by K. J. Emrick
Darcy really, really wanted to be in her bed right now too, snuggled up to Jon, but she needed to hear what Phin had to say. Because the mystery might be solved, now that Edmund Beres was under protective custody in a medically induced coma at the Meadowood hospital, but there were still a lot of details she and Jon didn’t understand.
“Your brother,” Jon said, scratching at that scar on his forehead. “Right. About that. You know he’s… how do I put this. He’s, um…”
“White?” Phin offered with a patient smile. “Sure do, Jon. I grew up with him in the same household. Don’t think it didn’t cause us a lot of trouble in school either, because it did. We got teased something fierce. Thing of it is, it never really bothered the two of us. Mom was Black. Me and Genevieve were Black, too. Edmund’s daddy was White as milk with that same red robin hair. Polish, to be exact. After we got into high school and the suspicion surrounding the fire seemed to be behind us, Edmund got real interested in his heritage. Even went to try and track down his birth father. That’s where I lost touch with him. Guess he ended up walking on the side of the Devil, whereas I went with the angels.”
He frowned, and went back to stirring his coffee.
“He’s not going to die,” Darcy assured him, sensing that it mattered to him a great deal. “He broke nearly every bone in his body when he ran the Iroc into that plow but the doctors are optimistic that he might even walk again.”
“At which point,” Jon added, “he’ll be living in prison. There’s good medical care in prison.”
Darcy shot him a look. He shrugged as if to say, hey, it’s true.
Phin looked out the window into the darkness where sporadic snowflakes would fall against the window, melt, and then disappear. “He killed our sister,” he said, his voice very quiet. “He didn’t mean to, but he did it. All these years I covered for him because I felt guilty for living while she died. All through the investigations, and all through my mother’s mental breakdown after, I blamed myself. Still would, I guess. If you hadn’t come to see me in that cell, Darcy”
He looked over at her now, shoving his untouched coffee aside. “I don’t understand it. I don’t know what you did, or how you did it, but when you touched me I saw the whole thing again with fresh eyes. The fire, the flames dancing up the walls, Genevieve coming to save me and then… and then her dying. I realized it wasn’t my fault. She died saving me, and I’m grateful to her and to God for that gift, and I won’t squander it any more by wallowing in my guilt. It wasn’t my fault.”
“Good for you, Pastor.” Jon meant it sincerely. He’d been the one to pull the strings with the judge to get Phin’s charges dropped so he could be released. It wasn’t enough that someone else had been arrested for the same crime. There had to be compelling reasons for the court to just drop charges of arson and murder.
The murder never happened, Jon explained to the judge. Just a tragic accident. No murder, no crime.
As far as the arson to the bakery… well, Jon had said, Phin didn’t do it, and after all it was Christmas. The season of forgiveness.
After that, the judge had signed the release order.
Darcy was proud of her man just for being who he was.
Brianna Watson had been sure to film the release of the local pastor, asking questions about trumped up charges and bias against Christians during the holiday season. Phin ignored every single word, and so did Darcy. Jon managed a few carefully scripted comments about how justice was being served here today, and then made a thinly veiled reference to where Brianna could stick her microphone if she needed any more information.
The look on Brianna’s face had been like an early Christmas gift for Darcy.
“I should go,” Phin said after another long moment. “There’s a lot to do this time of year and I’m afraid my little vacation in your holding cell has put the church behind schedule. I’ve got a sermon to prepare for Sunday, and there’s the winter coat fund, too, and God alone knows what else has been stacking up for me this week. Jon, Darcy… I can’t thank you enough for what you did for me, but… please understand. This is not a happy day for me. My brother grew up to be an evil man, and now he’s paid for his sins the hard way.”
“Wait, Phin,” Jon urged him. “Look, you’ve had a terrible day. I don’t want to load more onto you but I have to ask. Do you have any idea, any idea at all, why your brother did this?”
