THREE
TURNED OUT IT was as easy as bribing the caretaker’s kid to buy supplies.
No phones. No computers. Everything was done the old-fashioned way, long hand on legal pads. One after another, their failed attempts littered the floor in scrunched balls and torn fragments.
For five whole days, they stayed in that room, together, draft after draft, argument on top of argument. Would they ever come to a consensus? With the curtains perpetually closed and meals only arriving when her father chose to order, she couldn’t identify the time of day and still didn’t know which state they were in.
Sitting on the floor, back to the end of the bed, she was numb, yet still curious.
“Why did you do it?”
Her father, in the chair by the TV that had never been on, looked her way. “Do what?”
Frayed emotions settled in their intensity. It just wasn’t possible to live with such angry hate every minute, especially when they were hardly sleeping.
“Silvio Manzani, was he the first? Who approached you with a bribe?”
“We met. A few years ago, by accident.”
“Accident, huh?”
“We were at a city function, a fundraiser for something, I can’t remember. I’d stepped out to take a call. When I hung up and turned around, he was in the office with me.”
“That’s not by accident,” she said. “Whether you knew it was going to happen or not, that was deliberate.”
“Perhaps. It was harmless conversation, at first. We talked about the city, about a vision of the future. About our differences… our similarities.”
“He seduced you, told you what you wanted to hear.” Flattered him, no doubt. “Gave you a sense of righteousness. Shit, Dad, you walked right into it.”
“What about you?” Though rankle hid in his expression, he did a not so bad job at remaining calm. “How did Ire seduce you away from your family?”
“It wasn’t like that,” she said, doodling in the top corner of the pad on her folded legs. “Connel and I were entirely mutual in our attraction.” Though he’d videoed them, suggesting he intended to play her from the first second. “Conn never promised me anything but truth and he never let me down.”
Ronald had torn the phone from the wall on their first day there. That and the TV’s power cord had taken a shallow bath, rendering them useless. Any chance of help, of learning the truth of Conn’s fate, drowned with those power supplies.
“Ire McDade was a dangerous man.”
Past tense. Her father always spoke of him in the past tense. Uncertainty was poisonous… and contagious.
“I never doubted that.”
“He could’ve hurt you.”
“He didn’t,” she said, raising her eyes from the stag’s head she’d drawn. Though smaller, it was a perfect copy of Conn’s tattoo. “He’d have done anything for me, Dad. Anything. He loved me.”
“Did you consider your family when you were with him? Giving yourself to him?”
“Yes,” she said, fighting to restrain herself. “In fact, we broke up once because I couldn’t exist in two worlds. He gave me up. He didn’t have to make the sacrifice; he did it for me. For the McLeods.”
“I didn’t go into my deal with Silvio intending to hurt anyone.”
“These things always start with one small step,” she said. “Doing the right thing never starts with doing the wrong thing.”
“Your brother’s words.”
“He’s right. It’s always him, don’t you see? Lachlan is the best of us. Mom and Grandpapa are gone. You and I are damaged, broken. The only hope for the McLeod family is Lachlan’s purity. He wants to do good, to be good.”
“He was raised with integrity.”
“No thanks to you,” she said. “Lachlan spent most of his youth raising me. He spent most of his life setting a good example for me.”
“Is that what angers you? Why you chose to give yourself to…? You blame me for neglecting you?”
“No, actually,” she said, perspective adjusting. “My brother raised me with love and was an excellent role model. I adore my brother. Which you know, that’s why you used him to get me into that room with Silvio. Lach puts me, us, ahead of everything else in his life.”
Maybe that was it. Lachlan wanted to raise her right, so hadn’t taken advantage of the easy route, the reckless route, if ever offered to him. Choice over his character, his actions, was influenced by his need to set an example for her, and the expectation of the McLeod generations above him. Had her brother ever done something for him, been his true self, or was his entire life crafted by conformity?
“Sometimes we have to value more than one thing. My work with the city—”
“If we’ve accomplished any kind of truce in the last five days, can we at least be honest with each other? You enjoyed the attention. It’s no shame, it’s allowed. You were in control at work, felt important, you got a recognition there that you didn’t get with your family.”
“Silvio, more than once, brought you and your brother into conversation. Your safety was a concern.” Before it became about money, maybe. “A man like that can… I did stand up for you, for my family.”
“Threats are one thing, but the bigger picture… Maybe now with Grandpapa gone, it’s more precarious, but Silvio couldn’t have hurt Lachlan. Wouldn’t have. And Evander’s attention, it’s been a part of my adult life as far back as I remember.”
“Silvio is not close to his youngest son.”
The Manzani obsessed with her.
“No. You weren’t close to your children either.”
“I stood up for you.”
