Chapter 87
Trips
I’m shaky from adrenaline and exhaustion when we enter the same hospital we visited yesterday. Yesterday feels a lifetime ago at this point. And because nothing is ever convenient, Walker’s heading to a different hospital across town.
I remind myself to be fucking grateful. We’re all alive; I can’t complain.
RJ follows me down the hallway to my father’s room, my promise never to see him again ringing in my ears. But I’m not here for him; I’m here for Mattie.
My sister rushes out when she sees me through the door, dragging me farther from where I can hear Trevor, Jessica, and Father speaking with a doctor. “Thank God you’re here. I don’t know what to do.”
“What’s going on? You said Father’s getting surgery, but I don’t know why I’m here. I’m not going to kumbaya around the man, for fuck’s sake.”
She spits out a panicked laugh, her copper hair piled in an unruly bundle on the top of her head, making her look more like Clara than my typically poised little sister. “It’s an emergency surgery. They think they’ve found a liver for him.”
“Fuck,” RJ whispers beside me, one second before it clicks for me.
“We gave him a liver,” I say, blinking in shock.
Mattie’s confusion just adds to her frenzy.
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is my mom is going crazy.
She’s super sweet and kind to the doctors and Trevor, but the second they’re out of the room, it’s like she’s somebody else.
She just keeps insisting that Father promised, and that he should have let her rest in peace.
I don’t know who ‘her’ is, and she won’t tell me.
She just looks at me with watery eyes, then whisper-yells at Father again.
I’m scared. Really scared. She’s never been like this before. ”
RJ’s phone buzzes, and with furrowed brows, he steps away from our conversation. I tug Mattie to my chest, not knowing how to deliver the news I have to, let alone help her with whatever is going on between her mom and our father.
Honestly, Jessica lasted a lot longer than I thought she would. “I’m as clueless as you about what’s going on with your mom, but there’s something I have to tell you.”
“What?” she asks, the edge of a shriek in her tone.
“Bryce is dead.”
She goes completely still in my arms, then whispers her question to my chest, keeping her face pressed against my drugstore t-shirt. “Was it you?”
I sigh, wishing I had something different to say. “It was supposed to be. But he got loose. Jansen hit him with a car by accident.”
She’s quiet, and I worry I said the wrong thing.
I’m about to check in when she giggles, the sound as deranged as only a teenager at the end of her rope can be.
She laughs so hard her eyes water, and I worry that she’s going to cry, but that’s not my sister.
Instead, she looks at me, shakes her head, then laughs harder.
She laughs for so long that Trevor steps out of the room, nostrils flaring at her presumed misstep.
Behind him, Jessica slaps my father, the sound sharp, but mostly covered by Mattie losing it in front of me.
Then Jessica glances around, shady as fuck, and when no one comes running, she bends over my father’s arm.
She fiddles with something there, and my father shouts, but his voice is as weak as he is.
I don’t point out what she’s doing to Trevor, Mattie, or the nurse who’s passing by.
The call button flies across the bed as she yanks it away from him, before fiddling with his hand again, my father’s machines changing from a steady beat to a more erratic one the longer Jessica does whatever she’s doing.
Alarms go off at the nurses’ station behind me, and as one passes us, heading for father’s room, Trevor switches from glaring to confrontation, marching up to us.
“Get your shit together,” he whispers to Mattie.
Mattie just laughs harder. “By accident,” she chokes out.
The nurse takes Father’s vitals. Her face grim, she spins around and slaps the wall. An automated voice calls out a code over the loudspeaker.
Staff rush past us, the room suddenly full of people, and Jessica finally backs away from Father.
Trevor joins the throng, and when Jessica slips something up her sleeve, Trevor notices.
“What did you do?” he shouts, grabbing her arm and shaking her, that same something falling to the floor.
One nurse sees it and scoops it up. Then half the room shouts at Jessica, demanding she tell them what she did, one of them calling for security when it becomes clear Trevor won’t let go of her.
Or maybe because Jessica won’t say what she did.
Meanwhile, the beeps grow more erratic, and Mattie quiets, turning to watch the chaos surrounding our monster. “What did she do?” she asks.
“I think she pumped air into his IV,” I say.
Jessica stands calm in the face of all the shouting, proud despite Trevor’s manhandling. “He’s more than earned death,” she states. “Now you can give that liver to someone who actually deserves it.”
