20. Colson
TWENTY
COLSON
The three file into the room, the air uncomfortably tense. Stewart offers his best manners and gestures for them to find a seat. They round the table. A whole fucking lot of chairs in here, and they choose to sit next to me. I’m at the end, Finn is in the middle, and Clyde is on the other side of him. I stare straight ahead as the chair legs screech with the same protests I’m having in my head.
“Stewart.” My aunt awkwardly shifts in her seat. Uncle Thad’s hand moves to cover one of hers on the table. An act of comfort. My eyes track the movement of his thumb brushing the back of her hand as my aunt adds, “What’s this about?”
Stewart sits tall. I’m sure this isn’t the first time he’s been in a situation as fucked as this. In fact, he looks as laid-back as the two sitting next to me. Like their stomachs aren’t filled with wasps buzzing to protect their queen. Like it’s no big deal when it’s the biggest goddamn deal of the century.
I get why Clyde is here, but why the hell is Finn? Where does he fit into all of this?
Stewart tents his hands on the table. “I thought it’d be best for all of us to sit down. I’ll act as a mediator in order to make sure everyone walks away happy.”
Aunt Bess purses her lips then acts as if it’s just her and Stewart in the room. “We both know where that money belongs.”
“That might be so, but there are legal documents that say otherwise. I wouldn’t be doing my job unless we dealt with that appropriately. Mediation is the next step to take before dealing with the expenses of going to court.”
“We could’ve done this privately,” she gripes.
Stewart nods in understanding, but I’m not sure he realizes just how much of an overreach this is by not consulting with his client before dropping a bomb such as the Lincolns in person.
Clyde interjects, his voice deep and unapologetic. “Let’s not pretend like we don’t already know each other, Bess.”
I keep my focus ahead of me, even though I want to look over at the men next to me. They know me, and I know them. But Aunt Bess and Uncle Thad don’t know that. They can’t know that. I lied to Aunt Bess’s face about Mom’s well-being in their own kitchen. She can’t know about my involvement with them or why it exists.
I suck my cheek into my mouth and use it as a means to cope. My molars edge into the sensitive flesh and do little to calm the monster traipsing in my gut.
Aunt Bess glowers at Clyde, her eyes flaring with fire. It’s so much worse than when Sebastian and I got up to no good as kids. “How dare you intrude, thinking you can say whatever you please.”
“I belong here,” he states simply. Like he’s not crashing a party he was never invited to. “Just like any of you. It’s no secret that Janie and I were married.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Bess plainly asserts. “It was a secret. Why couldn’t you leave her the hell alone?”
Clyde shrugs. Finn lazily rests his elbow on the arm of his chair, ignoring me like I’m ignoring him. In this room, we’re strangers. On the streets of Harrison Heights, we know each other quite well. I think of everything he’s done to me. A lit cigarette to my neck. Having his muscle beat me down in that alleyway. Breaking my finger at his father’s instruction.
“Your sister did her own thing. We’ve always known that. It just so happens that we made a couple of stupid mistakes when we were young one night.”
“What was the point of it?” Aunt Bess questions. “Why marry her if you planned from the start to never be with her? To never support her?”
“Oh, I’ve supported Janie.” His smirk is slimy. Like a snake that slithers out of water on a hunt. “Just not in the conventional sense.”
I stomp down the accusations threatening to come out of me. The only way he supported her was by feeding her the drugs she was desperate to have. By getting her involved in a deal that I had to make better. He’s only ever been selfish with her and has done nothing to help the woman he was legally bound to.
“Listen,” he starts. “If I’m being completely honest, I forgot all about the marriage license.”
Yeah, that’s a crock of shit.
“I don’t believe you,” Aunt Bess accuses. “You chained her down with that all these years without anyone else knowing. I want to know why.”
Stewart sits back without saying a word, steepling his hands at his chin like he’s proud of himself. I don’t like him. Not that I did before, but I really don’t care for the guy now that he’s pitting Aunt Bess and Clyde against one another and calling it mediation.
“Janie didn’t seem to mind. Never brought me divorce papers, so I’d say she was happy with the turnout.”
“You know why she never did.”
She was always too worried about coping with her addiction. Feeding it. Figuring out how to give it what it needed to thrive. A divorce was probably the last thing on her mind.
“Janie’s addiction had nothing to do with me.”
What a fucking liar.
I grit my teeth, my jaw clenching, and sit straighter. Finn knocks his foot against mine. It’s the first time he’s made himself known aside from showing up with his dad, but where does he get off?
