27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mia
A cross the conference table sat our family lawyer. His face was familiar, but I’d always let my mother deal with any problems. Legal things were a distraction, over my head. Or maybe that’s what Laura had wanted me to think. He’d forced my mother to wait in the lobby of the law firm.
The conversation between the two of them had been tense, far more tense than any I’d seen between them before. In the end, he won. I wanted to know what dirt he had on her to make her fold. They’d been too far away for me to hear.
“There is no press here today because no one knows we’re meeting.” He flipped open his file.
“Right,” I agreed in a bored voice. “Your point?” He was dancing around my appearance. I’d chosen my clothes carefully with Tyler’s help before I left.
Is she fat? Is she pregnant? What’s the right thing to say here? He must be wondering, but unable to find a polite way to phrase the questions.
I could ease his discomfort, but I had no intention of telling anyone anything. Everyone could speculate. Let them all run wild. Eventually, they’d run themselves out .
“There will be press tomorrow when you go for your deposition with the prosecution.”
“Yep. I figured.” I leaned my elbow onto the table and shifted. “But you wanted to see me before?”
“It’s customary. Often, I’ll meet a client just prior to a deposition, but I thought it would be beneficial for us to meet the day before.”
“Why?” The chill between us was my doing. I wanted to be here, but I also really didn’t want to be anywhere near Nashville right now. My heart started bleeding out when our car drove away from Tyler’s house. If Laura hadn’t been sitting beside me, I’d have collapsed onto the seat, sobbing. I’d have played all the heartbreak songs I could find and wallowed in self-pity.
For months, I’d been free to let my feelings explode. My emotions needed help when I was younger, and they got out of control: a tourniquet or an ice bath. Right now, I was trying ice. Later, I might need the tourniquet, a necessary evil. I’d tied off my emotions once before.
Cut out the heart to save the soul.
“The police have a search warrant for all the properties, offices, and spaces Mr. Connors has used in Nashville.”
That sounded ominous. I’d only met him at the label in his office. Maybe he’d taken girls to other places. Promises. Hope. He would have fed them to the girls like Turkish Delight. My stomach clenched, and a wave of nausea swept over me. It had been so long since I’d felt like this that it was almost surreal.
“Okay,” I said. “What does that mean?”
“They’ve obtained an envelope during those searches that appears to have originated with either you or your mother. She’s also being deposed tomorrow. ”
“My mother?” Ice shot through my veins so quickly that the hairs on my arms rose in protest.
“She’s not the only mother being deposed in this case.”
He was staring at me, but I didn’t know what he expected me to do or know. Nothing. I’d never seen the contents of the envelope. I had no idea what my mother knew.
The blank look on my face must have given him a clue because he muttered under his breath, “So this is why she wanted to be in here.”
“I don’t understand.” The iciness was gone, and in its place was a taste of panic.
“In your own words, I want you to tell me what happened with Kenny Connors.” He clicked his pen open and pushed the file to the side, grabbing the notebook from the other side of him. “We’ll get into the types of questions the prosecution will be asking you. You’re not the one on trial, but we have to prepare you as though you will be.” When our gazes met, his eyes were full of sympathy. “This case isn’t going to play out in the courtroom alone.”
“Is there a chance it won’t go to court at all?” There was still the ray of hope. I wanted him to go down, but if I didn’t need to testify, that was even better.
“Never know. Deals might happen behind the scenes.” He opened his mouth as though he was going to say more and then closed it again. Adjusting the grip on his pen, he said, “In your own words, please.”
So, I told him. When and where and how often. The last part I’d never divulged to anyone else. Twice.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
After the first time, I’d tried to get out of meeting with him alone. But the whole experience had been so confusing that I didn’t have the words to tell my mother or anyone else why I couldn’t meet with him in private. I’d been ashamed that I’d allowed it to happen and confused about what it meant that I’d frozen stiff, hadn’t fought him, hadn’t said anything other than I’m not sure in a whispered voice.
When I finished telling him the whole tale, I raised my head. His was still bowed over the paper, frantically scribbling notes. At last, his pen stilled, and he twirled it without looking up. “Anything else?”
