Inheritance of Secrets Read online

  Inheritance of Secrets

  Robin Patchen

  JDO Publishing

  Copyright © 2022 by Robin Patchen

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

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  Also by Robin Patchen

  The Coventry Saga

  Glimmer in the Darkness

  Tides of Duplicity

  Betrayal of Genius

  Traces of Virtue

  Touch of Innocence

  Inheritance of Secrets

  Lineage of Corruption

  Wreathed in Disgrace

  The Nutfield Saga

  Convenient Lies

  Twisted Lies

  Generous Lies

  Innocent Lies

  Beauty in Flight

  Beauty in Hiding

  Beauty in Battle

  Legacy Rejected

  Legacy Restored

  Legacy Reclaimed

  Legacy Redeemed

  Amanda Series

  Chasing Amanda

  Finding Amanda

  Standalone Novellas

  A Package Deal

  One Christmas Eve

  Faith House

  To Misty.

  I couldn’t do this without you.

  Your friendship means the world to me.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Lineage of Corruption Chapter One

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Robin Patchen

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Her throat swelling, her eyes burning with tears she wouldn’t release, Aspen Kincaid held her father’s hand.

  At the restaurant the night before, he’d been perfectly fine in his serious, tender way.

  That morning, she’d been awakened by a call from a police officer. Dad had been riding his bicycle, something he did along the narrow roads near their apartment every single day.

  A teenage driver, not paying attention, had swerved into him.

  Aspen had made it to the hospital just moments after he did and had been waiting in the ER when a nurse called her back, telling her to hurry, hurry.

  Aspen had run, skidding past doors and machines and doctors until she reached the room.

  Now she stood at Dad’s bedside and took his hand, trying not to react to the scrapes and cuts on his face and neck, to the way his breath wheezed. This was the man who’d raised her and loved her so well. His kind brown eyes were rimmed with red. His tan face was pale. She brushed his hair back, feeling soft strands and gritty sand left from the fall.

  She lifted a prayer and tried to smile. “How you feeling?”

  Before he could gather enough breath to respond, a white-coated doctor and four other people crowded in, one pushing a machine.

  “You’ve got five minutes,” the doctor said. “Then we need to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Intubate. One of his lungs collapsed, and the other—”

  “What are you waiting for? Do it.” Panic rising in her chest, she stepped back. “Why did you wait?”

  The doctor only nodded toward her father, who said, “I have to talk”—he took a wheezing breath—“to you first.” He gasped, and she felt the pain of it, inhaling and exhaling with him as if she could infuse him with her strength.

  “We can talk after, Dad,” she said.

  He shook his head.

  The doctor squeezed her arm. “He insisted.” A flicker of sadness filled his eyes, but he masked it quickly. “We’ll be back in five minutes.” He followed the others from the room, leaving the machine that would keep Dad alive until he recovered.

  “Dad, that was foolish.” Aspen tried to keep her tone kind, despite her frustration. “You should have let them do what they do. What could be so important—?”

  “I need to tell you…” Another wheezing breath, then another.

  The tears she’d barely held back slipped down her cheeks. “There’s nothing that can’t wait—”

  “…about what happened…to your mother.”

  Her mother?

  Aspen’s heart pounded.

  Because those words told her two things in an instant. First, that Dad didn’t believe he’d have another opportunity to talk to her.

  And second, that he’d been lying to her all her life.

  Aspen had heard a lot of words to describe her mother over the years, certainly more than her father had ever intended for her to hear. Unkind words from extended family who visited on occasion.

  Cracked.

  Deranged.

  Psychotic.

  But when Daddy talked about Mom, it was always with a kind, gentle tone. Your mother was unwell, Aspen.

  Funny how, in all those words, what she remembered wasn’t the adjectives used to describe the woman who’d given birth to her, the woman she had no memory of.

  It was the verb.

  Was.

  Your. Mother. Was.

  Past tense.

  Daddy had told her that, though no body had been found, she’d been presumed dead for years. He’d claimed not to know what happened to her.

  Aspen leaned closer to him, squeezing his hand, refusing to be angry in what could be their last moments together. “What about her, Dad?”

  “The house,” he said. “You’ll get the house.”

  In all their years in Kona, despite his restaurants’ successes, they’d never lived in a house.

  “The apartment? What about it?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry.” He took a shallow breath. “I didn’t do right…by her. Or you. Don’t…” He gasped for breath.