“You took advantage of it. Why? You had a son with another woman and have been with her all these years. You’d think you’d eventually want to marry her, ” she says, referring to Finn’s mom, and how the hell does she know this much?
I can see how she might know a little bit about him from my mom hanging around him when they were in high school and shortly after she graduated, but that was decades ago. How would Aunt Bess know anything about Clyde’s current situation, about Finn, about Finn’s mother?
“I think this is getting out of hand,” Uncle Thad throws in. Stewart hangs on to every word like the rest of us. This conference room is the stage and we’re just the pathetic chumps being featured in today’s episode of Jerry Springer.
“This is normal for situations like this,” Stewart’s stupid ass says. “Let’s allow them to share the floor.”
Clyde meets Aunt Bess head-on. “If you want to throw all my business out there for everyone to hear, then it’s only right to make it fair, don’t you think?”
“Don’t you dare.” Her warning piques my interest, blowing my assumptions out of the water. She knows something I don’t. Something she hasn’t told me. Something she’s kept from me.
I’m like a little kid, watching a dodgeball soar from one team to another. Eventually, someone is going to catch the throw or get pegged in the face. I have the nagging suspicion I’m that someone.
“Afraid your husband and nephew will see that you’re not the perfect person you claim to be?” Clyde taunts.
Uncle Thad clears his throat, his voice taking on an authoritative tone. “That’s enough.”
Clyde’s voice turns threatening, reminding me of the way he spoke to me before Finn broke my finger in that car. “Don’t fucking interrupt me. I came, wanting to be decent, but seeing as how it’s not being offered in return, my patience is done. You want the goddamn truth? Yeah, Janie and I got married. So fucking what? It’s none of your goddamn business how or why or when it happened.”
“It’s all my business. She was my sister,” Aunt Bess argues.
“My involvement with her has nothing to do with you so butt the fuck out of it. Unless of course you want to hear about all the places I’ve fucked her. Might’ve been hooked on whatever she could get her hands on, but she never protested a good lay.”
Aunt Bess rears back. “You’re a pig.”
“The money she left behind is mine. It always fucking was, whether you like it or not. I’ll be the one leaving with it. Her failure to tell you the shit she was doing isn’t my goddamn problem.”
“ Please . Don’t sit there and act like you’re better than you are.”
I glance over at Clyde, my stomach in my throat. This is so fucking bizarre that I barely hear it when he says, “If there’s anyone at this table who has pretended that, it’s you. Tell me, have you ever told the kid who he belongs to? That you’ve spent the last two decades paying me off to stay the hell away from him? Was your cuckold husband over there in on it, too, or was this all your doing, Almighty Bess?”
My heartbeat stutters in my chest.
What did he just say?
Aunt Bess’s face falls. Once ready to go up against the storm of Clyde Lincoln, she recoils, a tiny gasp leaving her mouth as her hand comes up to cover it.
Gravel fills my throat. I’ve had the sneaking suspicion, but wondering about it is much different than finding out it’s the truth. “What is he talking about?”
“Yeah, I’m with him,” Finn speaks. I wish he didn’t open his mouth at all. “What the fuck is she talking about?”
Uncle Thad rubs at his temples. I stare blankly at my aunt. The woman who sat across from me and lied about it when I asked her what Mom was talking about that night. “Is what he’s saying true? Have you known all this time that he’s my…my father?”
“Colson, it’s not that simple,” she says.
“You’ve always had a way of making situations sound a whole lot less than they are,” Clyde comments with a smirk painting his lips before muttering, “Piece of fucking work.”
“Not that simple?” I’m reeling, losing grip on my emotions like a fishing line being yanked out farther and farther because a fish is hooked and taking it with them. “I asked you if you knew anything about my biological father. You looked me in my eye and lied after keeping it hidden for years ?”
“For your own good,” Aunt Bess responds, face stricken from Clyde airing out her dirty laundry.
I narrow my eyes on her. “Who are you to tell me what’s good for me?”
“You know the reputation the Lincoln name has across Harrison Heights. Did you want that imprinted on you?”
A laugh tumbles out of me. “Mom tainted my name the second she gave birth to me.”
“Your mother was a good person who got herself swept up in something that ruined her. He…” She points at Clyde, who’s sitting back with his arms crossed, a pleased expression on his aged face. “He’s rotten. He impregnated your mother and then left her. He had no intention of being there for you or raising you. Not like he did with that one.”