“Should there be?” The ice was back. The question undermined my experience. What else did he want? Blood? Gore? The damage had never been physical. Kenny Connors had ripped me open in his office, torn so deep I’d never looked at myself the same way again. At thirteen, I’d fought off my mother’s boyfriend, defended myself, hadn’t allowed him to do more than squeeze a few parts. Why hadn’t I done the same with Kenny? The question haunted me.
“His defense will dredge up anything they can find to discredit you, so I want to make sure we know everything.”
“One of my mom’s boyfriends tried to attack me when I was thirteen. I fought him off. Is that what you mean?” I cocked my head. “I told you all the Kenny stuff—that’s it. Twice. Just like I told you.”
“Were you on birth control? Did he use any form of birth control?”
“They’ll ask me that?” I straightened in my chair.
“Yes, I believe they will.” He fiddled with the edge of the folder.
“I was fifteen, and I wasn’t sexually active. So, no, I wasn’t on the pill. Did he use a condom? Doubtful given how quickly it all happened both times. One hand over my mouth, the other pinning me in place—I can’t see how he could have.”
“Were there any consequences to those two assaults? ”
“Consequences?” I frowned, and my hand unconsciously went to my rounded stomach. “You mean like an STD or something?”
“Or a pregnancy.” His voice was flat.
“No, no.” At the back of my mind, a memory niggled, threatened to snap back to the surface. “I would have known if I was pregnant.” I pointed to my stomach. “I mean, you can’t exactly ignore it.” God knows I’d tried.
From his folder, he pulled out a white sheet and stared at it for a moment before sliding it across. “You went to a clinic just outside Nashville with your mother. Do you remember that?”
“I had ovarian cysts.” I couldn’t look at the sheet, refused to lower my gaze. Tears pooled in my eyes, blurring my vision. “My mom said I had ovarian cysts.”
“You didn’t go there for ovarian cysts.” He pursed his lips. “That’s not the procedure you had done.” He inclined his head toward the document in front of me. “Is that your signature?”
Through my tears, I scanned the document. “No, it’s not. That’s my name. That’s not my signature.” My mother sometimes signed things as if she was me, but she never quite got the M right. “Dilation and curettage—that’s what it says here. What’s…what is that?”
“It’s often called a D and C and is used in abortions.”
“An abortion?” I dropped the page as though it burned my fingertips. When I’d woken up groggy from the sedative, my mother had brought up Kenny. For the first time, I had told her the truth—too out of it to care what was said. Or I’d told her some of it, anyway. How had Laura known? I hadn’t even realized I was pregnant. “I didn’t sign this. How…how could this have happened to me without my consent? ”
“There is mounting evidence that Kenny Connors might have orchestrated abortions when he impregnated the young girls he was producing.”
“But I didn’t even know I was pregnant.”
“A week before the abortion, you went to the clinic with your mother and had bloodwork done.” He removed another paper from the folder and slid it across the desk.
“Sure, for the cysts.” Except it wasn’t about cysts. I’d probably never had any cysts. I groaned and cradled my head in my hands. “To confirm I was pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my God.” I repeated the phrase over and over, trying to wrap my head around what he was saying. “I don’t understand how this is possible.”
“It’s not legal. What happened to you isn’t legal. The clinic has been shut down. Charges have been laid against the people working during these procedures.” A heavy silence sat between us. “If you didn’t sign your name, who did?”
“I wasn’t the only one?”
“I don’t have all the details. The prosecution tomorrow will decide what you need to know.”
“I need to know it all.” I stood up, the chair tipping with the force of rising. My body, still sore from giving birth, protested. “Are we done here? Because if you can’t give me answers, I know someone who can.” Rage coursed through me, so violent, so unexpected I feared I might murder someone.
“Maybe you should stay here—”
“Are we done?”
“We can be, yes. I just didn’t want you blindsided tomorrow.”
“Today. Tomorrow. What’s the fucking difference?” I grabbed my purse from the seat and stormed out the door. Pasha, standing next to the conference room, fell into step beside me. “Not a word, Pasha or I might literally rip your head off.”
He grunted in response.
In my head, I did the calculations, tried to remember when Pasha had started working for us. He hadn’t been around. The first tour was when he started, but I couldn’t be completely sure. He wouldn’t know what happened.
“I want my mother in the car. I don’t care how you get her there.” We stormed into the lobby, and I locked gazes with Pasha.
