47. The Reckoning
WESLEY
I hadno fucking clue what was going on, but when Jesse called me from Marla’s phone, he only got out two words. “It’s Celeste.” I ran back to The Comfy Cushion like the world was on fire.
Seeing her break—really, truly break—in my arms like this was enough to convince myself that she was never leaving them again. Yeah, I was pissed off about Iris. About the time I lost and couldn’t get back. We were gonna have to work through that. But love meant forgiveness, which was a lesson only Celeste taught me. And I could summon a whole lot of forgiveness watching her fall to pieces.
This was beyond anything I’d seen before. I always thought her worst was discovering the extent of her dad’s cancer, but this was a million times worse. Celeste’s body shook so hard that her teeth were chattering. I doubted she was even aware of it, though. The sounds emanating from her mouth were inhuman. Incomprehensible. I gripped her harder, clutching her to me so she didn’t fall out of my arms.
“Her daddy’s truck is parked out back,” Marla said.
One of the strangest things I had learned when I first moved to River’s Run was that people often left their keys in the ignition of their vehicles. Nobody worried about theft in a town where everybody knew everyone. For once, I was grateful for it because I didn’t have to hunt Celeste’s truck keys down when she was unable to give me directions.
We flew to my house. I didn’t want to bother with stop signs and pauses when I already knew there wouldn’t be anyone on the roads anyhow. Once there, I carried her inside and straight up to what had once been Aunt Shirley’s room. My aunt had been confined to the den downstairs for the past several years, so no one had slept in the bed in a long time. All the dust in the room reflected such. It normally would have made Celeste pause to see a room so filthy.
Now, she only continued to wail.
I cradled her in my lap like a child, both arms fiercely pinning her to me. Hot tears were coating my neck and, in an instant, the collar of my shirt was soaked, but I didn’t care. The only way out was through. Celeste needed to let all of the pain out.
It might have been minutes or it might have been hours before Celeste’s crying died down. Her body started to relax against me and I realized she cried herself to sleep. As gently as I could, I settled her against the pillows, only darting out long enough to grab the blankets from the couch downstairs where I had been sleeping. Her face was red and blotchy, her breathing deep and even. She would be out for a while.
Grabbing my phone, I stepped out into the hall to call Marla and find out what was going on. Storming out after our fight earlier wasn’t the right thing to do, I could admit that, but this reaction seemed a bit excessive, and Celeste wasn’t a drama queen. Something else had to have happened.
“Is she okay?” Marla answered on the first ring.
“She cried herself to sleep,” I whispered, glancing back over my shoulder to Celeste’s sleeping form. “What the fuck happened, Marla?”
She sighed heavily, the defeat evidenced in the sound. “Desiree took Iris. And she’s selling The Comfy Cushion to your daddy.”
I was momentarily stunned as I tried to piece together how those ideas were linked. “What do you mean Desiree took Iris?” I demanded angrily. “Where is my daughter?”
Marla’s sharp inhale was piercing. “Celeste told you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I think I might have already known.” It was all there, clear as a bell. Iris could have been my twin. The blonde hair, the blue eyes…the fucking attitude.
Lord help us all, I thought.
“Why would Desiree take Iris? That has nothing to do with a business deal,” I continued.
“Because Desiree holds Iris over Celeste’s head like a pawn.” The anger in her voice coiled through the phone and sent a shiver down my spine. “She’s been doing it her whole life.”
“Her whole life…?” I trailed off uncertainly, some of the puzzle pieces starting to fit into place. “But she doesn’t have the right to do that.”
Marla replied, “Of course Desiree does. Iris belongs to her, after all.”
“What? No, she doesn’t. That’s?—”
Celeste rolled over fitfully, jarring my attention. I promised Marla I would call her back later and ended the call. Celeste continued to fidget in her sleep, jerking erratically with whatever nightmare she faced. I settled in beside her and pulled Celeste in my arms. It quieted her enough that she stilled, nestling into the groove my neck to sigh contentedly.
“We’ll get through this, lovebug,” I promised her.
* * *
It was well into the night before Celeste roused from sleep. I only managed to doze, too nervous of her waking up and spiraling downward again. As she lifted her head from my chest, her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, tears still welling in the corners. Blinking hard, she turned to me in astonishment and said, “How did I get here?”
I would have laughed if it weren’t so sad. “Lovebug, I had to come get you.” Attempting to keep my tone light so as not to spook her, I added, “You were in a rough way.”
Celeste nodded curtly and flung the covers off to stand. “I have to go.”
