Chapter 28 #2
“Oh, Alatheia!” Barrett’s mother hugged me. “Your aunt and that horrible man will never be allowed at the cottage again. They’re banned. I knew what kind of person he was the second he came through the door. I can always tell. There are always those kinds of people. I’m sure he’ll be handled.”
Everyone kept saying that to me. I honestly couldn’t think of a single way their family could change my future.
“I’m worried you all might believe what they said.” I might as well be truthful.
She shook her head, her brows crumpling. “No, and I can say that with utter certainty. I had men target me like that when I was young.”
“You did?” Barrett’s mouth fell open in shock.
A strand of Rosalind’s blonde hair fell down her cheek, and she squeezed her oldest son’s arm. “Someday, I’ll share. Not yet. It’s hard for me. Anyway, of course I have my own stories. Take care of her, Barrett. She’s a sweet girl.”
Rosalind picked up her vase and strode away on bare feet. I shook my head, since their mother made no sense to me. Does she like me now? What changed?
I walked into the main room, breathing a little easier. She likes me , I thought, awed by the possibility. It was kind of … amazing. Julian and Phoenix lounged on one of the couches, while Jeremy stared out the front window. “Someone is coming,” he said. “Two cars. Black.”
Barrett scrunched up his face. “It’s usually quiet after the party. Who could be dropping by?”
Stephen entered the room quickly. “Someone coming?”
Since I knew, I could say that I had been right and yes I could see Julian in his features. Jeremy was more his mom, but he was there too. Around the shape of the eyes. They might have gotten different amounts of each parent, but I could clearly see them both.
He headed to the window, not looking too alarmed. “Someone get the date of the party wrong?” Once he pulled aside the curtain, though, his entire demeanor changed. “Barrett, get Kit. Now. It’s the police. They are in unlabeled cars but I recognize the men.”
The police? I didn’t know why, but my blood ran instantly cold. Barrett didn’t argue, just turned and hustled upstairs. The twins’ father looked at me. “It goes without saying that you know nothing out of the ordinary about our family?”
“Yes.” I couldn’t blame him for asking me. If I were him, I would be the same way. He wanted to protect what was his, and I could respect that.
Julian rose and slipped an arm around me. “She’s with us.”
The doorbell rang just as Kit came down the stairs, Daniel and Eric right behind him. Kit answered the door to four men in suits.
The tallest of the two nodded in greeting. “Can we come inside?”
“Depends. To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?” Kit asked him. “Is this a social call, Lou, or is something else going on?”
Kit seemed calm, but I could feel tension snapping off him like static electricity. The entire room seemed charged, as if any misstep could ignite it.
“I’m afraid it’s not a social call.” He shook his head. “We’re here because we need to take your kids down to the station, just to ask them a few questions.”
A muscle ticked in Kit’s jaw and behind me I heard a gasp. Rosalind arrived at some point, and Stephen shifted to go to her side, not touching her, but close. “Keep it together,” he said in a low tone.
Kit tilted his head. “For what?”
“This is a courtesy, because you have always been so generous with us, but we’re here for three different reasons.
Cal Jones, your neighbor’s son from next door?
” I blinked as he spoke, remembering the kid from New Jersey.
“He overdosed last night. He’ll survive, but it was touch and go.
He says Julian assaulted him, and Phoenix sold him the drugs.
Aside from that, there’s a complaint against Barrett for assault as well.
We need to speak to Jeremy, because he’s accused of being part of it, although we have conflicting sources.
So technically we need all four of them. ”
My heart started to beat so fast, I could hear it in my ears. This can’t be happening.
“Call Mayer. He’s in town for the party. Get him to the station. I want him there before the kids arrive. You aren’t bringing my kids down in your car. I’ll drive them,” Kit spoke aloud.
Eric nodded. “On it.”
Julian stared at Jeremy, but he almost looked amused. Did he think it was funny? It absolutely wasn’t. My palms ran slick with sweat. Barrett turned around, expression bored, and nothing like my personal panic.
Phoenix rose. “I don’t sell drugs. I never have. I have seventeen million dollars or more in a trust fund with my name on it, so why would I sell drugs? He got them somewhere else, and he’s blaming me, because he is a jealous, scared fuck.”
“Phoenix,” Kit said as he sternly stared at him. “Stop talking. Now .” The one they called Dad in public extended his hand. “Let’s get going. Everything will be okay.” That last part seemed to be addressed toward Rosalind.
Jeremy shook his head. “I didn’t do anything,” he muttered to the room. “Maybe I should start doing shit, if I’m going to keep getting hauled to the police station anyway.”
“We’ll get pie tomorrow.” Barrett smiled at me as he walked around me to the door.
My heart raced, but none of them even looked a little nervous. Phoenix squeezed my arm. “Sell drugs. What a preposterous idea. Hey, today is the day of my kidnapping. Does anyone want to talk about that?” He shouted the last part as Julian nudged him out the door.
