Chapter 7 Blood On The Family Tree
blood on the family tree
Lana pulled into the Spence Hotel in Kayden’s white Chevrolet Camaro and jumped out of the low-sitting car.
The air was cool and welcoming, a definite sign that spring was on the horizon.
When she passed Aunt Mae’s a few moments ago, she felt guilty having not visited the diner in a while and made a mental note to stop by after they returned from New York.
Lana waltzed into the lobby of the hotel for the second time that evening and made her way to the ancient elevator doors. She was certain Maureen would be in her room since she didn’t spot her eating dinner in the restaurant. If she wasn’t there either, Lana planned to wait until she showed up.
She pressed the “UP” button on the elevator and waited for it to chime, but couldn’t ignore the two receptionists behind the counter.
They were giving her pitying stares and whispering amongst themselves.
It was tiring to be looked at that way everywhere she went, or, worse, blamed for causing the drama, as one newspaper article suggested.
Lana was at her wits ‘ end dealing with it and wouldn’t let them treat her like their charity case. A middle-aged couple walked out of the restaurant across from her, stopped, pulled out a cellphone, and started recording. Lana’s face grew hot, her fists balled, livid at their audacity.
“Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?” she yelled at them quite loudly.
People in the restaurant turned from their meals, staring through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls, eyes wide.
The man pushed the phone down from his companion’s hand, and they walked out of the hotel.
Instantly, Lana felt ashamed of her reaction and was all too happy when the elevator door finally chimed.
Holding her breath, she scurried in and waited for the doors to close, her eyes planted on the floor, the ugly brown carpeting her only company.
The doors pushed together slowly, and the box started to lift, allowing her to let out the long-held breath.
She was losing her patience a lot lately and was tired of feeling bad for it.
Those people were rude, she reasoned in her head.
Her emotions were so raw that she didn’t have a handle on them much lately, and being made to feel like a victim was her limit.
She’d pitied herself enough for the entire town and was done playing into the shitty cards she’d been dealt.
It was time for a new deck. Once the elevator opened, she stepped out into the hallway and headed for Maureen’s room.
It was the same one she had months before, a personal request she made to Mr. Spence.
Not that she needed to. Ever since the incident, the town has had more visitors every day.
Mostly gossip blogs and media looking for anything to keep the drama wheel rolling.
When Lana got to the door, she knocked and waited as she heard the shuffle of feet.
The walls were paper-thin, and another reason a renovation was desperately needed.
“Who is it?” Heathcliff asked through the door.
“It’s Lana, Heath,” she yelled into the door, her anxiety rising by the minute.
Slowly, the door creaked open, and he stood back. He was dressed for bed, and beyond him, Lana could see a surprised Maureen putting her robe on.
“How are you?” he asked, standing to the side so she could walk in.
“I’m OK,” Lana replied, stepping in.
It smelled of vanilla-scented candles, and she didn’t want to think about what may have happened right before she came knocking. Maureen approached her, forehead wrinkled with worry.
“What’s the matter? Is it Kayden?” she asked.
“No, he’s fine. I need to talk to you—in private,” Lana looked at Heathcliff for permission.
“Of course, I’ll run down to the lobby for a bit,” he responded.
He pulled a jacket on, grabbed his golf magazine off the nightstand, and left.
Maureen looked after him as if she didn’t want to be left alone, but it was too late.
She opened her mouth to say something, but the door was already closed behind him.
Lana turned to Maureen, who sat on the edge of the bed, and wrapped her arms around her thin frame.
She pointed to the chair in front of the vanity by the window, and Lana walked over to take the seat.
She stopped and looked out the window a moment and saw for the first time, the front row seat Maureen had during the accident.
The new light post stood out as a stark contrast to the rest and looked out of place.
Its light colored wood against the aged, darkened color of the others stood out like a beacon on Deleveaux Street.
Her brows furrowed, staring down at the spot where she and Kayden lay months earlier.
What if I’d just agreed to stay in the room with him like he’d asked?
What if I’d just stayed in town the first time instead of running scared?
All this swam through her mind. She hadn’t realized she’d been sitting in silence for several minutes until Maureen spoke.
