Chapter 15
Fifteen
B y the time she reached home, Mia was shaking. Her whole body trembled with the effort it took just to draw breath. She had known it would hurt. The notion that it wouldn’t had never even occurred to her. Somehow, in the decade since, she’d convinced herself that she was tougher, stronger. Feeling so irrevocably broken inside, like all the hard and brittle pieces of her had shattered, was so much worse.
Climbing out of the car, she closed the door softly. It was either that, take control and be precise in everything she did, or she’d slam it hard enough to shatter the glass. As she neared the porch steps, she kicked off the heels that she’d worn primarily because she’d thought he’d like the look of her in them and threw them with as much force as she could muster. They landed disappointingly close.
As she took the steps up to the house, something caught her eye. The lights were on upstairs but not at the front of her house. It wasn’t her room. It was the room that had belonged to her parents before everything had gone to hell.
“Who the hell is up there?” she said aloud. In that moment, it didn’t matter. She was mad enough, hurt enough, reckless enough not to care. Unlocking the door, she let herself in and climbed the stairs quickly, pausing just long enough to grab the gun from the chest of drawers at the landing halfway to the top. By the time she reached the second floor, the light was off and Elizabeth was coming out of the room.
“Oh!” she screamed. “You scared me!”
Mia lowered the pistol. “What are you doing in that room?”
Elizabeth smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I was just looking at family photos. I thought taking a selection of them downstairs and talking to Patricia about them might be nice.”
Mia cocked her head to the side. It didn’t ring true. Anger and heartbreak aside, she wasn’t an idiot. “What would you say about them?”
“I’d tell her about Quentin and Clayton, of course…and you. All about Fire Creek.”
Mia nodded. “I’ve never talked to you about my brothers. How do you know their names? How do you know which is which?”
Elizabeth’s smile faltered then. “I really don’t appreciate the inquisition. I was only trying to help!”
The picture from Bennett’s phone flashed in her mind. It wasn’t Elizabeth, but there was a resemblance. “Who was the blonde in the picture with Erica McCoy? Derby hats, a black SUV with a deer guard on it in the background?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elizabeth said. “You’ve clearly had a difficult evening, and I’m sorry for that. But I can’t work under these conditions again.”
Mia raised the gun. “I have had a difficult evening, so I’d advise you to start being a little more truthful in your answers. Who was driving the black SUV, Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth backed away, pressing herself against the wall. “You’re just going to shoot me?”
“Shoot. Not kill. Not yet,” Mia answered. She wasn’t even sure she was bluffing. “Who was the goddamn blonde in the goddamn picture with Erica McCoy?”
Elizabeth lost it then, letting out a screech that could curl hair. “My god, she’s been dead for six years and all anyone still wants to talk about is my fucking sister!”
“Give me her damn name!”
“Why?” Elizabeth said. “She’s got nothing to do with this, other than the fact that my mother couldn’t bear to part with that monstrous gas hog of a vehicle that she loved! Katherine liked to get all dressed up and cruise around in that thing like she was still the goddamn homecoming queen!”
It all clicked then. Katherine Shelby had gone to school in Lexington. She’d been the homecoming queen, the prom queen, the head cheerleader and pretty much the envy of every teenage girl in Fayette and the surrounding counties. Her younger sister, Beth then, had been a pudgy, pimply-faced girl stuck somewhere in preteen hell. At one point in time, their mother, Barbara, and Patricia had even been friends.
Mia sized her up, noting the weight loss, the nose job, the skin resurfacing. It was a safe bet that Barbara was the driving force behind most of it.
“What happened to Katherine?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “She got drunk on a boat, fell off, and drowned. You can only party for so long before it catches up to you.”
“If she had nothing to do with this, why are you here? Why force me off the road?” Mia demanded.
Elizabeth smiled again, and it was clear the woman was half deranged. “My mother and father have parlayed the loss of their beloved daughter into quite the political career. There’s even talk of Daddy running for governor. But scandals are ugly, especially when your only claim to fame is family values and tragedy. Nothing can mar that squeaky clean image.”
Mia was getting frustrated, tired of dealing with her. “What scandal?”
“My mother’s affair with your father. The one that caused your mother’s accident.”
The world went completely silent. Mia’s vision blanked for just a moment. It was like diving underwater. “What?”
Elizabeth sneered. “There’s proof here somewhere. My mother’s tearful confession written in a letter to your mother on the day of the accident. At one point, the bitch apparently had a conscience.”
“Why would you help with this?”
“Why would you let your daddy control your whole damn life? We’re broken people, Mia. I never thought I’d have anything in common with you, but there it is. We’re both living these miserable, hateful lives created for us by destructive, selfish, toxic fucking people.”
Mia lowered the gun again. “Get out. Just get your shit and get out. And if you or your bitch of a mother even look sideways in my direction again, I will put a bullet in you.”
Elizabeth nodded. “My mother told me I should make friends with you to get in here. First time in my life I wish I’d listened to her. Under other circumstances, Mia, I think we would have gotten along just fine.”
