CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO #2
‘There you are,’ Margot declares. ‘Hiding?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Want a drink? Real one?’ she offers, cracking a bottle of Jack and pouring two fingers, drowning it in cola.
‘I’m driving.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Margot takes a healthy swig and then settles opposite him, looking him over. ‘I haven’t seen you in a year, man.’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s very full on.’
‘But it’s going well?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How are those kids?’
‘They’re fine.’
‘Aunt Jocelyn talked about them all the time, especially the little girl.’
Lachlan looks away. ‘She didn’t even know her name.’
‘Didn’t stop her.’
‘No, nothing ever did.’
‘Except death.’
‘Jeeze, morbid much,’ he says, determined to lighten the mood before he leaves. ‘Drink up, already. By the time they start playing ABBA you’d better be good and drunk so you can dance.’
Margot pours another, refuses his attempts. ‘Contract held up?’
Lachlan rolls his eyes. ‘That contract is titanium.’
‘I warned you not to sign unless they made amendments.’
‘They were never gonna do that and I needed the money.’
‘Which I appreciate.’ Silence grows between them. Margot stares down at her glass. ‘God, I really wanna say something nice, like she was proud of you deep down or whatever but…’
‘It’s fine,’ he says, clipped but not unkind. ‘She never hid how she felt.’
Margot pours herself another. ‘I know it was an accident, Lachlan, but I just don’t know how you let it happen,’ she says tightly.
‘What?’
‘Your dad used to push me on the swing and tell me all the birds sang for me.’ Margot exhales shakily, wipes her eyes. ‘I really loved him, y’know? And I know it was an accident, but you should have been more careful. I still miss him. I’m sad the kids won’t ever get to meet him.’
Lachlan’s lip curls. ‘I’m not.’
Margot winces. ‘Christ, Lachlan. Really?’
‘You have no idea how it was.’
‘Come on. I know he wasn’t the perfect father, but you killed him.’ She swallows. ‘You weren’t careful. That’s all I’m saying. We all know you did the right thing in enlisting. You put your skill where it paid off but I just wish you hadn’t made that mistake.’
He watches her drink.
A violent sense of pure injustice sears from its bone confines, locked away, locked up, Penhalyx’s jewelled blade scraped the bars but nothing more. Lachlan surveys her, waits until she sets the glass down before he speaks.
‘It wasn’t an accident.’
Margot’s eyes widen. ‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘You… why?’
‘Believe whatever you want, Margot. Bury your head in the sand like she did. But don’t stand there and call it a mistake just because the truth makes you uncomfortable.
If I’m the killer in the family, don’t labour under the delusion of it being accidental.
I don’t make mistakes. I wanted it to stop, so I stopped it.
My dad was a fucking monster, and I killed him. That’s all there is.’
His cousin stares. Music plays from next door. Her kids are laughing.
He makes to leave but she stops him. ‘Wait, are you serious?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He…?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I never knew. I. Fuck.’ She exhales roughly, cheeks red. ‘I can’t believe it. I just. Fuck me, I’m so sorry, man. I just. I never thought…’
‘It’s fine. It was a long time ago.’
‘No, no, it’s not fine.’ Tears fill her eyes. ‘Lachlan, I knew your contract was bad. I should never have let you sign it. I should have stopped you.’
‘We needed the money. I get it.’
‘No, please. Let me apologise.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I want to. I need to. I didn’t know. Jocelyn didn’t know either, I promise you. If she did, she would have—’
‘Look, it doesn’t matter, OK?’ he interrupts because he can’t stand her pity. ‘I don’t wanna talk about it.’ He forces a smile. ‘Tell me about life in the suburbs.’
It takes a while for her to adjust but, for the first time in his life, a blood relative actually puts his needs first and does as he asked.
Margot moves on, although he can tell it’ll plague her after. She doesn’t really deserve it. Family secrets are like illness, hard to break when cloistered.
His cousin tells him that the kids are little miracles who drive her crazy. She tells him what pisses her off at work. The group chats she hates. She tells him about this incredibly cool position she gets routinely offered that she refuses every six months.
‘Why do you refuse it?’
‘I mean, I needed to be nearby for Aunt Jocelyn,’ she tells him gently. ‘That and the cost of moving to a different country. I just—’
‘Do it,’ Lachlan says without hesitation. ‘She’s gone now. I’ll give you my advance when I get it in two weeks. That’s half a million. Just go. I’m being serious,’ he adds when she laughs.
Slowly, the humour drains away. ‘What?’
‘She left you the house, right?’
‘The kids, technically.’
‘So do what you gotta do. You’re a lawyer. I don’t want anything from here, so sell it, donate it, do what you like. Take the position next time they offer it. Go to Canada. I’ll send you the money as soon as I get it.’
‘Lachlan, no! That’s your money, holy shit. You’re working so hard!’
‘I’m not ever gonna do anything with it.’
‘Sure you will.’ She stares at him worriedly. ‘You’ve got three years left on your contract but then you can do whatever you like with it. Start fresh.’
‘That’s not gonna happen.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’d make me really happy to know the money went towards something good for you, Evan and the kids.’
‘Lachlan, this is crazy.’
‘Sell your house. Take the money. Go.’ He pats her arm, pushes off the countertop. ‘Live your best life.’
He kisses her cheek before he leaves, doesn’t speak to the kids who are playing with Evan, their Dad. It’s better not to mingle.
He leaves his dead mother’s house.
Doesn’t look back.
No rearview.
No replays.
He won’t see Margot again for a year and a half until she flies back into the country to stand as his lawyer, when the world as Lachlan knows it has ended, when the people who were his whole life are no longer alive, and when he’s forced to take the fall for the deaths of Julian and Jessamine Penhalyx.
He can’t know that now.
Driving away, he feels free of something he didn’t even realise was weighing him down. He just wants to get home to his princess and Jules and Blaire and Vasily and even Danya, the crazy fucker.
Lachlan Tanner has no idea how sharply the universe is about to prove that pride really does go before destruction.