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With all the negotiations, we were still at it late into the night. With that being the case, plus the added help of Archie being away from home, it wasn’t hard for me to talk Sapphire into spending the night. Good thing, too.
Baby Pearl didn’t sleep through the night. To be honest, that was still a hit or miss kind of thing. We took what we could get.
But the teething on top of all the wedding talk was just too much for her, it would seem. She didn’t wake up just at midnight, either. She was up again at three in the morning. Sapphire took the first round, and I took the second.
It was only fair.
By the time the child woke up the third time ready for the day at six o’clock, I was more than ready to hand her off to Nancy for the ritual first of the morning feeding. The girl was good at helping out like that. She insisted on doing her part... as long as her part didn’t involve the southern half of the baby, that is. Nancy had a distinct aversion to diapers.
Not that I blamed her. Changing diapers wasn’t high on my list, either.
Normally, after that feeding, Nancy handed her off to Kimberly, and we all started the day with showers, breakfasts, and the general getting ready to go chores.
Not today.
I opened the bathroom door after my shower to find Nancy standing there with wild eyes. She was holding baby Pearl, but I noticed there was a little more distance between the two of them than there normally was.
“What’s wrong?”
Nancy swallowed. “I think maybe Pearl is a witch, Mom. Only... well, witches don’t get their power until later on, right?”
I arched an eyebrow at her and led her out to my living room. Even after six months, I still hadn’t figured out a way to break the news to the rest of the family. Or Kimberly. Kimberly, being Pearl’s mother, definitely had the right to know what she was in for. And, of course, that I would have her back all the way.
“What happened?”
She swallowed again, then held baby Pearl out to me. I took the hint and strapped the grinning baby into her bouncy chair. All the better for Nancy and me to have a nice little uninterrupted chat. I really hoped that Mom would stay out of it.
I glanced over at Bridget, but she didn’t appear to be paying us much mind. She liked to linger over her breakfast. So far, so good.
“I took her upstairs and got the bottle ready. I know I put the bottle on the table beside the rocking chair. But then I realized I needed a cloth for burp time, so I put Pearl in the playpen and went down to get one.”
She stopped, staring hard at baby Pearl.
“And?” I prompted.
“And when I got back, Mason was still sawing logs as I went past his bedroom. You know he doesn’t get up easy, right?”
Oh, I knew all right. There was a reason that getting Mason out of bed in the morning was up to Kimberly. That boy loved his morning sleep-ins. Getting up early? Not so much.
At my nod, she continued. “Well, when I went back to our playroom... Pearl was still in the playpen, but she had her bottle.” Yet another swallow. “She was drinking it, only, well, she wasn’t exactly holding it.”
That sounded like Mom’s favorite levitation spell, all right. I glanced down at baby Pearl and then up at Nancy. “You’re right. She is a witch.” I hesitated. “But there’s a bit more to it than that. Only, I kind of think maybe I need to tell Kimberly first. She should be the first to know, don’t you think?”
Nancy nodded. “No problem. But she really is a witch? I’m not losing my mind?”
I smiled at her. “You aren’t losing your mind, child.”
“Good.” She glanced down at baby Pearl, who now seemed fascinated by her own foot. Just a normal little baby discovering new things every single day. Yeah, not buying it, baby Pearl. You’ll have to try harder than that. “Is it okay if I leave her down here with you and just let Kimberly know she’s here?”
I bit my lip. “That will be fine, dear. But I hope you don’t let this upset you too much, or let it change how you feel about her. She is a witch, yes, but she’s also a baby. And a member of the family.” Twice over, but she’d find that out later, after my little talk with Kimberly.
She nodded, but I didn’t like the uncertainty of her expression. I hoped she’d come out of it soon. It was rather a shock now, but hopefully, the idea would eventually just take root and grow. After all, baby Pearl being a witch could actually draw the two of them closer together. Another young witch in the family.
Once Nancy got used to the idea, she’d be on board. I hoped. Especially as I was going to need all the help I could get with baby Pearl. I hadn’t realized until now just how much I’d been counting on Nancy for that help.
***
I WAITED UNTIL AFTER we dropped the kids off at school and got the shop properly opened. At least there weren’t customers waiting outside this morning. I was kind of hoping that they’d hold off coming for a bit longer too.
Long enough for a nice little heart to heart chat with Kimberly.
We were straightening out the window display, freshening things up a bit, when I finally turned to her. “Kimberly...” and then the words just vanished. Right up in smoke.
She looked at me. “Yes, Opal?”
Desperate for something to talk about now that I had once again chickened out of discussing the real issue that needed to be discussed, I lit on the fact that she was raised in the same neighborhood where Orville lived. It was worth a shot.
“You used to live close to Orville, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “Yes. My stepdad’s house was just a couple of blocks over from his. Why?”
I shrugged. “I was wondering if you ever went to Reverend Castle’s church. Were you and your family members of that congregation?”
Her lips thinned out. “We were. It was a requirement of my stepdad’s. Every Sunday, rain or shine, and in sickness or in health, our bodies had to be sitting in a hard pew to listen to the good reverend spout out his sermon.”
