by R. K. Lilley
"Someone else lived there," he continued. "Correct?"
"Yes, but it was just my grandma."
He nodded, eyes steady on me. "And we will get to that. Step one is Tiffany's cooperation. And we have it. All she wants is the Durant name."
My eyes were on him when I caught it, when I saw what he was getting at. His mouth twisted when he saw he'd gotten his point across. "Yes. Me. I'm a bastard, which she does not prefer, but I've still been allowed to carry the name, and so will she."
"No, Bastian," I said, and I couldn't hide my horror or my weakness in the words. It was too much of a sacrifice. It was too unfair.
"Yes," he countered. "It's the solution to our problems, and it's better me than Dante. If I had what you had, I would not do this. I'm doing this to save what you have. I'm doing this because I believe in it, even if it's something I can never have for myself."
There was such a deep-seated sentimentality to his words. They felt so personal, and a hundred things I'd overlooked clicked into place at once.
Bastian had feelings for me. Old and deep ones. He must have for some time, though we hadn't spent any real time together in years, and never without Dante.
Dante. So that's where the resentment for his half-brother came from. Not from some family rivalry or Durant snobbery. It was always about me.
"I'm so sorry," I said to Bastian, and it had too many meanings for me to ever articulate.
"I want you to be happy," he said simply. "I want you to finally get back what was stolen from you."
That was impossible, but even so, his sacrifice was significant. Life changing.
Unacceptable.
"Don't you feel a little pathetic blackmailing someone into marrying you?" I asked Tiffany.
"Winning doesn't make me pathetic."
Jesus, some people you couldn't even insult.
"No." I was shaking my head. "We can't let you do this."
"You also can't stop me," he said it with resigned bitterness. "This is a part of the solution that cannot be screwed up. Without Tiffany, all of the rest could easily get away from us."
He had a very good point. But it was so wrong. He deserved so much better.
I swallowed the bitter pill and tasted it all the way down.
"We have two confessions. And a witness," he said, as though that settled it all.
"You should have been a lawyer," I told him.
"Yeah probably," he agreed with a sad smile.
It took me a minute to catch it, but then, "Two confessions?"
He was back to studying my face intently as he said, "Yes. Two. Adelaide incriminating herself in the death of Gram. And, I'm sorry I'm the one to tell you this, there's no easy way to say it, but also, your grandma."
I was so confused I thought I'd misheard him. "My grandma?" The words made no more sense to me when I said them.
"Yes. Glenda's going to confess to killing Detective Harris. In self-defense."
If Dante hadn't still been holding me, I thought I'd have needed to sit down. I doubted I was holding any of my own weight. "I don't understand," I said finally. Nothing made sense.
"This can no longer be used to hurt you, to be held over your head, if someone else confesses to it. Glenda has agreed to confess. We worked on the story. It doesn't incriminate you in any way. You're free and clear."
I realized suddenly that Dante had had no reaction to anything for quite some time. He'd known most of it. I shouldn't have been so shocked by that.
Actually I wasn't. I was still just reeling from the idea of my grandma doing something completely selfless that would help me.
"Why would my grandma do that?" I asked no one in particular.
Bastian cocked his head to the side. "To help you. To keep you from being on trial yourself." He looked away, appearing suddenly uncomfortable. "Again, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you. She wanted me to, though, actually. She said she hates doing things like this herself. But . . . she's been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Late stages. Her doctor's given her six months to live, perhaps a little longer. She's willing to spend that time on trial, in prison, however it goes, if it means you'll be free of the burden. Again, I'm sorry to have to tell you like this."
I didn't know what to say. What to think. "Why would she do that?" I asked again. It didn't match up with anything I knew about her.
"She wants to help you," Dante said into my ear. "She's sorry for the way she treated you. She's stopped drinking, and while no one will ever accuse her of being a pleasant woman, she's not as awful as she used to be. She does love you, Scarlett. In her own way, she does."
"You did this," I said to Dante. "You talked her into this."
"Yes. Of course. But, you may not believe this, it wasn't that hard of a sell. She knows more than anyone that she has some making up to do. She's feeling very mortal, and she'd like to leave this world knowing that she did some good."
I was still taking all of that in, still reeling from it, when they dropped another bombshell on me.
"And now we come to Leo," Dante said to his father with resigned scorn. "Are you sober enough to say your piece, Leo?" he asked him.
"I'm perfectly sober," Leo said, sounding less than perfectly sober.
Still, he was markedly less drunk.
"So what does Leo have to add to this?" I asked no one in particular when the silence had gone on too long.
Leo glared at me. I glared back. The usual.
"I know what happened to your mother," he said, sniffing, and I was shocked to realize he was fighting back tears.
"What happened to my mother?" I asked automatically, almost robotically.
We'd shifted gears so quickly, information overload, and I hadn't given my absent mother a thought in years, so I wasn't really even committed to the question.
Leo changed that pretty quickly. "Your father killed her. Jethro. He beat her to within an inch of her life and left her on my doorstep."
"Tell the whole fucking thing, you asshole," Dante gritted out at him. "Start at the beginning. She deserves to know it all."