Phin had been starting to stand up. Now he sat back down again. “I do. I think it’s important that you know why this happened, so, um.” He took a deep breath, staring down at an imaginary spot on the table. “I’m not trying to make Edmund sound innocent. He’s a bad man. He chooses to do bad things when he could be so much better and I’ve tried to be there for him whenever I could to show him a better way. Usually, he chooses not to accept my help. See, he belongs to this group that calls themselves The Hand.”
“We’ve heard of it,” Jon grumbled. “If it makes you feel any better Edmund isn’t really part of their organization. He just does some, er, work for them from time to time.”
“He’s still chasing after his father,” Phin agreed. “I remember his papa being into some shady things. Edmund must’ve gone looking for him in this Mafia wannabe group. However he ended up there, he seems to like that sort of life. Recently he’s been doing some freelancing and some enforcement work. By that, I mean he does dirty deeds for people who want to keep their hands clean or when people have debts they can’t pay, he encourages them to pay up. By force.”
“Illegal debts, you mean.” Darcy was the one who put it together first. “People like Elizabeth Archer. She’s in deep to a bookie for illegal gambling debts.”
“Right.” Phin let his hands drop helplessly into his lap. “Elizabeth had come to me about her troubles. That’s when she told me her bookie had sent a guy to try and force her to pay them more money. From the description of the guy and the car he drove I just knew it was my brother. So, last Sunday, I went to the bakery. I stayed there and I waited for him. When I said I was there all day I meant it. I was there when Elizabeth closed up, and I walked her out, and then I stood there on the sidewalk in the cold and waited some more.”
“You were going to talk him out of it?” Darcy guessed.
“Of course! I couldn’t let him bully Elizabeth like that. Maybe hurt her, even. I know, I know.” He looked over at Jon with a shrug. “I know what’s on his criminal history. He’s hurt people in the past. I didn’t want him to do it again. Then he showed up.”
Phin went back to looking out the window. “I saw him go around the back of the building. He didn’t see me at first. He went inside, and I followed him in, and then I saw what he was doing. There was gasoline poured everywhere. He was holding a lighter. Just that easy, he was going to burn the place down. I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was doing what he’d been paid to do. At the time I thought he meant sending Elizabeth a message but now I believe he was paid to torch the bakery.”
“Why do you think that Phin?” Jon asked.
“Well… it’s the only thing that makes sense. Elizabeth had already lost her job so how would burning the bakery make things difficult for her?”
“True,” Jon said. “I think we need to look at Tobias Ford a bit closer. Always thought there was something fishy about him but didn’t have any concrete proof. Thanks Phin.”
Phin sighed. “I tried to talk him out of it, I really did, but it was like when we were kids. He laughed at me and said he knew what he was doing. He said he didn’t need his little brother to tell him right from wrong. I begged him… begged him not to do this again. He called me naïve and said he’d done it more times since that first fire than I would ever know. And then he just dropped the lighter.”
Darcy watched him holding back the tears. “You felt guilty again, didn’t you? Because you couldn’t stop him.”
“It was like we were kids again, and the flames were everywhere and I… I just shut down. I had to get out of the place.
There was nothing I could do. Just like when we were kids. Then you came to arrest me and I wanted to tell you the truth Jon, I really did, but I couldn’t turn my brother in. He’s still family. No matter what he’s done, he’s still family.”
“You were trying to take his place. Just like Mister Carton did for Charles Darnay in A Tale of Two Cities.”
Darcy had realized, once she knew that Phin had a brother, that Aunt Millie had flipped Charles Dickens’ novel off the shelf for a completely different reason than she’d originally thought. Good old Millie, still trying to watch out for her niece. More than the great opening lines of how it was the best and worst of times, Darcy’s aunt had been trying to tell her that Phin was quite literally taking the blame for his brother. He was trying to get sent to jail to give his brother a chance at a better life.
“He’s family,” Phin repeated, as if that explained everything.
