Chapter 19 #3
But she shakes her head. “He’s always been an easygoing man. Inappropriate a lot of the time, but not a bad person, you know? He did what I asked him to do. Until this.” She stares down at the screen.
James scowls.
Could this have gone any worse? “Let me go and pack up my stuff,” I mutter.
“Jake moved into your room!” My mom says as I head out into the corridor. “I didn’t want him in my bed!”
God, I wish James wasn’t here. This is mortifying. When I step into my bedroom, my monitor is still on the desk, but everything else has been rearranged, and worse, my bookcase is empty. When I fling open the closet doors, it’s full of Jake’s T-shirts and pants.
I head back to the kitchen where James is nursing his mug of coffee and talking to my mom about Williams Security. And now another alarm bell starts ringing. She could tell him all sorts of things I don’t want him to find out about. School. College.
“Where’s all my stuff? My books? My clothes?” I say to my mom.
“He put most of it under the bed.”
Most of it?
I head back to my room and drop to my knees. All my belongings are haphazardly stuffed beneath my bed, and I drag everything out and place it on top of the comforter. My mom appears in the doorway.
“Half my books are missing,” I say, as I scan through the piles, my throat getting tighter and tighter.
My mom’s face scrunches up like she’s in pain. “I think he ditched some things, Sadie.”
I stare at her as something hot and tight takes over my chest: my books, my lovely books. My hands start to shake, bile rising sharp and fast. “What? You couldn’t have stored them in your room or your closet for a couple of weeks?”
“Sadie, honey …”
“You couldn’t have made sure he didn’t ditch half my stuff?”
She stares down at the floor. “He did it while I was at work,” she whispers.
“He has no right!” I shout. “I collected those books over years of reading; some were from when I was a little girl! They mean a lot to me! I had full series; older copies with covers they don‘t print anymore.”
I burst into tears. My mom flutters forward, like she’s not confident I’ll accept a hug from her. James appears in the doorway, blue eyes concerned as I bat her hands away. He steps neatly past her and wraps his long tentacles around me.
“I’m so sorry, Sadie,” he says, and he kisses the top of my head.
Before I can even process the fact that he’s kissed my head, or that I’m smushed against his enormous chest, my mom’s hand reaches out and grabs mine, and when I look at her, her eyes are watery, too.
“I’m so sorry, honey. I wasn’t here. He told me when I got home. I can’t seem to do right by you.”
She sacrificed so much for me, of course she did right by me, but how is this okay? I take a deep shuddering breath, tears still leaking down my face.
“You know how important my books are to me, Mom. How could you let him do that?”
I pull away from them both and turn back to the piles.
“Let’s pack all this up and get out of here,” I mumble.
I can’t look at my mom, or I’ll say more stuff that I’ll regret.
I grab two suitcases from the closet, open one up, and start packing books into the bottom.
James opens the other case and starts to help me.
My mom watches us like she doesn’t know what to do, her hands fluttering about, then she disappears.
“I want to take all the books with me,” I mutter, and James nods, stacking them carefully into the other suitcase.
I root around under the bed to make sure I’ve got everything that asshole shoved in there, and in twenty minutes it’s all packed.
I’ve got all the remaining books and a few extra clothes that I can fit in.
I fold up the rest of my stuff and stash it in my mom’s room.
When we wheel the cases into the kitchen, my mom is sitting at the table, crying.
I step forward and wrap my arms around her from behind. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“You never lose your temper, Sadie,” she says, tears streaming down her face. “Always such a quiet girl. I don’t know what to do when you shout at me. I’m so sorry about your books.”
“Did he say what he did with them?”
She shakes her head.
“Could you talk to him for me? Perhaps I could find some of them if he sold or donated them somewhere local.” But frankly, that would be far too much initiative for someone like him. They probably went in the trash. Fuck.
“Okay, honey. I’ll ask.”
I swallow all my anger back down. “I’ve put the rest of my stuff under your bed. Just tell him I’ve taken it all with me, okay?”
“I’m so sorry,” she weeps, and my stomach flips over. She’s had a hard life, and in comparison my books are the least of her problems. But, strangely, this feels like more of a violation than Jake touching my ass.
“They’re just books,” I say, aware of James watching me.
She hangs onto my arm. “I’m so sorry. Come back soon, okay?” she whispers.
“Of course, Mom.” I kiss the top of her head. She’s all I’ve got, and my love for her burns somewhere deep inside.
James wheels a case out into the corridor, and then he comes back in to say goodbye to my mom.
She gets up and pulls him into a hug as I take the other suitcase outside. When I come back in, she’s speaking to him in low, earnest tones, and he’s nodding at her. She squeezes his arm.
Christ, I hope she wasn’t saying anything awful like, “You’d make a wonderful son-in-law.”