by T. L. Haddix
“Hey, sweetie. Are you busy this morning?” Sarah asked.
He laughed. “Not unless you count staring at the ceiling. What’s up?”
“I need to talk to you. Mind if I stop by before work?”
Ben frowned and glanced at the clock. It was still a little before eight. “What do you need to talk to me about?”
Sarah was silent for a few seconds. “I think you know.”
“Really? You’re going there?” He half-sighed, half-growled. “Mom, I’m an adult. I can handle my own affairs, no offense. There’s nothing to talk about.”
“I disagree. There’s a lot to talk about. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
She hung up before he could tell her to not bother. He set the receiver back on its cradle with a muted crash, cursing under his breath. Throwing the sheets back, he got up, then grabbed clean clothes. The drive from the farm to his apartment would take her fifteen minutes. He could be showered and out the door in five.
It was a juvenile move that he would catch hell for later. But he had no intention of sticking around. His wounds were still too raw, and his mother would unintentionally rub salt into them.
He didn’t bother shaving, just showered and brushed his teeth. Four minutes and some change after she’d called, he was pulling open his front door.
“Benjamin Wayne. I’m disappointed.” Sarah slapped his chest with a paper sack, and after a stunned moment, he moved back to let her in. “Not surprised, however. Which is why I called from the library. Donuts are in the bag.” She pulled a cup of coffee from the cup holder she carried and handed it to him. “Have a seat.”
“Mom, really?” He cast her an imploring look. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I know. But we need to. There are some very important pieces of information that you don’t know. If I could have waited until you’d healed a little more, I would have. But I think what I have to say is going to save you pain in the long run. And it just can’t wait.”
He sat in the chair adjacent to the couch and put the donuts on the table. “Unless you’re going to tell me that Ainsley didn’t get pregnant with my child and then marry another man, I’m not interested.”
Sarah’s eyes flashed with temper. “Ben, it wasn’t that simple.”
His laugh was vicious and bitter. “Oh, really? And how do you know this? Mom, she’s a devious, conniving bitch. She used me as a sperm donor for all intents and purposes. I was stupid enough to let her. That’s a mistake I’ll not be repeating, and one that I don’t care to be reminded I made.”
Sitting as stiff as though she were strapped to a board, Sarah pulled a folder from her purse and laid it on the table in front of her. “Mind your tone, Ben. I’m still your mother.”
He got up and went to stare out the window. “Do you have any idea how I feel? How much this hurts?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. I have a pretty damned good idea.” She didn’t say anything else, and he turned to look at her. She was gazing at him steadily, an eyebrow quirked in challenge. “Do you think your father loves me?”
Ben’s scowl was immediate. “Of course he loves you. What the hell kind of question is that?”
“There’s no mistaking how he feels? You’ve always known, no doubts in your mind?”
“Mom… no. He’d die for you. I’ve never seen him waver. You, either, for that matter.”
She pulled a faded envelope from her bag and held it out. “Then explain this.”
Wary, he took the letter and pulled it out. It was from his father, dated a few weeks prior to his parents’ wedding. It was short, succinct, and not at all like the long letters Owen was known for writing. In it, he apologized for not writing, but promised to call soon.
“It’s kind of abrupt, but this was while Uncle Eli was recovering from the house fire, right? Dad was busy with things in Laurel County.”
“He was. And I knew that then, but I also knew that I hadn’t heard from him in over two weeks. I had written several times, had tried to call, nothing. The phone number he gave me didn’t work. That letter you hold was in response to my own letter asking him if he wanted me to stop writing him, if he wanted to break things off. He didn’t even sign it ‘with love,’ which he always had in the past. And two days after that letter showed up, Kathy came to me and told me she’d seen him with another woman in London. It was a woman he’d been intimate with before.”
From the faint flush on her cheeks and the stern line her mouth pressed into, Ben understood that even after almost thirty years, the thought of the other woman bothered her.
“Dad was with someone else?” The very idea of it blew his mind.
“He was. It was a few years before we started dating, but you know your father. Sex isn’t something he takes lightly. That isn’t a new phenomenon. He wasn’t in love with her, but he did care about her.”
