11. Chapter 11
I stood there, metaphorically scratching my head. My grandmother knew Victoria? How? I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but seeing her sobbing in my grandmother’s arms had me frozen in place. It could wait. Marcus gestured for me to step out of earshot.
Whispering, he said, “Just so you know, Victoria thinks Kinsley is your girl.” A half-grin played on his lips, his expression laced with amusement.
“Why on earth does she think that?” I asked.
“Beats me. Maybe she read the note she left you. She chose Kinsley’s playlist to listen to on the way over. Do what you will with that info.”
“Did you find out anything else?” I asked, barely holding back a chuckle.
“She disassociates.” His face grew serious. “With a husband like hers, I can’t say I blame her.”
“I noticed it a few times and was trying to find a way to approach it, but it’s not like I needed one other thing to harp on her about. She told me she doesn’t need a therapist.”
“Probably a good thing you’re not her doctor then. You have broken all kinds of ethical rules with this one.”
I groaned, not needing the reminder. He slapped me on the back.
“I’m going to head out. I’ve got to gather up Kinsley and drop her off at Sophia’s,” he chuckled. “She’s still mad at the guys for quote, ‘not loving her anymore and sending her to the ends of the world as punishment.’”
I shook my head and grinned. “That ought to be a fun ride for you.”
“I’ve got an epic sad song playlist all ready to go for the little shit. As well as jellybeans. She’ll love it.”
“And Isabella?”
“Oh, she’s in rare form as well. I don’t think I’ve heard so many doors slam at the house, ever. She packed a bag and is having Mr. Caruso pick her up, probably as we speak. Says she refuses to be home if Kinsley isn’t there.”
“Serves her right. She shouldn’t have spilled the beans about the addition of Pasha’s scar. I think that was what sent Kinsley off to begin with. How many times do you think we’ll need to tell the little pixie that Pasha can take care of himself?”
“The rest of our lives. It’s hilarious. She honestly has no clue. He holds his own. I’d actually like to see him in a more hands-on role with the ones we take to the warehouse. Is that coming soon?”
It was Marcus’s way of asking if Pasha was getting closer to full admittance into the squad.
“I would say that it is absolutely in his future. Probably the next big case the guys get.”
“Well, I leave you to your day. Are you going to have Nan’s driver take you guys back to the hotel?”
“Yeah, I can do that. Thanks, Marcus.”
He took off, and I followed my grandmother and Victoria down the hall.
Nan had us put the piano in the formal drawing room.
I kept a reasonable amount of distance, content to simply observe them.
Victoria carried herself with a fragile strength, and she froze the moment her eyes landed on the grand piano.
“It can’t be,” she whispered, her eyes the size of saucers as she looked at my grandmother.
I cocked my head to the side, intrigued by her reaction.
“Oh, but it is,” Nan said.
She gestured toward it, inviting her to explore its keys. With hesitant steps, Victoria approached. The piano’s polished, burr-walnut surface shone, and the lighting in the room created a soft glow across her pretty face.
The filigree music desk, with its intricate arabesque cut-out design, stood poised, ready to hold a piece of music. Her trembling fingers reached out and traced the contours of the piano’s surface.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.
I stood there admiring her as she stared in awe. Emotions danced across her face, painting a picture of longing and nostalgia. I wanted to rip out my phone and take a picture. She was so fucking mesmerizing. Her gaze moved to the ivory keys, each one polished to gleaming perfection.
“Go on, dear, after all, it’s yours. Your grandmother always hoped to hear you play it. Take some time to get reacquainted with it,” Nan said.
She walked over to me as Victoria inched closer. Her hazel eyes, now red-rimmed from her earlier cry, only made me want to take away every ounce of pain she’d ever experienced. My stomach dropped.
Was this what Ivan meant by knowing?
My heart thumped inside my chest. I instantly created a mental list as I tried to rationalize and de-compartmentalize every emotion assaulting my senses.
Victoria’s fingers hovered over the keys, and her eyes closed softly, but not before a myriad of emotions flickered across her face. There was longing, fear, and a deep sorrow. I’d seen that look before.
“Walk with me a bit, Andy.”
Nan took my arm and led me from the room. I wanted to stay and watch Victoria, but Nan wasn’t having it.
“You never asked me why I purchased that piano,” she said.
“No, I figured you had your reasoning.”
“It belonged to that young lady’s grandmother.
Elizabeth Laurent and I were childhood friends.
She’s the only one who stuck by my side when your mother’s illness came out.
Her and her daughter were estranged for many years.
We bonded over so many things back then.
We kept in touch over the years, Victoria’s grandmother and I. ”
I knew from the many conversations we’d had over the years that all of my grandparents’ friends turned their back on them as my mother’s illness raged out of control. It wasn’t easy what they went through.
Mental illness wasn’t something people freely talked about or even understood. Even to this day, many families struggle to have the hard discussions, and there can be stigmatism surrounding it.
If not for Nan’s unwavering love and devotion over the years, I wouldn’t have turned out to be half the man I was.
Despite every obstacle life threw Nan’s way, she rose above it all, an anchor in my life and more of a mother than the one who birthed me had been.
Before the guys came into my life, Nan was there. She’d always given me a reason to hope.
When I was angry, she was there to calm me. When I was lonely, she was my friend. When I shook violently, coughing, soaking wet, terrified of the woman my grandfather was holding back from me, she was the one there.
She shielded me from the anger and pure hatred my mother felt on more than one occasion. As much as I hated it, my mind took me back to one of those times.
I shook with fear as my grandparents waved from the car. They had to go into town for something, and I did what was safest–run to my room and lock the door. It was too hot outside, and the woods scared me almost as much as my mother did.
