“Do I get to take credit for this?” she asks. “I mean, did I help?”
“You got me thinking,” I admit.
“I bet he’s been groveling,” Antony says with a laugh.
“Hey now,” Nate says, “my groveling is none of your business.”
“He groveled!” Threes lets out a big belly laugh.
“Hopefully, he stopped being an ass,” Nora says as she looks at her brother with narrowed eyes.
“Yes,” Nate says with a grin. He grabs my hand and holds it up for all of them to see. “You should all know that despite how idiotically I’ve behaved in the recent past, Cherry has agreed to become part of the family. We’re going to be married.”
Nora’s eyes widen as she stares at us. I nod at her, and she seems to relax a little.
“Well, that’s good news at least,” she says. “I hoped you would work it all out.” She holds her arms out toward the phone. “Virtual hug!”
“Congrats, you two!” Antony beams at us.
“It’s a good thing she is as sweet and naïve as she seems,” Threes says with a sly smile. Nate demands that he explain himself. “If she weren’t, she’d have smacked you silly for what you put her through.”
“I still might.” I narrow my eyes at Threes, and Antony laughs.
After a few more minutes of congratulatory words and Nora’s insistence that I hold the ring up so she can get a better look, the family gets down to business.
“Janna Ramsay paid Cherry a visit,” Nate tells them.
“Shit.” Antony glances at Threes. “You were right—she did leave town last week.”
“I told you we shoulda followed her.”
“We need to figure out how much Janna and Jay already know,” Antony says.
“But they do know Cherry is their sister,” Threes says.
“Yes,” I say. “She said she’s known for the past year, but my aunt didn’t want either of them to make contact.”
“So why the visit?” Antony asks.
“She said she just wanted to meet me, but I didn’t believe her. She seemed to know all about why I left Cascade Falls, though. At least, she knew it had to do with Nate.”
“She might have done it just to get close to you,” Nora says. “It was clear the two of you are were together when you were here.”
“They never reached out to you before?” Nate asks me.
“I’d never seen her before that day, and I’ve never met her brother,” I say. “At least, not as far as I know. I definitely hadn’t talked to her before.”
“They kept their distance for a reason.”
“Maybe they saw your interest in her,” Nora says. “Maybe they were hoping to convert her after she was already a part of this family.”
“That’s not how it works,” Antony says. “If you marry into a family, that’s where your loyalties lie, period.”
“They might have thought she would spy for them.”
“This all sounds ridiculous,” Nate says. “She wouldn’t have any loyalty to the Ramsay family, not with her birth parents dead. None of this makes any sense at all.”
“We are missing a piece of this puzzle,” Threes says with a solemn nod.
“How did your brother even find out about me?” I ask.
“That’s what I want to know,” Nate says. “I have no idea how he got your name or anything, but he did have a file on you. I think he figured out that you were a Ramsay, but I’m not sure what he did with the information. He might have tried to use it against them, and in the process, the Ramsays killed him in order to keep the secret from getting out.”
“That makes a bit of sense, at least,” Threes says. “That means the Ramsays definitely knew about Cherry before we did and maybe even before Micha found out.”
“Do you think he came to Accident at some point?” I ask. “He could have talked to Aunt Ginny without me ever even knowing about it.”
“That’s something we can check into,” Threes says. “It should be easy enough to figure out if Micha traveled to Maryland last year.”
“Do that,” Nate says. “The timing might be significant, too.”
“Hey, boss?” Antony tilts his head to the side as he looks at Nate.
“Yeah?”
“There’s something else I wanted to say about that birth certificate we found on file at the clerk’s office.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve been thinking about it, and if someone wanted us to see that birth certificate as a forgery, find the dead person and stop at that, it makes a little more sense.”
“What do you mean?” Nate asks.
“As in, all of this is just to throw us off the track—to hide who she really is.”
“But why make it such an obvious forgery?”
“If I wanted to make a forgery,” Antony says, “but wanted anyone in the know to think it wasn’t our family who did it, this is what I’d do.”
“But you weren’t around then,” Nora says.
“Uncle Mario was, and he taught me everything.”
Nate pulls me a little closer to his side.
“So, why would someone in our family want a forgery to look bad?” he asks. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Keep someone off our trail? Make it look like it was the Ramsays when it wasn’t? I don’t know, boss. I only got guesses here.”
“That’s all we have left. We’ve exhausted all the possibilities here in town.” Nate looks at me and huffs out a breath. “There is a reason Roland had Sofia go to Accident, and the only way we’re going to figure this out is to do a little digging.”
“We also have an address to investigate.” Threes pulls out a small piece of paper with some writing on it from a file folder
