Untold Read online

  When she’d gotten back to the inn she’d immediately opened up her computer and pulled up the blog she’d been told about. The Grim Truth hadn’t been around ten years ago. If it had been, Brie would’ve found it when she’d done her research. And it wasn’t like she would’ve come across it in the years since.

  After that day, she hadn’t wasted any time looking into the woman. She’d shut that door…or at least she thought she had.

  Brie rolled over in bed for what was probably the seventy-ninth time and stared up at the ceiling. She hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in days, and tonight looked like it would be a repeat performance.

  She just needed to get through tomorrow, find out what was in that will, and then be on her way.

  Then she could move on. Put all of this behind her.

  Bethelda Grimshaw was dead. And it didn’t bother her one bit.

  Chapter Two

  Freak-Outs, Flightless Birds, and Fortune Cookies

  Adams and Family Funeral Home was in downtown Mirabelle. Like a lot of the businesses in the area, it was an old Victorian house. The building was two stories tall, had a wraparound porch, and was painted a cheerful buttercream yellow.

  It stood out in stark contrast to the overcast gray sky. The weather was pretty gloomy, and beyond appropriate for the day.

  There were a dozen or so cars parked in the lot off to the side of the building, and Brie pulled her white and blue MINI Cooper into one of many empty spots. She shut the engine off before leaning forward, looking out the windshield and over to the funeral home.

  “Just get it over with,” she muttered to herself before unbuckling her seat belt and getting out of the car.

  Clutch in hand, she made her way to the building.

  She was wearing her leather boots, the heels clicking against the brick path and echoing in her ears with each step. A blast of cold wind blew in from behind her, plastering the back of her sweater dress to her thighs.

  Her entire outfit was black. Her boots, her tights, her dress, her jacket, her scarf. She’d stood in front of the full-length mirror that morning totally aware of the irony of the situation. Black was a color for mourning, but Brie wasn’t in mourning.

  The front door of the funeral home was painted a dark green, the same color as all of the shutters. She wrapped her hand around the brass knob, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves. She had to do what she could to help ease those nerves; they weren’t going anywhere. How could they? She felt like a lamb walking into a lion’s den.

  Letting out her breath in a foggy rush, she twisted the handle and pushed the door open. Once inside, she realized that the hallway was empty, and so was the front room just off to the right. No one was sitting behind the receptionist desk.

  She took a few more steadying breaths, and the sweet scent of apples and cinnamon filled her nose. Someone had made cider, and the warmth of it seemed to sink into her bones, heating her up from the inside.

  Calming slightly, she looked around the space, taking in the dark mahogany wood floors and railing on the banister. The furniture was all beautifully maintained antiques, and the photos on the walls were stunning. Even though she’d just had a short drive through town late yesterday and early that morning, she knew they were taken locally.

  “Hello. How can I help you?” a thickly southern feminine voice said from behind Brie, making her spin around.

  The woman in front of Brie was rather striking. Her face all angles, with a sharp chin and cheekbones. Her reddish brown hair was pulled up into an elegant twist at the back of her head, and dangling gold and emerald earrings hung from her ears. She had a cup of something steamy in her hands, her fingers wrapped around the porcelain. When she walked by, Brie got an even stronger hit of the cider scent.

  “I’m here for the Grimshaw memorial.”

  Surprise flickered in the woman’s eyes. “Oh, it’s just in there.” She pointed down the hallway. “There are refreshments that you can help yourself to. The kitchen is just off the end of the hallway to the right.”

  “Thank you.” Brie gave the woman a small smile before she headed off down the hall.

  There was the soft sound of someone playing the piano coming from the room that the woman had indicated. When Brie stepped over the threshold, her eyes panned over the fifty or so seats. There were seven people in the room in total, including herself and the piano player in the corner.

  Wow. Well, this was a promising turnout.

