The Usual Family Mayhem

Chapter Thirty-Six

“Did you just say not exactly?”

Jackson’s even voice cut through the still room.

I turned, for once hoping not to see him, but there he was. Standing with his hands hanging by his sides and his gaze locked on his aunt.

No, no, no. “You should leave.”

He couldn’t play the role of attentive nephew right now. He couldn’t help or even listen to this. He needed . . . What was the term? It came to me in a shot. “Plausible deniability.”

Cover from the fallout. Political career or not, his job was to keep his hands clean.

The color left Celia’s face. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

Yes. That. He should. I counted on his twenty-hour workday, but he’d parried when I least expected it. He picked today to take off early. Of course. If I’d known he was on his way over I would have locked the door. Saved him from this conversation and the ramifications of having my poison theory confirmed.

I glanced at the clock. It was a little after four. “Why are you here?”

“I texted you a couple times and didn’t hear back. I wanted to come by and make sure everything was okay after that mess yesterday.”

He blew out a haggard breath as he walked across the room to join us. “Apparently it’s not.”

I slipped my cell out of my pocket. There they were. Four texts from Jackson, all smooth until the last one, which read as if his agitation had spiked.

Okay, that was on me. I couldn’t fix that mistake, but I could avoid another one.

I stood up and grabbed his arm. Tried to tug and drag him away from the table and the overflow of confessions. “Really, though, you need to go while you still can pretend you didn’t hear anything.”

Moving him didn’t work. He stared at me like I’d lost it but didn’t shift an inch.

“Celia is my aunt. I love Mags and Celia. What happens with them matters to me. If they’re in trouble I’m going to help.”

The sweet words made my heart do a little jump.

Well, he needed to rein it in. So did I. The dark energy swirling around the room reflected just how serious this moment was. He had to feel the kick of that dark energy.

“That’s lovely but not relevant.”

Yes, I’d made him my investigative wingman. I regretted that.

“We didn’t want either of you involved in this.”

Celia’s voice sounded stronger now. Like that of a high school teacher who had seen enough and was putting an end to the chaos.

“What is the ‘this’ you’re referencing?”

Jackson looked at Celia over the top of my head as he asked.

Loving him was going to kill me. There. I admitted it. My feelings for him weren’t random or fleeting. They also covered things like not putting him in danger. I never intended to do that but did. “Do not ask more questions.”

I didn’t realize until right then that I held Jackson’s arm in a death grip. My fingers wrapped around his impressive biceps. We stood just inches apart. I could feel his breath near my ear. Smell him.

“Sit down. Both of you.”

Gram gave the order.

My balance faltered. “I don’t think—”

“Kasey Adelaide Nottingham. Do not argue with me.”

Gram’s message was clear. She was done playing.

I balanced my forehead on Jackson’s shoulder for one blissful second then went back into the fire. I let go and fell in my chair, defeated. “Right. Caution be damned.”

Without a word, Jackson sat down at the table. The strain of the moment caught up with me. I wanted to curl up and slouch against him and will this discussion away. The rolling admissions needed to happen but coming clean about my role in the business pitch had stolen most of my strength.

Celia rested both hands on the table. She stared into her cup of tea. “I’m not sure where to begin.”

“With men problems.”

Gram dropped that like she’d said a full sentence. “They’re the cause of all of this heartache.”

“Jackson, you might not understand this, but there are some men who can’t be reformed.”

Celia sounded hesitant, like she was trying to wade in and be careful with her words.

He already looked confused. “Why wouldn’t I understand that?”

Celia touched her crime scene of a plate then moved it away from her. “Mags and I came from difficult household situations. Different types but both required an escape.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it.”

Gram rushed in as if she needed to get the words out fast so she could go back to forgetting them again. “Some men are positively rancid. Edmund Dennison being the most obvious. He’s the kind of evil that should be wiped from the earth.”

My biological father. The most hated figure in Gram’s long life. She was right about him.

“The women in our family have a habit of picking bad men.”

Gram stared at me for a few seconds before moving on. “My husband, Kasey’s grandfather, was not nice. He wanted the drapes closed at all times so the neighbors couldn’t see. He kept the walls, the furniture—everything—in a monochrome brown and black. Darkness inside and out.”

Gram’s love of color and wild prints now made sense.

“He didn’t believe in compromise or partnership. He led with his fists, and anything could set him off. When he was angry or tired or hungry. When he had a tough day. Because his boss hated him. Because it was Tuesday. He always had an excuse and a reason why his anger was my fault.”

My stomach roiled. A mix of fury and sympathy caught in my throat. I knew the broad strokes about Gram’s married life but not the details. Hearing her talk in that flat tone about being hit, imagining her trying to duck but not being able to outrun her husband’s wrath, would play in my head for a long time. How did she dodge the terrifying memories for all these years?

Another round of silent communication passed between Gram and Celia. This time I could hear it. Maybe I just guessed the words, saw the comfort. Celia sat there, listening, and taking in every harsh fact with her hand resting on Gram’s arm. Celia was Gram’s tether. Her lifeline.