To Owen’s way of thinking, love should always accompany sex. Ben didn’t think he could have been more surprised if she’d told him his father had been married before.
“This was when the two of you almost split up, wasn’t it?” He sat back down, most of the fight gone. “Right when everything happened with Kathy.”
Sarah’s sister had been married to a man who abused her. When he’d discovered she was planning to leave him for someone else, he’d killed the other man. He hadn’t stopped there, though, but had gone on to kill Kathy’s two small children before killing himself, all in front of her, leaving her alive to suffer the guilt. It had only been in the last year or so, more than twenty years after the fact, that Kathy had started to approach anything near recovery.
“Yes. And even down in London, your father should have heard about what happened. It was a huge scandal. When he failed to show up even after the news broke, I was utterly convinced he had walked away from our relationship. As you can imagine, that was not a good time for either of us.”
Ben carefully placed the letter back in the envelope and handed it to her. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
She shrugged, her smile tinged with sadness as she tucked the letter back in her purse. “I didn’t tell you to make you upset or angry. I told you so that I could demonstrate to you that sometimes, things really are not what they appear. Or what we’ve been led to believe they are.”
He drank some coffee, just to have something to do with his hands. “And you think what I believe and have been told about Ainsley is wrong.”
“I do.” She slid the folder closer to him. “Read the contents.”
He was afraid to open the file. “Can’t you just summarize it for me?”
She sent him a scolding look that told him she was aware of his fear. “Your father and I went to see her Monday. We had a long talk with Byrdie and Jonah, as Ainsley was a bit under the weather. They answered a lot of our questions.” Sarah set her own coffee aside. “How much do you know about Ainsley’s mother?” She clasped her hands together in front of herself and waited as he considered the question.
Ben shrugged. “She and Ainsley had problems. Ainsley hated talking about her, and I always got the impression that Geneva ruled the roost with an iron fist. I met her once.”
“When?”
“The day I found out Ainsley was married.” He picked at the edge of his cast. “She was just about the coldest person I think I’ve ever met. I could almost understand—almost—why Ainsley would do whatever it took to get away from her.”
“Then can you do me a very big favor and read these letters? It’s easier to put things in context if you read them.” Sarah held out the folder, and this time Ben took it.
“Yes, ma’am.”
There were only a few pages, and Ben read them quickly. When he finished, he was outraged. “This is all bullshit. Where the hell did Geneva learn about the shapeshifting and his writing?”
“You didn’t tell Ainsley?”
He shook his head. “No. It never seemed like the right time. I was always afraid she’d think I was crazy and leave. Where’d you get these?”
“Ainsley gave them to us. Those letters…” She looked away, and Ben saw her hands clench. “Those letters are the reason she married Doug Scott. Her mother threatened to use them against us. The only way Ainsley could keep her from doing that was to marry the man her mother picked out and swear to never contact you again—not even to explain.”
“That’s ridiculous. Nobody would believe this bullshit.” He tossed the file back on the table and got up to pace the small living room. “You’re telling me Ainsley fell for that?”
“I’m telling you that if these letters had gotten out, they would have brought us all down. They weren’t an idle threat, Ben. I know the people she would have sent the library letter to. At the very least, I would have lost my job. No questions asked. Ditto for Jack. And if it all hit at once? Do you think even Gilly’s family’s sterling reputation could have withstood the scrutiny? Your sisters would have been ostracized. At least some of your father’s secrets would have come out. It would have been a nightmare.”
He wanted to argue. He wanted to tell her she was overreacting. But something held him back. First of all, his mother wasn’t the kind of woman who overreacted. And he’d grown up in Hazard, then lived in Savannah for years. He knew how things worked in small towns, especially if money was involved.
One fact couldn’t be explained away, though. “She swore her mother didn’t know about us.”
Sarah’s smile was full of sadness. “Sweetie, she knew about you from the first time you met each other in the library. She had eyes and ears all over town. And I’m pretty sure I know who those particular eyes belonged to.”
It didn’t take Ben more than a few seconds to put it together, and it hurt. “Callie?”
