by Lyla Payne
“And your cousin, Amelia? Well, I’m sorry to say that not only will she lose custody of that precious little boy, but she’ll never see him again. Courts tend to be very wary about letting unstable parents near their children.”
My anger boils, sloshing deep in my veins. Growing as it speeds into my heart and pumps out again, curling my fingers into fists and my toes into the soles of my shoes. It makes me partially deaf, clouds the edges of my vision with red. A voice in the back of my mind tells me to play her card for card. Stay calm. Say what you think.
“Ma’am, I do believe that I’ve completed my task here to the best of my ability and I’ll be leaving your employ. As far as the rest of it, you have insulted me and every single one of my friends. You’ve disrespected your son, who loves me. You’ve covered up the murder of a girl who had almost no one in this world while she was alive and robbed her in death.” I pause, gathering my thoughts. They’re scattered, tossed on winds of absolute rage. “Perhaps worse than all that, you think you’ve protected Brick, but in truth, you’ve failed him. You failed him then, and you’re still failing him now. The truth is, I don’t have a single shred of proof because, as you said, not everyone is going to believe the things I see are real. But I know the truth. And your family knows the truth. Saddest of all, Brick knows the truth, and the fact that he’ll never be able to say it out loud is probably the worst punishment you could have ever inflicted on him. So congratulations. We’re all going to keep doing exactly what you say and living exactly as you see fit. I hope you’re happy, Mrs. Drayton, because no one around you ever will be.”
With that, I storm out of the office on trembling knees. Both Sean and Jenna stand close to the door, their eyes wide and wearing matching expressions of shocked masks. I ignore them, too flushed with adrenaline to do anything but get the hell out of here before it fades and leaves me a giant puddle of goop incapable of defending anything. Including how on earth I can still be Beau’s girlfriend after this.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It takes me three days to get myself back to some semblance of normal. Beau calls and texts, but doesn’t push when I tell him I still need some time and space to myself. Amelia’s good, actually. Taking care of other people has always been her thing, and even though she doesn’t know the whole story—I kept the hateful threats to myself—she understands what I gave up on Nan’s behalf and my doubt over the future of my relationship with Beau.
What’s sad is that everyone, including me, saw this coming from our very first date. A crazy, messed-up girl from a mediocre family does not get to live happily ever after with the eldest son of one of the most prominent families in the South. Particularly not when he—and they—have grand dreams of politics that probably include the White House.
Now isn’t the time to think about my problems, though. Today is about Nan.
It only crosses my mind after I’m on Reynolds’s porch that she might not want to let me in after what happened the last time. The fear turns out to be short-lived as she opens the door and registers my presence without much fanfare or surprise, then leads me back into the same parlor we used the other day.
I’m too nervous to sit and my eyes keep sweeping the room, looking for my ghost.
“Is she here?” Reynolds’s voice conveys exhaustion, and her gaze is resigned.
“No.” I check again to be sure. “Listen, I don’t want to make things harder for you. I know that you didn’t believe Nan killed herself, but we both know that after you got pregnant, the Draytons paid you off to just go away, to stop asking for the truth.”
Tears pool in her eyes. She looks younger, now. Not even close to thirty. “I had a choice. I know that. I could have kept saying what I thought to anyone who would listen, but with the baby and trying to finish school… I lost my apartment. How could I raise my daughter without anywhere to live?”
My throat hurts, looking at her. At least this, I can help. “No one blames you, Reynolds. Nan was gone and you had your daughter to think about.”
“I shouldn’t have taken the money.”
I cross the room, sit at her side to put my hand over hers until she finds the courage to look me in the eye. Her misery fills the room, makes my lungs feel as though they’re full of water. “Nan doesn’t blame you, Reynolds. She only wanted you to know the truth, so you wouldn’t believe that having you wasn’t enough for her.”
“She told you that?” she whispers.
“I saw the whole thing. What happened that night…” It had certainly crossed my mind to gloss over this part, given Mrs. Drayton’s warning about telling anyone the truth about what happened, but Reynolds deserves to know. Especially since we’re the only people who will ever know the truth.
“Brick Drayton and your sister had a suicide pact. I don’t know when they formed it, but they were both pretty desperate kids. They met out at that tree to go through with it that night. He helped her tie the noose and had a gun for himself. Nan promised to go first but she changed her mind.”
Reynolds gives me a doubtful look.
“She did. I felt it. She started thinking about you and the promises she made, and she wasn’t going to do it.”
“So what happened?”
“Brick thought she needed help so he pushed her. Then he shot at himself but he missed, fell out of the tree, and by the time he woke up she was dead. The Draytons were trying to protect their kid, but it wasn’t fair to leave you in the dark.”
She’s quiet for a long time, her slim fingers curling into fists, spreading out, and repeating. “What can we do?”
“Nothing. I see ghosts, Reynolds. That’s not proof. And the only other people who know the truth are your sister and Brick.” I squeeze her hand. “Honestly, I don’t think Nan would have wanted him to get in trouble. He was her only friend.”
“And he killed her.” She falls silent again, staring at the photographs on the mantle. “Her name is Nan, you know. My daughter.”
