Myths, Murder & Love

Chapter 4

For a moment, the only sound at the dinner table was the clink of silverware.

Susan paused with her fork halfway to her plate. "Probably for the best."

Thallia looked at her. "You didn't like him?"

Susan returned her attention to her plate. "I didn't know him well enough to dislike him. You never seemed particularly happy with him."

Thallia lowered her fork. "You noticed?"

Susan gave her a level look. "I'm your mother."

Thallia glanced down at her plate. "You could have said something."

Susan reached for her water. "You're thirty-two, Thallia. I trusted you to handle your own relationship."

There wasn't much to say to that.

David reached for the vegetables. "What happened?"

Thallia kept her attention on her plate. "I caught him kissing another woman."

Her father's hand stopped.

Susan's expression tightened. "I'm sorry."

Thallia glanced toward her mother. "They've been together almost five years."

David set down the serving spoon. "He knew exactly what he was doing."

Thallia nodded. "The entire time."

Susan took a drink of water. "Better to discover it after six months than six years."

Thallia couldn't argue with her mother's logic. That didn't make it hurt any less.

She set down her fork. "There's more."

David looked at her.

Thallia held his gaze. "He's been stealing my work."

That changed his attention. "How was he stealing it?"

Thallia drew a slow breath. "I gave him my work to submit to the Chronicle. He told me they rejected it, then gave it to Bianca and published it under her name. All my stories and photographs. All of it."

Susan frowned. "How many articles did you give him?"

Thallia shook her head. "Maybe fifteen. I don't know yet."

David pushed his plate aside. "Do you still have the original files?"

Thallia set down her fork. "Everything should be on my computer."

David leaned forward slightly. "Drafts and emails?"

Thallia thought through what she'd saved. "Yeah, most of them."

David nodded. "Then preserve everything. Make copies tonight."

Susan's expression remained composed. "You should contact the Chronicle directly."

Thallia shook her head. The thought of dragging her name through such a fight would be worse than just leaving it alone. "I'm not sure I want that fight."

Her father's expression became thoughtful. "They published your work under someone else's name."

Thallia folded her hands in her lap. "And they're a major newspaper. I'm one freelance writer. Maybe they’ll care. Maybe they’ll decide Bianca's byline sells more papers, and Trevor becomes the convenient explanation for everything else. Either way, I could spend the next six months fighting people with a lot more money than I have and lawyers who swim with sharks."

David considered that.

Thallia took a deep breath and continued. "I'm not saying I'll do nothing, I'll save everything then decide what needs to be protected. But I don't want Trevor taking another six months of my life while I try to make the Chronicle admit what happened."

Susan gave a small nod. "That's reasonable."

And from Susan Laskari, that was practically a blessing.

Susan took another bite of dinner before setting her fork beside her plate. "There's something else we need to discuss."

Thallia looked up. "Please tell me it has nothing to do with Trevor."

Susan glanced toward David. "It doesn't. It's about Evalyn."

Thallia's attention sharpened. "What about her?"

Susan folded her napkin once across her lap. "Her estate is settled."

Thallia waited.

Susan shifted in her seat, a rare sign of nerves. "She left me her property in Utah."

Thallia's head came up sharply. "Evalyn owned property in Utah?"

Susan drew a slow breath. "Near Moab."

Thallia paused, trying to make sense of that. "Since when did Evalyn have property near Moab?"

Their eyes met and the look on Susan’s face didn’t help. She didn’t know anything either. "A long time, from what I understand."

Thallia looked toward her father. "You knew about this?"

David shook his head. "Not until the attorney contacted your mother."

Susan smoothed her napkin across her lap. "I don't want the property."

Thallia stared at her.

Her mother could have been discussing an unwanted piece of furniture.

"You inherited property from Evalyn and your first reaction was that you don't want it?"

"My first reaction was to find out what it was." Susan took a drink, her hand was calm again. "My second was that I don't want it."

Thallia leaned back in her chair with a sigh that went all the way to her toes. "What exactly did she leave you?"

Susan paused. This was the part she wasn’t sure if Thallia would be okay with. "A house. Some land. There may be other assets tied to the property."

