Chapter 12

Tamsin eventually decided to meet with Alex. She was surprised that, instead of a bar, or a place with chairs and a table, Alex would meet her at a residential area near the foot of the mountains.

They stood in front of a gated, private driveway, which extended into the dense patch of pines and oaks. Behind the trees, there was a mansion, one of those fancy, monstrous ones easily worth 2, 3 millions or more. It occupied at least 20 acres of gorgeous wooded land that sloped gently into the mountains.

And that made Tamsin wonder, what was the owner thinking? Why had the weeds taken over the lawn? Why was the gate rusted? Why was the driveway covered in a thick layer of pine needles?

Why did the mansion seem...dead?

"Do you know whom this house belonged to?" Alex asked her.

"Well, when I still lived here, this house belonged to the Lawson family. Beyond that, I have no idea."

"It's still in the Lawson family," Alex said. "It's just...there was a fire a couple of years ago, and now no one lives in there."

"Good to know, but I'm starting to wonder why I should be interested in this conversation at all."

Alex didn't answer that question. She gazed into the mansion for a while, before she proposed, "how about I tell you a story first, Tamsin? In exchange, I want to know about that postcard you received."

"Only if your story is good."

Alex smiled. "Do you know a Jennifer Lawson? She went to the same highschool with you."

"One of the Lawson kids? The youngest one?"

After getting a nod from Alex, Tamsin snorted. "Oh, sure, of course. Everyone knows her. Who doesn't know about the Lawson kids. They were the creepy Lawsons."

"The creepy Lawsons?"

"The Lawsons were...how do I put this, well, it's one of the richest families in town, and they are creepy and insane," Tamsin rolled her eyes. "They treated their kids like prisoners. The father would go pick up their oldest everyday after class so he wouldn't mingle with the bad kids, and the oldest kid was in graduate school."

"What about Jennifer?"

"I barely knew her. I mean, I knew her as one of the creepy Lawsons, but I didn't really know her in person. I don't think anyone knew her well in highschool. She wasn't allowed to do anything with any of the school kids. No birthday parties, no sleepovers, not even school field trips. She never really talked to anyone at school. Always sit with her siblings, and they would only whisper to each other."

"What else?"

"There were...rumors."

"What kind of rumors?"

"Some would say the Lawson's were in some sort of cult. Others claimed that they were possessed by demons. There had been rumors of physical and sexual abuse in the family.I thought at one point the county had sent people over to investigate, but it didn't go anywhere. Why would you ask about her?"

"Do you know that Jennifer ran away when she was 16, after having suffered years of abuse?"

"Oh I didn't know about that. So the abuse rumor was real….she's younger than me, I think. I was long gone by then."

"Yes, you were. You left three years before her. She had always said that what you had done encouraged her."

"Wait, you know her in person? Are the two of you close or something?"

Alex let out a small sigh. "She managed to contact a group that would help abused minors to leave their family and start a new life. I was a volunteer in that group back then. Me and another volunteer came over and got her out of Crimson Rock. We helped her settle into a new life. She got herself through college. She graduated and got a decent job. She had told me, repeatedly, that leaving Crimson Rock was the best decision she had made in her life, and that she would never want to return to Crimson Rock ever again."

"So far your story is quite a snooze fest."

Alex shook her head slightly. "Anyway, several years after she had gotten out of college, she got engaged to, quote unquote, her soul mate."

"Yawning," Tamsin drawled.

"She seemed very happy. She had set her wedding date and everything, starting to look for the perfect dress. I was really happy for her. Several months after her engagement, I got her wedding invitation in my mail. I was shocked that the ceremony would be held at Crimson Rock and that the groom was not her fiancé."

"Ok, that's weird, but it happens."

"I called her fiancé. The man was devastated and beyond confused. He told me that Jennifer left him all of a sudden. One day, he woke up and she was gone with all her things. She left him a note, saying that she had to go home and that she wouldn't come back. Then, he got a call from her. She told him that she was back with her family and she was in love with another man."

"Did she really mean it, or was she forced to say those things?"

"That was what I thought. I thought, maybe after all these years, she had finally built enough courage to face her abusive parents. Maybe she wanted to tell her family about her wedding news in person. When she arrived, they forced her to stay. In fear of her own life and safety, she had to play along. So, I took a few days off and came over here, thinking I could rescue her again."

"Mhm."

"I contacted her, and she agreed to meet me at a coffee shop. She came by herself and she wasn't followed. She told me that it was completely her own decision. She said that she had suddenly realized that this man she was about to marry, a third cousin of hers, was the love of her life. For hours, I tried to convince her that she needed to leave. I told her that my SUV is right outside the coffee shop, and if she needed to, all she had to do was to get into my car, but she refused."

