Chapter 33 #2
“He lied about his age when he met me. He lied about his past. He lied about his loyalty. He lied about what he believed. He lied about how he treated women. Children.” My voice broke on the last word.
I hated it. Hated him for putting that weakness in me.
Hated myself for still missing a man who’d apparently never existed.
I forced myself to continue.
“I keep going back through my life, trying to figure out what was real. Every memory feels different now. Every sweet thing he ever said. Every fight. Every apology. Every time he touched me.” I swallowed hard. “I don’t know what belonged to me and what was manipulation.”
Lettie whispered, “That’s not your fault.”
I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “That’s what Diana keeps telling me.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Truth doesn’t always make things easier to carry.”
“No,” she said softly. “It doesn’t.”
Something in her voice made me look up.
There was understanding there. Not the polite kind people offered when they wanted to be comforting. Real understanding. Personal understanding.
I wondered again what that mother of hers had done to her.
I wondered how much of Lettie’s sweetness had been grown out of love and how much had been forced to survive neglect.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said before,” I said, keeping my voice even.
Lettie’s brows drew together slightly, but there was no confusion in her eyes. Only recognition. “About helping you?”
I nodded once. “About being prepared.”
She didn’t ask anything else right away. She didn’t need to. Whatever she’d offered me before, she’d known I wasn’t ready then.
“I still have it,” she said quietly after a moment. “It won’t hurt him. It’ll just make it impossible for him to keep up.”
I let out a slow breath. “That might be enough.”
She studied me for a moment longer, something like approval settling into her expression. Then she gave a small, resolute nod. “Okay. I’ll get it for you.”
But I saw the sadness move through her as she nodded.
“I’m not running,” I told her.
“I didn’t think you were.”
“I need to say it anyway.” I lifted my chin. More for myself than for her. “I’m not running from the club. I’m not abandoning my children. I’m not leaving because Lucas broke me.”
Her eyes softened.
“I’m leaving because I need to remember who I was before him. Or maybe figure out who I would have been without him.”
Lettie’s lips parted, but she didn’t speak right away. When she did, her voice was quiet. “I think that’s brave.”
Something cracked in my chest.
Brave.
I’d been called many things in my life. Strong. Loyal. Stubborn. Difficult. Queen. Mother. Old lady. A bitch.
Not brave.
Never brave.
I looked away before she could see too much.
“I don’t feel brave.”
“Maybe brave doesn’t feel brave while you’re doing it.”
I smiled despite myself. “You sound like someone much older than twenty-five.”
She gave me a small shrug. “I’ve always been older than I should be.”
The words slipped out too easily.
Too honestly.
Then she looked like she regretted them.
I reached across the table and covered her hand with mine.
Lettie froze.
Not because she didn’t want the touch.
Because she didn’t know what to do with it.
That hurt more than I expected.
“You deserve softness too,” I said.
Her eyes filled instantly.
She tried to blink it away.
Failed.
“I have softness,” she whispered.
“Do you?”
She looked toward the garden. Toward the house. Toward wherever her mother was tucked away inside, waiting to be served by the daughter she’d convinced herself existed only to meet her needs.
Then she looked back at me.
“I’m learning.”
Brock.
The answer was Brock, whether she said it or not.
Good.
My son in everything but blood had chosen well.
And maybe, somehow, so had Lettie.
“Don’t let the club scare you,” I said.
That startled a laugh out of her. “Rhea, have you met them?”
“I raised half of them.”
“Then you know why I said it.”
I squeezed her hand. “They’re loud. Messy. Violent. Ridiculous. Occasionally stupid.”
“That’s generous.”
“They’re also loyal in ways most people will never understand. Once they love you, they don’t always do it gently. But they do it completely.”
Her throat worked.
“And Brock?”
I held her gaze.
“Brock will love you like he’s guarding the entrance to hell and you are the only thing that has ever made him want to leave it.”
Her breath caught.
I let go of her hand before the moment became too much.
For both of us.
We finished lunch slowly after that. The conversation shifted to safer ground.
Plants. Recipes. Cerberus. The chickens.
The absurdity of grown men pretending they weren’t terrified of a black dog with better manners than most of them.
Lettie showed me the herb beds after we cleared the table, explaining what she used for teas, salves, cooking, soaps.
She was animated there, moving from plant to plant with knowledge and affection, her fingers brushing leaves like greetings.
She belonged in this garden.
That was clear.
But she also looked lonely in it.
When we reached a section bordered by an iron gate and climbing vines, Cerberus stopped ahead of us and sat.
Lettie’s hand moved subtly. Almost instinctively. The dog stayed where he was.
I noticed.
I noticed everything.
“What’s back there?” I asked.
Her smile never faltered. But something shuttered behind her eyes. “Plants that need more care.”
That was not an answer.
I had spent too many years married to a liar not to know when someone was choosing words carefully.
Still, I didn’t push.
Lettie had secrets.
So did every person I loved.
Maybe the difference was that Lettie’s secrets felt like armor. Not weapons.
When it was time for me to leave, she walked me to the front of the house with Cerberus padding silently beside us. The sun had shifted higher, warming the porch steps and turning her hair nearly white-gold in the light.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
“Thank you for lunch.”
“You’re welcome anytime.”
The offer was simple.
Sincere.
Dangerous to a woman who hadn’t realized how badly she needed somewhere quiet to be welcome.
“I may take you up on that when I come back.”
Her smile trembled just a little. “I’d like that.”
I stepped closer. Because I was old enough not to ask permission for every tender thing. I touched her cheek.
Lettie went still again.
So still.
Then slowly. Carefully. She leaned into my palm.
My heart broke for her a little.
Maybe more than a little.
“I don’t know what your mother taught you love is,” I said quietly. “But if it makes you small, if it keeps you afraid, if it asks you to disappear so someone else can feel important... that isn’t love.”
Her eyes glistened.
“Rhea—”
“Brock won’t ask you to disappear.”
She swallowed hard.
“He’ll probably ask too much. Push too hard. Hover until you threaten to poison him.”
A watery laugh escaped her.
I smiled. “But he won’t make you small. He won’t pull you out of the darkness, Lettie. He’ll stand in it with you.”
She didn’t respond. But the look in her eyes told me she understood I knew the truth. Zeus had told me about the people who were dying. The club hadn’t put it together yet. And I wouldn’t tell them. I wouldn’t give away her secrets.
I only wished Lucas were still alive. After everything I’d learned. Everything he’d done. Then Lettie could have shown me exactly how a man like him deserved to be brought to his knees.
What Indie had done had been too quick. Too merciful for a man like Kronos. If ever a man had deserved to suffer, it was him.
I dropped my hand and stepped back before I did something foolish like pull her into my arms and give her the kind of motherly comfort she looked like she’d been waiting for her entire life.
Maybe one day.
Not today.
Today, she needed to be able to breathe after I left.
Cerberus walked me to my car like a silent escort. I paused before getting in and looked back at the house. Lettie stood on the porch, one hand wrapped around the post. Golden hair moving in the breeze. Gardens blooming behind her.
For the first time since Lucas died, I felt something beneath the grief.
Not peace.
Not yet.
But the beginning of myself.
I got into the car, started the engine, and drove away from Lettie’s quiet little house with tears in my eyes and my spine a little straighter than it had been when I arrived.
I was not Lucas Cooper’s wife anymore.
I was once again Gabriella Amelia Baudelaire.
And I was going to find out what that meant.