“And I did the same,” she said. “Maybe we both started out trying to do the expected thing, the default thing, in standing up for our family. But now…” Everything seemed warped, every memory unreliable. “I don’t know what we were doing, either of us.”
Giving themselves permission to do whatever they truly wanted. That’s what they’d been doing. Stacking their selfish desires under a false umbrella of virtue gave them a righteous, ridiculous excuse. They weren’t thinking about the family, they were thinking about themselves.
A pause lingered. Neither waited for anything, they just sat with themselves for a minute. Who was she without Connel? Her life had been molded by the men in it. First Lachlan, her work at the Chronicler, Evander, the Manzanis, the McDades, Conn… Her morals twisted in the wind, catering to whatever the moment required. It never scared her to be near Conn. In spite of what he’d done, even in her company, disgust, fear, neither visited when he was around.
Conn would never be with her again, and her grandfather was out of the picture. Who was she without them? Who did she want to be? The McLeod restraints disappeared when she admitted her relationship with Connel. Since being free of judgment, she hadn’t paused to figure out if there were other facets of herself she wanted to explore.
Lach. It came back to him, didn’t it? Without Conn, her life stalled. Maybe it was her turn to look after her brother, to prioritize him, like he’d done when she needed him. He’d lost so much. His relationship, his apartment, maybe that’s why he moved in with her, to get away from his own grief. He’d said she needed a keeper, maybe it was him, maybe he needed one. Had he come to her for support in the wake of his heartache? What had she done? Thrown her relationship in his face and moved out. Great job, Sersha. Just great.
“I do enjoy being important,” her father said, surprising her with candor. “And I never was with you.”
“Important?”
“You respected your brother. Idolized him. You clung to him, hung on his every word. He got through to you in a way I never could.”
“You could’ve tried.”
“I did.”
“Harder. You could’ve tried harder. I lost my mother. I was the only female in our family; I’ve always been out of place with the three of you. Lachlan was the only person ever happy to see me, ever aware of me and my safety, my comfort. He cared about me. I never got that from you, or from Grandpapa, not really.”
“We’re a different generation.”
“That’s an excuse,” she said. “You gave yourself the out and put my wellbeing, my upbringing, on Lachlan’s shoulders when he was just a kid himself. A grieving kid. I’ve always thought it must’ve been more difficult for him. He had memories. He missed the woman our mother was. I missed a specter, a glimmer of an illusion. My mother was whatever I made up in my head, whatever Lachlan gave me. I pieced together the puzzle from photographs and whispered lullabies.”
“I never intended to do it alone. We were supposed to do it together, raise a family together—”
“You blame her?”
“No.” Something wistful touched his words. “I was lost. She left me lost. And I didn’t like that, I can—I’m used to being in control.”
“And you were alone.” She got it. More now as an adult than had been possible as a child. “You expected to be half of a whole and the other half suddenly vanished. Maybe you did deserve a better hand than you got, maybe not. At least you got the chance to be with her, to be married and have two children with her.” She licked her lips. “You’ve taken that chance from me.”
“Ire McDade was not a suitable partner,” he said, stern in his disapproval, nothing new. “A life with him would’ve been intolerable.”
“Now we’ll never know.” She didn’t need to experience it to know she’d have been happy in a life with Conn. “Does it mean nothing to you that he showed me love? That with him, I learned what it was to be truly accepted, to be happy?”
She didn’t envy his conflict. Ire McDade, as her father knew him, was the epitome of a bad boy. No father, no regular father, would want his precious daughter with such a dangerous individual. He seemed to conveniently forget that he was no regular father. And that she was in no way “precious” to him. Their relationship, though it was changing in these days they spent together, wasn’t traditional either.
What kind of a daughter could sit with the murderous man responsible for the death of her love and the family’s patriarch, and accept his criminal acts? She didn’t accept them with happiness; no, happiness went away with Conn. But life with the McDades, the life she’d lived through her work, taught her normality was relative.
“We should get back to work,” her father said. “We’re close on this draft.”
Inhaling a deep breath, her eyes went back to the page as she prepared to read, again, their latest—
A knock brought their gazes together.
A knock. On the door.
“Did you order food?” she whispered.
Her father shook his head, bringing the gun to his hip as he rose to go to the window.
Should she call out? Why? So her father could shoot someone else? If they didn’t find common ground, a compromising resolution, only one of them could go back to their life in the city.
Though the value of her existence, without Conn, put a question mark over her desire to breathe. Without him, it didn’t matter much where she was or what happened. Spending time with her father was exhausting; how much fight did she have left in the tank?
With the barrel of the gun, Ronald edged the curtain aside and immediately leaped back. “Shit.”
“What is it?” she asked, probably louder than she should’ve. “Dad?”
“Fuck,” he hissed but went to unlock the door.
“Dad, what is—” He opened it and stepped aside to show their guest. “Lach!”