“What did you just call me, Eden?”
“Not Eden. It’s me, Dare, Echo.”
“Where’s Eden, Echo? What have you done with her?”
At first, all I felt was the hurt, but then the jealousy and resentment slowly crept in. Here I was talking to him for the first time in years, and all he could think about was my brat daughter. I thought he’d be as happy as I was about the prospect of being able to talk to each other. I should have known better. I fought to rein in all the negative feelings that had suddenly engulfed me. Of course, Eden would be his priority. Why would he ever value me more than her? It didn’t matter how close we’d been as kids; the cold hard truth was that I was dead, and Eden wasn’t. As if God was trying to make just that point, just below the surface, I felt Eden stir, and I knew I didn’t have long. She was starting to make her way back.
“I didn’t do anything short of saving her life, Dare. She needed some time for her spiritual self to mend. I’m sorry I don’t have more time to catch up, but that bull-headed daughter of mine is starting to gain her dominant seat over me again.”
Daryl looked like he didn’t know whether to be happy or sad. I would have given anything to be able to feel what he was feeling at that moment. My brother had never been a man of outward emotion, but as I felt Eden’s conscience start to overtake my own, I saw a tear streak a wet path down his cheek, and that single tear told me more than a thousand words could have.
“Say you’re goodbyes, Echo. It's time for me to come home.”
I could feel from her emotional state that she was anxious to get back in the driver’s seat but wanted to give me the chance to say what I didn’t get the chance to say seventeen years ago. How she could still be so good-hearted after everything I’d put her through was beyond me, and then the answer came to me like a bolt of lightning. This was Daryl coming out in Eden. So I said the one thing that I would have never gotten the chance to if I’d just passed over.
“Thank you Dare, Thank you for taking care of Eden.”
I felt the shift in control and faded back into the background of Eden’s mind.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Intentional Accidents
(Eden)
The brake lines were cut. That’s what the mechanic told us, not snapped or broken but cut. Someone was trying to kill me. It didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t like I was old enough to remember who killed my mother, hell technically I hadn’t even been born yet! So that wasn’t the reason. Had someone hated Echo so much that they didn’t want any trace of her to be left? Dad insisted on taking me to school until whoever was behind the attack was caught. Not because he didn’t trust Drew, but because Dad had the type of car that would pretty much yell at you if you got within four feet of it without his key, so the chances of someone cutting his brake lines were zero.
“Don’t go anywhere alone Eden, do you hear me,” Dad said as Drew walked up and I closed the passenger side door.
“You won’t have to worry about her; I will be walking her to all her classes. Are you staying down here today, Mr. Garrows, or going up to Tulsa like my mom?”
Dad looked between me and Drew several times before he said, “The captain has granted me a leave of absence, so I can stay down here to help in any way I am allowed with the investigation, and to be close by should anything else heinous happen. We still have no leads on where Daniel is. It’s almost like he never existed. People don’t just disappear like that unless they have something to hide or run from.”
“Dad, Danny didn’t kill Echo.”
“How can you be so sure Eden, seriously, how? Everything is starting to point to him, and why else would he disappear like he did.”
“Come on, Dad did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, whoever killed Echo might want him dead as well.”
I knew that wasn’t true the minute it came out of my mouth and wondered what the hell had possessed me to say it. I immediately felt terrible for being misleading. I thought about pushing the guilt down and walking away, but it took root in my stomach, spread like a weed, and made me feel physically sick.
“Dad, I know it wasn’t Danny because the night Echo rose to the surface and attacked Drew, I had a memory of her’s visit me. It was her death memory.” I sighed in resignation; I didn’t want to keep it to myself anymore. “Yes, Danny was there when Echo died, but I am almost positive he didn’t kill her. He wasn’t alone, there was another person with him, but I didn’t see her. I just heard her, and Danny didn’t look happy with her at all. Actually, he looked pissed.”
“Hold up, are you telling me the person you think killed Echo was a woman? Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner, honey bear?”
If there was one thing I couldn’t take, it was the feeling that I had let my dad down. The look he wore and the hurt in his eyes stung me like a wet handed slap to the face.
“If he didn’t kill her, then why was he there in the first place? It doesn’t make sense…unless; the woman was his girlfriend and followed him to the field. A jealous girlfriend makes sense. Why the