“Go?” I repeated, throwing the blankets onto the floor in my haste to follow her down the hall. “It’s the middle of the night. Where are you gonna go?”
For some reason, my question brought her up short and another sob shuddered from her throat. I really did need to work on my tact.
“You’re right,” she added. “I don’t have anywhere to go. I have nothing.” She should have been dehydrated with all the tears she shed earlier, yet there were more trailing down her cheeks.
I pulled her to me, tucking her under my chin and stroking her back. “You have me,” I whispered. “I know it’s not much, and I’m sorry for that, but I’m here.”
The tension in her body lingered for another minute or two before she finally sank into my embrace, wrapping her arms around my waist and squeezing me close. The fight left her, which was the closest I’d felt to a victory with her in a long ass time.
“I can’t go home anymore,” she finally replied, pulling away from me to wipe her eyes. “Desiree is selling the house and all our land to your father. Along with The Comfy Cushion.”
My jaw clenched as my teeth ground together. Fucking Benny boy strikes again! He had nothing to gain from such a deal other than another way to manipulate me. This was about his anger over my refusal to start at Madden Enterprises until I had things settled down here. Using Celeste to get to me was always his favorite method, after all.
“I’m not gonna let that happen,” I vowed angrily. “He’s only doing this to get back at me.”
Her sigh let me know she felt the weight of the world on her shoulders. “It hardly matters when I’m the one who has to deal with the outcome,” Celeste reminded me. She started down the stairs and I followed.
“Goddamn it, Celeste, quit walking away!” I yelled at her back. She almost reached the front door.
“Why? You taught me how!” she argued, throwing her hands up as she rounded on me. “And the only explanation I got doesn’t make a lick of sense!”
“It hardly matters when I’m the one who has to deal with the outcome.” I threw her own words right back at her. Because sometimes you just have to throw gasoline on a fire, like a dumbass. I folded my arms over my bare chest and glared at her.
“Oh my god, you cannot be serious right now!” Celeste yelled. “You left me!”
“And you hid my daughter from me for her entire life!” I screamed back. “Don’t you think that makes us even?”
My accusation hit like a slap across the face. She stepped backward, mouth hung open, and stared at me as though she had never really seen me before.
Fighting with her wasn’t going to make things better, so I let my temper deflate a bit. “You were the one who taught me that you have to love someone through their biggest mistakes. Or was that all a lie?”
Celeste opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish, weighing her response. “I’m sorry that I hid her from you. I wouldn’t have if I had any other choice,” she finally admitted.
But that only deepened my frustration. “It’s the same for me! My father has been controlling things from the moment I got arrested. Even now, all of this business with your family is about manipulating me! I’m sorry that you keep getting caught in the crossfire, lovebug, but we owe it to ourselves and each other to save this! To have the life we always wanted!”
Her eyes flashed. “What life? This isn’t living, Wes! Desiree has my daughter, my home, and my parents’ business in an iron fist. I have no hope of getting any of it back! You have no idea how hard I’ve been working, day in and day out, since Iris was born. I’m in that restaurant from sun up to sun down every single day, without a break, because that’s all that I have left of my mama and daddy that she hasn’t taken from me!” A sob caught in her throat and it killed me. I hated to watch her fall apart again, yet I couldn’t help but think this was a far more therapeutic version of what happened earlier. At least now she was voicing her feelings.
I stepped up to her, cradling her soft, wet cheeks with both my hands. “Celeste, that was all before me,” I assured her. She looked like a feral cat, cornered and terrified, but desperate enough to take the chance of listening to me. “It shouldn’t have taken me so long to come back to you. I can admit that. I was scared of how I hurt you and scared of not being worthy of you. I’ve been busting my ass just as much to build a life you deserve, without any of my father’s strings attached. And I’ve done it. So I’m here now, and I’ll stay here now. For my whole life.”
More sobs broke free and she leaned her forehead against my chest. “Wes,” she said tearfully, “we’re such different people now. I don’t know if I can love you again like before.”
I nodded into her hair. “You’re right,” I agreed. “We’re not the same and our love won’t be the same. It’s going to be stronger now because of everything we’ve been through.”
Celeste pulled away, taking all the warmth with her. “It’s not that simple.”
“It’s not that hard either,” I retorted.
Silence stretched between us like an empty vacuum. There was no way her stubbornness could beat mine, and I suspected that all of her protests had more to do with how broken she felt rather than how honest she could be with me. Hell, she probably wasn’t even being honest with herself at the moment.
