Curtis Bridgewater came to the Guzzlers meeting at Book & Mug that evening with a black eye. The Tweed cousins, Cilla and Melba, fussed over him. Kai fought not to smile as the big, shuffling man visibly wobbled back and forth between feeling foolish and lapping up the cooing attention like a puppy.
That pretty much described Curtis, one of the town's characters. An earlier era, less politically correct, would have kindly labeled him "slow." The mockery and people taking advantage of him would have been much more open, even encouraged in some circles. Kai had decided Cadburn was just the sort of town he wanted to live in when he had met Curtis on that first visit and saw how the "challenged" people were treated. What a lot of people didn't realize, and Eden had discovered first, was that Curtis knew everything about everyone. Especially the history of the township, going back several generations. Maybe further. Curtis, his father, grandmother, and her siblings, had been something like family retainers for the Cadburn family. That translated into them handling maintenance and managing the three Cadburn buildings on Center Avenue, and various other properties once owned by the family. Including the grand old apartment complex where a woman who called herself Sybil Orwell had lived. That was the last of many names Eden had been able to uncover for the woman who might have tossed the cousins into the foster care system and then figuratively threw away the key. As far as their investigations had revealed, Sybil -- if that was her real name -- had trashed every bit of documentation that would reveal their identities and help them find their real families.
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