He swept Laura off her feet like a linebacker, barreling through the lobby and out the doors ahead of me. She let out one noise of protest and then took his treatment without further comment.
Opening the rear door, he tossed Laura inside and slammed it shut. With his finger, he pointed to the front passenger seat for me and opened the door. He was probably right. The amount of anger racing through might cause me to do something rash like strangle her. I wasn’t sure Pasha would stop me if I did.
As soon as I was in the front seat, I turned on Laura. “Why? Why would you do that to me?”
“Don’t act like you didn’t know. You signed the paperwork.” Laura crossed her arms and eased into the seat as though I was being irrational.
“You forged my signature. You lied to me about what was happening that day.” My voice shook.
“And you had no clue? Never suspected? Never looked up the procedure online and thought, ‘Mmm…that’s not what happened to me.’ Ne ver?” Laura scoffed. “You knew. It’s why you didn’t tell me about this baby.”
Sarah and I had spent a drunken night looking up ovarian cyst procedures when it turned out Sarah was prone to them and might need surgery. After several pages of the search engine, I’d realized my procedure probably hadn’t been for cysts. I’d been too afraid to look any further.
“You’re blaming me for this?”
“I didn’t know how you’d gotten pregnant, but I knew you were.” Laura’s shoulders collapsed, and she sighed. She pulled her elbows closer to her chest and gazed out the window. “Okay? I was managing every aspect of your career so we didn’t screw up. We’d had that massive advance, and I’d bought us a house. Our first house. A place that was really ours. If we defaulted on our contract in any way, we had to pay back that advance. The housing market had soured.”
“What does that have to do with you drugging me and forcing me to have an abortion?”
“There was a morality clause in your contract. One of the things you weren’t allowed to be was a teenage mom. Right there in bold black and white.” She swallowed. “When I realized you were pregnant, I went to see Kenny.”
I stiffened.
“I needed some advice, and he’d always been easy to talk to. I thought…I thought he’d help us. I didn’t know he was the reason we needed help.” She shrugged. “He suggested the clinic, told me how to get it done if you were resistant, said the label would drop us and insist on getting their money back if you had the baby. ”
“The house was more important to you than my health? Than my well-being?”
“No! No.” Laura glared. “With the market soured, we’d have lost money on the sale of the house, assuming we could even sell it in a decent amount of time. We would have been homeless, in debt, so much debt.”
“You should have told me.” My voice vibrated with rage. “If we were in that much trouble, you should have told me.”
“Would you have gotten an abortion?”
“I don’t know!” I cried. “I was fifteen. I probably would have done whatever you told me to do.”
“Telling you was too risky.” Laura shook her head. “You would have wanted to keep it. You’re softer than me. You wouldn’t have been able to do what needed to be done.”
Bile climbed my throat. For twenty-one years, I’d been chasing her love, but I’d been outrun even before I was born. “You never wanted me.”
“You’re so melodramatic.” She pinched the bridge of her nose.
My anger dissipated quicker than I expected. A deep sense of loss rushed into its place. The one thing I’d have done almost anything to earn, and I’d never stood a chance. “Pasha, I want you to remove my mother from this vehicle. I’m going to work on removing her from my life.”
“Mia, honey, don’t be rash.” Laura sat forward and reached for my hand, but I tugged it away, out of sight. “We can work through this.”
Turning my back on her, I dialed Taryn’s number. Pasha veered to the side of the road .
Taryn answered while Pasha dragged my mother out of the backseat, and I said, “I’ve fired Laura as my manager, and I’m firing her from being my mother. I need your help to cut her out of my life for good.”
“That might be tough, but I’ll help in any way I can. If she has access to bank accounts, phone numbers…” Taryn droned on while my mind spiraled out of control at the impossibility of the task. By the time we got home, Laura would be ten steps ahead of us. I didn’t know how anything worked.
When Pasha’s door opened again and he slid into the driver’s seat, Laura’s enraged screams followed him. He passed my mother’s purse to me. “I have phone, too.”
“You got her phone and her purse?” I glanced over my shoulder at Laura’s livid expression outside the rear window.
“Cut her out,” Pasha said. “Then you be happy.”
That seemed so simple. Was it really that easy?