Chapter Twenty-Two #4
“When Lily was born, I threw myself into raising her, and for a long time, living life just as her dad was good enough,” he said.
“I didn’t care that I lived in a house I hated, in a town I hated, with a wife I hated.
I had a daughter who needed me, and that was all that mattered.
But then things got so bad with Sue, it was looking like divorce, and Omma decided to make sure her daughter got every cent and more out of all three of us—only one legal husband be damned. ”
“Omma blackmailed you too.” It wasn’t a question.
“She didn’t even go to Sue with the information in the end. What she found on Rhodes, Micah, and me was just too good to give up, and she wasn’t going to let Sue drain us dry before she got the chance.”
“But you didn’t have any money? What could she want from you?”
“Lily.”
My lips parted, but nothing came out.
“Omma never approved of how we were raising Lily.” Step.
“We were too soft, too permissive, too lax, too this, too that. I think she thought when she tricked us into moving in, she’d finally get her hooks into Lily through Sue, but Sue was way too uninterested in being a mother to bother enforcing Omma’s rules, and Rhodes, Micah, and I just ignored her.
“But when she got the truth about what happened to Jason Earnst, that was the jackpot. She told me that if the three of us didn’t sign custody of Lily over to her, and if I didn’t get the fuck out and disappear, she’d put us all in jail,” he said.
“Divorce seemed inevitable back then, so it was quite a threat. When we left, we’d leave alone. ”
“But— But it can’t have been that simple,” I burst out. “You could’ve fought the charges. Even the murder charge! It was self-defense and you were eleven.”
“It was a cover-up, Sarang. The cover-up of a child’s murder in a state-run facility.
Compounded by the fact that said child killer then grew up to be a money-laundering thief,” he dropped.
“The only thing the jury would’ve seen is a dangerous felon that escaped justice for too long.
They would’ve put me away, and I’d have lost the only thing in my life worth having—three-fifths of this family. ”
“So what happened?” I couldn’t help myself. If all of this was more lies, they were the most engrossing lies I’d ever been told. “You obviously didn’t leave. The four of you didn’t get divorced.”
“What happened is Sue got hit with those lawsuits, and suddenly her useless husbands weren’t so useless after all.
Rhodes leveraged the firm to pay everyone off and keep her out of jail.
Micah has a bunch of big clients who loan out the keys to their summer and winter homes in the off-season, giving Sue endless escapes to lie low and figure out how to blame everyone else for her problems, and I continued to love and raise Lily, so she didn’t have to.
“Suddenly, trading us for richer husbands didn’t seem so likely, so she settled for the ones she had. After all, who wanted to be attached to the bird-poop lady?”
“Who indeed.”
Step. “Omma kept pushing for Sue to dump us, but Sue refused while the lawsuits were ongoing, and she definitely fucking refused when Omma let slip that Sue could walk away with Rhodes’s firm, and Omma could walk away with Lily.” He whistled. “Wow. Did that blow up in her face.”
“It did?”
“Oh, yeah. Sue did not want a firm she had no idea how to run. Your sister was born to be famous, loved, and adored, and investment managers did not have worldwide fans. And besides, who would fund her rise to fame if she signed away her only bargaining chip?”
It took me a sec, but then I got it. “You can’t get child support if you don’t have custody of the child.”
“Ding, ding, ding,” he sang. “When Sue found out your mother was maneuvering behind her back to force through the divorces, send her free nanny away”—he gestured to himself—“and rob her of future child support payments, she lost her flipping mind. She blew up on Omma, telling her that if she didn’t back off and stay out of our marriage, she’d sell the manor right out from under her, and the five of us would take off. She’d never see any of us again.
“That threat hit the bull’s-eye. Because Omma had just—”
“—found out she had cancer,” I finished, hearing the pieces fall into place.
“She was scared. Afraid of dying. Afraid of being alone. But most of all, afraid of dying alone. She took her finger away from the nuclear button because she wanted you all to stay here in the manor with her, but a ceasefire isn’t a surrender.
She planned to have the last laugh by making sure this.
..” I held up the drive. “...was released after she died.”
“Yes.” Alex took that final step, surrounding me in his spicy-sweet cinnamon cloud.
