Chapter 57
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The room is dark and quiet except for the gentle whir of the infusion machine perched next to the drawn blinds. But light from the hallway and the gaps in the window coverings illuminate enough of the room for me to see the faint outline of a tiny, frail body in the hospital bed before an overhead light abruptly switches on.
“Who’s in here?” my mother snaps, voice raspy and unfamiliar as she clutches the bedside remote.
My arm flies up to shield my eyes from the shockingly bright light, and I have to blink a few times before I can acclimate.
“I said who’s in here?” She’s staring right at me when she says it, but her eyes are cloudy, one of them barely cracked open as she peers out through the shiny pink-and-white skin covering her face and neck.
When the room spins, I reach out to brace myself against the wall, spotting the whiteboard beside her bed.
Patient is legally blind.
She can see blurred images and general shapes.
Please identify yourself upon entering the room and prior to administering patient care.
“Mrs. Dunn,” I croak, unable to bring myself to look directly at her. She was burned so much worse than I was…
Somewhere deep down, I’d been expecting to confront a monster, not a feeble woman with patchy hair and a broken body. My stomach does an uncomfortable flip when my eyes drop to her restrained wrists.
I mean, Jesus , she’s got tubes and wires sticking out from every available surface of her body and she’s struggling to hold up her own head, but they’ve got her handcuffed to the fucking bed like an animal?
“It’s Ms. Dunn now,” she says, voice low and grated as she takes a wheezy breath. “I’m here often enough, you think y’all would’ve caught on by now.”
“I— I don’t work for the hospital.”
God, I sound like a scared little girl… Where is all my rage and anger? Why am I letting her have this effect on me?
“Who are you, then? Did Joel send you? Does he finally believe me?” She breathes in an excited rush. The monitoring machine mounted on the wall alarms before shutting itself off when her heart rate drops back below one hundred.
“Believe you about wh-what?” Dammit, Willa, pull yourself together.
“Beau Blackthorne.” My mother yanks her cuffed wrist against the bed frame. “Joel has to believe me. It wasn’t my fault! Beau put that abomination inside me against my will!”
Goose bumps ripple across my flesh. The ticking of the hospital equipment is so astronomically loud it feels as though it’s banging against the inside of my skull as I stumble backward. My spine collides with the wall, and even though I can’t possibly move farther away, I keep trying to.
“Beau raped you?” I ask with a shaky voice as bile claws up my throat. “He’s the father of your daughter, not Joel?”
My skin crawls because I already know the answer. I saw it in the way Beau looked at me in the graveyard at Divine Mercy yesterday. Jesus , that’s why Charlie and I have the same color hair, why Cooper and I have the same eyes. It’s why I look so different from Noah, and it’s the real reason why Dad has barely looked me in the eye since he visited my mom six months ago…
I blink once.
I’m not a Dunn, I’m a fucking Blackthorne .
“Yes,” my mother says, voice cracking. “That wicked man forced himself on me. It’s not my fault. He?—”
Folding over, I clutch my stomach to stop myself from being sick all over the floor while my mother keeps droning on. I try to listen to what she’s saying, but with my head such a jumbled mess of emotions, I only catch fragmented chunks.
She’d caught Beau touching one of his nephews at the park…
He pinned her against a picnic table…
She was too terrified to admit the child wasn’t her husband’s.
She believed God would heal her of the abomination growing in her belly.
Then the abomination tried to kill her…
She prayed and prayed for an answer until one day, God revealed that fire was the only way to cleanse her and her daughter’s souls…
Rage quickens my blood, proliferating inside of me until I’m seconds away from exploding. I want to scream and curl up on the floor, but even more pressing is my desire to smash everything in this room and burn the world down for what Beau did to her…
For what he did to us .
This information in no way excuses her actions, but this woman is sick. Beau Blackthorne is the clear monster here. Now the only question is, what the hell am I going to do about it ?
Standing up straight, I whip out my phone and point it at my mother. “Ms. Dunn, you were right. Joel did send me.”
Joel … Because he’s not really my father…
I wipe an angry tear from my eye and bring up the video app before hitting Record. “Joel wants to believe you about what happened, but he said he needs more details. Would you mind starting from the beginning and telling me what happened so I can record it for him?”
My mother goes off on an even more detailed recollection of what Beau did. How he raped her and threatened to kill Noah if she told anyone. How when she told Beau the child was his, he accused her of being possessed by the Devil.
“Who else in Deadwood knows?” I ask once she’s done.
“No one,” she whispers, her opaque eyes blinking in the bright fluorescent lights. “I didn’t say a single word at my trial, but the doctors are telling me I won’t see the new year.” She adjusts the oxygen tubes near her nose with her uncuffed, shiny-scarred hand and shakes her head. “Joel already divorced me, and my son won’t visit. I just want my husband to understand I didn’t betray him. I want to keep him safe from the abomination Beau created. That girl’s not right.”
She keeps talking, but I interrupt her. “Thank you,” I say, adrenaline helping the insults roll right off my skin. “I’ll make sure the right person sees this.”
Without another word, I leave the room and skitter right past the corrections officer into the hallway. My thoughts are frantic, my heartbeat uneven, but it takes me less than two minutes to track down the number I need from the Town Council directory, and only three seconds to queue up the video and send it.
The read receipt pops up a few seconds later, and not long after, I get a phone call.
“ She’s lying ,” Dorothy Blackthorne hisses, her voice so loud and full of hatred I have to pull the phone away from my ear .
“We both know she’s telling the truth, and I can prove it with a court ordered DNA test if you’d prefer I make this video public.”
“What’s your price, girl ?”
Knowing I have one shot to make this work, I draw in a shaky breath and steel my spine. “I want Beau to stop trying to have his parental rights reinstated and sign off on Charlie’s foster parents adopting her. If he does that, then this video will never see the light of day.”
I can hear Dorothy’s mouth twisting into a snarl through her exhale. “That’s my only granddaughter?—”
“No,” I say firmly, “she’s your youngest granddaughter. I was your first. And I’d rather die than let Charlie spend a single second in your rapist son’s house. If you care for her at all, you’ll convince him.” I let that simmer for a second before continuing. “Otherwise, I’ll release this video to the public and my mother will take Beau to court.”
Dorothy doesn’t say a single word, but her breathing on the other end of the line lets me know she’s still there.
“I need an answer, Dorothy.”
“Fine,” she spits. “I’ll talk to him.”
If there’s one thing the Blackthornes are good for, it’s protecting their family name, but it’s not enough. I need to make sure she understands. “I’ll post this on social media if you don’t send confirmation that Beau’s officially withdrawn his petition for custody within twenty-four hours.” I take a deep, sobering breath. “And Dorothy, I need you to make one more thing very clear to your son. If he ever comes after me or Charlie, I will kill him. And then I’ll release the video anyway.”
“I said I’ll take care of it,” she hisses.
Relief washes over my shoulders like a cool wave. The rest of my world might be on fire, but at least I know Charlie is safe…
The line goes dead and I’m forced to stare at my own reflection on the screen. My stomach churns. Nutmeg-brown hair. Hazel eyes. Soul dead and empty. Turns out, Willa Blackthorne is a more fitting name than Willa Dunn ever was.
Maybe I belong in Deadwood with the rest of my cursed bloodline, but I don’t fucking care. After my brother’s funeral, I’ll never step foot in that godforsaken town again.