“Edmund will always be your family, that’s true,” Darcy agreed, “but that doesn’t mean you have to protect him from his own actions. You have to let him grow up.”
Phin took his coffee finally, and drank half of it in one gulp. “Yes. He needs to grow up. Just like I had to. Thank you. Both of you. Sometimes we have to experience the fall to know that God will always be there to catch us. You guys are wonderful together. An amazing partnership.”
Jon brushed his fingertips against Darcy’s cheek. “I’m a lucky man, Pastor Phin. I thank God that we’re together. I really do.”
Darcy kissed his hand. “I love you too, Jon.”
Smiling at them both, Phin got up and collected his coat from the back of the chair. “I think that’s my cue. Again, thank you both. There’s no words I can say to express my gratitude.”
“You’ll be all right?” Jon asked him.
“Yes. I think I will.”
He left them there, closing the door tight against the cold. A moment later they heard his plain, ordinary car leaving the driveway.
Jon held a hand up over his mouth to stifle a yawn. “I need to get to sleep. There’s still a mountain of paperwork waiting for me at work tomorrow. It’ll be a week or more before we get all of this wrapped up. At least…” He yawned again. “At least we crossed off all the names on our naughty list. And now Tobias Ford is going to be arrested for insurance fraud. Then there’s Edmund Beres. I can’t believe he tried to bully you into thinking he didn’t do this. Guy’s got some nerve.”
“Never trust a liar,” Darcy said, sure she was quoting it from somewhere. “You tired?”
He looked at her all sleepy like. “Yeah.”
She got up out of her chair, and traced her hand along his shoulders as she walked around the table, heading for the living room and the stairs up to their bed. “I was kind of hoping you’d be able to stay awake for a little bit longer. I had a few naughty things in mind for my husband.”
“Careful,” Jon said, catching hold of her hand as she went by. “Santa might not bring you a gift if you aren’t a good little girl.”
Pulling him up from his seat, she pushed up on her tiptoes to kiss the edge of his ear and whisper, “I suppose I can be a good girl… for you.”
Chapter Ten
Christmas morning felt like it took forever to arrive.
Colby sat on the living room floor with shreds of colorful red and green paper all around her, her gifts all unwrapped. There was a new pair of sneakers and a couple of new books and a playset for her superhero girl dolls. She was happily reading the first of the books while the television played Christmas carols from a pop music station. Jon had his arm around Darcy’s shoulders on the couch as they watched their daughter.
Darcy had spent a lot of time with Colby over the last couple of weeks. Just watching television, or reading together, or playing board games, but also studying and practicing the different ways she could use her gifts. Breathing techniques, mostly, and listening to the world around them. Beginner stuff that Great Aunt Millie had taught Darcy in her teen years. Colby picked them up easily. She was far stronger than Darcy had been in the gift. It scared her a little, sometimes, to think about the sorts of things Colby might be able to do when she was all grown up.
At the same time, she would never ask her daughter to be embarrassed by what she could do. Instead of burying her gift, they were going to explore these new powers together. Maybe Colby would teach her some things one day.
She rolled over to lay against Jon’s chest, kicking her feet in their fuzzy pink socks up onto the cushions of the other end, and sighed happily. She felt loved, and safe, and comfy.
A rustling over by the Christmas tree drew her attention. Tiptoe was wrestling with Smudge in the torn gift wrapping. Smudge had tolerated his daughter’s playful paw slaps but when she jumped on his back he rolled and pinned her down and held her there until she swished her tail fiercely and mrrowled to be let go. He might be old but he could still hold his own.
Nosing Tiptoe’s face, Smudge licked her cheek. With everything forgiven, she flopped onto her back, and began swatting him with her paws once more. Let’s do it again, Dad! Let’s do it again!
Darcy felt her eyes drooping. It was barely midmorning and they had several long and lazy hours to spend together as a family before meeting Aaron and Grace at their apartment for Christmas dinner. They were going to Pastor Phin’s evening service, too. The town had rallied behind him after his arrest and exoneration. He was still their pastor, and would be for as long as he wanted to be.