  There wasn’t a casket as Bethelda had been cremated. Instead, a hot pink urn sat in front of a poster-size photo of her. Brie barely glanced at it before she took a seat a few rows back from the front. The seat was at an angle behind an elderly lady in a thick, wool sweater. The gray material looked like it would be soft to the touch. She was rubbing her fingers against rosary beads in her tiny, weathered hands, the words of the Hail Mary just barely audible as she whispered them in a low chant.

  Brie pulled her focus from the woman in front of her and looked up, her eyes landing on the photo of Bethelda a few feet away. It was the same photo that was on The Grim Truth blog. As Brie had only met Bethelda once, she wasn’t exactly sure how old the woman was in the photo. Late thirties maybe. She looked like what Brie remembered from that day. Same expertly cropped hair. Same perfectly sculpted eyebrows. Very similar cat’s-eye glasses. The ones in the picture were blue, but when Brie had met her she’d been wearing purple ones.

  One thing Brie remembered so clearly from that day—before any harsh words were said…or before Brie had been rejected—was when she’d first looked at Bethelda. Growing up Brie had always wondered who she’d gotten her features from. There hadn’t been very much time to figure it out then, but she sat there now, staring at the picture. Studying it.

  Well, she hadn’t gotten her eyes from Bethelda. Brie’s were golden brown, Bethelda’s were hazel. They didn’t have the same nose, or mouth, or ears. Yeah, ears. Brie’s earlobes weren’t attached at the base, while Bethelda’s had been. It was an odd thing to notice, but Brie had.

  They did have the same jawline though. It was just slightly squared, shaping their faces and giving them the same cheekbones, too. Then there was their hair. Bethelda’s was bright red, and Brie’s was more of a mahogany, the reddish tints made even more noticeable in the sunlight.

  They didn’t have the same skin tone. Brie was tan year-round with no added help from the sun. That was probably from her father’s Cuban side, something she found out from a DNA test she’d taken years ago. A DNA test that hadn’t helped her find out who her father was. Another door shut.

  Bethelda had pretty fair skin, fair skin that sported a good amount of freckles. Another small thing Beth had gotten from Bethelda, a slight band of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

  That was it. They had nothing else in common.

  “How did you know Bethelda?”

  Brie pulled her gaze from the picture and looked in the direction the question had come from. It was the little old lady sitting in front of her. She had a pretty clear voice—steady but on the soft side—and blue eyes.

  “I—” Brie was more than slightly taken off guard. How was she supposed to answer that question. “I actually didn’t really know her. Did you?”

  The woman looked Brie over for another second, her eyebrows bunching together. Brie knew the question the woman wanted to ask. If Brie didn’t know Bethelda, why was she at the funeral?

  Instead the woman’s eyebrows relaxed and she nodded. “Yes,” she said, giving a sad smile. “I’m Ella, by the way.”

  “Brie,” she responded, relieved, feeling like she’d somehow escaped a firing squad.

  “Well, Brie. I knew Bethelda from the day she was born. I was very good friends with her mother, Petunia.”

  Petunia…Brie’s grandmother. Her grandfather had been named Harold. She hadn’t been able to find out too much on them in her research, because there hadn’t been a lot. Just a few archived articles from the Mirabelle Newspaper and
what could be learned from public records.

  They were both products of the Great Depression. They seemed like the kind of hardworking, God-fearing people who were formed by being raised in the south. Harold fought in WWII for two years before he came back to Mirabelle and got a job at the power plant. Petunia had been the secretary at what was still the only Catholic church in Mirabelle.

  Brie’s parents were Catholic, and they’d raised her in the faith. When she’d found out the Grimshaws were Catholic, too, it was one of those similarities that was pretty interesting to her. A tie she had in both lives.

  Petunia and Harold had both passed away. Harold from a stroke seventeen years ago and Petunia from pneumonia thirteen years ago. Their deaths might’ve happened before Brie had found out who Bethelda was, but she still felt like she missed out on a relationship with them.

  Maybe they would’ve wanted to know her…she’d never know. She wondered if they were kind people. But that was the sort of information she couldn’t get from a computer.

