“So you think she wanted you to hit her?”
He shrugged. “Does it matter? I hurt her, the one person I never wanted to hurt. She loved me at some point, I know that. I don’t know what she must have felt at that moment, to doubt that I ever felt that way, that everything had been a lie. It wasn’t a lie though, Ellie. I loved Sophia. She could never replace you, but I still loved her as much as I could. And I love Ben. I’d give everything to go back to that moment and make things right.”
I stared at him, feeling his pain.
“Would you really? Would you go back in time and change that, if you could?”
He thought it over and looked at me. “No. No, maybe not. Because then I wouldn’t have this. I wouldn’t have you. I have to live with my mistakes, but I don’t have to regret them. I regret my actions but I can’t regret the consequences. We all make our own paths in life. Everyone we meet, everything we do, it changes us. It makes us who we are. And, if we’re lucky, we’re given the chance to make things right again.”
I completely understood. I stuck my hand out the window and let it snake up and down with the wind. “It’s like an I.O.U. you didn’t know you’d written.”
He nodded. “That sounds about right. I have a feeling we’ve written a lot of those.”
“I think everyone does.”
We lapsed into a comfortable silence for the rest of the drive, understanding each other a bit better. Camden lived with his guilt, his guilt that had never let him be free. I wasn’t any different than he was. Each day I found myself relating more and more to the only other “freak” in town, the only one who really knew.
Once we passed through the small town center of Hemet, and after I whooped with delight at discovering the Hungry Heart music store still existed, we began our search for the Shady Acres. It was further out of town than we had both thought and as the town lights disappeared behind us, I had to admit I was feeling a little bit nervous.
It was terrible to doubt my uncle, but for a split second I thought maybe, somehow, this was a set-up. Maybe something wasn’t right. I don’t know if it was my own instincts or Camden’s cynical influence, but it set alarm bells off in my stomach.
It took a lot of courage to say to Camden, “I have a funny feeling about this.”
He gave me a smile and kissed my hand. “I know you do. You’re a trained con artist, you can’t forget that. If you didn’t walk into every situation with suspicion, I’d question how you survived so long.”
“So what do you think?” I asked him, suddenly doubting everything.
“I think your uncle sounds like an honest man. And I know he took care of you when we were kids, like you were his own daughter. I think he needs our help—that he deserves our help, and I believe that Javier has targeted him. But, I also think to be safe, we don’t park at the motel. Just around the corner. We sneak in.”
“Better paranoid than dead?”
“You know it.”
Once we located the hotel on my phone and spied the flickering signpost in the distance, we took the first side-street and parked down by an abandoned house on an overgrown lot. There was nothing but small farms in the area, a place that would probably seem very bucolic during the day but looked lifeless and deserted at night.
“Should we bring a gun?” I whispered as we climbed out of the car.
He eyed me over the roof. “I don’t think it could hurt. I’ll bring mine.”
I liked that idea. I didn’t want to have to use my gun in any situation that involved Uncle Jim. I was too close and it would get messy.
We quietly walked up the street, eyes peeled, ears scanning for anything unusual. A few cars puttered past on the main road up ahead, and in the distance an owl hooted, but there was nothing else except the sound of our feet as we crunched through gravel on the shoulder.
When the hotel got closer, Camden gestured for us to head in through the back of the property and scale over the fence. My arms burned from the effort but I made it over okay. We landed on the ground with a soft thud and observed the scene.
It wasn’t a hotel at all but a rundown motel. From the back, it looked like only one of the rooms in the bungalow block was occupied. I did a quick count and the small bathroom window with the light on was probably Uncle Jim’s.