Eric and Daniel ran out after them, leaving Stephen behind. “Are you going to be okay? I would like to go, too.” His question was addressed to Rosalind, who didn’t seem to hear him. Her gaze seemed locked blindly out the window, as if the plain black cars hypnotized her.
“Can you stay here with her?” Stephen asked me. “I’m the calm one. It will go better if I’m there.”
I nodded. “Sure, I’ll stay.”
“Thank you.” He vanished quickly out the door.
Rosalind had gone as white as a ghost. She turned fast then rushed at me, grabbing my shoulders in her hands. My phone flew out of my pocket, slamming onto the floor face down. I pulled free of her embrace to pick it up only to find the screen smashed, utterly destroyed.
She grabbed it from me then threw it into the other room in annoyance.
“It’s broken. It’s gone. Everything breaks eventually.
Today?” Her accent changed, becoming a thicker drawl, less gentile sounding.
I wasn’t even sure she really saw me right then.
“ C’est une date maudite . It’s cursed. Today is cursed.
They took my baby and we were all destroyed.
You need to go. You don’t belong here. You can’t be part of this.
You aren’t with us. You are something else. ”
She took me by the arm tightly, her fingers pinching against my skin. “Maria,” she shouted, and a maid appeared. “They have taken the boys. They’re gone.”
“I think they’ll be back,” I pointed out. Won’t they? Stephen had asked me to stay with her, but I didn’t understand what was happening.
“Pack her up. All of her things! I want her out of here in ten minutes. Call for a car. I mean it. No more people. We are closing the shades, and we are hiding. I can’t have it again. If they come back, we are staying hidden. There are too many things, too many people.”
Rosalind lost it, clearly, and she was throwing me out. I didn’t know what to do as I watched Maria scamper from the room.
I tried, “It might be better, Rosalind, if I waited for the boys. If you still want me to leave, I’ll leave then.”
“No.” She shook me roughly, her eyes wild and not focused on me at all. “You aren’t welcome here anymore. You have to go . Now.”
Some of my numbness returned, because it wasn’t the first time I heard it, and wasn’t I expecting it from the start?
I’m not welcome. I have to go again. At least the routine became familiar with repetition.
No one ever wanted me. I couldn’t call for help, despite her obvious crisis. I would be thrown out, and that was it.
When they came back, they would close ranks. I might never hear from them again. I proved too much of a risk. They didn’t take me with them, ergo I wasn’t welcome.
I watched as bags got loaded into a waiting car, capturing a notebook and some pens before my belongings all ended up slammed into the trunk.
“I don’t want to go,” I told her honestly. “I want to stay here with you. I want to be with them when they get back.”
She shook her head wildly, her pupils dilated. “No. It’s better, you’ll see.”
“I am Dina’s companion.” Maybe the words would break through her daze.
Her laugh bordered on hysterical. “She isn’t one of us, either. She doesn’t understand. Any time I let myself forget, when I stop being afraid, it all blows up again. It’s for the best. Go. Now.” She practically shoved me into the car.
I couldn’t even text them.
The limo skidded down the driveway, somehow way too big with me alone in it.
We are supposed to be getting pie .
I sank into the numbness, a familiar emotion, at least. The circumstances had changed, but the end result would always be the same. I have to leave. Every time .
The hours passed slowly. Four, not that the light traffic made it better. I didn’t have a book or the Lent brothers to occupy my time. I missed Phoenix’s head on my lap, Jeremy’s not-so-soft snore in my ear, Julian’s sighs, and the way Barrett would meet my gaze across the car.
With nothing else to do, I started to sketch. I could always call upon the Poor Relation . She wasn’t real, but she didn’t let me down.
But I couldn’t call her up either. Instead, I sketched their faces. I couldn’t have them, but I would have my fresh recollection of them, while I could still smell them, on paper. One by one, I drew them. I only had my pen, so they were all colored blue. Still, I recorded them as best I could.
I couldn’t erase so I would just start over, frustrated with my skill, the paper, and my medium. Page by page, I kept trying to capture them until my fingers cramped, and I threw my pen across the limo. It was the closest thing to a temper tantrum I ever allowed myself.
“Did you leave me here for this, Mom?” I didn’t know why I shouted at my dead mother.
Rosalind had lost it, so maybe I could, too.
“Did you leave me here so I could never stay anywhere ? So I could be alone all of the time?” I gripped my head.
I wasn’t crying, but it felt like the repressed tears dammed up inside me, making so much pressure my head might burst. Then again, maybe all of my tears just dried up.
Rosalind said when she stopped being afraid, she was punished. I could get her feeling of being cursed, since any time I let myself be happy, I ended up shot down. I stared out the window at the passing traffic, as usual, with zero control over my destination.