His thumb and forefinger closed on the drive.
“But I didn’t kill your mother, Sarang. There wasn’t any need or point.
She kept my secret for an entire year. She was obviously content with knowing our lives would be ruined after she died.
All we needed to do was find the email and backup drive, and destroy it without her knowing.
Then she’d just peacefully pass on, and that’d be the end of the whole sorry fucking episode.
“I got the drive that night and hid it, and the clothes, under a loose step in the servants’ staircase.
When I went back to get it the next morning, it was gone.
I thought the cops took it, but then they arrested your friend.
You were protesting her innocence so hard, it occurred to me that maybe you found the clothes and drive, but you didn’t know what to make of it.
You were hanging on to it until you figured out what to do with me. ”
I made a strangled noise. “That’s why you suddenly started acting all nice and sweet to me.”
“Well, I certainly wasn’t going to piss you off when you had the key to my freedom in your hands,” he said.
“But it’s different now. You know the truth now.
” I felt him tug on the drive. “I’m innocent, Sarang, so what I’m going to do now is burn the drive and the clothes, and we’re all going to move on with our lives. ”
Alex tugged a little harder as he reached down, closing on the plastic bag with his other—
“My father started raping me when I was eight years old.”
Alex froze—stopping dead with his head hovering over my cleavage and body bent at the waist.
“There is a secret passage on the second floor that leads to a secret room,” I went on—my tone flat. “No doubt it was made for the reasons Davis suspects. As a hiding place for alcohol during Prohibition. But what it became... was my hell.”
Slowly, Alex straightened... and let go of the drive and bag.
“Appa was clever,” I forced out. “When he’d come into our room in the middle of the night, he dressed head to toe as a clown.
The stupid outfit, the big shoes, the red nose, and the face paint.
No detail spared because he knew if I ever told anyone about the evil clown who’d sneak into my room at night and carry me through the walls to a room where he’d hurt me, no one would believe me.
“And no one did.”
No smirk. No laugh. No trickster’s grin. Alex’s bravado faded away, leaving behind nothing but true and naked horror. “Sarang... I...”
It was okay that he was speechless. Not even someone with a history like his could be expected to know what to say in the face of such evil.
“Even with all that fucking face paint on, I knew it was my father doing those things to me, but when I tried telling Omma, she didn’t believe me,” I croaked.
“She thought I was just a little kid having nightmares, and it didn’t help that every time I turned to Sue and begged her to tell Omma that the clown was real, she’d lie. ”
“She’d lie!?”
My lips twisted. “Oh, yes. You see, Appa was only doing it to me, not her. I got to deal with the monster every night, and Sue got the saint every day. Our father would shower her in treats, presents, candy, pets—anything she wanted. And all Sue had to do was keep telling the world I was a liar. That no one was coming into our room at night, and I was making it all up for attention.”
I made a noise under my breath. “I know what you’re thinking. She was a young, impressionable child being groomed by a predator. By her own father. She didn’t know any better. All the fault lay with Appa, not her.” I inclined my head. “And sure, I guess I can say that’s true.
“But that wasn’t what Omma thought when she woke in the middle of the night and found my father’s side of the bed empty, and me missing from mine.
She panicked,” I confessed. “She searched the whole manor for me but I was gone.
Then, she woke up Sue and ordered her to tell her what happened. Where did I go?
“Scared, Sue finally admitted that everything I said was true. Our disgusting, vile, pedophilic father was dressing as a clown, taking me from my bed at night, and dragging me to a room hidden in the walls.
“And just like that, Omma got a rolling pin from the kitchen, burst into the room, found him on top of me, and cracked my father over the head—killing him.”
“Killing?” he rasped.
“Killing. She didn’t slow down. She didn’t ask for explanations. She didn’t hesitate. She killed her husband, dragged his body outside, and threw it off the cliff.”
Alex’s head snapped around, staring at the walls that hid the cliffs as if he could see through them to that very scene all those years ago.
“As much as I’ve come to despise my mother over the many years,” I continued, pulling the words through a strangled throat.
“As much as I’ve cried, cursed her, and wished she’d change everything about herself, I’ve never been fully able to hate her, because all I could remember is that when faced with the truth—she chose me.