Leo glared at his heir but complied. "Renee was a few years younger than me in high school. She was a freshman when I was a senior, but we went steady for a year." The childish phrase sounded silly from him. All of it did. But I didn't care. I wanted to hear. He'd effectively caught my interest. I wanted to know anything, everything I could about my mother.
He waved a negligent hand in my direction. "She looked like you. Prettiest girl in school. By far. Prettiest thing in the whole town. She's still the only woman I ever loved. But I was young, and once I graduated high school, the last thing I was going to do was wait around in that Podunk town.
"I left, went to college. I didn't forget about her, but I just sort of got distracted. That's when I met Adelaide. At Harvard. She was as conniving then as she is now. She got knocked up quick. I don't even remember how, but she talked me into marrying her. I got sick of that quick, and after the first year of college I went back home to visit. Not gonna lie, I was hoping to see Renee, to start things again. I was already planning to leave Adelaide. To divorce her as soon as humanly possible."
He took a deep breath, looking around suddenly, and I think everyone in the room knew that he was searching for his usual glass of Scotch.
"No liquor until you finish, Dad," Bastian said, voice quiet but firm.
Leo glared at him. "Long story short, I show up and Renee is seven months pregnant. I was pissed. Really pissed. Especially when I found out that the daddy was that piece of trash Jethro. I didn't talk to her for a few days, but I caved pretty quickly. I still wanted her, and she was already avoiding Jethro, said he scared her.
"We lived together over that summer break. I was planning to take her back with me. We had a lot of plans, actually, but one day Adelaide showed up, newborn Dante in tow, and threw a fit to end all fits, and scared Renee off.
"I was planning to fix it, to get Adelaide to leave, get the divorce and everything
, but then Renee went missing. Couldn't find hide nor hair of her anywhere for three days. I was really worried, since she was due any day."
He took a very deep breath, looking distraught, and for the first time in my life, I felt sorry for the prick. "It was the worst timing, but that's Adelaide's specialty. Some part of me thinks she orchestrated the whole thing. Hell, it'd be hard to convince me otherwise. She came to my house one night and started a fight. I was so over her by then. I didn't even care. I just let her go crazy. She was pulling out her hair, bashing her head and face against the wall. She was deranged, and I did try to stop her at some point." He waved a dismissive hand at Dante. "She was the mother of my child. But I couldn't stop her. She beat the crap out of herself, and right at the worst of it, my doorbell rang.
"It took me a while to get it. Adelaide threw herself in my way. But when I finally did, I found Renee on my doorstep, beaten bloody. I brought her inside. I wanted to call the police, an ambulance. I wanted to help her, I swear, but she was in active labor, and I just reacted, helped her deliver the baby." He pointed at me and sneered. "And Renee died before I could ever make that phone call."
He sighed and started looking around for his drink again.
"Finish the story," Dante ordered him.
"You can guess the rest. I wanted to call the police. I wanted to have Jethro fucking drawn and quartered, but there was Adelaide. She told me that if I called the police she'd say I beat her, and that she'd watched me beat Renee to death, too. You know how she fucking is. She had her proof all lined up. It was a setup, all of it. All so I wouldn't divorce her. I was a wreck. A sad, terrified wreck. I agreed to everything she asked, even got rid of the body, took it where she told me. Did everything, everything she said. A fucking life sentence with that cunt. Then she took the baby and left. I didn't even know what she was going to do with it . . . with you. But I can't say I was even slightly surprised when I found out you ended up in a dumpster."
I thought, no, I knew, that I couldn't have held my own weight at that point. I was literally floored.
Dante was all that kept me upright.
It was sad, but a part of me, a big part, was relieved to hear the tragic story. At least she hadn't abandoned me on purpose. Maybe someone had wanted me. Maybe my mother would have kept me if she'd had a choice.
Leo was still Leo, but I asked him anyway. I needed to know. "Did she want me? Was she going to keep me?"
He was looking around for his drink again, but he answered quickly and absently enough for me to think it was the truth. "Oh yeah. She was real excited about you. She was a bit impulsive, but I think she'd have been a good mother. Wasn't meant to be, though. Obviously."
We left soon after that. I was feeling numb but somehow okay as Bastian walked us out.
I faced him when Dante went to turn in his valet ticket.
"We can never thank you enough for doing this, Bastian," I said sincerely.
He touched my face. "Be happy with him. That's my thank you." He smiled and it was sad. "It could've been us. If you hadn't met him first, it may well have been."
I couldn't have agreed or disagreed with him, because I simply didn't know. My heart hadn't belonged to me since I was ten and a beautiful blond-haired boy had shown me that I wasn't alone in the world. I couldn't imagine another life than that, but I nodded solemnly at Bastian, because it seemed to be what he wanted, and he deserved that.
"Did you always know?" I asked Dante on the drive home. "That Bastian had feelings for me."
"Yes," he uttered succinctly. "Imagine if you had a friend, or a sister, that had feelings for me, and you knew it every time you saw them. It has not made things peaceful between us."