“Are you okay?” Maureen wondered, concern on her face.
Her eyes met the older woman’s, pained, confused. She promised not to shed another tear, and she meant it. They were replaced with something else now—determination.
“Why?” she scolded.
Lana didn’t need to embellish on the question.
Maureen’s eyes turned glassy, the rush of tears threatening to release.
She could finally see the strong, brave Nurse who jumped into action for Rachel and changed her son’s life.
For a while, Lana was a shadow of herself, but she was slowly evolving, changing, and no matter what manner of lies or sleight-of-hand tactic would stop it.
Wiping the tears from her face, Maureen started to speak.
“Kim called me a few weeks before the arraignment and wanted to meet in person. She said she had something important to tell me and that couldn’t be said on the phone.
Of course, I thought she was insane and refused at first, but she insisted,” Maureen stood and paced the room, her silk gown flowing around her like an apparition.
“She knows all my secrets, all the bad things I’ve locked away and tried to keep from my children. Lana, she threatened to expose them if I didn’t help her, and I felt I didn’t have a choice.”
“So, because of your ego and bad life decisions, she gets away with attempted murder? Do our lives, or the life of our unborn child, mean nothing?” Lana yelled.
The flimsy excuse didn’t absolve her for what she did, and she wasn’t going to let her show of emotions deter her from getting to the absolute truth.
“It does, Lana, it does. It’s the last thing I wanted to do. I didn’t have a choice,” Maureen pleaded, approaching her.
She was shaking so bad, Lana thought she would fall over.
“What does she have on you? What was so bad that you needed to ruin our lives over?”
“It’s Vincent,” Maureen said finally.
“Kayden’s dad. What about him?”
Maureen shook her head, staring at the carpet, swirling her toes in it. She was no longer the powerful woman who could bring a room down with one look. To Lana, she looked like a petrified shell of her former self.
“Kim was with me when Vince died,” Maureen said finally.
Lana knew all this already. Kim was there and helped Maureen through her heartbreak, and that’s how they got close.
“That morning when I woke and found Vincent next to me in the bed, there was evidence and a note,” Maureen continued.
“What do you mean, Maureen? What note?”
“Vince took his own life. Kim heard the screams coming from the bedroom and rushed in! That’s when I asked her to help me.”
“Help you do what?” Lana was confused, and the whole story sounded convoluted at the very least.
“Cover up the suicide. The company had started to lose stock, our properties weren’t selling, everything was a mess, but I knew we’d get through it.”
“How could you hide the suicide?” Lana asked her, her eyes boring holes into Maureen’s face.
“Potassium chloride,” Maureen started, “I don’t know where he got it, but the syringe and vial were on the floor by the bed when I found him.”
Lana sat back and ran her hands through her hair.
That made sense. As a nurse, she knew that potassium chloride overdose mimicked heart attack symptoms, and since heart attacks released a large amount of potassium chloride in the blood anyway, there was no real way to prove foul play without evidence, which was what Kim helped her get rid of.
“Does she have proof of any of this?”
“Apparently, she does.”
Maureen sat back down on the edge of the bed now and smoothed her hair back and wiped her face.
“If the board knew why Vince committed suicide, they’d have never let me run the company. They’d have voted me out as CEO or liquidated their stock, and Capshaw Realty would’ve been done. I couldn’t lose everything we’d built.”
She stood again and covered her mouth as more tears flowed down her face. Lana sat in astonishment, hearing the details of what happened, and prayed none of those traits lay dormant in Kayden.
“The only thing that would give us the push we needed was the insurance claim. I was able to pull us out of the fat by investing in new development deals, eventually.”
Lana stood from the chair and looked at Maureen, her red face a mess, a far different woman than the one who so strategically tried to ruin her not long ago.
“And the insurance policy wouldn’t pay out in the event of suicide, am I correct?”
Maureen shook her head and sank to the floor.
“It was a newer policy; we’d had it for less than two years, so no, they wouldn’t pay the premium. Our finances were tied up with so many projects across different states… we were leveraged to the max. I couldn’t let all we worked for go down the drain, Lana.”