Chapter 17
Seventeen
Some of us are depending heavily on our personalities, because these summer bodies aren’t working out.
—Mable to Cody
Mable
Ding-dong.
Ding-dong.
Diiiiiiingggggg-donnnnnnnggggg.
I groaned and rolled over, staring up at the stupid ceiling.
I narrowed my eyes and blinked a few times just so I could see the clock displayed on my ceiling a little more clearly.
Yep, that actually said three in the morning.
What the fuck?
The doorbell ringing started again, then the pounding.
I got out of bed and shuffled to the door, very aware that I was dressed in Romeo’s clothing still.
I’d taken a shower and had put everything right back on. Though, I did manage to wear my own panties instead of his boxer briefs.
“Open the door right now, you fucking bitch!”
Birdee.
What the absolute hell?
I cautiously opened the door.
My stepsister showing up at my house in the middle of the night with a cop was not on my Bingo Card List for the year.
Yet, as I stared, neither one of them disappeared off my porch.
“Um.” I hesitated, not sure I wanted to let them in. “Can I help you?”
Just as that word came out of my mouth, crunching ice and snow caught my attention.
I looked over to see Cody pulling up in her plow truck, and right behind her was a familiar black truck that had my heart rate accelerating.
“What the heck is going on?” I asked to no one in particular.
“That’s what I would like to know.”
Another truck pulled into my drive behind Romeo’s, and I blinked even more as Cody’s parents got out.
“Is someone dead?”
“No one that I know of,” Birdee muttered. “You know as much as I do, though.”
I looked at my stepsister and noted all of the bruises and cuts on her face.
A little pang of sympathy went through me at the sight.
I didn’t like that she’d been hurt.
I may not like her very much, but I didn’t wish harm upon anyone, not even my worst enemies.
She crutched past me with a glare in my direction, and I had to stop myself from putting my foot out and tripping her.
Before I could do that, though, the officer that I now realized was Romeo’s friend from the bar said, “I’m sorry to wake you up like this at three o’clock in the morning, but this was something that we couldn’t wait to discuss.”
“What’s going on?” Romeo asked. “Is she okay?”
I looked over just in time to see Romeo barreling up the stairs coming right for me.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I was sleeping.”
His eyes scanned me from head to toe, double-checking that my words matched the state of my being, then nodded.
That’s when he tugged me to his side and put himself in between my sister and me.
My sister who’d made herself at home on my favorite seat in my living room.
“Anyone want to tell us what the hell is going on?” Vito asked, pulling his wife into his side.
Cody rounded out the group and stood off to the side with her parents, glaring at Birdee. “What did you do this time?”
Birdee stiffened.
“First off,” the cop said, “we’re not going to say anything until I tell you what I’ve found out with Apollo tonight, okay?”
Another car door slammed outside, and everyone collectively looked toward the door.
“Who’s this?” Vito wondered.
“That’s Apollo.”
“Apollo?” Romeo asked. “Is my sister there?”
“Last-minute trip.” Apollo walked into my house like he owned it. “Hi, thanks for giving me some excitement over the last few days. Fuck, it’s cold here. Also, how do you live in these kinds of conditions?”
Cody snorted. “Let me guess, you’re from the South?”
“Born and bred in Texas, baby.” He looked around the room. “Okay, first, we’ll start with what Gentry found out first, and I’ll start filling in blanks from there.”
Birdee looked to the cop, her gaze curious.
I was just as curious.
“So Romeo sent me down to the hospital to figure out what was going on, and things started to not add up pretty damn fast. Starting with the fact that the insurance information that was given out after the accident wasn’t given by Birdee. It was given by Birdee’s mother, Whitney.”
My head tilted. “What?”
“When officers arrived on scene, Birdee wasn’t capable of handing out identification, let alone insurance cards and thinking of using an alternate name. She couldn’t even tell us where she was at or who she was.”
“Okay…” Vito sounded worried. “Are you okay, Birdee?”
Birdee stiffened but nodded once.
