Chapter 32
Tyler
I hadn’t been back to this piece of shit town in years.
Not since Josh’s mom and stepdad moved away.
There was nothing for me here but bad memories and the evidence that nothing had changed.
The houses were still run down. The yards were overgrown with weeds.
The concrete roads were pitted and pockmarked, and the dirt ones were so bad you’d need a lifted truck to navigate them.
Mom was buried a whole county over in a much nicer area, away from her fucked-up family. I didn’t even tell them where she was—those assholes didn’t deserve access to her. So, no, there hadn’t been a reason for me to come back here. Not until now.
One of the few changes of note was that there were more trees than I remembered.
This part of the country was flat, and growing up, there had been a lot of open fields, though they’d mostly laid fallow because the local farming industry had been in full collapse by then.
Now the forests were creeping back in, reclaiming what had been stolen from them.
I wondered if that meant the wildlife was rebounding, too, bears and wolves stalking through the trees.
Stella was quiet beside me, her face turned away as she stared out the window at the passing landscape. Seeing her openly weep for me had been oddly gratifying. Like maybe I wasn’t wrong for thinking I had an especially shitty childhood.
She must have felt my eyes on her because she glanced my way. “Where are we going?”
“To see my aunt Jenny. She was the only one Mom had any contact with and can confirm everything I told you.”
Ten minutes later, a familiar, abandoned farmhouse appeared ahead on the right, looking even more decrepit than I remembered, the roof caving in, the front porch half rotted away.
I hit my blinker and turned onto a dirt road just past it, slowing the car to avoid all the ruts and potholes.
My shoulders stiffened up, and I put both hands on the wheel, white-knuckling it even though we were only going ten miles an hour.
Stella noticed. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. Aunt Jenny will confirm everything I told you, and then you’ll know I’m not lying.”
“I don’t think you’re lying,” she said. “Not about this. I believe you really think Richard treated your mom that way.”
“But you still don’t believe he did.”
“Does it matter if I do?”
“It does,” I said before I could stop myself.
Did I have any right to ask her to believe me? No. But I was asking anyway because I needed someone else to hear the whole story. To understand that I had my reasons for doing what I’d done, behaving the way I had.
My mother died a horrible death that might have been prevented if she’d had access to early cancer screenings or better healthcare.
Coverage she would have had if Richard had done the right thing.
For him to claim he’d been looking for us, all so he could save face if the scandal eventually broke, was un-fucking-forgivable. I couldn’t let him get away with it.
All too soon, we were pulling into the dusty driveway of a run-down, brown-shingled ranch.
Pink flamingos dotted the lawn. A flower basket hung beside the front door.
We parked next to Jenny’s ancient, rusted-out minivan, and I turned off the car.
Two tired-looking old hound dogs roused themselves from the front porch.
One gave a low woof as they headed our way, but neither seemed aggressive.
Still, I wasn’t taking any chances.
“Let me go first,” I said, pushing my door open. Both dogs wiggle-butted right up to me, tails blurring, noses leaving wet marks on my pants. “They’re fine,” I told Stella, and she climbed out next.
They went around and greeted her, and then retreated toward the house like their jobs were done and they could go back to napping.
“The fuck are you doing here?” a raspy voice called.
I turned to see Jenny standing by the railing, wearing a blue-and-white tie-dyed dress, her long brown hair piled on top of her head, a blunt dangling from her fingers. She’d lost weight since the last time I’d seen her, the dress hanging loose on her frame.
“I came to talk to you,” I said.
She took a long hit off the blunt, eyeing me over the top of it. Yup, this was going about how I expected.
“This is my girlfriend, Stella,” I said, putting a hand on her lower back to get her moving. Why I felt the need to still play-act like we were together, I had no idea. Maybe it was habit at this point, a way to explain her presence.
Jenny exhaled a cloud of smoke and looked Stella over from head to toe. “I thought you left here because you wanted to get away from the trash?”
Stella reached the porch steps first, extending her hand toward my aunt. “It’s been a long fucking night. At least give me a hit if you’re going to be an immediate bitch to me.”
Jenny barked a laugh, caught off-guard, and passed the blunt over. “Maybe you’re not so bad.”
“I’ve even been told I’m tolerable once or twice,” Stella said, taking an even longer drag then Jenny had.