“I tried to stay out of his way, be perfect, not cause trouble or wake him, and it was never enough. I never offered the right response at the right time. And if I tried to get away or fight back . . .”

Gram’s words faded. “Life got worse.”

“Gram.”

She’d experienced more heartache than anyone deserved. She was strong. A survivor. I didn’t want to say or do anything that suggested I viewed her any other way.

“The worst part was the impact on your mother. I have so much guilt. So much . . .”

Gram’s voice broke.

Celia didn’t try to hide her pain at seeing Gram’s despair. “Mags, you can take a breath.”

“I need to say it. Get it all out.”

Gram lovingly covered Celia’s hand with hers. “Even though I tried to pretend, to protect her, Nora knew what your grandfather was. He never used his fists on her, but she saw and heard what he did to me, and the damage was done.”

“Sonofabitch.”

Jackson mumbled the word but his anger rang through loud and clear.

“I’m convinced she married Edmund Dennison because she craved a home and stability. She wanted to secure her future then help me escape my situation, and she thought he was her ticket.”

Gram had never hinted at this before. I’d read a lot about spousal abuse and spousal violence over the years, trying to understand how things could go so wrong. I’d assumed Mom’s choices fit a pattern. She’d married a man like her father because that’s what she knew, and the cycle continued.

“Edmund Dennison seemed fine at first. A bit too smooth-talking for my taste, but attentive to your mother. Something sinister lurked under the surface. Something he hid until he exploded. He convinced people he was one thing when he was really a monster. A narcissist who valued how the public viewed him above all else.”

Jackson took my hand under the table in an unspoken gesture of support. I grabbed on.

“His controlling behavior escalated at home. Nora saw the signs. She knew what a dysfunctional household looked like because she’d grown up in one, but he couldn’t allow her to leave and . . . you know the rest.”

Gram’s words abruptly stopped, the pause echoing through the house. “It keeps me up at night to think she didn’t come to me because she thought I would tell her to stay with her husband like I did.”

The haunting words sat there. Hearing them, seeing Gram’s stark expression as she opened the vault to her most secret memories made every sentence sound so much worse.

“You and Mom deserved better. I’m so sorry you lived like that.”

Gram had made sure I didn’t. I’d thanked her many times over the years. How she raised me was a gift I never wanted to take for granted.

The stress around Gram’s mouth eased. “I know, honey. It’s been years. While I can’t pretend the trauma didn’t leave a mark, and I am nowhere near ready to forgive the unforgivable, I have moved on. I married your grandfather to escape my father and all his drunken screaming and then walked into a much worse situation. Nora repeated the pattern. That’s my fault. My failure.”

“You’re not to blame for how either man acted.”

Celia’s soft tone didn’t match her message.

“It’s okay.”

Gram nodded. “I was blessed with Nora and Kasey. I got a second chance with you. I found love and a much better life.”

Jackson nodded. “I don’t know how but you thrived. Despite the odds, you trusted Celia and then the two of you built a life with Kasey. That’s the kind of personal strength people claim to possess but don’t. You actually do.”

Hearing him say the words confirmed what I already knew. He wasn’t anything like his father. Jackson might resemble Harlan on the outside. On the inside, Jackson surpassed Harlan in every way.

“Your aunt’s situation was different from mine. Her husband was a loser. Insecure. Incompetent. Far beneath her and threatened by how much smarter she was.”

Gram squeezed Celia’s hand. “He took everything. Lied. Ran up debt in her name. Squandered every cent. She had multiple jobs while he wasted it all.”

I couldn’t hold one job and Celia had juggled multiple jobs. The women who raised me impressed me more every day.

“The medical supply business. A department store sales job. For a time, some bookkeeping work. I also cleaned offices at night. Anything to keep food on the table. My car that I had before marriage and thought was paid off got repossessed. That’s when I found out my husband had leveraged it and forged my name to do so. The house foreclosure notices. All those calls from the credit card people for cards I didn’t know he had.”

Jackson’s pained expression showed his sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”

“We know.”

Celia treated Jackson to a small smile. “After all we’d been through and all we’d lost, we tried to teach Kasey she deserved better. That she deserved an equal who loves and respects her.”

“Not every woman knows her worth or believes she has value outside of her marriage. Add in children and money strains and other daily issues and walking away becomes an unscalable mountain,”

Gram said.

“We felt sick and angry and helpless whenever a new rumor popped up and traveled around town about a woman in an abusive household,”

Celia said. “We vowed to help them.”

I dreaded asking this, but the topic was how we landed here. “Is now the right time to ask about the poison?”

“Poison is only part of it.”

Thanks, Celia. Not exactly the answer I was hoping for.

Gram was more direct. “It would be too obvious if we drugged every abusive man in the area. They’d be dropping all over town.”

Gram glanced at Celia and waited for her nod before finishing. “So, we came up with a compromise.”

I bit back a groan. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

Gram treated me to a satisfied nod. “This will teach you to snoop around.”