  “I’m sure you did your best.” Her voice squeaked. She leaned down and kissed his cheek. “You’re a good, good man. I’m sure whatever you did, you felt you had to.”

  Tears dripped from his eyes and soaked into the pillow beneath his head.

  He licked chapped lips and tightened his hold on her hand until her fingers ached. “Wanted to…” His words were interrupted by raspy breaths.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  He shook his head and pressed his hand to his chest. “Me.” He shook his head, tapped his chest. “Find her. Do what I never…had the courage…to do.”

  “What do you mean? Is she aliv
e?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but a cough choked out the words, the sound tearing through her soul like a dull knife against tough meat.

  The nurses hurried back in. One propped him higher, speaking words Aspen couldn’t make out over his coughing and the dull roar whooshing through her brain.

  Another nurse gripped her shoulder. “You need to step out.”

  “No.” Her father’s eyes filled with terror. “You don’t… I have to—”

  “Ma’am.” The doctor’s voice drew Aspen’s attention. “We’ve got to do this now. I’m sorry.”

  She tugged her hand, but Daddy held on and tried to speak. He didn’t have the breath.

  “You’re going to be all right.” Somehow, she didn’t think it was fear of death that put that panic on his face.

  “Now, please.” Someone tugged on her arm.

  “I love you, Daddy.” She pulled her hand from his and moved into the hallway. She watched the scene through the open door, barely glimpsing her father beyond all the medical personnel trying so hard to save his life.

  It was too late.

  Three days later, after he’d been airlifted to the trauma center in Honolulu, her father slipped into eternity. In his last moments, unconscious, the tube no longer down his throat, a smile graced his lips. She imagined him in that thin space between this life and the next, getting his first glimpse of the Savior he’d loved and trusted as long as she could remember.

  As awful as her grief was, Aspen knew her daddy was at rest.

  She feared she never would be again.

  Chapter Two

  ONE YEAR LATER.

  Aspen’s phone rang, and she hit the button on her steering wheel to answer it.

  “I meant to call earlier.” Jaslynn Matsomuto’s voice was the only thing that felt familiar in this unfamiliar landscape, and Aspen’s eyes stung at the sound of it. “I take it you got there all right?”

  “I’m about an hour from Coventry now,” Aspen said.

  “Are you going to the house tonight?”

  “It’ll be dark by the time I get there, so I got a room in town. I may end up staying there, depending on what I find when I see the place. I’m meeting the contractor tomorrow morning.”

  “How was the flight?”

  Aspen had kept her best friend informed about her plans in the months since she’d made the decision. It didn’t matter that Jaslynn and her husband had moved to Kathmandu, where they served as missionaries. Now that Dad was gone, her best friend was the only person who cared enough about her to check in. She had other friends, of course, but over the years, most of them had married and had families. A few had moved away. Aspen had socialized with people she worked with, but since she’d left her job, she hadn’t kept up with them.

  She wasn’t sure how, but despite being surrounded by friendly faces all her life, she’d somehow become incredibly alone.

  “The flight was long,” she said. “I don’t know how you manage that all the time.”

  “You get used to it. You know me—I love traveling.”

  “You know me. I love staying home.”

  Jaslynn laughed. “The car’s all right?”

  Aspen had bought a used four-wheel drive SUV online a couple of days before. “Just as advertised. I didn’t even have to stay in Boston, thanks to the overnight flight.”

  “But are you awake enough for the drive? What is it, two hours?”

  “Close to three, but I’m fine. I slept a little on the plane.” Very little, but she’d be in town by dinnertime. Between her anxiety about what she was going to find and the multitude of caffeinated drinks, she wouldn’t fall asleep behind the wheel.

  “What’s it like in New Hampshire?”

  “Cold.”

  “That, I guessed already. It’s January. What else?”

  Aspen gazed around at the tall pines and naked trees, at the snow-topped mountains reaching to gray skies. “You know Mud Lane up in Waimea? All those tall trees? It’s sort of like that, times a million and with snow.”

  “I bet it’s pretty.”

  Aspen shrugged. “I’m just glad the roads are clear. It’s getting dark already, even though it’s only”—she glanced at the clock on the dash—“three fifteen. If there’s a sunset somewhere, I can’t see it, and the skies are cloudy and…” Her voice hitched. She stopped talking before she revealed too much of what was swirling in her thoughts.