I ignore her comment about Finn. “Then why pay him off if he was never going to be around? Why stand there,” I point over to the door where we stood when I arrived, “and lie to me about not knowing about them being married.”
She shakes her head. Maybe it made more sense to her all those years ago. “I didn’t know they were married. That was as shocking to me as it was for you. I wanted to ensure he kept his distance.” Her eyes dart to Finn. “I didn’t want you to become some protégé to him. I didn’t want him to influence you into his way of life.”
Oh my God.
This is fucking rich.
She wanted to protect me from them, but Mom forced me into their lives, anyway.
When Clyde chuckles, I want to laugh right along with him until he stops and adds fuel to the fire. “Now might be a good time to mention that none of us here are really strangers. You might’ve paid me off to stay away from him, but your sister dragged him into this life right under your nose.”
“What are you talking about?” asks Uncle Thad. His stare is hard, a divot forming between his brows as his attention bounces between the man across from him and me.
I inwardly cringe. I was a fool to think that I’d be able to keep my involvement with the Lincolns hidden. That my family would never find out about me lying to them. Everything always comes back around and catches up with you.
It’s comical, knowing that we’ve all been hiding our truths and burying them beneath the surface of day-to-day life. Death has forced our hands, our honesty. Now, we have no choice but to claw our way out of the dirt and rise above the truths.
Finn brings his hand up and runs it through his dark hair. He’s dressed in the same black attire as his replica next to him, but for the first time ever, I think he does it out of nervousness. His sleeve of tattoos slips out from the wrist of his long-sleeved shirt, and he shifts in his chair uncomfortably.
Aunt Bess’s gaze lands on me. It reminds me of times when Sebastian and I got into trouble as kids. When she’d try to get the truth out of us but we’d both just stand there, unwilling to rat the other out. She always found a way, though. Always figured out how to get into one of our heads to give the tiniest of details for her to put it together.
Now is no different, but rather than hiding behind my cousin, I have to step forward and take responsibility. Something I should’ve done a lot sooner.
“Colson? What is he referring to?” my uncle asks again.
I run the tip of my tongue over the inside of my bottom lip, hating the storm that beckons over us, threatening to destroy the little good that remains. Storm clouds so fucking dark they make day feel like night.
Weeks ago, we were as close to one big happy family as we could get. Now look at us.
As I meet Aunt Bess’s eyes across from me, I realize that we’re not very different from one another. She thought she was protecting me by paying Clyde to stay away. I thought I was helping Mom by paying off her debts. Neither did a goddamn thing to protect the woman who’s now gone.
I inhale a deep breath even though the air that’s circling us is thick and strained. It pushes into my lungs and does nothing to scatter my nerves. My foot bounces underneath the table, my knee brushing the bottom of it with each lift and fall.
I glance over at Stewart. I’m not about to incriminate myself in front of him. Nor will I risk him eavesdropping and running with the information since he clearly can’t be trusted. “Mind bailing for a few minutes?”
He lifts his palms to me and glances around at everyone. “As long as everyone promises to keep their hands to themselves.” He rises from his seat when he seems confident that no blood will be spilled then slips out of the room.
“Mom was buying drugs from the Lincolns,” I concede, feeling as if there’s this negative energy hovering over my shoulder from my dumb ass choice to help her in all the wrong ways. “I don’t know the details behind the transactions, but she ended up not following through and owing them a bunch of money.”
Aunt Bess’s eyes cut to Finn and Clyde before sliding back to me. “You were paying for your mom’s drugs?” She balks at the idea. Like she has a hard time believing it’s true.
I scratch the back of my neck. “I mean, she already had them because of some deal she made with them, but then she did who the hell knows what with them. I guess in so many words, yeah, you could say that, depending on how you look at it.”
She blinks in quick succession, as if she’s having a hard time understanding what’s happening.
Join the club.
“When she didn’t have the money or she’d go back on her promises to them, they’d come knocking for what she didn’t have. What was I supposed to do? Let her fend for herself?” I ignore the fact the Lincolns are next to me. “They would’ve held true to their threats. I didn’t want that to happen.”
“How much money have you given them?” Aunt Bess asks as if the devil isn’t sitting at the table with us.
Clyde chuckles, and I only now realize how much of a good mood he’s in. All the times I’ve seen him with Finn, he was the complete opposite.
Sinister.
Mean.
Out for blood.
His cruel laugh slices through me.
“How much, Colson?” Aunt Bess prods.
