Chapter Sixty-Five Stella
Chapter Sixty-Five
Stella
Mom hadn’t answered a single, simple question since she got back from the police station yesterday. She verbally danced and
skipped her way around a clear answer. With each parry my frustration grew. I’d targeted all my anger at Hanna. Let the pent-up
frustration and yearslong slog of panic build and explode, aiming the shrapnel directly at her and catching Jeremy in the
cross fire.
More guilt. This never-ending swim through a pool of shame defined me. I sat in hypocritical judgment of Hanna, Aubrey, my
mother, and my patients. My path crossed with corrosive and dysfunctional people all the time. I saw my life as different
from theirs. Silently named their sins and found them wanting while I absolved myself from my choices.
With every story I listened to, I lost perspective on how to separate out the understandable from the unforgivable. My life
had become an uneasy accounting where I measured how bad an act was by how easy it was for me to get away with it.
I needed a break. Time to rethink my role and my ability to serve it. But first, Mom. The nanny took Everly to the playground a half hour ago, keeping her safe so I could focus on Mom.
She’d barricaded herself in the guest room she’d taken over. I’d tried to open the door earlier, but it wouldn’t budge. I
took a quick look at a photo Agatha sent me from the swing set as I marched up the stairs a second time. Everly laughing.
My favorite sound.
I dropped my cell into my pocket and emerged into chaos. The guest bedroom door stood open. I didn’t recognize the clothing
stacked in piles on the bed. The toiletries gathered on the dresser. Jackets and boots. Enough purses to open a store.
When did she drag all of this stuff over here?
“What are you doing?” My voice came out louder, harsher, than I intended.
Mom froze for a second, then continued stomping around. She was a bundle of misfiring nerves. Gathering things. Dropping things.
Shoving things in bags. “I can’t stay here.”
Not a helpful response to my question. “In my house or in Sleepy Hollow?”
Mom finally stopped and looked at me with a load of pants and sweaters overflowing her arms. “Do you understand what’s going
to happen to me?”
Years ago, she’d developed a strange affect. Her voice changed. Sounded more elite, if that was a thing. That weird wash disappeared
now, leaving her sounding like every other non-millionaire woman in town.
“Explain it to me.” I’d run over the evidence with Lukas. The longer he talked about Daniela’s injuries and Jeremy losing consciousness as a way to explain away the firsthand testimony against Mom, the less I believed Mom’s denials.
“Xavier started this,” she said.
Not a surprise where the blame fell. “I’m going to need more information.”
Mom dropped her arms, letting the clothing tumble to the floor. “I do not need your judgment or your condescension.”
Whip-fast the affect returned. It brought my annoyance with it. “I backed you up. I went over to Hanna’s house and—”
“She should have stayed out of this.” Mom yelled the comment. “I told Xavier not to trust her. First Victoria, then Hanna.
He should have been proactive and taken care of both of them on his own.”
Oh, God. “What?”
“You don’t understand what I had to do after we lost your father. Xavier made promises. I trusted him even though he constantly
threatened me about my mother.”
“Your mother?” I sat on the bed and pulled her down beside me. “What are you saying?”
“Your grandmother was very rigid. She was the big sister and always trying to drag Xavier to church. To police how he acted
even in his business life.” Isabel scoffed. “None of this would exist—the money, the property—if your grandmother had gotten
her way.”
“You lost me.” Part of me was grateful for that.
Mom continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “You wouldn’t understand. I tried to do what Xavier wanted. He never cared what it cost
me, but I expected gratitude. A payoff at the end.”
The idea that Mom sided with Xavier against my grandmother was too much to take in. I needed time to dissect that later. Now, I tried to find a new angle. “Tell me why you attacked Daniela.”
I expected denial. Shouting. None of that happened.
“That was an accident. It worked before. It should have worked again.”
My unease turned to revulsion. “Explain to me what you’re trying to say.”
“The cook wasn’t supposed to be there. The boy is the problem.” Mom’s shoulders slumped. “With him gone . . .”
My blood ran ice cold. “Did you hurt Jeremy?”
Mom blinked as if she’d been lost in the moment. Reliving it, likely not realizing her confession. “It was about the fire.
Scare Hanna out. That’s what he said.”
None of this made sense. “Who, Mom?”
“I’d done it before. The first was the hardest, of course.”
Fifteen years ago. That’s what she had to be referencing. “At the bookstore?”
“That was the second. That time I took Xavier’s stupid truck. Tried to divert everyone’s attention.”
Three fires. The one that killed her mother. The one fifteen years ago at the bookstore. The recent one at the café. The timelines
ran together into a disastrous pileup of information.
She couldn’t mean . . . could she? She did them all?
A wave of heat hit me. I was going to be sick.
She grabbed my sleeve. Tugged as she begged. “You have to help me.”
“Okay.” I couldn’t even think. “Let’s just—”
Her hold tightened. A tiny ripping sound broke through all the shifting and pleading as the seam on my shirt opened. “We can use the secret passageways.”
Oh, Mom. She knew it all. Hanna was right. Mom had been there. She’d played a role. “You know about the hidden hallways in Victoria
and Patrick’s house?”
She shook her head. “Those don’t matter.”
Did she even know what she was saying? Anguish, deep and raw, tore through me. The woman who pretended to be everything, to
have everything, disintegrated before my eyes. She’d never been a rock or even a help in my life, but she’d been consistent.
I counted on her need for public acceptance to control her actions, so I didn’t have to.
I’d failed so many people in my rush to make the Tanner stain fade, including her. Not this time. This time I needed to fix
the mess. “I’m so sorry. I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me about the passageways.”
I had to remember every word, so I slipped my hand into my pocket. Felt for my cell. Peeked down at the screen while Mom was
lost in her haze and started recording.
“Xavier’s house.” She sounded so clear all of a sudden. So focused and competent.
“What about it?”
“That’s how we got them out.” She nodded as if trying to convince me. “The fire was secondary.”
I had no idea if she was talking about now or then or if she’d made up the entire scenario in her head to keep the significance
of her role as extreme as possible. She loved the spotlight, but this?
“He needed me.”
The words I dreaded.
“You mean Xavier.” Fucking Xavier. He used her neediness to his advantage. He controlled and destroyed. He’d turned my desperate
mother into his puppet and his assistant.
“No.” She sounded confused by my reaction. Her eyes had a cloudy, disturbed look to them.
“Mom, I don’t—”
“Not Xavier.”