Thallia didn’t move. "How much land?"

Susan glanced toward David and he answered. "Enough that it isn't something we can deal with by signing one document and forgetting about it."

That answer only raised more questions. “And where exactly is this place?”

Susan gave her the name. "Olympia Springs, Utah."

Thallia repeated it slowly. "Olympia Springs? I've been to Utah with Grandma and I've never heard of it."

Susan wasn't surprised. "Neither had I."

Thallia held her mother's gaze. "So what are you going to do with it?"

Susan picked up her fork and twirled it like Thallia had seen her do with a scalpel. "I'm not going to do anything with it."

Thallia paused with the glass near her mouth.

Susan continued. “You’ll be the one dealing with it.”

Thallia lowered the glass. “Wait. You’re giving it to me?”

Susan set down the fork and picked up her linen napkin. She dabbed her mouth. “Someone needs to go to Utah.”

Thallia’s heart raced. “And you've decided that someone is me?”

Another person in her life was making decisions for her.

Susan's tone remained matter-of-fact. "Your circumstances changed today. Mine haven't."

Thallia blinked at her mother.

Susan continued. "The property isn't the entire inheritance. Evalyn also left a substantial amount of money."

Now Thallia held on to her seat cushion as her head spun. "How substantial?"

David set down his fork. "Seven point eight million dollars."

Thallia's eyes widened. For several seconds, she couldn't make the number fit inside her head.

"Evalyn left you almost eight million dollars?"

David nodded.

Susan met Thallia's eyes. "Most of it is already invested. Your father and I don't need it."

Thallia looked between them. "Where did Evalyn get almost eight million dollars?"

David shook his head. "We haven't been able to determine that. The accounts have existed for nearly sixty years, and the records we've found don't explain where the money originally came from."

Thallia frowned. "That's not suspicious at all."

David shrugged his shoulders. "It may be perfectly legitimate."

"Dad, only a lawyer could make eight million mysterious dollars sound perfectly legitimate."

The corner of her father's mouth lifted.

Thallia looked between them. "So, you're giving me almost eight million dollars?"

Her mother’s expression hadn’t changed. "I'm giving you the means to be independent."

David leaned back in his chair. "You could comfortably draw ten thousand dollars a month and never need to work again."

Ten thousand dollars a month.

Thallia tried to fit that number into a life where she'd spent years calculating whether an assignment was worth the travel expenses.

Susan picked up her fork. "You can write because you want to write. Travel when you want to travel. Decide what you want your life to look like without needing anyone else to finance it."

Anyone else…

Thallia understood what her mother was really offering.

Freedom.

Susan and David weren't offering to put her life back together for her. They were making certain she had the means to do it herself.

In the Laskari family, that counted as taking care of her.

Susan studied her across the table. “You sound more like Evalyn every year.”

Thallia smiled faintly. “I'll take that as a compliment.”

Susan hesitated. “She would have. She used to say every family has a gift. Some people spend their lives trying to find theirs. Others spend their lives running from it.”

Thallia caught something in her mother's tone. “Which were you?”

Susan remained quiet for a moment. “I became a surgeon.”

Thallia frowned. “That's not an answer.”

Susan met her gaze without flinching. “It's the one you're getting.”

David took another bite and took his time chewing it.

Thallia looked between them.

Her mother was avoiding the question, and her father knew why.

Another question for another night.

Thallia picked up her phone.

Susan glanced at it. "At the dinner table?"

Thallia stared at her mother in disbelief. "You just told me there's a house waiting for me in a Utah town I've never heard of and enough money to make working optional. I think we can suspend the rules for five minutes."

David leaned back in his chair. "Reasonable."

Susan gave him a look.

Thallia typed Olympia Springs, Utah into the search bar. The results loaded and she frowned. "That's strange."

David glanced toward her. "What did you find?"

Thallia scrolled through the results. "There's almost nothing here."

A few scattered references placed Olympia Springs somewhere in southeastern Utah. One led to a private resort hidden inside a canyon.

Thallia opened the website. The resort was called, ‘The House in the Canyon.’

