Chapter Nineteen Stella
Chapter Nineteen
Stella
“This is an outrage.” Isabel made the pronouncement as she paced in front of the refrigerator.
Even my thundering headache couldn’t block out her nagging voice. “Mom, please.”
What I really meant was please stop whining. I needed five seconds to think. A glass of wine. Quiet. A big sloppy kiss from Everly.
My gaze went to her. She sat on the floor stacking acrylic colored blocks on top of each other. Her structure would reach
a certain height, then she’d smack it, sending it toppling over. Then she’d laugh in this high-pitched squeal of pure happiness.
I could feel it vibrate through me. Warm me as it smoothed over every sharp, malformed piece of my past that had created the
prickly person I was today.
I wondered if I’d ever felt that free. Looking at my mom, listening to her grumble, I doubted it.
The household I grew up in kept score. Mom, the perpetual victim, suffered from real wounds as well as perceived ones.
Starting with her mother’s horrific, fiery death and continuing with my dad’s car accident.
The latter let Mom fully and finally recast and retool her entire life story as a person who things happened to so that she
never had to change her behavior. He left her—willingly or not—and we all, everyone who knew her, paid for his decision. Worse,
she became my lifetime burden.
Lukas drove home with me from the attorney’s office. He said he’d get a rideshare back to the office after we’d had a chance
to talk. Talking meant waiting for Mom to slink off in a ball of fury and despair.
He spent the last few minutes wiping off the kitchen counter, removing all signs of Mom’s day drinking. Every move telegraphed
his intention to clean up after another Clarke woman, emotionally and physically, as if being our collective keeper was his
part-time job.
“Isabel. I know you’re stressed but—”
She grabbed his arm, holding him tight to her side. “You can fix this.”
To his credit, he didn’t balk or push her away. He eased his body out of her punishing grip, putting a few inches between
them without insulting her or fully escaping her hold. “What exactly?”
Crunch. “Mommy!”
Another building destroyed. Everly clapped and cheered at her accomplishment.
“Just a second, honey.” I winked at her when I really wanted to take four steps across the kitchen and pick her up. Smash her little body against mine and not let go. First, Mom demanded attention. “We can talk about this later. After—”
“We need to deal with this now,” Isabel snapped. “If you’re not willing to help me, he is.”
Poor Lukas. Mom adopted him as her protector the second we started dating and refused to let him go even after we signed the
separation agreement, signaling the official end to our marriage.
“He’s a prosecutor.” The explanation wouldn’t stick but I tried anyway.
“Then prosecute her. This Hanna.” Isabel ignored me and unleashed her dark energy on Lukas. “She weaseled her way into the
Tanner family. Curled up against Patrick like a little—”
“You don’t know that.” Lukas fully extricated his arm from her overzealous clench as he spoke. He moved around the kitchen
island to the refrigerator. He had a glass of water poured and sitting in front of my mom in record time.
She didn’t let up on her mix of begging and ordering. She leaned across the counter, practically willing Lukas to join in
her crusade. “You said it yourself. Xavier dumped his meaningful assets in a family trust. Hanna is not family.”
Lukas shrugged. “It sounds like her son is.”
Yeah, it did and that meant . . . Damn. I definitely needed wine. And a lot of it. “If true, that makes Jeremy Sato, what,
your cousin? My cousin? The once-removed thing is confusing.”
Isabel turned on me, ready with a severe frown and sharp tone. “That’s not funny.”
“It sort of is.” In a what the hell kind of way.
Bang. Bang. “Mommy!”
“Everly, enough.” Isabel slapped her hand against the counter. “The adults are talking.”
Everly jumped.
I came out of my chair like a shot. “Do not talk to her like that. Ever.”
Mom performed her how dare you eye roll. “A little discipline won’t hurt her.”
I could hear Everly’s sad hiccupping sound and went to her. Picked her up but instead of savoring her sweetness tried to reason
with my mom’s determination to remain unreasonable.
“She’s not even three.” Thirty months, to be exact, but grandma bullying wasn’t okay at any age.