My aunt chuckled.
I pulled the blunt from Stella’s fingers when she tried to take a second hit. “Calm down, lightweight.” I wasn’t one, so I took two drags and passed it back to my aunt.
“What do you want?” she said.
I blew out a lungful of smoke. “To talk about Mom.”
She scowled. “You finally going to tell me where you hid her?”
“I didn’t hide her, I gave her the burial she deserved, without help from any of you.”
Jenny pointed the blunt at me. “Don’t start that bullshit. I was in jail, Tyler. What the fuck did you expect me to do from there? Barter my commissary money for a headstone?”
I clenched my jaw shut on a retort. I was not getting dragged into this fight again.
“I just want to say goodbye to my sister,” Jenny said.
“Fine. I’ll tell you where she is. After you answer my questions and promise not to tell anyone else in the family. She’s finally at peace, and I don’t want them bothering her.”
“Like I talk to any of those fuckers.” She studied me for a second. “What do you want to know?”
“What happened to Mom in the city?”
Her gaze slid away from mine. “Why are you asking me that now, after all these years?”
“Because I found Richard.”
Her eyes, the same pale blue my mother’s had been, landed back on me. “What do you mean, you found him? You promised Meg you wouldn’t go looking.” She inspected my clothes—dirty, but expensive—before her gaze slid to my six-figure car. “Don’t tell me you live there.”
“I live there.”
“Goddamn it, Tyler. He didn’t lie and tell you he tried to find you two, did he?”
A tingle ran up my spine. Why—the fuck—had my aunt jumped straight to that conclusion? “Why would you think he said that?”
She waved her hand through the air. “Because that man was always lying about everything.”
I studied her. Lack of eye contact, increased breathing, immediate defensiveness, looking up and to the right, fidgeting with the blunt. She was trying to hide something from me.
Stella shifted at my side, and I could tell from the look on her face that she thought so, too.
“He told a pretty convincing story,” I said, remaining vague on the details to see how Jenny would react.
She suddenly became very interested in her fingernails. “’Course that asshole did.”
Lying. She was lying.
“Aunt Jenny,” I said, my voice laced with barely restrained anger. “I am going to need you to tell me what happened. What really happened.”
Her head snapped up, eyes boring into mine. “Don’t you take that attitude with me. I am your elder.”
I stepped toward her. “You’re nothing but a mean old drunk who’s spent your whole life blaming other people for the problems you caused. You mooched off us when we had nothing to give and took advantage of Mom’s kindness for years. The fucking least you owe me is the goddamn truth!”
“Tyler,” Stella said, putting a hand on my arm.
“No!” Jenny shouted. “Let him show you who he is, honey. Who he’s always been.
A self-obsessed brat who thinks he’s too good for the rest of us.
” She got right in my face, breath reeking of pot and stale liquor.
“You wanna know what happened? Your mama saw what those people were like. She saw how greedy and awful money made them. How rotten and spoiled and mean their kids were, and she didn’t want you to grow up in that world.
She thought it would be better for you if you grew up here, with nothing, so you learned the value of money and hard work. That’s why she left Richard.”
She poked me in the chest. “Well, I’m glad she’s not around to find out she failed.
That it wasn’t money that made them like that, it was blood, and even after all her hard work, you turned out just as bad as those rich assholes.
” She shoved me, and I stumbled back a step.
“Get off my property. I got somewhere to be.”
She turned and stormed back into the house, and I just stood there, unmoving, my ears ringing. I tried to tell myself she was lying, but the truth was there for anyone who knew how to read the signs.
“We should go,” Stella said, taking the steps down to the dirt lawn.
I didn’t follow her because I didn’t think I could move. My hands were shaking, and I felt hot, dizzy. Like I was about to puke.
“Tyler, come on,” Stella said, heading toward the car.
My gaze went past her to the trees, my vision tunneling around me.
There was nothing in my head but a low roar and a need to get away.
From what, I had no idea. Maybe myself. Maybe the knowledge that my entire life had been a lie and I had wasted years of it pursuing a Machiavellian plot of familial vengeance.
Maybe if I started walking, I’d feel better.
Maybe if I kept walking, heading as deep into these woods as I could, I might find some forest hermit with untold knowledge who could tell me how to unfuck my life.