Chapter 13 #3
“Yes, I knew. Alexander told me all about Johanna’s misadventures and how you were going broke yourself, trying to hold it all together for them.”
“Great. So, he cared enough about you to share the truth, yet you put him in a loft to die?”
“He let this whole thing happen,” Jenny shouted, tears running down her face now.
“I’d gotten into a bit of a fix when I locked him up.
I figured, if I just left him there, he would expire naturally,” she noted with a sigh, resignation in her tone, not looking at either of them.
“His body would have been found somewhere along the line—in twenty-odd years when the place either burnt to the ground or when someone found the little love nest that Max and I had together.”
Then she stood taller and declared, “At some point in time, you make a choice, and that choice commits you to something that you never thought you would ever do. After Max died, I began to realize that I had nothing.
“Then your grandfather told me how I wouldn’t get the pension or the home he had promised me all these years, and everything disintegrated inside.
Nothing like realizing you have worked an entire lifetime for one family, only to have that family go broke because of a selfish bitch who stole from a good man, leaving the rest of us with absolutely nothing,” she explained, staring at Ashton.
“Can you imagine that?” she asked, pain filling her words.
Ashton nodded, realizing the extent of it. “And you made that life-changing decision when Grandpa told you, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know that I made the decision right then,” she hedged, waving the gun, “but the opportunity presented itself, after Oliver took off and needed calming down, and then I found Alexander, out cold on the floor, when I returned home.”
Ashton asked her, “So, you were here earlier, inside Oliver’s home, even with the deputies out and about?”
“I often come over here on my own,” she muttered, “just needing space. I would sit in that room where I spent so much time with Max. It was my safe space, just a quiet spot where I could feel love and could be loved and could remember what it was like when he was alive. His death caused me so much pain,” she whispered.
“And nobody knew about these visits?”
“Exactly. I don’t even know that Oliver knew about our love affair. I mean, there’s been times when he may have thought so, but I know Max never told him, so I didn’t really know how much he understood.”
“Maybe he didn’t have to be told. Maybe he figured it out for himself,” Crystal suggested.
“Maybe.” Jenny smiled, a pained look on her face.
“If Oliver did know about us, I would want to know. We could remember Max together. Losing him was so hard, so very painful, and I didn’t have any way to grieve.
It was not just the loss of Max. It was the loss of that future we had together, a home, a space of our own, a place to retire, just the two of us.
If Max were alive today, we would have been happy. ”
“Would he have wanted this?” Ashton asked.
“No, he would not, but he can’t do anything about it now.
He’s gone and I’m here. Nothing to my name, left holding the bag.
An empty bag. As much as we were together, there was a hole in him too.
Max was all about getting the property back together, and, at the time, Oliver was the one looking for a chance to get away and to have a different life, a separate life. It’s funny in a certain way.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
“After Max died, Oliver basically picked up his brother’s dream and wanted to have the property back together again.
Yet your grandpa refused to consider it and was being difficult, while everything just blew up all at the same time in my life,” she pointed out.
“I’m not proud of the part I played in it, which is also why I’m thrilled Alexander survived. ”
“No thanks to you,” Ashton stated.
“So, what’s with the rifle?” Crystal asked, taking a step closer to Ashton. “Why are you doing this now?”
“Because I need to leave,” she snapped, her tone sharp. “I mean, the kidnapping alone will cause me trouble, but then there’s the rest of it.”
Ashton stared at her, and suddenly it all clicked. “You’re the one stealing from the company, aren’t you?”
She smiled at him. “Well, it certainly wasn’t my idea originally.
Yet I realized Johanna was doing that and how you were struggling to save it all.
Johanna was the reason I wouldn’t have a home, and then you told me about all you were doing to save it.
And, of course, I would have a home if you could do something, but I’d already taken a big chunk of money, and you could do nothing about that. ”
Jenny sighed. “By then I also knew that there was no way to recover from what I’d already done to Alexander and no way to go back to that nice planned retirement that I deserved after so many years here, especially not with your grandmother being such a crazy old coot,” she explained, shaking her head.
“I didn’t have a choice. I had already gone too far,” she admitted.
She cocked the gun, looked at them both, and stated, “I really don’t have any choice now.”