Stone buildings nestled beneath towering red walls. Mineral pools curved through gardens thick with greenery. Walking paths disappeared beneath cottonwoods, and private cottages dotted the canyon floor.

Thallia looked up from her phone. "There's a resort."

Susan nodded. "That much I found."

Thallia returned to the search results. "But almost nothing about the town. No newspaper. No chamber of commerce. Even the resort calls its location southeastern Utah instead of Olympia Springs."

David shrugged. "Maybe it's very small."

Thallia shook her head as she kept scrolling. "Small towns leave footprints."

Thallia tried another search.

Nothing.

A place could be small. It couldn't be invisible.

Her thumb moved farther down the screen.

Then stopped.

The Crossing.

Thallia opened the result.

An old wooden bar filled the screen beneath low amber lights, surrounded by dark wood and stone walls.

Beneath the photograph were six words.

THE CROSSING. WHERE EVERY ROAD EVENTUALLY LEADS.

Thallia stared at it. "That's cheerful."

David leaned slightly toward her. "What did you find?"

Thallia tilted the phone toward him. "A bar called The Crossing."

Susan lifted an eyebrow. "And that's what interests you?"

Thallia shook her head. "Not the bar."

She looked again at the sparse search results. The absence did.

A town near one of Utah's busiest tourist areas shouldn't be this difficult to find. Six hours earlier, she'd been worried she might never get another story published. Now one might be sitting in a canyon in Utah.

Thallia locked her phone and set it beside her plate. "I'll go."

Susan barely reacted. "For how long?"

Thallia considered it. "A few weeks. I'll look at the house, figure out what I've inherited and decide what I want to do with it."

David nodded. "And then?"

Thallia picked up her water. "Maybe I'll write a novel."

Her father looked amused. "About what?"

Thallia counted off the possibilities. "Murder. Secrets. A strange little town where nobody tells the truth."

Susan studied her.

Thallia smiled. "I'm kidding."

The ride home gave Thallia too much time to think.

Trevor was gone. Her career was uncertain. She had inherited enough money to stop worrying about either one, along with a house in Utah and a town mysterious enough to give her something new to chase.

Her parents had done what they always did. They'd identified the problem, found a practical solution, and considered the matter handled.

Susan and David Laskari could probably sleep very well tonight.

Thallia wasn't nearly as confident.

By the time she reached her building, the apricot dress that had made her feel almost put together at Jenna's felt too pretty for what waited upstairs.

She climbed the stairs to her apartment and stopped outside the door.

Thallia unlocked the apartment and stepped inside. She turned the deadbolt, then stopped with her hand resting on the lock.

Trevor had a key.

Thallia slid the security chain into place.

He might still have a key, but tonight he wasn't walking into her apartment without her permission.

The apartment looked exactly as she'd left it that morning.

Her shoes were beside the sofa. A coffee mug sat on the end table with three pens sticking out of it. The throw blanket she'd kicked onto the floor last night was there.

And beside her computer sat the ridiculous ceramic frog Trevor had bought her, its stupid little mouth holding a handful of paper clips.

Thallia stared at it.

This morning, it had been proof that he'd noticed the little things.

Now it was just a frog.

She picked it up, her fingers tightening around the ceramic.

Throwing it against the wall would have been satisfying.

Thallia looked at the paper clips sticking out of its mouth.

She set the frog back beside her computer.

Trevor was an asshole.

The frog hadn't done anything.

She walked into the bedroom.

Two of Trevor's shirts hung among her clothes. His toothbrush was in the bathroom, along with the expensive shampoo he'd insisted was better than hers.

Thallia looked at all of it. She would worry about it tomorrow.

Tonight, she didn't want to spend another minute dealing with Trevor.

Her phone lay on the bed where she'd dropped it.

Thallia picked it up and opened the photograph of the Stone House she'd saved during dinner.

The river-stone house sat deep inside its canyon, waiting for her in Olympia Springs, along with nearly eight million dollars and a life she hadn't known existed when she'd gotten out of bed that morning.

When she had started the day she'd had a boyfriend, a career she was trying to save and no reason to leave Chicago.

Tonight, every one of those things had changed.