“Why are you not still in the hospital?” Grace asked worriedly.
“That would be my fault,” Gentry said. “I didn’t think she was safe there.”
That had everyone stilling.
“When I got there, Whitney Watts was shouting from the rooftops to take care of her child,” he said. “But the problem was, she kept switching back and forth between Mable and Birdee.”
Birdee buried her face in her hands.
“We removed Whitney from the hospital and Tom Watts took her home,” Gentry explained. “But not before I followed them out through a side door and found them in the parking lot talking furiously.”
“What were they talking about?” Cody asked.
“That’s where I can come in,” Birdee muttered darkly, lifting her face from her hands. “My mother decided to take a life insurance policy out on everyone. My stepfather has one. I have one. Mable has one. Hell, even my dad has one.”
“Okay…” I trailed off.
“And I saw on some paperwork in her office when I was in there today that I have a lawsuit taken out against me.” She glared at me.
“But beyond that, I saw some more paperwork about the life insurance policies. Once I started digging in her desk, though, I couldn’t stop.
I saw paperwork from the bank with a loan in my name.
I saw one with a loan in your name.” She glanced at me.
“I saw a stack of credit cards in both of our names. Ones that I can assure you I never applied for. I also saw some paperwork in there about the vacation that she helped me book.” She looked sick.
“But the details for this vacation were all in your name. Not mine. And I just got pissed. Because I had no clue what was going on. So I went to confront my mom about all of it since it was in her office.”
“What happened then?” I asked.
“I found her at the country club,” she admitted.
“Confronted her in the parking lot. She went off about me being in her shit. She accused me of a lot of stuff, like stealing your fiancé and ruining your wedding. That she was protecting me. Doing what was necessary to fix things.” Birdee pulled at her hair.
“Which I can assure you I didn’t do. I don’t know where any of that even came from.
I thought you were just making shit up when it came to Morris.
I knew you hated me, so I thought you were just spewing BS to make me look bad. ”
“She only hates you because you go out of your way to make her life harder than it needs to be,” Cody interjected.
“Oh, like she hasn’t done the same shit to me?
” She snorted. “Stealing my homework? Reporting me as cheating during school? Making fun of my learning disability? Making everyone hate me? What about when she poured Nair in my shampoo? What about when I saved up enough money to buy a car on my own? And it was taken and ‘no one could find out what happened to it?’ What about when my cat was thrown out in the cold? I know that she was behind all of it.”
Romeo’s arms tightened around me.
“I did none of those things, Birdee,” I promised.
“She didn’t,” Cody agreed with me.
“Oh, sure, sure. And you’re one that I’ll really take at face value.
” Birdee crossed her arms over her chest, and the move looked like it pained her.
“You stole my father. Turned him against me. He doesn’t return my calls.
He doesn’t spend any time with me. Refused to see me on his weekends.
He looks at me like I’m the lint at the bottom of the dryer vent.
He went to your graduation and not mine.
He went to all of your school plays and sporting events.
Every single milestone, he was there for you. And me? I’m just chopped liver.”
Vito inhaled swiftly. “That’s not true, Birdee.”
“Sure,” Birdee snorted.
“Birdee, it’s not,” Grace whispered. “We wanted you.”
Birdee didn’t reply.
“Birdee, can you sign into this for me?”
Apollo handed her a tablet.
“How would I sign into someone else’s tablet?” Birdee rolled her eyes.
“Use those hacker skills,” Apollo suggested.
Birdee looked confused.
“I don’t have those.”
Apollo nodded, then turned to look at Romeo and me. “So I was wrong.”
“About what?” Romeo asked.
“She’s not the hacker,” he said. “The mother is.”
Everyone in the room went still. “What?”
Gentry crossed his arms over his chest. “She truly has no clue what she’s doing with technology. I can assure you.”
Birdee muttered something under her breath that had Gentry smirking.
“She couldn’t figure out how to work the remote on the hospital bed. And I physically watched her lock herself out of her phone.”