  “You were friends with Petunia Grimshaw?” Brie couldn’t stop herself from asking.

  “Oh yes. She was one of the first people I met when my Owen brought me to Mirabelle. She came over to the little place Owen and I were staying with the most heavenly peach cobbler. Their family was famous for that thing, made it for every single pot luck, and you were lucky if you even got a bite let alone a full helping of it.”

  Ella leaned closer like she was imparting the greatest secret to Brie. “When Petunia gave me that recipe she made me swear I’d never share it with a soul unless they were family. She didn’t want it to die with her…and by that point she and Bethelda weren’t on the best of terms. So four women have gotten it from me. My daughter, my granddaughter, my daughter-in-law, and my granddaughter-in-law, who bless her heart, can’t cook at all, really.”

  “So you were close with Petunia.”

  “Very. It’s the reason I’m here today, to show respect to my friend.” Ella’s eyes narrowed on Brie’s face. “Have we met before? You look awfully familiar, and these days I don’t remember as well as I used to.”

  “No, ma’am, we haven’t met before.” Brie shook her head.

  “Well, next time I run into you, that won’t be the case. Are you just in town for this?”

  “I am. I’ll be going home tomorrow.”

  “And where is home?”

  “Chapel Hill, North Carolina.”

  “Oh, I’ve been there.” Ella beamed. “It’s a beautiful place.”

  “It is.”

  “Well, I hope you get back safely. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Ella said as she slowly stood. “I need to use the powder room. It was nice meeting you, Brie.” She offered her a departing smile. “And like I said, next time we run into each other we won’t be strangers.”

  “It was nice meeting you, too, Ella.” Brie smiled, saying good-bye to the woman as she slowly walked away.

  Turning back to look at the front, Brie’s eyes landed on the hot pink urn. Such a bizarre choice in color. But as Brie learned more and more about Bethelda, she was discovering that there really was no understanding the woman.

  The thought kind of ticked her off. If Bethelda had given Brie the chance, maybe she would’ve understood the woman who’d given birth to her. Now? Now there wasn’t much of an opportunity for that.

  The longer Brie stared at that pink urn the angrier she got. She stood up abruptly, needing desperately to get out of the room. The back of her neck was hot and itchy and her heart was racing. She needed fresh, cold air. Needed to take deep, steadying breaths.

  Once she got to the hallway, she turned to head back out the way she’d come in. She froze in her tracks instead. Finn was standing by the front door, Ella on one arm while they talked to Paige and Grace.

  Fuck.

  He was wearing a fitted navy-blue suit that more than showed off the impressive size of his biceps, and his black hair was slightly tousled, like he’d run his fingers through it multiple times.

  No. No. Noooooooo. He couldn’t see her here. None of them could. None of them could know who she was. She turned around and headed in the opposite direction, passing the door to the kitchen. Her eyes landed on a back door and she headed through the space, the scent of cider even stronger as she passed the pot of it steaming on the stove.

  The lock was just a dead bolt and she flipped it, thanking God it wasn’t one that needed a key on both sides. The second she was outside the cold air slapped her in the face, but fresh air or not she still couldn’t breathe properly.

  She needed to get out of there now.

  * * *

  The office of Schmidt & Whitley wasn’t in Mirabelle. It was actually over an hour north in Tallahassee. And all during that sixty-plus-minute drive, Brie couldn’t stop going over everything that had happened that morning.

  Walking into that room, talking to Ella, seeing Grace, Paige, and Finn.

  God, seeing Finn. That had been the most unexpected part of the entire morning. Because really, when she’d walked into that place there’d been no doubt in her mind she was going to have some sort of bad reaction.

  Her bad reaction wasn’t about being sad, though, because she wasn’t sad. But shouldn’t she be sad?

  The woman who gave birth to her was dead. Not only that, but very few people had actually cared about that fact. Not that she’d been at the funeral home very long, but she had a pretty strong feeling there hadn’t been many more people who’d come to pay their respects to Bethelda Grimshaw.