I never knew what would set her off. Every day the rules seemed to change, even sometimes hourly.
As a small child, it was confusing. What made her angry yesterday might make her laugh today.
What made her laugh last week or even an hour ago might send her into a physical rage toward me in a matter of minutes.
If it wasn’t the pure hate pouring from her, it was delusions and massive acts of paranoia. In her mind, we were all conspiring against her. Her favorite thing to do was trick me.
That’s how she got me out of the room that day.
I can’t remember the exact thing she used, but her sweetness in that moment was the only thing I craved, so I opened the door. She’d lost her phone and literally tore her room to pieces.
At first, it started as a game, and we went on a hunt to locate it. Fifteen minutes later, she turned on me. She screamed, accusing me of siding with ‘the agency’.
After slapping me, she shoved me into a small broom closet and locked me inside. I heard her talking to herself, afraid of the things she said she was going to do. She wanted to set me on fire and probably would have: if she’d been able to find matches.
My grandfather saved me that day. He’d forgotten something and came back home. This was just one of the many reasons my mother scared the living shit out of me.
But the time she tried to drown me was the worst. I was maybe six years old. She dragged me out of bed from a nap and shook me violently, cursing the entire way.
“You think you’re so clever, don’t you? I see you. I know what you really are. We’re going to take care of the sickness inside of you right now,” she yelled in my face. I was confused and disoriented.
She filled the tub. “Spawn of Satan, we need to purify you. I can’t guarantee it will work, but one way or the other, you’ll end up in heaven or hell today.” I shook, and tears fell down my cheeks.
As she yanked me over to the tub, I whimpered and tried to reason with her, “Mummy, I’ll be good.”
She soothed me in a rare moment, confusing the hell out of me. It was for show because the minute she was able, she shoved my head under the water. The icy coldness startled me, and a new level of fear filled my body. The longer she held me under, the more panicked I became.
I remember needing to take a breath, but realizing I couldn’t. I had no way of getting away from her. At such a young age, I wasn’t strong enough to fight back. The level of determination she had would absolutely have ended in my death.
Nothing could change that she wanted me dead, needed me purified. I tried to turn my head, but her grip only intensified.
For years, that’s where the memory ended.
I blocked the rest of it out until I was fourteen. A classmate of ours drowned, and after attending the memorial that night, everything came back. Fragments at first. Then more.
I remembered a hospital stay as a small child—how safe I’d felt there, even without understanding why. Later, I found the medical records. I don’t even remember how. I just remember reading the words water on the lungs and feeling something in me go cold.
Secondary drowning.
The phrase stuck with me. Haunted me through my teens. By the time I got to medical school, it was one of the first things I researched—what happens when water gets into the lungs, when the body can’t recover from it.
But knowledge didn’t dull the memory. If anything, it sharpened it. I could still see her face. The look in her eyes as she let my head break the surface—just long enough to drag in a breath—before forcing me back under again.
If I let myself sit in it too long, I could easily feel it all over again. Her hands around my arms. My body thrashing. The confusion. The terror.
That was the incident that finally forced my grandparents to act. She was hospitalized after that. It wasn’t the end of it—they let her come back more than once—but I was never left alone with her again.
It took years of therapy before I could stand being near water without my chest tightening. After that incident, the medication helped. She chose to stay inpatient. My grandparents visited her regularly, but we all agreed it was best for me to keep my distance—to give her time to heal.
The worst part of all of it was that she died before we could reconcile. A blood clot took her in the middle of the night. As an adult, it’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to come to terms with.
Your mother is supposed to love you more than anyone else in the world.
Mine couldn’t.
I understood it as an adult—in a clinical and logical way. But the boy in me still ached for something he was never going to get. The faint voice of Nan calling my name pulled me from the past.
“I’m sorry, Nan, once more please?”
“I was saying there is something you need to know,” she offered solemnly.
“What is it?” I answered, sensing that it was important.
“I always wondered what happened to that girl. Elizabeth and I spoke shortly after Victoria’s mother died. She was distraught, of course, and kept going on and on about how her daughter wasn’t a drug addict.”
“Nan, often times people turn from one vice—”
“I know and while she had suffered with alcohol addiction for a brief period of time during Victoria’s younger years, she’d been clean and sober going on six years.
Not only that, but her mother was taking her father back to court for custody.
She was counting on that to play to her advantage. It never made sense to Elizabeth.”
The story was intriguing. Maybe we should look deeper into the suicide. I made a mental note to call Nik later.
“I’ve tried to ask little of you over the years,” Nan stated, tears filling her eyes.
My heart caught in my throat because not only did I know what she was going to ask, I didn’t know if I’d be able to do it.
“Save her,” she said fiercely.
I pulled my grandmother into my arms and held her. “Nan, it’s not that easy. She has to want it and it’s complicated by the fact they have a son together.”
She pulled back sharply, grasping my shirt. “That makes it more imperative.”
“I’m trying. She’s so closed up. I know he’s manipulating her, holding their son over her head, but it’s as if he has something else on her. I can’t get her to trust me.” I sighed, feeling powerless.
Maybe if you were focused less on fucking her, you would have that trust by now, Counselor.
I chastised myself with a hundred and one different thoughts.
“Why don’t you check in on her? I’m going to inquire about dinner.” Nan patted my hand before walking away.
After shooting a message to Nik to investigate further into the overdose situation, I took a deep breath. I walked back toward the drawing room. My footsteps echoed softly on the hardwood floor.
Victoria was nowhere to be found. Panic hit, and then I noticed her sandals sitting near the piano bench. Where could she have gone? I called her name and got no response. A small sob caught my attention, and I knelt down.