CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
They filed into Beckett’s kitchen, and while Gia fussed with bottles of water and glasses of iced tea, Eva sat, face pale, lips tight. Donovan made sure to keep Beckett on the other side of the room. His friend had no idea how close Donovan had come to losing his cool. He was furious with Eva, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t stand between her and any threat.
“Who was it, Eva?” Donovan asked, keeping his tone calm, his voice quiet. Layla readied her notebook. It was highly unusual to interview a victim with so many other people present. But this way, Eva would only have to go through it once.
“Agnes.” Eva answered quietly.
“Agnes who?” Emma demanded.
“Is this some crazy fan?” Gia asked, sliding a glass of tea in front of Eva.
Eva shook her head. “Agnes Merill.”
Gia and Emma froze.
“Mom?”
“Our mother?”
Donovan nodded subtly at Layla who scratched the name down on the pad and quietly left the room to call it in to Minnie.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” he suggested. He could see that his all-business tone hurt her. But that was something that would have to wait until later.
She began with what he knew. The depression, the drugs, Agnes’s downward spiral.
Emma and Gia, to their credit, sat quietly, flanked by their husbands, and listened as the story unfolded.
Emma shook her head slowly. “I knew something had changed in her. She’d just… I don’t know. Disconnected from us.”
Gia nodded, remembering. “I wonder if Dad suspected. He started making us spend our time after school at the restaurant instead of at home with her.”
“It explains a lot. I always assumed she’d been unhappy and met someone else,” Emma added. Niko laid a hand on her shoulder. Emma reached up to hold it.
“I thought I had done something to make her want to leave,” Gia confessed. “She was so angry leading up to her leaving. I hated even having a conversation with her.”
Eva was shaking her head. “No. Not you. It was me.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “You were eight years old. What did you do that was so horrible she couldn’t live with us anymore?”
“I was born,” Eva said matter-of-factly.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Beckett muttered. Donovan shot him a look. The man was skating on very thin ice, even if Donovan agreed with the sentiment.
“She told me, off and on, that I’d ruined her life. That there was an Agnes before me and a different one after me.”
“You have zero responsibility for post-partum depression,” Gia argued.
“I know that. At least I do now. But I didn’t for a long time. The first time she came to me asking for money, she reminded me that she’d left because of me. Because I’d ruined her life.”
“That’s bullshit,” Emma snapped.
“Yeah, well, I was nineteen and naïve.”
“So, you paid her,” Niko filled in.
Eva nodded. “She always came back. And if I balked or didn’t have enough, she’d threaten to come back.”
“What do you mean?” Beckett asked.
“She’d make promises about stirring up trouble. Things like paying you all a visit. She’d make comments about how well it looked like Emma was doing for herself in L.A., and she was sure you had some to spare for your poor mother.”
“And I would have told her to go fuck herself,” Emma snapped. Donovan saw Niko squeeze her shoulder in approval.
“That’s why she went after me,” Eva whispered. “I was the weak one.”
“Now you’re starting to piss me off,” Gia announced.
Eva shook her head. “You don’t understand. I grew up thinking I ruined my own mother’s life. I was young enough, dumb enough, to believe what she was telling me. For a long time.”
“Why did she show up here?” Beckett asked.
“Because I told her no.”
“That’s who Jax and I saw you on the street with,” Niko guessed.
Eva nodded. “She surprised me seconds after Dad and Phoebe walked out of the coffee shop. Told me she was going to make trouble for all of you if I didn’t pay out this time.”
“What could she have done?” Emma asked, getting up to pace.
“I can’t explain what it’s like to have the shadow of this woman hanging over me at all times. Every text, every phone call. Is it her? How much does she need now? Why won’t she leave me alone?”
“That’s why you moved so much,” Gia said quietly.
“She always found me.”
“How much money did you give her?” Emma asked.
Eva shrugged.
“Eva,” Donovan said.
Her sad hazel eyes met his gaze.
“No more lies,” he told her.
“Twenty-six thousand dollars.” Anger, hot and fierce, raced through his system, and Donovan wished he could shoot something or at least beat the hell out of someone.
“Why in the hell didn’t you tell us?” Gia demanded.
“At first I believed her. That you would blame me if you knew that I was the reason she left. Then I just wanted to keep her far away from all of you.”
Gia took a cleansing breath and then another one. And when that one didn’t work, she gave up. “I honestly don’t know who I’m more mad at right now.”
Beckett ran a hand down his wife’s hair, a steadying stroke, and Donovan wished he could do the same for Eva. But she needed to finish it.
“Explain what happened today,” Donovan told her.
“She put herself up in Eden’s B&B. And I had to either get her the money tonight or fess up to Donovan,” she said shooting a look at Beckett. “So, I came up with a plan to get her to leave without the money. I figured she kept threatening me with my family, and maybe I could do the same thing.”
“How?” Donovan asked.
“I told her that I’d come clean with everyone about everything and that her parents were here and ready to take her to rehab. We were all going to support her recovery and help her get clean so she could be brought back into the fold, so to speak.”
“Grandma and Grandpa?” Gia asked. “We haven’t seen them in years.”
Eva shrugged. “I thought it worked. She panicked and took off.”
“That’s how you became the monster?” Beckett asked, swiping a hand through his hair. Donovan shot the man a long cold look. If his friend had known anything about the trouble Eva was in and didn’t tell him? There wasn’t much room for forgiving him.
“Yeah,” Eva continued. “And I thought it worked. She ran out of the inn like she had Batman and the cops on her heels. She was so angry at the idea that she’d have to face everyone she abandoned. She doesn’t care about any of us. She just pushes buttons until she gets cash.”
“So she left the inn, and she came straight here,” Donovan said.
“Yes. Evan called me and told me someone had broken in. And I called you, and here we are.”
“When you catch her,” Emma said, looking at Donovan. “I want ten minutes alone with her.”