“I didn’t know.” It brings a smile to my face, and when I look over toward the windows, I see that I’m not the only one. I nudge Reynolds with my shoulder. “Nan’s here. She likes that very much.”
“Where?” She sits up straighter, squinting into the corners of the room, and for the first time since returning to Heron Creek, I see why people call this thing of mine a gift.
“She’s sitting at the piano.”
“Oh. That’s for her. She loved to play—I never did. I forced my daughter to take lessons for years but she never took to it either.”
Nan’s ghost runs her fingers over the keys, her smile sadder now.
“She’s happy. There’s nothing we could do to Brick that he hasn’t done to himself, I don’t think, and Nan…she just wanted you to know the truth. That’s all.”
Reynolds nods, tears running down her face as she stares in the direction of the ghost of the sister she barely knew, seeing nothing. I watch Nan as her smile grows bigger, giant tears falling down her own little girl cheeks. She tears her gaze away from Reynolds, catching mine, and gives me a satisfied nod.
It feels like a pat on the back.
And then she disappears.
A bit later, I find Brick Drayton where I suspect he spends most of his time—at his office in Charleston. It’s better than trying to figure out where he lives and showing up like a stalker, though his uppity secretary did chase me halfway down the hall in four-inch heels after refusing to buzz me through without an appointment.
Brick’s alone, and his gaze wavers between amused and irritated when he sees me standing in the doorway, his secretary panting an explanation behind me.
“It’s fine, Candy. I’ll see her.”
She huffs off at a wave of his hand while I resist the urge to stick my tongue out at her back. Barely.
I raise my eyebrows at Brick. “Candy? Seriously?”
“She’s a very dedicated assistant, despite all the trials she’s had to overcome due to her name,” he replies wryly. “Now, I must say t
his is a surprise. Not a pleasant one, but a surprise.”
“I wanted to talk to you and I figured if I called you’d tell me to go piss up a rope.”
“I believe that’s your line,” he retorts with a half smile, reminding me that I’d told him that same thing last month after a particularly impressive dickhead display at Beau’s house.
“You’re right.” I take a seat without it being offered and take in the gorgeous view of the harbor and Fort Sumter framed by the giant picture window behind his desk. “I guess I came here to tell you a story, Brick.”
“I don’t have time for stories. I’m a very busy man.”
“Let’s pretend you’re a kid again. But not the kid you were. A kid who likes stories and whose parents read them to him before bed every night.”
“I can see you’re not going away until I hear you out, Graciela, but I don’t have to play games with you, do I?”
I spread my hands in defeat. He doesn’t have to play along for this to relieve the last vestiges of my guilt. “There once was a teenaged boy from a very nice family. At least, everyone else thought it was a very nice family. The boy was sad, though, because from the inside his family was less than nice. He had no friends because he hated himself and no one understood. He couldn’t tell people because that’s not how families like his handle things.”
Brick’s face has gone white. He’s not scared, he’s effing pissed. “How dare you.”
I don’t stop. “Until he met a girl like him. She was sad, too. Her life wasn’t what she thought it could be, what she thought it would be, and together they made a plan. A pact, really. They would kill themselves, because being dead couldn’t be worse than staying alive in a world that didn’t understand them.” I soldier on, despite a very real fear that he’s going to toss me right out that window. I’m being a bitch, bringing it up like this, but it’s high time someone did. “So they researched how they would do it. They made a plan, and they met at a place where maybe they’d met before just to be alone. Things started out fine, but then the girl got scared. She wasn’t sure she could do it but the boy was her friend. He would do anything for her, even this.”
I check Brick’s expression. He’s no longer mad, but folding in on himself. Horror paints his hard features and he seems to shrink, so much so that the chair looks as though it might swallow him right up.
“So he helped. But when he went to follow her, to follow through with the pact, he lived. It was an accident. A fluke. But he lived, nevertheless. And he never told anyone about how maybe his friend didn’t kill herself, after all, because she had wanted to die. What’s the difference if he’s the one who pushed her off that branch at the last minute?”
I stop, my voice trailing off, obscured by the pounding of my heart. Brick’s looking at me as if he’s the one who’s seen a ghost, and right then, it hits me why.
“Oh crap on a cracker. You’re just now realizing I’m not full of shit about the ghost thing.”
He shakes his head, slowly, face more pasty than Henry’s the last time I saw him. “How could you know all that? You can’t…no one else was there. The cameras hadn’t been installed yet.”
“Brick, I see fucking ghosts, man. Nan wanted her sister to know the truth, so she showed me what happened.” The stricken look on his face makes him into a creature much more akin to the boy in the tree with the gun in his lap than the insulting, jerkface brother of my boyfriend. It softens my heart, just enough. “I know you thought you were helping her do what she wanted. Nan’s not mad at you. She doesn’t want you to go to jail, or want justice, or anything. It was just about her sister.”
“I wanted to tell… I did.” His gaze turns hard. “It doesn’t matter now.”
He repeats it like a mantra, one he no doubt heard over and over for days. Months. Years.