Dinner and church were for later. For now, the day belonged to them.
She held her wrist up above her face and let the charms on her new bracelet dangle. This was her gift from Colby and Jon, a mother’s bracelet with bangles like a gold heart, a quarter moon with a smiling face, a cat, and angel’s wings. She liked it a lot. It was pretty, and she definitely hadn’t expected it.
“Thank you,” she said again.
“You’re welcome,” he said with a kiss in her hair. They were both in their pajamas still, and she could feel his heart beating through his plaid shirt top. Strong, and steady. “I can’t wait to see my present.”
“I told you,” she said, “later.”
“Later, huh? Why later?”
Darcy snuggled into him more. “Just because. Be patient.”
A knock on the door took them both by surprise.
“Are you expecting anyone?” Jon asked her.
“No. You?”
“Nope. Maybe it’s carolers. If they start singing Here We Come A-wassailing, I want in.”
Darcy reluctantly got up from her comfortable position in his lap and stretched to get circulation back into her limbs. Colby paused in her reading to look up. “Mom. Take a breath.”
Darcy finished her stretch, and her yawn. “I’m good, honey. Go back to your book. I’ll see who’s at the door.”
Smudge came over to sit with Colby, staring down at the book as if he could read the story with her. Silly, Darcy knew, but it sure seemed like he was scanning every word on the page.
Trailing her fingers along that sensitive spot behind Jon’s ear as she danced away from his playful grab, Darcy came out into the kitchen, making sure all the buttons on her pajamas were in place, telling herself that whoever had come visiting this morning would just have to accept that she wasn’t ready to get dressed yet and if they didn’t like it then they could just go and find their holiday cheer somewhere else—
She stopped. In the window of the door, she saw Grace.
Her sister held her gaze for a moment, and then waved, and pantomimed for her to open the door. Scowling, crossing her arms, Darcy took her own sweet time getting there to open up for her. She and Grace still hadn’t talked about what had been said between them. Darcy had so many questions and things she wanted to say but she just couldn’t get her head around what Grace had done when they were younger. It was Christmas, and she should be able to forgive her own sister, especially for something that had been done so long in the past. Or, so she told herself.
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In truth, maybe a part of her did want to forgive Grace and let it all go. That part was growing daily, but she just couldn’t seem to figure a way past the pain and the hurt. Maybe if their mother was here, she could help Darcy understand. Only, it was just the sisters, so Darcy was going to have to find some way to solve this little mystery by herself.
The cold from outside suited her mood as she held the door open for Grace. Her sister was in her puffy winter coat and sparkly pink gloves and jeans. Definitely not dressed for work. Jon had given her and Wilson the day off for Christmas. At the same time, Darcy hadn’t expected to see her until tonight at dinner.
Grace stamped her boots on the rug, but she didn’t take them off. She didn’t unzip her coat. She didn’t make any move to stay at all. “I know,” she said, “that I’m not one of your favorite people right now.”
“Oh?” Darcy started to close the door. “What was your first clue? The fact that I haven’t returned your calls or the fact that you said you didn’t want anything to do with me or my curse?”
“Darcy, I never said I didn’t want anything to do with you.” She curled her lip with a sorry shake of her head. “At least, I didn’t mean to say that.”
“Then what did you mean?”
Someone else stepped up to the door and stopped Darcy from shutting it. “Maybe I can explain what she meant.”
Of all the people Darcy had expected to see today, her mother wasn’t one of them.
Eileen Bollinger was busy with her own life now, remarried and happy, and Darcy was proud of how much her mother had changed over the years. The stuffy, stodgy woman who had kicked her out to live here with her Great Aunt Millie was now wearing a stylish purple sequined coat, something she would have never worn before. She saw so much of herself in her mother. In spite of her silvered hair, the heart shaped face and her eyes and the way she carried herself were like looking into a clouded mirror of her own future self.