The way she said the words ‘good reverend’ had me thinking that she was talking more than a little sarcastically. “Did you not like Reverend Castle? I mean, I know you and your stepdad had very obvious problems.” Namely, that the man was a pervert. “But that doesn’t mean the church was bad, does it?”
In fact, a good church should have been a comfort during the times that Kimberly went through with her stepdad. Obviously, that hadn’t been the case, though.
“Not by itself, no. But Reverend Castle wasn’t the saintly man all the menfolk seem to think he is. We women of the church knew better.” She hesitated. “At least us younger women did.”
“I think I’m going to need a little more than that, Kimberly. What do you mean, exactly?”
Kimberly shook her head. “He just wasn’t a very nice man to the girls. When his wife was still alive, it wasn’t so bad. I think she evened him out a bit. Kept him honest, if nothing else. But once she died a few years back, things changed.”
I let that sink in. “Well,” I said slowly, “that is a pretty big life change to go through.”
She just looked at me. “It wasn’t grief that changed him. More like someone taking the reins off a wild horse.” She tilted her head and thought for a few seconds. “I rather think that’s how he envisioned himself. A wild and free stallion out to sow some wild oats.”
Crapsnackles. That didn’t sound good. Not for the reverend of a church.
“Are you saying the man took advantage of his position to be with young women?”
Kimberly fidgeted. “I can’t say a definite yes to that because no one was talking. Part of that was Reverend Castle’s saintly reputation. I mean, one or two girls came forward about a year after Mrs. Castle died.” She shuddered. “It wasn’t pretty for them. Everyone rallied behind the good reverend and called it a witch hunt.”
I bristled at the phrase. Witch hunts weren’t good, even when they didn’t involve actual witches. Which, honestly, was most of the time.
“Sorry. But that’s what the good old boy network called it. No one else came forward after that. That isn’t to say the bad behavior stopped, though, is it?”
“I truly wish I’d known about this before now. This kind of thing can’t stand, you know.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Well, it did for a long time.”
That brought up a good point and a whole list of possible murder suspects. “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted the man dead? I mean, I know there are a fair few that wouldn’t like him, being what he was, but hate him enough to kill him?”
Her eyes met mine. “Besides me, you mean?”
I blinked at her twice before I could find the words to respond to that. “Please don’t tell me you were one of the ones that stepped forward.”
“No, I wasn’t his type. Thank God. But when things started going wrong with my stepdad, I went to him. I guess I was hoping that the men were right and that he was a decent shepherd to his flock, other than the randy tendencies. I found out that wasn’t the case.”
“What happened?”
She took a deep breath and looked away, tidying up the display a bit more. Tidying that didn’t need to be done, I might add.
“He acted like he believed me. Made me think he was on my side. Told me he’d take care of it. That it wouldn’t happen again. All the right things.”
I waited. There was more to come, but I didn’t want to push her. Reliving those days couldn’t be easy for her.
“Then, as soon as I left the church, he called my stepdad. Told him everything I’d said. He wanted to let him know that I was telling stories on him.” Her face flushed. Yup, still a whole lot of anger there. Not that I blamed her one bit.
“That’s what got me and Mason shoved out into that tiny little camper next to Nancy and her dad.” She hesitated. “In hindsight, that’s the best thing that could have happened to me. But at the time, trying to keep the lights on and food on the table for Mason, all while being pregnant... well, it didn’t feel like it then.”
I swallowed. The Goddess worked in mysterious ways. She had used a very broken, but good-hearted man to fix a fair few lives in Wind’s Crossing. Not that I believed that violence was the right way to handle the situation. But truthfully, the world was a lot better off without the men he killed in it.
One of those men had been Nancy’s dad. That had led to Nancy getting a new lease on life with a mother who loved her. Namely me. But it had also eventually led me to Kimberly and Mason too.
As I said. Mysterious ways.
“I can understand that.” I paused. “But you don’t seem the murdering type to me. And even if you were, you would have killed the man months ago, not now. Who else had reason to want him dead?”
She shrugged, her concentration apparently totally on the display. I knew better than that. She wasn’t meeting my eyes for a reason.
“I trust you, Opal. I do. But I know that anything I say to you will find its way to the sheriff.” Kimberly took a deep breath. “And to tell you the truth, Reverend Castle had it coming. Ten times over, in my opinion. If it was one of the girls that stepped forward only to have their lives ruined by the man... well, I’m not so sure I want to be the one that rats them out.”
“You don’t really think murder is the right way to solve anything, do you?”
“Maybe not the right way, no. But to some, it might seem like the only way. If no one will listen to you, or believe you, what alternatives do you really have?”
Crapsnackles. The girl had a point. But that didn’t mean we could just let someone get by with murder. Even if the one they murdered was a blight to the human race.
As Orville once told me, that’s how serial killers were born. Once a person has killed, it gets easier for them to kill a second time. And it seems more natural to solve problems that way. To their minds, anyway.
In other words, killing someone changes a person. And always for the worse.
I was seriously hoping that whoever had ended Reverend Castle’s life hadn’t done so with good provocation. I was hoping that the killer was just as bad of a person as the Reverend himself.
That was the only way this was going to end well.