Strangled Skein by ACF Bookens

Author:ACF Bookens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andi Cumbo-Floyd

7

By mutual agreement, Santi and I had decided to take a night off from everything when he got home from bingo, so we had watched the first episode of Eureka, an older sci-fi show that was fun and a little ridiculous before we’d crawled into bed early.

Unfortunately, I still didn’t sleep well. My dreams were full of time travel episodes that included Linda and Rob and a ghostly figure who walked through walls. When I finally pried myself out of bed at 5, I was exhausted, agitated, and desperately in need of coffee.

Fortunately, my fiancé was one of the “take care of things before they need taking care of” people, and the coffee was already set to go when I stumbled into the kitchen. Both he and Sawyer were still sound asleep upstairs, so after I got my coffee, I settled myself at the dining room table with my research again.

It took me almost no time at all to confirm that the Robertses and the Fords had worked for the Sumner family for at least eight generations back. From what I could gather, a Roberts had been the heads groundskeeper since the early eighteenth century with a Ford in the role of overseer for everyone who worked on and in the house. It seemed the previous generation trained their replacements, passing the trade and position on to their offspring, who had, until the past couple of decades, notably been only male.

That bit of detail confirmed, I let myself follow a bit of a hunch and looked at the men in both families who were working at the Sumner house when Lily’s abuse had begun. From what I had gathered in both her journals, the person had been significantly older than her, but still young enough that a pre-teen girl could label him “cute.” From absolutely no scientific process, I decided that put him between 20 and 30.

It became quickly apparent that the only worker who fit that age-range was Linda’s father, Felix, and the few bits of information I had about him gave no indication that he was anything but a stellar groundsman and good citizen. Of course, people were not always what they appeared, but that possibility was at a dead end as far as the information I had available, so I let it go.

As I fixed myself a second cup of coffee, I wrestled with my guilt about directly defying Lily’s wishes by trying to identify her abuser. I wasn’t about to share anything I’d found with anyone besides Santiago, and now that I’d pretty well determined that the abuse wasn’t linked to whatever strange secret Linda and Rob were keeping, I didn’t feel like I needed to pursue my research in that direction any more. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t curious.

Crap, I was curious about everything. That’s what made me good at my job, and it’s also what got me into a lot of trouble.

So for the sake of Lily and my own safety, I decided

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