"Yeah, I get it. Believe me. I get it. It's just so sad. Especially now. God. Tiffany?"
"We'll fix it. One thing at a time, though. He and I will figure out something. Tiffany is conniving and ruthless. She feels no guilt, and she'd do anything to get what she wants. Like my mother. But she's not that smart. Or complicated. She's simple. She thinks she's good at this game, but she never sees the whole board. Sooner or later, Bastian and I will find her weakness and exploit it."
"God, you two are scary enough on your own. Put you together . . . "
He grinned and it was bloodthirsty. "Yes. We work well together. As Adelaide is about to find out."
He sent me a sidelong glance, his hand going to my knee. "Don't you feel like a weight's been lifted off you? We can live our lives again. Scarlett, we're free."
I couldn't quite meet his eyes.
It's time, I thought. I have to come clean now.
Because I didn't have one excuse to keep it from him any longer.
CHAPTER FORTY
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on."
~Robert Frost
PAST
SCARLETT
I'd never felt so utterly hopeless in my life.
I'm not even sure how I ended up on a park bench, watching a playground full of strange children, bawling my eyes out like the world was ending.
The truth was, my world had been ending for months now, crumbling to pieces around me, and I'd just now received the last blow, the final bit of information that I absolutely, emphatically, could not handle.
It was one month to the day I'd last spoken to Dante. Since I'd destroyed us both over the phone, since I'd used Nate to make Dante bleed, to make him suffer and then callously broken up with him as soon as I was done.
Four months since I took antibiotics while on birth control and then completely forgotten that the one canceled out the other.
I could barely support myself. How the hell was I going to be responsible for someone else?
Not just someone else. A child.
A child without a father. A child whose father had stated, plain as day that he did not want its mother so much as calling him anymore.
I was wearing shades, but even with that buffer between my eyes and the world, I knew I kept not even one ounce of composure.
I was lost. I had no clue what to do with myself.
How could I be so stupid?
What was I going to do?
I'm not sure how long I carried on like that, arms hugging myself as I rocked back and forth, feeling profoundly alone in the world. It felt like hours, when in reality it may have been only minutes.
When I noticed the outside world again, I realized that there was a woman sitting next to me on the bench, just a few feet away, which was not unusual on its own.
What was unusual was that she was crying, like me, sobbing like her heart was breaking, clutching her hands together as though in prayer.
She seemed to notice me at about the time I noticed her. She wasn't even wearing shades, her grief laid even barer than mine.
She wiped her eyes, studying me. My suffering seemed to have calmed hers, as though seeing someone else in need gave her purpose.
And so it did.
It was the type of meeting that imprinted itself on your memory, and looking back on it I realized that it was indicative of her nature—Gina was a woman who always put others needs before her own.
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."
~Pablo Picasso
PRESENT
SCARLETT
The first time I brought Dante to Gina and Eugene's was the hardest.
They greeted us at the door, and Mercy was with them, flinging herself at me with abandon.
I stroked her hair and let her hug me to her heart's content, my gaze wary on Dante.
The look in his eyes as he saw her for the first time broke my heart all over again.
I knew what he was feeling, and I felt it with him, knew precisely what he was seeing as he took her in.
Mercy was a gorgeous doll of a girl, a lovely mix of her biological parents.
She had her father's blond coloring and the same gorgeous ocean eyes.
And there was no doubt where her wavy hair texture came from, her high cheekbones, her stubborn jaw. Her mother.
But that was all they had in common.
No one called Mercy trash. No one would. No one thought of her that way, she was the opposite, in fact.
And only once had anyone ever thrown her away.
You never make peace with being abandoned. This I know. But we would do what we could to take responsibility for it. To never let her feel the way I had. She was loved deeply, and not just by the parents that raised her. That was a fact.
Dante had known what to expect, or at least he'd had fair warning.
But knowing and seeing are two different creatures.
Not to mention feeling.
It was hard, perhaps even as hard as telling him had been.
He hadn't taken either thing well.
Who would? Who could?
We'd had a bad few days after I told him, a few miserable moments where I wasn't sure we'd make it out the other side.
Of course he resented my decision. Resented that I'd made it without him, but even he knew that that was as unfair as it was natural.
The night I'd told him is one I'd never forget. Neither of us would. It had been as horrible as I'd dreaded. As painful as I'd known it had to be.
"How could you do that? How could you do a thing like that just for spite?" he had asked when I told him, his immediate gut reaction.
I'd been expecting something like that, but I was still offended, still taken from reasonable to messy with those two sentences.
"It wasn't for spite," I told him, voice quavering in something akin to dread. This conversation could ruin us. That fact was not lost on me. "It was for survival. You were engaged to Tiffany when I found out. What was I supposed to do?"
Something awful wrote itself on his familiar features in all caps. His mouth twisted.
Shame.
"You should have told me," he gasped out. He couldn't even look at me. His eyes were aimed up at the ceiling, blinking over and over. "You should have at least told me. Jesus, how could you go through that alone?" I shook harder with every word out of his mouth. "How could you give our child away without even telling me?" He was weeping by the end.