"So that was really her own decision?"

Alex sighed. "It appeared that way, but it didn't make any sense. I stayed for a few days. I was convinced that something was wrong. Eventually, I attended the wedding, and she was actually happy! It was...creepy and terrifying to watch her there while her parents stared at her. They looked like two characters who had just walked out of that American Gothic painting! I watched her hugging them. She was hugging her parents, someone who had abused her for years and nearly destroyed her, someone who she had said she'd never want to see again. Then, there was the groom, looking just as creepy as her parents. I couldn't for the life of me understand what she was seeing in him. It just...it didn't feel right to me at all, that she was genuinely happy to be there, marrying that man, but there was nothing for me to-I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I mean, everything seemed wrong, and I didn't know where to start."

"So you left."

"I did. I had to. I still have a job to do. I tried to contact her later, to see if she had finally come to her mind or something. All I got from her was 'I am so happy that I reunited with my family. They are the most important people in my life. I love my husband so much!' Thought I'd come to Crimson Rock and meet her in person again, but my job was...overwhelming. The next time I heard her name was her ex-fiancé telling me that a fire killed her along with her husband and her parents."

"The cause of fire?"

"A burning scented candle. It seemed to be an accident."

"Well this is a tragic and strange story but…why are you telling me all this?"

Alex let out a sigh. "Do you know that accidents happen here in Crimson Rock far more often than national average?"

"What do you mean?"

"Deaths," Alex explained, "car accidents, hunting accidents, fire, flood... It was roughly four times the national average. Even the murder rate is high in Crimson Rock, higher than some of the metros."

"I told ya. This entire town is fucked up."

"Have you wondered why everyone around you seemed to have some sort of tragic death in their family? I mean, both of your parents, Bo's parents, that little girl Kira's parents, and now Dylan."

"This is not where you accuse me of being the culprit, right?"

"Have you wondered why, after 15 years of not setting a foot in this town, you are suddenly back, just like Jennifer?"

The hair on the back of Tamsin's neck suddenly stood. "What are you implying?"

"I am not implying anything. I mean, maybe I am but I don't even know what I am implying. I just think that there's something going on in this town. There has to be an answer to such a high death rate has to be an answer to why Jennifer had come back all of a sudden. Maybe, and just maybe, it could also explain Dylan's death as well."

After a long pause, she turned to Tamsin and asked, "was there a reason that made you come back?"

Tamsin sighed. "Alright, fine. I came back because of that postcard, okay? It was a stupid thing Dylan and I came up with when we were little. We agreed that if one of us was in danger we'd sent the other person that exact postcard with nothing written on it."

"So it was a distress signal," Alex nodded. "Anyone else know about this?"

"Not that I know of, but who knows whom he had told all these years. I mean, it was just something we talked about when we were like 11. It was kids stuff. I never expected him to actually send me one. I certainly didn't expect him to be missing when I came back here."

"So you are saying that he knew he was in danger and that was why he sent you the postcard?"

"I don't know. He had to, but how could he have known? If he did know that he was in danger, why hadn't he told anyone? Do you have any new clues regarding his death?"

"There is something, but...if I tell you that, you will need to tell me something as well."

"Fine, what do you want to know?"

"If it is okay with you, I'd want to ask you a few questions about your parents."

Tamsin shrugged. "Fine, you first."

"In that cave where you had found Dylan, I mean, the chamber down there where you had found his body, I've found a partial shoe print that didn't match yours. It did match his but-"

"-he couldn't have left a shoe print because the fall had already killed him. Wait, could it be that when he fell, one of the shoes happened to touch the ground? The dirt down there was very soft. "

"It was found several feet away from his body, so...I don't think it could be his. But it was too small to compare with the other prints we have found there. I can't say for sure it belonged to that hypothetical second person, but it's possible, very possible."

"But if it did belong to that person, it would mean that person was down there with his body. Why?"

"Maybe to make sure that he was in fact dead? Or to retrieve something from down there?"

Tamsin's heart suddenly stopped as she recalled the scene of Dylan holding the earring. Did Bo go down there to get her earring? Why didn't she take it with her? Did she have trouble finding it? It wasn't that hard to find. She should have known that it was in his hand….

"Anyway, nothing's conclusive, but if I had to take a guess, someone else was down there with him that day."

"But, I don't remember seeing any other footprints down there that day, except mine."

"That second person could have cleaned or wiped after themselves, and they might have missed that partial print down there."