Mia watched her walk past and then down the stairs, following at a safe distance. When the other woman had left the house, she didn’t just lock the doors, but bolted them and put the chains on. It wasn’t something she’d ever felt compelled to do. Not in Fontaine, not even after everything that had happened.
“Toxic fucking people,” she whispered aloud. “Truer words had never been spoken.”
Rather than go up to her room, Mia walked into the library and sat down beside her mother’s hospital bed. With the gun still in her hand, and still too terrified to put it away, she prepared herself to sit there till morning. No one else was coming in that house uninvited unless they went back out of it with an extra hole in them. “Mama,” she whispered. “This has been one hell of a night.”
She dropped her head onto her mother’s bed. “I wish you could talk to me. I wish, more than anything in this world, that you could just tell me what I need to do.”
There was no answer. There would never be an answer. Mia let the truth of that wash through her. It hadn’t been hope that had kept her from accepting her mother’s condition. It had been guilt. But freed of the belief that she had somehow caused her mother’s accident, Mia could admit that there was every possibility that the woman lying there in that bed was only a shell. Whatever had made her Patricia, it was either gone or locked away so deep that it might never be found again.
She felt alone. Not just lonely or sad. She felt, in that moment, like the entire world had simply passed her by. Her mother was trapped by a broken body and mind, and she was trapped by guilt and the selfishness of others.
“I hate him,” she whispered. Mia wasn’t sure if she was talking about her father or talking about Bennett.
Mia reached for the remote, flipped the TV on and prepared herself to keep watch. Teresa would arrive at six for the day shift, then she’d get to work. She had some papers to find.
Digging her phone out of the pocket of her painfully tight jeans, she dialed Clayton’s number. He answered, sounding out of breath and more than a little angry.
“What?” he barked.
“I’m not coming to work tomorrow,” she said.
“Why the hell are you calling me about this?” he asked.
“Don’t fucking take that tone with me, Clayton. I’ve had a hell of a night and I’m sitting here with a gun in my hand.”
He got quiet. “Mia, don’t do anything stupid?—”
“I’m more apt to be homicidal than suicidal, you jackass,” she snapped at him.
He breathed a sigh of relief into the phone. “Why do you have the gun?” he asked, going back to being his normally reasonable self.
“Because I came home and thought someone had broken in. Turns out the new caregiver I hired for Mama was snooping through the house looking for old love letters.”
“I’m not following.”
There was another voice in the background. A decidedly feminine and all too familiar voice. “Who’s there with you?”
“I’m not at home,” he answered.
“Oh, you’re at home. Just not your home, although, since you’re still paying the mortgage on it, I guess that’s up for debate!” It was irrational to be angry at him, and honestly, she wasn’t. She was just angry and looking for a place to put some of it. “I’m having the worst fucking night of my life and you’re screwing your soon-to-be-ex-wife?”
“That is not what’s going on here,” he protested. “Mia, you’ve got to calm down.”
“No, I don’t. I’ve been calm. I’ve been quiet. I’ve done what the dutiful daughter ought to and I’ve spent ten years making up for something I didn’t even fucking do! I’m finding those letters, Clayton, and when I do, so help me God, I may kill him.”
“Kill who, Mia? Baby, you’re worrying me?—”
“Samuel,” she said. “I can’t talk about this anymore. Not tonight. I won’t do anything stupid or reckless. I won’t shoot anyone unless they’re trying to break in. I promise.”
“I can be there in ten minutes,” he said.
He would, she thought. Whatever he’d been doing with Annalee that she didn’t really want to think about, he would walk away from that to come and take care of her. She’d been selfish enough for one night. She’d hurt enough people that she loved for one night by being prideful and cowardly. A few more hours on her own wouldn’t kill her.
“No,” she replied quietly. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m just angry and hurt and jealous. If you’re with Annalee, it’s where you ought to be. Stay there. I’ll be fine. Just don’t expect me in the office tomorrow. I’m going to be tearing this house apart from top to bottom.”
“I can help you.”
“Yes, you can.” Her voice rang with a certainty that felt good, vindicating. “Whatever it is you’re working on, whatever you’re trying to do to destroy him, keep going. Don’t stop until you have it. When this is all done, I want him left with nothing. Promise me that.”
“Whatever it takes,” he vowed.
“Now, go seduce your wife. Or let her seduce you. We like that sometimes.”
He groaned. “That is really not what’s happening here and for the love of God, just don’t go there with me. I can’t take it. Quentin is bad enough.”
She smiled. Even through everything else, there was nothing like making a sibling squirm to bring joy. “Good night, Clay. I love you.”
“Love you too, Mia-mine,” he said, defaulting to the pet name her mother had used for her so long ago.
“You bastard. I thought I was done crying for the night.”
“Maybe you need to cry. You can’t bottle it up forever.”
“I can try,” she protested lamely.
“It doesn’t work. Take it from someone who knows. Call me. Anytime. I will come right there if you need me.”
“I know you will. Good night,” she said firmly.
After ending the call, she looked at her mother lying in the bed. Patricia was still quiet, her sightless eyes barely blinking. “I wanted to talk to you, Mama, and now, I kind of feel like I did. I’ll never tell him, but somehow my idiot big brother has turned into you.”