Page 42 of Echoes in the Storm
She falls so quiet, I have to check the dashboard display to make sure I haven’t dropped the call. “Mum?”
“How did you go?” she asks softly. “Are you okay today?”
Truthfully? No, I’m not. I spent the majority of the day at work stumbling my way through my tasks with the blind focus of a zombie. My thoughts were trapped amongst the images of Taylah the day she died at her kiddie table, eating her lunch. The last positive memory I have of her, considering what we did in the following hour was never more than a blur. The next clear memory I can dredge up is the flash of blue and red as I opened my eyes to an officer shaking me awake.
They thought I had overdosed. I wish I had.
“She’s been on my mind a lot, but I think I’m okay with that.”
“Duke?” she says. “What did he do?”
“Talked me off a ledge.” A smile creeps onto my lips as I think back to this morning. “He was great about it all, really.”
“That’s good, honey. I’m honestly so glad to hear it.”
“You know,” I say with slight jest to my tone, “it’s a bit low to enlist the help of a stranger like that.”
“He’s a nice boy,” she protests. “And it worked, didn’t it?”
“I guess.”
She lets the silence hang a while as I drive, my thoughts a jumbled mess. Taylah, Jared, the house sale, and now Duke. So many things demanding attention at once.
“Is there something else?” Mum asks carefully.
“Jared wants me to sell the house.”
Her sharp intake of air is deafening in the confines of my car. “Why? He agreed to let you stay there as long as you covered the mortgage on your own. What does he want with it now? I knew we should have forced him to transfer his name off the documents.”
“We couldn’t, remember? To do that I would have had to draw down again, and I didn’t have the lending power on my own to do that.”
“Yes, I do remember now.” She sighs. “Damn it, Cam. What are you going to do? I hope you’re going to fight his sorry arse.”
“I tried, but he doesn’t want to hear about it.”
“How long has this been going on?” Mum asks.
“A couple of weeks.”
“And you’re only telling me now? Cam …”
I sigh, fingers flexing on the wheel. “I thought I might be able to talk him out of it, make him see reason and the whole thing would blow over. But I can’t. The sale is going ahead.”
She hesitates before saying quietly, “Maybe it’s for the best. Everything happens for a reason, sweetheart.”
“I know. I’m just not ready yet, you know?” I take a deep breath and hold strong before I let myself slip into the past once more. “I told him to list the house with an agent who’s related to Kell.”
“Cammie,” Mum drones. “What would you do that for? She’ll be biased.”
“Exactly. He wouldn’t let her get away with a cheaper price in the name of a quick sale, so if I have to sell, I may as well make the most profit I can out of it.” Perhaps, given inflation over the past five years, I’ll walk away with enough to put a healthy deposit on another old villa, this time on a smaller property, so I can follow through with my B&B idea.Got to look for that silver lining.
“What’s the asking price?”
“Why, Mum?”
“What’s the asking price?” she repeats more matter-of-fact.
I sigh, shifting gears to turn into the driveway. “The last rateable valuation put the house and land at a bit over four hundred thousand.”