“It was…it was a lot. At least ten grand.” I don’t tell her that amount only includes this last time.
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
I give her a look. Like, really?
There was no way I wanted deeper ties to the Lincolns. Or to get more people involved.
“It was easier to deal with it on my own than pull anyone else into her mess.”
Her gaze drops. Confusion coats her feminine features and then a wave of guilt hits me so hard, I would be down on my knees if I weren’t already sitting.
This could have been avoided. Mom’s dealings with the Lincolns. The fact that I’m Clyde’s son—Jesus, I still can’t believe it. And one he never wanted at that. For years, I wondered what it’d be like to have a dad. Hell, I even went as far as thinking that he could’ve been better than Mom. That a childhood with him wouldn’t have been as fucked up as life with her.
How wrong I was.
There’s no way in hell Finn had it better than me.
Sure, Clyde isn’t an addict, but he’s bad in every other possible way.
My chest seizes from the very real fact that my father—a deadbeat—is two seats away. After all this time, I finally know who he is. He’s no longer a figment of my imagination, but a living, breathing human. And not at all the person I expected him to be.
Clyde fucking Lincoln.
A man I despise.
One of two men I’ll never give the benefit of the doubt.
Not finding out would’ve been better than this.
Aunt Bess doesn’t bother turning her attention to me. It’s not me who’s her enemy, after all, but the man with the buzz cut and dark, assessing eyes across from her. “You sold drugs to Janie ? You two were married. All this time, you’ve handed over the thing that killed her?” She chokes on a tearless sob and rubs her palm over her clavicle. “I can’t believe this.”
Uncle Thad rests a hand on her back. “Deep breaths, Bess.”
“He…” She swallows around the difficulty of talking. It reminds me of when her and Uncle Thad approached the fundraiser table. She tried getting the words out, but ultimately, it was him who had to finish for her. She doesn’t give her power over to him this time. She pushes through, and all the while, her eyes blaze with a heat so hot that it sears just to be in the same room as her.
Clyde teases, “Cat got your tongue, Bess?”
“You planned this,” she snarls accusingly.
“You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
“You didn’t forget that you were married to Janie. You didn’t care that Janie never tried to divorce you because you…you wanted that paper legally binding you to her all this time.”
Why would he?—
“You knew that there would be money if she died, and you kept flushing her system with the one thing everyone knew was going to be her demise. Were you the one that got it into Harrison County Jail, too?”
“Gotta say,” Clyde taps his knuckle on the table. “I thought it’d take you a lot longer to put all the pieces together. Shame you don’t have any substantiating proof that I have contacts everywhere, isn’t it?”
“You knew you’d be next in line for that money if something happened to her.”
“Not necessarily,” he blinks.
“Don’t sit there and lie to us now.”
“Okay, fine.” His lips turn up like the Cheshire cat’s. “Janie might’ve gotten loose lips one night and said there would be money if her parents ever kicked the can. Never said how much. It could’ve been five dollars for all I fucking knew.” He shrugs. So nonchalant. “Figured it’d be worth it to stick out and never push for a divorce she didn’t give a flying fuck about to see, and boy, am I glad I did. Over a hundred grand?” He whistles his surprise. “Well worth the wait.”
Finn kicks back and pushes up out of his chair. His hand swoops through his messy hair again and then he moves for the door, his boots trudging with each step. He walks out without saying a word, and I have to say, I’m about ready to follow in his footsteps.
My knee bobs faster under the table. My heart moves along to the same rhythm. All the while, my stomach is in my throat. I’m on the brink of flipping this table in disgust. A numbness courses through me as I’m stunned into silence.
I always knew the Lincolns were bad. Rumors of them doing whatever they could for the things they wanted floated around Harrison Heights when I was a kid. I ignored them as much as I could. When I was young, it didn’t matter as much because I wasn’t in their crosshairs. But then I had no choice but to step in and help Mom.
It never made sense why they wanted her dealing for them. That they’d hand over copious amounts of product to a drug addict who couldn’t be trusted.
Fuck, I never even trusted her with crackers and peanut butter. Yet they gave her so much more. How stupid of them , I used to think. They’re not the criminal masterminds they think they are.
They appeared so goddamn dumb.
But they weren’t, were they?
This was a transaction to him just like any other. A means to an end. It only backs up what everyone knows of the Lincolns; that they’ll do anything for money.
Even enable a drug addict until her body turns cold so they can inherit the life insurance money her parents left her.