Tamsin nodded.

"Now it's your turn."

"What do you want to know?"

"How did your parents die?"

Tamsin paused briefly. "Well...my mom died of a very rare, genetic liver condition. My dad died of an accident during a field trip with his co-workers."

"Were either of them away from the town and then suddenly back?"

Tamsin pondered that question. "My mom was born here, but when she was two, her parents moved away to Atlanta and they took her with them."

"How did she find her way back here then?"

"She met my dad in college in Atlanta, and I guess the fact that he was from the same town that she was born intrigued them. They started dating and then got married. They were going to start a family in Atlanta. I mean, in fact she had already found a job there."

"But...they somehow came back."

"My dad's family had been here for generations. They had this hotel business in town, and the owner, his uncle, had fallen ill. His family wanted him to take over the business."

"I thought he was a geologist."

"He was. He had no idea how to run a business, but somehow he and his side of the family convinced my mom that they had to stay and take care of the family business. She eventually agreed, and she turned things around, making the hotel business a real success. When Dylan and I were born, I think they owned like half of the hotels in town, and some restaurants as well."

"Your family no longer owns those businesses, right?"

Tamsin shook her head. "After we were born, she had a hard time balancing her career and child care taking. She was away all the time, working, and my father started to complain. They ended up agreeing to hire a full time nanny who'd take care of us and also maintain the house and stuff. And then, you got the cliché where the busy wife was at work all the time, and the lonely husband was drawn to the kind hearted, genuinely nice nanny. My mom eventually found out, and got really, really upset. She started drinking. She got sick, and then she got sicker. By the time the doctors had figured out that she had a very rare, genetic liver condition that made her particularly prone to alcohol damage, it was too late. She passed away when we were 10."

Tamsin stopped briefly, as she recalled the last moment she was with her mother. She was in the hospital, looking pale and fragile. She held Tamsin's hand and whispered something to her. Before Tamsin had figured out what she was saying, nurses rushed in. They pushed her out and closed the door, and through the window, she could still see her mouthing something to her, over and over….

"Tamsin?"

Tamsin rolled her eyes. "Anyway, after she died, my father took over the business, but he just didn't have what it would take to run the business at all. He made lots of mistakes, and then he had to take some high interest loan. We ended up losing pretty much everything except the house and a couple pieces of land that aren't worth much."

"And your father's death…."

"He went on a field trip. It was something like they needed some research results to convince whoever was funding the research to give them more money. He said that if everything would go well, he might have a chance to work at some big museum somewhere else. But...flash floods in the mountains took him."

Alex nodded. "That was right before you left town, right?"

"Yeah."

"Was that why you decided to run away?"

Tamsin didn't answer that question. "Do you have any other leads on Dylan's case?"

"Not at this moment."

"Care to share your list of suspects?"

"Well you know the drill, spouse, lovers, family, friends. It's a long list."

"Do you think it's the spouse?"

"I haven't excluded her yet. Why?"

"Just curious."

"Do you think it's the spouse? The three of you were close, right? You all went to the same school and she was living in the same house with you for a while after her parents death."

"I don't think she could hurt anyone," Tamsin said honestly. "She doesn't have it in her."

"What about her lovers, or someone who's obsessed with her?"

"You do realize that you are asking someone who has not been in town or in touch with anyone here for more than a decade, right?" Tamsin snorted. "I don't think she has any lovers. If she did, Dylan would know. As for someone who's obsessed with her, gee, where do I start?"

"She's popular, huh?"

"Back in highschool? Oh yeah, half of the school had a crush on her. The other half just didn't know they had a crush on her yet. "

"Did she ever reciprocate?"

"Other than Dylan? Not really. I mean, she dated a few but..."

"Any of them might be so obsessed with her that they'd want to hurt Dylan?"

"Back then, sure. I'm sure they'd want to punch him in the face at least. Now? It's been 15 years. If this person hated Dylan that much, why would they have waited for so long?"

"You are right. Probably not someone from your highschool."

They went quiet for a long time, before Alex said, "the backpack that Dylan was carrying with him had been released to the family before I got here. Do you still have it?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Oh, just want to examine it myself. Do you mind bringing it to the precinct?"

"Sure."

Tamsin went home and found Dylan's backpack. She went through everything again: snacks, first aid kit, his kindle….

She had not noticed that Dylan was using a customized screensaver for his kindle before. It was a page of a book. She absentmindedly read a few lines, before she suddenly remembered that message decoder Dylan had left her. The size would fit.

She quickly overlaid the page on top of the kindle screen. To her surprise, and somewhat disappointment, the two words it revealed were: crimson rock.

