Page 11 of Lovely Darkness

“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.

But it’s more than just creepy, it’s seductive. It’s the kind of place you want to run away from, but can’t. Because it’s got secrets. There are mysteries around every corner of this old home. And people like me—like us—we live for those mysteries.

I picture my girls here. How they would love it. Then I spend a good number of minutes wondering if the desert was the wrong place to raise them.

Nah.

These woods are just like the woods in Montana. They hide you, but only from yourself. Because there is no way to secure a place like Old Home. A river runs along two sides of it and then there’s the lake on the third side. It’s almost an island and even though people think islands are safe, they’re not. Every bit of that perimeter is a way in.

So it’s got woods, and a lake, and a snaking river.

How the hell do these people ever sleep at night?

I don’t get it.

But then again, none of them are actually sleeping right now.

First it was Doc. McKay introduced Sasha and me to him when we were given our assigned rooms along the breezeway. He got up around two AM to check on Donovan. I could hear their whispered conversation floating through the air conditioning vent up near the ceiling.

A little while later I heard more noises, so I opened the door to my room and watched Doc casually stroll around the gardens for a little bit through the breezeway windows. Then he walked over towards the giant pavilion out front and disappeared from view.