Page 95 of Creeping Beautiful

SESSION NOTES: (cont.)

OK. McKay didn’t go kill Nathan. He went into town to buy another pregnancy test. He needed to see it in real time, I guess. And… yup. She’s pregnant. From what she told me, that happened the night before she left for school, so my handy-dandy doctor training tells me she’s about fourteen weeks along.

She will not be getting an abortion. This was the only thing the four of us agreed on during our little emergency family meeting.

Adam sat in the dining room with his head down on the table, while the rest of us sat in the living room. But we could see him from where we were sitting and let me tell you, it wasn’t a pretty sight. He’s taking it hard. Very hard. Even McKay is handling this better than Adam. And if I had to make a prediction about which of us would freak out most should Indie ever come home pregnant, I’d have picked McKay every day of the week.

But he’s had the most practice with Indie’s bouts of insubordination. And OK, maybe calling a baby insubordination is a little bit callous, but… this was not in the plan. So it is what it is.

McKay is dealing.

Adam is not. I think he really was coming up with ways to kill Nathan St. James without Indie finding out. But there is no way. There is no way to get rid of that kid without one of us getting the blame.

SESSION NOTES (cont.)

New development. Nate’s grandfather died the day after Christmas.

Indie wanted to go to the funeral.

Fucking wonderful. That’s how that went.

Just to clarify, that was irony. It sucked. Because Adam made us all go with her.

Once a team, always a team.

SESSION NOTES (cont.)

Indie ran away. Well, not exactly. She went to Nates and then she called me and said she wasn’t coming home.

Adam is going to kill Nathan St. James with his bare hands.

McKay now thinks we should poison him.

I’m… on the fence. But leaning towards bare hands.

SESSION NOTES (cont.)

Nathan St. James has been arrested for statutory rape.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - ADAM

6.5 YEARS AGO

Let’s just be clear. That little fuck had it coming.

I can’t exactly pinpoint the reason why I hated Nathan from the first moment I realized he was helping Indie when she was living in the woods those first few weeks after I bought her, but I don’t really need a reason.

He helped her. I should’ve thanked him for that. He fed her. Made sure she wasn’t tripping over the snakes or swimming with the gators. If he had not been there, who knows what she would’ve done. Maybe gone into the marsh and never come out. Not because something bit her or ate her. Not because she starved or died after drinking dirty river water.

She could’ve just kept walking and taken her chances. She’d have been caught by someone eventually. But with no birth certificate or parents she’d have ended up in foster care and by the age of seventeen Indie Anna Accorsi would’ve been a statistic, or a drug addict, or some deadbeat criminal.

And I do get the irony. I made her a criminal too. But we’re not deadbeat criminals. She has been trained, and she is safe, and I did everything I could to make sure she grew up understanding limits.

So I owe him.

I do. And I get that.

But I do not like him, and I do not trust him, and that boy is eighteen and my girl is seventeen, so… that little fucker had it coming.