What the fuck? She thought. You went through all this shit to leave me a message of...the name of this damn town?!

Tamsin's night started with Bo knocking on her door. She let the brunette in.

After closing the door behind her, Bo leaned in and touched Tamsin's face affectionately.

"Bo? Are you okay?" Tamsin asked as she gently held Bo's wrist. The sudden intimacy startled her.

Bo stared at her for a while, and whispered, "let me stay with you."

Tamsin closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "You can't...you can't stay here every night, Bo."

"I just don't want to be alone."

"Are you having trouble sleeping again? If you are, you probably should tell the doctor."

"She gave me some pills, but I don't like them," Bo complained.

"Those are not for you to like, Bo," Tamsin sighed. "They are medicine. They should help you."

Bo bit her bottom lip. "They make me feel numb, like there's a fog in my brain."

"It's probably the side effect. Why don't you tell her that, and maybe she can give you something else instead?"

Bo shook her head slowly. "It's alright. I actually feel better without them."

"You can't just...not take your medicine, Bo. You need to get enough sleep."

"I'll get enough sleep here. I promise."

With that, Bo invited herself into Tamsin's bed and tucked herself under her blanket. She looked irresistible with that subtle smile in the corner of her lips.

You have to resist. Tamsin warned herself.

"Tamsin."

"Yes?"

"How have you been for all these years, really? It's been so long since you-"

"I've been alright."

"Seeing anyone?"

Tamsin smiled. "Seeing a lot of people."

Bo chuckled. She gazed at Tamsin softly. "What do you do for a living?"

Tamsin frowned. "I thought I've already told you that."

"No, you haven't," Bo shook her head.

"Bo, I told you that I work for a private investigation firm the other night. You don't remember that?"

"No...you've never told me that."

"Yes I have. I told you that first I joined the military. Then, I became a cop. Then, I quit and found a job at a PI firm."

Bo was genuinely confused now. "No...I don't think you have told me any of it. I mean, I knew you joined the military because Dylan told me, but-"

She trailed off, looking lost.

"Are you having trouble remembering things, Bo?"

"I remember things fine. I guess...I guess it just...I guess sometimes things just slip my mind for a bit. It's not a big deal."

"Are you sure?"

"I...I'm sure. Dr. Wilson said that it was probably because I don't get enough sleep."

"So you don't remember me telling you about my jobs at all?"

Bo went quiet for a long time. "I guess I do remember now, but...it just...it just seemed...a bit far away."

Tamsin sighed. "You really shouldn't skip your pills."

"I'll take them tomorrow then." Bo yawned and closed her eyes.

Tamsin couldn't help but sit down close to Bo. She placed a hand gently on Bo's cheek, and Bo's slightly knotted eyebrows relaxed.

"Bo." Tamsin called that name sincerely and gently.

"Yes?" The brunette opened her eyes again.

"Do you remember the things that happened the night after Dylan's funeral?"

Bo propped herself on her elbow nervously. "Umm...nothing really happened that night," she eventually replied, with a hint of embarrassment in her voice.

"You don't remember that we had sex downstairs?"

Bo's jaw dropped and her cheeks turned bright red. "What? How-how do you even know about that?!"

Tamsin frowned. Now she was confused. "Because I was there."

"No...no, no, no...oh no you weren't. This is embarrassing. No we did not have sex that night, Tamsin. It was not real. It was...it was a dream of mine. I had a wet dream and that was it. We did not-I did not...we did not have sex that night."

She was too embarrassed to even look at Tamsin in the eye now.

"Yes, we did," Tamsin said firmly. To prove her point, she pulled her collar to the side and showed Bo the vague bite mark on her shoulder. "You left this, remember?"

Bo gaped at it. She touched it briefly and withdrew her hand as if the bite mark burnt her.

"Wait...we really did it? It wasn't...a dream?"

With her voice quivering and her eyes brimming with tears, she touched the bite mark again, then Tamsin's cheek, then her lips….

"It...it can't be real…" she murmured, panicking with guilt, yet with a hint of peace and joy.

"Bo, it's one thing to not remember little things. It's quite another to think that something really happened was a dream of yours."

Bo turned away, in complete silence and shivering.

"I think you might have a bad case of amnesia, Bo," Tamsin suggested. "Why don't I take you to the doctor's tomorrow? Let's see what she says, okay?"

Bo nodded. In fear, she buried herself into Tamsin's arms.

Tamsin let out another sigh as she held the brunette tightly to her chest.

A/N: Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Stay safe and stay healthy!