My throat burns. “It matters to you. And that’s okay with me. You deserve to feel however you want about that time in your life, about Nan Robbins. You can feel about it.”
He blinks away tears, spots of red on his cheeks that betray emotion he’d probably rather not be witnessed. Particularly by me. But it would be super awkward for me to get up and leave now, as if I’m dropping a mic.
We sit together for a long time. Minutes tick by on the clock on the wall, the sound getting louder and louder, at least in my mind. Part of me honestly doesn’t want to leave him alone right now. That’s how destroyed he looks.
“Thank you, Graciela,” he rasps, the sound raw and painful.
“What?”
“Thank you. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to remember Nan and that night and feel anything but shame. I kind of forgot how much she meant, outside of those moments.”
“You meant a lot to her, Brick. I’m sorry the two of you didn’t get to figure out that life gets better together.”
The smile he gives me is tired. “Life gets better… Interesting concept.”
“You don’t think so?”
He stopped trying to kill himself, so that seems to indicate some improvement, but what if he’s just given in to the whole acting normal to get by racket?
My heart turns to Millie, and the struggles she’s having that I suspect are so much worse than she’s letting on. It has to get better. People can’t disappear into this sort of black hole forever. Right?
“I think people get better at dealing with the shit hands they’re dealt.” His smile turns hard, but his eyes don’t. “My family has always been this way, Graciela. Mean, spiteful, superior. Drunk.”
“I’m sorry.” I really am, too.
Beau’s told me very little of his time growing up, very few anecdotes from his childhood even though I’ve shared dozens from mine. Part of me didn’t want to know, and after finding out more about them through the sad tragedy of Brick’s early life, the rest of me has caught that train.
“They’re always going to be this way. The Draytons will always close ranks when things get hairy, and no matter how much my brother likes you or how long you’ve been together, you’ll always be left on the outside. Be an outsider.” The tone of his voice is soft, almost caring. The kindness in his eyes is jarring because it’s new, but it’s not put-on. He’s actually trying to be nice, even though his words are shredding me. “You’re a good person, Graciela. A really good person who wants to do the right thing in every situation, no matter what that means for you or the people you love.”
“Thank you?” The question mark is because although it sounds like a compliment, contextually I’m sure that it’s not.
“Do you know what happens to people who do the right thing?” He laughs quietly when I shake my head. “They get stomped on by the people who are willing to do whatever it takes—right or wrong. People like my family.”
I take several deep breaths through my nose. Try to calm down. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you and my brother may as well be Romeo and Juliet. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you care for each other—and I can honestly see that you do—being together is only going to kill you both. Hopefully not literally.”
“That’s not funny.” My heart aches. My soul hurts. My throat is on fire but there’s some piece of me left that’s not willing to concede.
“You’re right.” He pins me with a stare, one that’s frank and raw enough to let me read every single emotion he’s so clever at hiding with his sarcasm and superiority. What he’s feeling now is not all that different from the pain that twisted his face the night he wanted to die alongside Nan. “It’s not funny at all.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The best word to describe how I feel by the time my tires hit Heron Creek is depleted. I’m exhausted, for one, but also emotionally drained. Mentally drained. The only thing I want to do is crawl into my bed.
That scares me, because according to Brick, I’m never getting better. I’m always going to be a little bit depressed, a little bit of an alcoholic, and a big fat mess who prefers to bury her hea
d under covers rather than confront her problems.
Son of a biscuit eater.
He can’t get into my head. Life isn’t like that. I’ll buy that his life is like that, because of the way he treated his trauma by covering it up and pretending he was fine, but not everyone’s.
Can’t be.
Beau’s car sits in the driveway at my grandparents’ old, beautiful house. My whole body slumps over the steering wheel as I pull in behind it and put my car into park. I’m not ready to see him, not ready to talk. Not when Brick’s warnings make too much sense, are too closely aligned with the worries that have been dancing in my head like evil little So You Think You Can Dance contestants for the last several days.
Longer, if I’m being honest.
Maybe it’s time to be honest.
My feet feel as if they’re made of lead. The last thing I want is to see him, to face this whole thing right now. Maybe it’s that we might say things we’ll regret or maybe it’s that it would be nice to pretend for a few more days. Whatever’s tugging me backward doesn’t win out, though, and I step through the front door.
Voices guide me into the kitchen, where I find Beau and Amelia chatting over cups of tea. The room is sunny, white curtains fluttering happily and the fresh scent of mint and dish soap in the air. They both stop talking when they see my face, which I realize too late I was too tired to rearrange.
“Grace, are you okay?”
I nod. “I’m fine. Seriously. It’s just been a really long couple of days.”
Millie gives me the side-eye. “I know. You’ve been sleeping less than I have, and that’s saying something.”
“Hi.” I greet Beau with a kiss on his rough cheek, the taste of him forcing me to blink back tears. “What are you doing here?”
His arm wraps around my waist and squeezes. “I had some good news I couldn’t wait to share. One of my pals from law school who is really, really good at his job agreed to take Amelia’s case. They’re going to have a meeting tomorrow.”
The edges of my world brighten the slightest bit. “Really? That is great news.”