Forcing her hand wouldn’t help the situation, though. “Tell me about Iris. I need to hear the truth from you.”
She winced again. “What is there to tell? Desiree has her and I’ll likely never get her back.”
This wasn’t making any sense. I frowned at her. “What does Desiree have to do with it? Iris never should have even been around that bitch.”
She pulled her long, blonde hair over one shoulder and moved to the living room. Sinking down on the weathered sofa, Celeste looked like she aged ten years overnight. Everything about our situation was beating her down, covering the radiant light I knew she emitted.
“Iris was born on February 8th. When I was still at the hospital, Desiree told me that since I was a minor, she was the legal adult who had custody of Iris. She said she could take her away from me any time she wanted, especially if I didn’t do the things she asked. That if I tried to talk to you in any way, I would never see Iris again. Desiree had already made Nana move out, so I didn’t want to call her bluff.”
All I could see was red as her words sunk in. Desiree lied, and that was the reason I missed out on one of the most precious moments of my life. Thank God I didn’t look good in prison orange or that bitch would be eviscerated.
“None of that is true,” I told Celeste through clenched teeth. “Just because you were a teenager doesn’t mean Iris belongs to her. Unless you signed legal custody papers, Iris belongs to you and has always belonged to you. Desiree has no right to take her from you.”
Celeste blinked at me like I sprung a second head. “What?” she squeaked out.
My rage was too great to fence in and I started pacing the room. “I graduated from Harvard Law School, Celeste. I promise I know what I’m talking about.” Too infuriated to hold back, I punched the wall closest to me. The resounding crack did little more than split my already callused knuckles. “Why didn’t you ever consult an attorney?” I inquired.
She whimpered. “Because I don’t have any money! Desiree told me that I had to earn my keep by running the restaurant or else she wouldn’t allow me to live in Nana’s cottage anymore. Sometimes Marla or Nana have to help me out just so I can pay Jesse, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to stay open.”
It was the wrong thing to say to me. I exploded like a volcano. “YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT FUCKING WOMAN HAS BEEN STEALING FROM YOU?!” Breathing like a wounded bull, I made to punch the wall again until Celeste darted in front of me.
“Stop, Wesley! You can’t keep lettin’ your temper do the talking! I’m just trying to explain what I’ve been through,” she finished.
“That doesn’t matter, Celeste!” I seethed. You mean to tell me that you haven’t seen a penny of the money you earned after working like a slave in that diner for TEN YEARS?!”
She flinched at the storm in my voice, choosing to remain silent rather than add to my fury.
The reproach hung heavy between us, however, which stopped me from breaking anything further. My mind flipped through a thousand facts at once to make sense of the chaos around us. One thing was certain. We were getting our daughter back immediately.
“Right,” I finally said, hands on my hips. “So we’re gonna get Iris back, and then we’re gonna get married. I’ll figure out a way to stop my dad from doing all this. Hell, all I really have to do is show up and he’d probably let it go anyway. Let’s just?—”
“Hold up, Wesley Madden,” interjected Celeste. “I am not marrying you!”
I blinked at her like I was stupid. Hell, I must’ve been because I could have sworn I heard her say she wasn’t marrying me. “Yeah the fuck you are,” I replied firmly. “Father of your baby, remember?” My finger drew an air halo over my head as if she had forgotten to whom I was referring.
She rolled her eyes and stood up to leave again. “That’s not how it works anymore, Wes. You’re in the wrong century.”
I huffed in exasperation as I trailed after her. She threw open the front door and ran down the steps like her feet were on fire. “Celeste, you love me! I know that you love me! So yes, that’s exactly how it works! It’s not like we wouldn’t have gotten married if I had been here for everything.”
She rounded on me with the grace of a dancer, and I had the fleeting thought that Iris got all her ballet talent from her mama. The idea brought me a ridiculous amount of giddy excitement.
“Why can’t you understand?” she shouted. “I’m not the girl you think I am! I’m not who I used to be! If you got to know me now, you wouldn’t still love me, Wes. Nobody could.” Her voice broke on the end, a pitiful squeak as her jaw clenched to prevent tears.
Desiree truly broke her spirit. She took my sweet, kind Celeste and offered her a world filled with cruelty, loneliness, and despair. Petty, jealous women like Desiree, and probably Hillary too, if she were anything like her mother, were the worst sort of people.
There was nothing I could say now that would convince Celeste otherwise. She needed time. The more, the better.
