Brook observed Gwenyth for a reaction and found none.

“You didn’t believe that yesterday, Mr. Ellingham,” Brook called out, taking a step closer. “Yesterday, you were advocating for the guardianship and the land sale. You weren’t suggesting that Nestor was responsible for anything other than being an eccentric and reclusive researcher.”

“I don’t know what to think anymore. Every day there’s something new. Bodies in the greenhouse, and now Porter is dead. But what I do know is that Gwenyth needs more help than anyone in this house can give her.”

“Porter was kind,” Gwenyth said, as though Dale’s outburst had been a mild interruption to a thought she was already having. “But I can take care of myself.”

“You can’t even drive, Gwenyth.” Dale’s voice carried a frustrated edge that he wasn’t bothering to soften. “You don’t have a license. You haven’t left this property in years. How exactly do you plan to get groceries? Pay the electric bill? Manage any of the basic things that Porter handled for you every single day?”

Gwenyth opened her mouth to respond, but the front door swung open before her words escaped.

Cal Brennan stepped into the foyer.

Brook recognized him from his DMV photo. He was in his early seventies, lean and wiry, with a full head of slightly windblown brown hair and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that sat crookedly on his nose. He wore a flannel shirt over a white undershirt, khaki pants, and walking shoes that had seen hundreds of miles. His face was angular, deeply lined, and carried an intelligence in the eyes that hadn’t dulled with age. He took in the scene with the quick, practiced assessment of a man who had spent decades managing classrooms full of teenagers and could read a room in three seconds flat.

At first, Brook wondered how he’d gotten to the estate so quickly, but she brought herself up short. Sheriff Gentry had mentioned he would contact Porter’s next of kin, but in a town this small, the sheriff would know exactly who else needed to hear the news. Cal Brennan had been Nestor’s closest friend and one of the few people who had regularly checked on Gwenyth.

Gentry would have called him as a matter of course.

His expression hardened the moment he registered Dale.

“I should have known you’d be here,” Cal said, and the bitterness in his voice was immediate and undisguised. “Porter isn’t even cold, and you’re already working the angles.”

“This has nothing to do with you, Cal.”

“It has everything to do with me. I’ve been looking after Gwenyth since her father disappeared, which is more than you can say.” Cal stepped further into the foyer, and whatever distance had existed between the two men collapsed into something confrontational. They were nearly the same height, but Cal carried himself with a coiled tension that Dale’s broader frame didn’t match. “You don’t give a damn about her. You never have. You want the property, and she’s in your way.”

“That is not true, and I won’t stand here and be accused by a man who has no legal standing in this family.”

“Legal standing.” Cal’s laugh was sharp and humorless. “Is that what this comes down to? Paperwork? I’ve been more family to Gwenyth in the last thirty years than you’ve been in her entire life.”

The two men were close enough now that Brook caught sight of the veins in Dale’s neck as they stood out against his collar. Cal’s hands were at his sides, but his fingers were curled, and the rigidity in his posture suggested that he was holding himself back through force of will rather than temperament. The foyer seemed to contract around them, the high ceiling and the stone walls amplifying their voices and holding the tension in a way that a larger space wouldn’t have.

Suddenly, the plate hit the floor.

The crash was sudden and sharp, porcelain shattering against the hardwood and sending fragments in every direction. The sandwich landed face down, and a piece of the plate skidded to a stop near Brook’s shoe. The sound ricocheted off the stone walls and up the staircase, filling the house with a violence that neither man had managed to produce.

Her attention went to Gwenyth, whose hands were now empty at her sides.

Oddly enough, her expression hadn’t changed. There was no surprise on her face, no distress at the broken dish. She had dropped it with the calm deliberateness of a woman who had decided that the only way to stop two men from tearing into each other was to give them something else to react to.

And it had worked beautifully.

Both Dale and Cal stepped back from one another. The fragments of the plate lay scattered across the hardwood in a rough semicircle, white porcelain against dark wood, and the quiet that followed was thick enough to feel against the skin.

“Uncle Cal,” Gwenyth said into the silence that followed. “I’ll be waiting for you on the back patio.”

She turned and walked toward the rear of the house without hesitation, without acknowledging the shattered plate, and without giving any indication that the last five minutes had affected her in the slightest. She moved through the hallway and out of sight with the unhurried pace of a woman walking through her own home because it was still hers to walk through.

Dale and Cal stared after her, and then at each other.

“This isn’t over,” Dale said, his voice low and strained. “The court will decide first thing in the morning. And when they do, you’ll have no say in what happens to her.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Dale straightened his shirt, collected whatever remained of his dignity, and walked out the front door without another word. The door closed behind him. It wasn’t long before the muffled sound of his car starting in the drive could be heard through the heavy wood. Gravel sprayed, and the engine noise faded down the lane until it was swallowed by the distance and the trees.