  When she pulled into the lot of the law firm she found a spot close to the door and parked her car. It was still beyond gray outside, and as she walked up to the brick building she felt a few drops of rain hit her nose.

  The car ride up to Tallahassee hadn’t completely calmed her down. How could it when for the second time that day she had no clue what she was walking into. At least she was breathing regularly now though. She had one thing going for her.

  She walked into the building and turned to the right. A woman sat behind a glass and steel desk, her platinum blond hair in a straight bob. She was typing away at her computer and glanced up looking bored when Brie walked in.

  “How can I help you?”

  “I’m Brie Davis. I have a one-o’clock appointment with Mr. Whitley.”

  “Have a seat. He’ll be right with you.” She gestured to the waiting room behind Brie.

  It was kind of cold inside the room with its modern furniture and sparse decor. Everything was black and white. A very square leather sofa sat in the corner accompanied by matching chairs. There was a huge picture of an eight ball on one wall and a rusted bolt on the other.

  Brie sat there for about five minutes or so, flipping through an entertainment magazine. She wasn’t much for celebrity gossip, but there was an article about the newest season of Sherlock and as Brie was a pretty big fan—of both the show and Benedict Cumberbatch—her interest was piqued.

  “Ms. Davis?”

  She looked up to the man who’d just called her name. Their two conversations on the phone had been long enough for her to recognize the voice of Lincoln Whitley with just those few syllables of her name.

  His voice matched how he looked. Late thirties, relatively attractive, fit. He had thick blond hair and blue eyes. Though his eyes paled in comparison to Finn’s. Everything paled in comparison to Finn.

  OK, she had no idea where that line of thinking had come from. She was probably just still losing it. Hadn’t gotten over seeing him at the funeral home. Yeah, that was it.

  “Mr. Whitley.” Brie stood, brushing the sides of her dress down. She took a step forward, holding out her hand.

  “Please, call me Lincoln,” he said as he grabbed her outstretched hand and shook it. He didn’t tighten his grip, one of those weak handshakes that men reserved for women.

  It was like holding a limp fish. Nothing like when Finn shook her hand the night before. He’d had a firm steady grip. And good hands. Good Lord he
had good hands.

  Strong hands. Masculine hands.

  “Right this way.” Lincoln’s voice brought Brie back to the moment, and he let go of her before gesturing to the hallway behind them.

  There was more of the same coldness in the rest of the office. Not a single touch of color. Just white walls and more black-and-white photos. There was a close-up of the stem of an apple, old tires stacked on top of each other, a patch of mushrooms in the grass, a fuzzy caterpillar crawling along a fence.

  Lincoln had a corner office, two glass walls separating his space from everyone else. Brie took a seat in the boxy gray chair across from his desk, a desk that was made of more steel and glass.

  “I was surprised you called me yesterday,” he said as he settled in his seat. “You sounded pretty adamant about not coming when I talked to you the first time.”

  “You weren’t the only one who was surprised.” She gave him a half smile that was fully forced. She didn’t like being here and she wasn’t impressed by this guy. Maybe it was the small talk he started with. Asking about her drive down, how the funeral was that morning, where she was staying in Mirabelle. She didn’t want small talk, she just wanted to get out of there.

  “Well, it’s all pretty straightforward,” he said as he opened the folder on his desk. “Ms. Grimshaw left you everything.”

  Brie was pretty sure she’d blacked out for a second. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “Your mother left you everything.”

  The response came out before she could stop herself. “Bethelda wasn’t my mother.”

  Lincoln’s head moved back on a flinch. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s fine.” She waved off his apology. “But if we could just refer to her as Bethelda or Ms. Grimshaw, I would appreciate that.”

  “All right.” He nodded his head slowly. “Well, it’s all yours, everything from the house to its contents and the cat.”

  “I’m sorry, there’s a cat?” She sounded slightly hysterical when she asked the question. And why Brie chose to focus on the cat at that moment she had no earthly idea.