“You’re proving my point about being too lax.”
This was the wrong time. The wrong damned day. “Yeah, because you’re mother of the year.”
Silence fell over the room. Even Everly switched to straight staring.
After a few beats of quiet, Mom spoke again. A hum of anger threaded through her voice. “You don’t appreciate all I do for
you.”
I kissed Everly. Pretended to drop her, which she loved. I waited for her big smile to return before I set her down in her
mound of blocks.
“Do we really have to do this now?” I lowered my voice even as a scream begged for release.
“Fine.” Mom slipped off the barstool and marched toward the doorway. “When you’re ready to have a grown-up discussion, call
me. Until then, I hope your babysitter, or nanny or whatever Agatha’s title is, doesn’t go on vacation.”
Mom’s stomping steps echoed down the hallway. The bang of the front door came next. A loud and unnecessary exit, but at least she was gone.
Lukas whistled. “She’s on fire.”
“The question is why she thinks she’s qualified to be included in a grown-up discussion.” Where was that open wine bottle?
I scanned the countertops but didn’t see it.
Clink. Clink. “They’re broken.”
Lukas laughed as he watched Everly smack two blocks together.
“Let me help.” He crouched down to eye level and gently lifted the toys from her chubby little hands.
For the next few minutes, he arranged and stacked the blocks, removing and repositioning them until Everly approved and thanked
him in her sweet voice. She also gave him a quick hug before turning her full attention to the blocks on the floor.
She wasn’t his but I loved watching them interact. Loved and hated. During their play lightness filled me. A satisfaction
and sense of calm grounded me. Then he turned back to me and the punch of reality, of knowing that to Everly he would only
ever be the guy her mom knew and she saw infrequently in her life, swept through me with a chill that left me shaking.
“You’re good with her.” I could hear the sadness in my voice.
The sound must have registered with him because he reached over and put his hand on mine. “So are you. Don’t let your mom
convince you otherwise.”
After all we’d been through, that remained—the respect. We fought. Sometimes we brawled. He pissed me off. I disappointed him. But he was a good man. My biggest regret was that when the Tanners disappeared, I lost him, too. The two incidents would forever and hopelessly be intertwined.
“Thanks. I needed to hear that.”
“Anytime.” He gave my hand a final squeeze before letting go. “The good news is your mom will have some money soon. The life
insurance should help.”
Not me. I’d be fighting money requests for the rest of my life, thanks to getting the retirement accounts. I’d sit down and
figure out how to off-load money on Mom in a way that she wouldn’t run through it. Not today. I needed more energy for that
monumental task.
“The attorney said he’d send the paperwork and account information for everything soon. I’ll have a better idea about finances
then.” The will reading or whatever it was still had me reeling. “But why did Xavier do things this way? Why tie me to Mom
financially?”
“I’d say you pissed him off, but the real answer is he was an asshole. Being dead didn’t cure him of that.”
“True.” Xavier had been a savvy bastard. I’d bet he left the assets to me on purpose, knowing it would suck me into a lifetime
battle with Mom.
Lukas rubbed his hand over his tie in the same way he always did when he was thinking and deciding if he should share his
thoughts out loud. “He also could be a murderer.”
I groaned. I’d been holding the noise in for hours but this topic guaranteed it would seep out. “I know a few people still
think he killed his sister, my grandmother, way back. There was no reason for him to do it, and he wasn’t even in town when
that happened. The fire started with a portable heater.”
“That’s not the only horrific death in Xavier’s past and it’s not the one I meant.” Lukas didn’t let my weariness stop him. “With Aubrey’s reappearance and all the questions circulating about the other missing Tanner family members, the rumors about Xavier’s wife, Patrick’s mom, have resurfaced.”
Not this again. “Why?”
“You know why.” Lukas hesitated just long enough to make the air in the room grow thick. “Most people believe that if Patrick
killed Victoria he was following Xavier’s example. That Xavier started this downward family spiral thirty-two years ago when
he killed his wife.”