“How do you know it’s my stepmother?” I asked.
“Because I got suspicious when I started looking through everything,” he answered.
“Everything that was done to you from Birdee was in turn done to Birdee. Though after getting Romeo’s word that you’re a good human being, I know that you’re not responsible for single-handedly ruining Birdee’s credit.
Everything points to you. There are emails and receipts that clearly indicate you.
But after hacking into both of your personal phones, you both have completely different email addresses than the ones used for all of the information. ”
“I only have one email,” I admitted.
“Same,” Birdee muttered.
“Yeah, that I knew. So, I started digging more. And I noticed that Birdee was using stuff under your name just as much as you were using stuff under hers. At least until about two years ago when you started to distance yourself from your stepmother’s reach.”
“This is all so confusing.” I rubbed at my temples.
“What it looks like, Whitney started to use both girls’ lines of credit when they were around ten or eleven,” he said.
“I don’t know if either of you know it or not, but both of you were encouraged to buy new.
And Whitney ‘helped you pay for them’ with her own car guy.
There are emails back and forth telling him what was going on and what needed to be done.
Not to mention, she’d get your credit back up to good, then go back to the other one.
Constantly bouncing between the two of you and switching your information up all the time.
It looked like she was just careless, and got confused who she was supposed to be using and when.
After some research, it looks like there are over fourteen lines of credit between the two of you.
Some are even shared lines of credit. Oh, and you have two buildings in your name.
Four cars. Two houses. Eighteen credit cards a piece. ”
“What the holy hell?” Vito asked, bringing his hands up to his head.
“Tom is oblivious,” Apollo continued. “And sadly, there’s no real rhyme or reason to anything she’s doing.”
“So what happened after you confronted her?” Cody asked warily.
“She freaked the fuck out. Backed into my car and I wasn’t sure it was drivable.
” She winced as she looked at me. “I saw your car across the street and I just…I took it. I’m sorry.
I saw the spare key under the wheel well.
I just had to get the fuck away from her.
I drove like a bat out of hell. Saw Cody and just…
didn’t think. I wanted to get away for a minute.
Then I lost control in my recklessness.” She hesitated.
“I would say I’d pay you back but at this point, I don’t know if I can even do that. ”
“What about my apartment? My things? Brawny?”
“I didn’t do anything with any of those. I’m glad you got Brawny back, though. Where’d you end up finding him?” she sneered. “I can’t believe you would trust your father and my mother to watch him. I had to feed him every single day when I went over there.”
I looked to Cody, then to Romeo, who still had me in the curve of his arms.
He squeezed my shoulders.
Was I in the Twilight Zone? Was I seriously experiencing the same life that I’d led for the past two decades? I felt like someone was about to jump out and yell “PSYCH!”
The silence must’ve gotten to her because she said, “What?”
“You taunted her with Brawny’s disappearance for months, Birdee,” Vito said carefully. “In person and by text. You even warned her before Brawny disappeared.”
Birdee tilted her head, then exploded, coming up off the couch in a grimace of pain. “I fucking warned her! I told her that Brawny wasn’t being taken care of. I told her that he wasn’t getting fed. I told her that she needed to keep an eye on him.”
Cody started reading a text. A screenshot of the text that I’d received from Birdee.
“Watch your own stupid fucking dog. If you’re not careful, he’ll go missing and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself,” Cody read aloud for the room.
Birdee sat back down painfully. “I warned her. I didn’t have to be nice about it.”
“That sounds more like a threat,” Cody pointed out.
Birdee shrugged. “I don’t care how you look at it. All I know is that I warned her. I told her it would happen.”
“What made you think it would happen?” Gentry asked calmly, likely the only voice of reason at this point.
My mind was freakin’ spinning, and I couldn’t come up with a single constructive thing to say.
“And Morris?” Romeo asked. “What happened with him?”
My stomach sank.
I didn’t want to hear her answer.
I didn’t think that there was any way she could get out of what she’d done with Morris…but apparently, I was wrong.