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“Many times.”
“She lied to you, and to Carrie.”
Carrie needs… “What does Carrie need?”
“She needs you. Carrie would’ve gone straight to you after Kylie died, but for years your ex told the poor girl that you didn’t want to have anything to do with her, that you’d moved on, that you had a new family and had no time for a raggedy stepdaughter.”
Mac cursed, low and vile. He’d hated Kylie, he’d truly despised her, but never as deeply as he did now.
Colt continued. “Kylie understands now that if Carrie had been able to go to you she wouldn’t have ended up in a foster home, she wouldn’t have felt so all alone. She wouldn’t have acted out the way she did. Knowing that haunts her.”
“It should, dammit,” Mac said. “Has Carrie been running from me because she knows I’ve been trying to find her, hiding the way Loran did for so long?”
“No. She’s been running from another lie.” Colt held up a hand to silence what Mac assumed to be Kylie. That hand was directed at an empty space. Empty for Mac, at least, but not for the ghost whisperer. “Slow down. You’re not making any sense.” After a while Colt’s expression changed, and he whispered, “Oh. That poor child.”
“What?” Mac snapped.
Colt shooed away Kylie’s ghost and looked at Mac. “When Carrie ran away from the foster home, she went by the old house to pick up some of her stuff. Eddie was there. Do you know who Eddie is?”
“Yes.” The single word was a whisper. That poor child. What had happened?
“She accused him of being responsible for her mother’s OD, which may or may not be the case. They fought, and he grabbed her.”
Mac’s heart dropped, his stomach roiled. For a moment he saw double.
“Carrie grabbed her mom’s cast iron skillet from the stovetop and beaned Eddie over the head with it.”
Relief washed through him. “Good for her.”
“Not entirely good, I’m afraid. Carrie thought he was dead, she left that house believing she’d killed him. She’s been on the run ever since.”
“Eddie’s dead, but he didn’t die that night.” The bastard hadn’t filed charges against her either, or made sure she knew he’d survived their fight. “What Carrie needs is for me to find her and let her know she’s not wanted for murder?”
“That’s a good place to start, but what she really needs is a family,” Colt said. “She needs someone to love her.”
I can do that…
“She needs to be able to stop hiding herself away. It’s time for her to rejoin the world. Rejoin the living. Help her do that.”
“I will.” Mac looked to Colt’s side. “I swear, Kylie, you…”
“She’s gone,” Colt said.
Of course she was.
“I have a few other of these conversations ahead of me,” Colt snapped. “Not how I wanted to spend my day.”
“Thank you,” Mac said sincerely. “I get that it’s uncomfortable and a pain in the ass, but you just freed Loran from a life on the run.”
“Make it count,” Colt snapped before he walked back into the main area to be confronted by the mob of angry, grieving people.
Loran stood behind the coffee bar with Anna. Helen had placed herself at the open end, an impressive guard, of sorts.
Make it count.
A woman. A dog. A daughter…
* * *