“Believe what you wanna believe,” I argued, “because my truth still stands. I love you, I’ve always loved you, and I’m not going anywhere. We’re getting our kid and getting the fuck outta here! Period!”
Celeste was on the brink of madness. She threw up her hands and screamed into the night sky. “I’m not leaving River’s Run, Wes! This has always been my home!”
This woman was going to be the death of me. Not even ten minutes ago she was insisting that she had nowhere to go and nothing left, yet she wasn’t going to take my offer to get us out of here.
I sneered. “Your home? So that your entire fucking life can pass you by while you live out your parents’ dream rather than your own? Hell, do you even know what you want out of life, or is everything just supposed to stop because they’re gone?”
It was a low blow.
The lowest blow I could deliver.
She crumpled like I struck her. In a way, I had. Regret immediately washed over me. No matter how angry I became, she didn’t deserve this.
Therefore, she surprised us both greatly with the venom she threw back at me. “Oh, like you’re so much better?” Celeste screamed. “Have you ever had a friend, Wesley? A real friend, outside of me? How could you when you don’t know how to do anything other than throw your daddy’s money around to control the situation? You’re a Madden through and through, and it makes me sick!”
Flashing red and blue lights came around the corner as a sheriff’s car came flying around the corner. Brakes screeched as it came to a stop…right in front of my house.
Fuck.
Chief Hillsborough himself climbed out of the vehicle, his skin even more wrinkly in his old age. The glare he fixed on me set off warning bells in my head. There was still an outstanding warrant for what I did to his stupid shed. And although he always suspected me, there was never any proof. Hillsborough was far too gleeful any time he was called for one of my fights back in high school.
Now, he looked downright victorious. “Gettin’ a whole lot of calls down at the station about a domestic disturbance,” Hillsborough stated. “Figured as soon as I heard the address that it had to be our…celebrity.” Only he made the word sound like a dirty expletive.
Celeste blanched before turning abruptly on her heel. “I need to go, Sheriff,” she said. “Nothing happened. I’m sorry about the racket.”
“That’s not the way we heard it,” countered the sheriff. “A neighbor phoned it in that the fella laid hands on the woman. I take that kind of thing very seriously around these parts.”
It had already been the longest day of my life, so I was fresh out of fucks to give for this prick. “Look, man, you heard her say that nothing happened clear as a bell. I don’t know what else to tell you. It won’t happen again.”
He stepped up to me like he wanted to square up, sending my temper flaring. “I don’t like your attitude, boy. What are you doing back in my town, anyhow? I thought we got rid of the likes of you.”
My jaw clenched. “I came for Ms. Shirley’s funeral.”
The sheriff eyed me suspiciously. “And yet, I can’t recall seeing you there this afternoon,” he snarled.
“Because there is someone who will always be more important to me,” I replied evenly. It might have been the answer to Chief Hillsborough’s question, but it was Celeste to whom I spoke. Our eyes held over his shoulder, and I watched as a tiny fraction of hope sparked to life in her face.
“You missed her funeral?” Celeste asked on a sharp inhale.
“What kinda man misses his kin’s funeral?” Hillsborough glared at me as though I had mortally wounded him.
Wasn’t this guy due to kick the fucking bucket? Where was all that “divine intervention” bullshit when you needed it?
Celeste shivered as though doused with icy water and turned back towards her daddy’s old truck, parked at the end of the driveway. “Everything’s fine, Sheriff. Thanks for checking on us!”
We both watched her drive away like her ass was on fire. My heart went with her.
“Seems to me like I better take you in for questioning,” the sheriff said as soon as her taillights trailed out of sight. “I don’t let anyone put their hands on a woman in my town.”
I sputtered like a fish out of water. “You can’t be fucking serious! She just told you that everything is fine here!”
As impossible as it seemed, Hillsborough took another step closer, his rotund belly pushing against me. “That’s not the way I heard it.”
The accusations from earlier pounded through my head. You don’t know how to do anything other than throw your daddy’s money around to control the situation!
Would it hurt as much if it weren’t true? Was I turning into my father, despite all my attempts to the contrary? I wanted to emulate Celeste herself, or even Mr. Hendricks. This was a test. A test I was going to pass.
“Fine,” I said coolly, holding out my hands, palms upward. “Let’s go talk down at the station.”
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. Spinning me around, a harsh clink! filled the air as he clamped handcuffs on my wrists.
“Shouldn’t you be reading me my rights, old man?” I taunted him.
Hillsborough only jerked me towards his squad car in response.