My Stepbrother, My Enemy {BL}-Chapter 197: Becoming Sherlock Holmes

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The silence stretched after Rachel’s question, almost like the room was closing in on us. The radiator clanged loudly, and the old woman in the wheelchair seemed to watch us more intently.

Adrien placed his almost-empty glass on the coffee table with a soft thud and leaned in, elbows on his knees, the journal sitting heavy in his lap like it held the weight of a trial.

"Rachel," he began, his voice quiet but firm, "a few months back, we found Mom’s journal hidden away at the lake house in Clearwater. She wrote in it at least every month or so during her last year."

He carefully opened it, the pages crackling slightly. "She talked about you a lot, called you her best friend and the only person she could open up to when things got tough. She wrote about her fears, secrets she felt she couldn’t share with anyone else... and how she needed answers to a lot of things happening around her."

Rachel furrowed her brow, confusion deepening the lines on her face. She tucked a loose strand of blond hair behind her ear, her fingers shaking a bit.

"Answers?" she repeated, her voice just above the hum of the radiator. "What kind of answers are you looking for, sweetheart?"

I glanced at Adrien, noticed the muscle in his jaw twitching, and jumped in before the moment slipped away.

"We...um, don’t think the car accident was actually an accident," I said, keeping my tone soft even though the words felt heavy and perilous in the small space. "We think... someone else might’ve been involved."

Rachel’s face went pale, all color draining away. Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, but for several long seconds, no words came out. She looked between me and Adrien, as if waiting for one of us to laugh and reveal it was all a prank. But when we didn’t, she pressed a hand to her chest, checking if her heart was still beating.

Adrien continued, his voice softer now, almost desperate. "There are entries about her wanting to leave to take me somewhere safe. She wrote about moving money, hiding important papers, meeting someone who was supposed to help her. And on the night she died, she wasn’t just running errands in the city like the police claimed. She was probably headed out of Willow Haven as a whole...almost as if she was being chased or something. We think she was either trying to escape someone... or was rushing toward something she felt she needed to protect."

He paused, letting the gravity of his words sink in. Outside, the snow tapped insistently against the window, the only noise in the room.

"We came all the way from Willow Haven," I added gently, " because we’re hoping you can help us find the right path. Since you were the person she trusted most. We figured you might know something...anything, to help us solve this puzzle."

Rachel’s eyes quickly filled with tears, a few escaping onto her cheeks. "I... I don’t know what to say," she murmured, her voice breaking.

"Joanne was the kindest, brightest person I’ve ever known. There’s no way anyone would...no, I can’t even think it. Murder? Someone killing her? She hardly caused any sort of trouble, so why would someone want her dead? I don’t... I don’t know anything about that. If someone harmed her on purpose, I swear I have no idea who it could’ve been."

Adrien nodded slowly, not pressing too hard, but his gaze remained steady on hers.

"I believe you," he said. "I know you don’t have all the pieces. But there’s one thing you might be able to help us with." He flipped to the page he had marked before and showed her the entry dated a week before the crash. "She wrote about someone named L.S. and their meetings, phone calls, things she couldn’t let my dad find out about. She mentioned that you were the one who introduced them. We need to know who this L.S. is."

Rachel stared at the page as if the handwriting might burn her. Her breath quickened, and she reached out with trembling fingers to trace a single line, Joanne’s neat script scribbling L.S. in worried, hurried ink.

The old woman in the wheelchair shifted slightly, her blanket rustling, her pale eyes now focused on Rachel instead of us. Despite the snow falling outside, the room felt too warm, too filled with ghosts and the questions we had carried for so long.

Rachel swallowed hard, tears finally spilling down her cheeks. "I..." she began, then hesitated, pressing her lips together as if the name itself was dangerous. "I never thought I’d have to say this out loud again."

Adrien and I waited, hardly daring to breathe, as the radiator clanked and the snow kept falling, and the truth she had buried for six years hovered just on the edge of coming to light.

Rachel stared at the journal page for what felt like ages, and I thought she might actually burn a hole through it. Her lips moved quietly, repeating the initials over and over—’L.S.... L.S.’—like saying them out loud could somehow bring back a memory she had buried long ago.

Her face hadn’t regained any color; if anything, she seemed even paler under the unforgiving kitchen light, and the lines around her eyes seemed to deepen with each passing second.

Adrien leaned in closer, his voice soft yet firm. "Rachel, please. We’ve gone through the entries. She mentioned meeting L.S. in secret, talked about feeling guilty every time she did. We thought... maybe there was an affair. If that person was somehow involved—"

"No," Rachel interrupted sharply, then added softly, almost pleading. "No, no, no. Joanne was many things, stubborn, a bit dramatic when she wanted to be, the kind of person who could light up a room just by walking in...but she was never unfaithful. Not once. Her marriage to Keith Fell was cold, loveless, and really depressing toward the end, but she stayed loyal. She used to say that cheating would make her feel like she was becoming exactly what she couldn’t stand. She wouldn’t do that."

I blinked at her, so if L.S wasn’t a lover of Joanne’s...then who was he to her?