RJ’s familiar presence joins Mattie and me as we watch the staff working to save the damned.
The doctors and nurses share the same blank look of defeat when the elevator dings behind us. Police stride past, not the security I expected, but they wait outside the door. Here at least, death is given dignity. Dignity the man doesn’t deserve.
Jessica calmly watches her husband of seventeen years die by her hand, no tears or hysterics to be found.
Not one of us shed a tear.
When the elevator dings again, the medical staff confer in low voices, unplugging cords and filtering from the room. He’s gone.
Whoever got off the elevator stops beside RJ and me.
“Thanks for meeting. I know tonight’s been a lot for…
” Tom Reed says, then pauses, curious about what holds our attention.
“What’s going on here?” he asks, motioning to the slowly emptying room, the silence loud after the noisy beeps.
I spare him a glance, Mattie stepping closer and grasping my hand.
He glances between us and the room, then stands between the uniformed cops and RJ, and my friend lets out a deep sigh.
“My father,” I say, wanting to curse his name and guarantee him a place in hell, but not in front of the cop.
“And your brother,” he notes, his eyes lighting with that familiar avarice. He steps away with his phone in hand.
When he returns, the cops at the door receive a call over their radios, glancing around.
Reed steps up to them, and they lose my attention.
Instead, I can’t help but watch the last nurse in the room with my brother and my stepmom.
One person puttering around his corpse, one person who might mourn him, and the person who killed him—the only people keeping vigil. Mattie presses herself against my side.
A different nurse approaches Mattie and me. “Do you want to say your goodbyes?”
“I did that yesterday,” I say, not mentioning that my goodbye was also a fuck you. It’s what he deserved.
“No.” Mattie is still, not crying, but I can feel her trembling. The nurse leaves, and Mattie turns to me. “What’s going to happen to Mom?”
“What do you think, Sparkles?” I ask gently, dragging my eyes from the cops quietly deliberating outside the door.
Tears well in her eyes. “She’s going to jail, isn’t she?”
I don’t answer. There are no words that make this easier.
Reed steps into the hospital room in his street clothes, his badge held high. “Trevor Westerhouse?”
That’s not what I expected to happen.
My brother nods. “That’s me. Arrest her. She just murdered my father.”
Jessica steps forward, wrists together. But instead, Reed grabs onto my brother, locking one wrist in cuffs before my brother freaks out.
“You’re under arrest—”
“What the hell are you doing? I’m a government official!” Trevor shouts. He tries to step away, but bumps the bed, jostling our father. His head slumps to one side, and disgust makes it through my apathy.
“For the trafficking of minors,” Reed continues, Jessica’s gasp audible as my brother fights his natural inclination to throw down when threatened.
Reed continues his spiel, then hands a furious Trevor off to the uniformed officers, his threats about lawyers and publicity following him all the way off the floor.
Then Reed sits beside my stepmom, waiting for whoever is going to join him to bring her in.
“I did it,” she says.
I rush forward. “Jessica. Don’t say anything without a lawyer present.”
She looks up at me, eyes watery. Then she shrugs. “But I did.”
Mattie and RJ follow me, and with a nod from Reed, Jessica pulls Mattie to her, crying into her daughter’s hair. But her voice is clear. “My beautiful girl. So brave. So strong. I can’t help but wonder if she’d have been the same.” She holds my sister’s cheek.
“Who, Mom? You’re not making sense.” Mattie’s voice wobbles as she speaks, and I’m forced to remember that as tough as my sister is, she’s still a kid. A kid who’s survived more shit than most adults will in a lifetime.
“Your big sister, sweetheart. The one your father beat out of me once he found out she wasn’t another boy.
She wasn’t the first.” She switches her gaze to Reed.
“There’s a baby cemetery under the rose garden.
He is—was—digging it up, trying to get rid of the evidence before the police figured it out, the bastard.
We’d made a deal. I wouldn’t tell anyone about those poor girls; I’d keep everything else I gathered over the years from the feds if he just let them rest. He reneged on our deal. ”
Anger flares in her blue eyes, the color the same as Mattie’s, and just as fierce. “His life for all his unborn daughters. It’s too little. But it’s what I could do.” Then Jessica’s tears overtake her anger, and she holds Mattie close, leaving Reed, RJ, and me to share a horrified look.
He’s gone. Good riddance.