Eden's Playground: Graystone Academy Book One, BE Kelly [good short books .TXT] 📗

Eden gasped—it was the same way Anson had found his friend Geneva. She wondered if Anson was seeing Gen or if they were truly just friends. Everything else in the story matched up. Anson said he was just out for a run and stumbled upon her. Gen’s insides were ripped out and even though the school’s administrators and the authorities questioned him, he was released and Gen’s murder was deemed a cold case. Those were too many coincidences to be just that. Things were just not adding up. She was going to have to do some research on her end before she jumped to any conclusions, but she had a feeling that the Graystones and the Kirkpatricks were connected more than any of them ever dreamed possible.

Eden skipped the dining hall the next morning, wanting to get a head start on doing some research. She looked up some of Graystone’s history—from the founding of the school back in 1839, by her six times great-grandfather, Atticus Graystone. He built the building that now housed her dormitory—Graystone Hall. She found it fascinating that one of the co-founders of the academy was a man named Stewart Kirkpatrick. The two men stood side by side in a founders day picture that she found from the ribbon-cutting ceremony before they broke ground on the library. A little more research showed her that Kirkpatricks helped build most of the present-day academy and she wasn’t sure why her father would have an issue with his sister wanting to date Dugan Kirkpatrick. From the historical pictures that she found online, it looked like Kirkpatricks and Graystones had been friends since the academy's beginnings.

Anson had been blowing up her phone all morning after she told the guys that she wasn’t hungry and would be skipping their breakfast date. Classes were going to start in just a couple of days and she wanted to get settled and do as much research as possible before they did. Blowing off Duff and Anson was harder than she imagined it would be and when they showed up at the library with a takeout container of food, she shouldn’t have been surprised.

Duff put the container of food on the desk next to her and her traitorous stomach growled as if it agreed with the guys that she had neglected it. “Really guys?” she questioned.

“You could have just told us you were at the library nosing into our family history,” Duff said, nodding to the computer screen. She had a picture of one of their distant grandfathers pulled up and she realized that there would be no denying that she was snooping through their family tree.

“Well, I started with my six times great-grandfather, Atticus Graystone and that’s when I found your six times great-grandfather, standing next to him. Stewart Kirkpatrick was a co-founder of the college. Did you two know that?” she asked.

Anson sat down on one side of her and Duff on the other.

“I guess we did. I mean, our father has told us stories about how the academy was founded by Graystones and Kirkpatricks but then he usually ended up on a tangent, telling us stories about how the Graystone family did us wrong and swindled us out of our rightful spot in the academy. We just thought he was bitter because of the feud between our two families,” Anson said.

“We never really paid much attention to him after he’d start ranting. We just let him say his peace and go about our day,” Duff added. “Could it have all been true? Did our families found Graystone Academy together?”

“Looks like it,” Eden said, pointing to the computer screen. “But why would your father lie to you all these years? Why would both of our father’s keep the truth from us?” she wondered.

Anson scrolled through the pictures that she had downloaded to a zip file and stopped on the one of his father and her aunt. It was one of the last pictures she found. Eden had to comb through the yearbooks that coordinated with the dates that her father attended school there. Dugan had his arm around Bianca and they were both smiling for the camera. They looked happy and dare she think it—in love.

“I don’t know why this would all have been kept a secret from us, but I plan on finding out,” Anson said.

“I agree, Brother. It’s time to have some questions answered,” Duff said. “I think we should make a quick run home.” He turned to face Eden and smiled. “Wanna come home with us for a night and meet dear old Dad?” he asked.

“My classes start in two days,” she said.

“Well, our father lives about thirty minutes from here, so we can run home and still be back in time for your first class,” Anson said. “So, how about it? Want to do some more research?”

Anson knew that he was really selling their idea by bringing up the whole research thing. “Research, huh?” she asked. “You already know me so well.” She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea for her to go home with Anson and Duff since she just met them, but they were right, she wanted to do some more digging to find out what was going on between their families. It might be the only way the three of them would be able to move forward, and she wanted that more than anything.

Anson

Anson decided not to give his father a heads up that they were coming by. What would be the point? Once he told his father that he and Duff were bringing home a Graystone, he’d go on a tangent about all of the injustices that had made his life so unfair. As if living in a mansion, surrounded by staff and the finer things in life, was a hardship.

They were about ten minutes out and he knew that it was time for him and Duff to have a