  “Oh, honey.” Jaslynn always saw through her. “How are you? Really?”

  She swallowed a sob. “I can’t believe he’s been gone a year. It feels like a blink. And it feels like a lifetime since I talked to him. I miss him so much.”

  “I wish I could be there with you.”

  “Fly over. How far could it be?”

  “Don’t think I didn’t consider it. It’s only about a twenty-four-hour flight.”

  Aspen groaned at the thought. “And probably a million dollars.”

  “Not quite that bad. If you stay there, Danny and I will come visit for sure.”

  “That would be…” The very thought of her best friend making a trip to see her choked her up again. But she wouldn’t be staying. She didn’t know a soul within a thousand miles of New Hampshire.

  “Once you get a good night’s sleep, everything will seem brighter. You have a plan, of course.”

  Aspen always had a plan. She had a notebook, where she’d lined out exactly what she’d be doing when she got to New Hampshire, beginning with meeting the contractor and getting the renovations going. Then she’d search the house and figure out why her dad had bought it. Then she’d…

  Well, it got a little murky after that. Somehow, she’d find her mother and do right by her. Whatever that meant. If only Dad had given her a few more details.

  It didn’t matter. The to-dos would fill themselves in.

  “This is going to be good for you.” Jaslynn’s voice took on the confident tone she used whenever she talked about the Savior she trusted so well. “God loves you, and He has good plans for you. I have a strong feeling that this trip is a big part of those plans.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Her life couldn’t go forward until she unlocked the secret her father had tried to share.

  “I’ll be praying for you, my friend. Keep in touch.”

  Aspen ended the call and swiped at her tears. Thoughts of her father gave way to thoughts of his final words, and then to the reading of the will in Kona.

  Her father had owned a house, one he’d purchased a couple of years before his death. He hadn’t traveled to New Hampshire in that time, which meant he must’ve bought the place sight unseen.

  In Coventry, New Hampshire, the town he had grown up in. The town where Aspen had spent the first year of her life.

  The last place Aspen’s mother had been seen alive.

  Dad must have known something about her mother’s disappearance, but he’d kept that information from Aspen.

  As hard as this was going to be, she was going to figure out why.

  Chapter Three

  Garrett McCarthy glanced back at the big old house. This was his opportunity to establish himself as a general contractor. He’d taken small jobs here and there—a kitchen remodel, an addition over a garage—but he’d never been hired to manage the renovation of an entire house. When he completed this job well, new opportunities should open up.

  He’d arrived at the two-story home early that morning, plowed the drive, and had almost finished shoveling the walkway when the growl of an engine interrupted the silence. As remote as this house was, he assumed his client was arriving. With the shovel propped beneath his hand, he faced the road. A small red SUV turned down the long driveway and parked beside his pickup. A woman in a puffy parka, the hood pulled up over her head, stepped out of the vehicle and approached him.

  When she reached the shade of the house, she took off her sunglasses and pushed back her hood.

  His heart did a weird little hitch.

  He didn’
t know what he’d expected, but not this.

  She was beautiful with dark blond hair and pale green eyes. Despite her puffy blue jacket, it was clear that she was trim and fit and…

  “Aspen Kincaid.” She held out her hand, covered in what looked like expensive leather, and he yanked off his dirty work glove to shake it.

  “Garrett McCarthy. Welcome to your house.”

  She looked up at it, and so did he, feeling protective of the old place that had been so poorly used in recent months. The cedar siding was faded, splintered in places. The concrete steps behind him, though clear of snow, were cracked, and the iron railings listed to one side. From the front, it didn’t look like much, especially with the rise that blocked most of the structure from the road. But, despite all that, the fresh snow enshrouding it made it look…well, if not new, then at least bright and clean.

  He couldn’t read the look on her face. She seemed shocked.

  “It’s not as bad as it seems,” he said. “We can freshen up the siding, or even paint it.” Though the thought of painting it did not set well. “Either way, it’ll look great when we’re done. A few of the rooms have been updated already. Not the kitchen or… most of the baths.” He’d have to explain about the creepy rooms in the basement, but not yet. “It’s functional. You should be able to live here while we do the renovations.” He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to defend the property. It was what it was. Maybe it wasn’t her dream home, but his understanding was that she’d inherited the place free and clear. Whatever she could sell it for would be money in her pocket.