Sarah nodded. “She’s always been a terrible gossip, and she knows that information can be a commodity. I can’t prove it, but if I were a betting woman…”
“Damn it.” He ran his uninjured hand into his hair and tugged hard. “That doesn’t change that she was pregnant when she left here, and she still married another man.”
“She didn’t know she was pregnant. When she found out, according to Byrdie, she started trying to figure out how to get word to you without her mother knowing.” Sarah’s gaze dropped to her hands. “But her mother wasn’t stupid, and she realized as soon as she found out that Ainsley would try to get to you. She couldn’t let that happen.”
A very bad feeling crawled into Ben’s gut and dug its claws into him. “Mom?”
Sarah drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “You’re a botanist. You know about natural medicine, both the good and bad it can do. Apparently, Geneva knew about it, as well. And she tricked Ainsley’s husband into giving her something that would cause an abortion. The miscarriage wasn’t natural, Ben. Geneva caused it.”
Ben stared at her in horror. He couldn’t speak or move. He could hardly even breathe. Several abortifacients came to mind immediately, each more potent and damaging than the last. To cause the degree of symptoms Ainsley had described, he suspected her mother had used pennyroyal.
Bile rushed into his throat, and he nearly toppled his chair as he got up. He rushed to the bathroom, barely managing to make it to the toilet before he violently threw up.
Sarah was there a minute later, wetting a washcloth and gently wiping his mouth. “Oh, my baby. I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”
“It can’t be true,” he rasped.
She rinsed the cloth and came back, this time wiping the tears that ran unheeded down his cheeks. “I believe it is.”
He leaned into her, and they sat on the cold tile for a long time. Sarah’s soothing voice washed over him, much as it had when he was a little boy and was hurt or sick.
“I don’t want to believe you,” he admitted in a low voice. “I’d rather think she’s shallow. Because if I believe you, that means she’s been through hell because of me. And I don’t know if I can live with that.”
“Benjamin, the only thing you’ve ever done to Ainsley is love her. All the harm was done by someone else, and I hope sincerely that Geneva is burning in the deepest pits of hell.”
“I could have stopped her. Somehow, some way. If she’d come to me, we could have figured it out.”
“If she’d come to you, Geneva would have used the letters. That was how she got Ainsley to comply. Her choices were to let her mother destroy us or to marry someone else. She did the only thing she could.”
He got to his feet shakily, then helped her up. “I’m not sure I believe that.”
Sarah followed him into the kitchen. “I understand. I don’t expect you to just take my word for it, not on something this important. But you see now why your father and I thought you needed to know?”
“Yeah.” He got a glass down and filled it with water, then rinsed his mouth and spat into the sink. “What does Dad think about all this?”
“He’s torn. He believes Byrdie’s version of things. Said it speaks to his gut instinct. But he’s concerned, too. Ainsley’s not without some baggage, and that worries him.”
“You mean her addiction?”
Sarah was clearly surprised. “You know about that?”
He nodded. “She told me about that when she told me about the miscarriage, week before last. Of course, she didn’t tell me—deliberately, I guess—that the child she lost was mine. She knew I wouldn’t take it very well.”
“Jonah said she’d been sober for two years.”
“Twenty-three months. She was very proud of that,” he admitted softly. “I’m going to have to go talk to her, aren’t I?”
Sarah hugged him. “I think you should. I think the two of you deserve a chance to sit down and be open and honest with each other for once. That’s something that was taken from you. You need to take it back.”
Ben rested his head on top of hers. “I’m sorry I was trying to run away earlier. And that I got short with you.”
“I know. I understood it wasn’t me personally.” She half-smiled up at him. “I need to get to work.”
“What are you going to do about Callie?”
Sarah sighed. “I’m not sure. I’ll let you know when I do decide.” She bent to pick up the file, but Ben stopped her.
“Do you mind if I hold on to that? Just for a day or so?”
“I suppose not. Promise you’ll be careful with it?”
“Of course.”
Long after she’d gone, he stood in the living room, staring down at the file. He trusted his parents’ judgment. But there was someone else he wanted to talk to, someone whose opinion he needed. He picked up the phone to make the call.
“Hey, it’s me,” he said once he’d been transferred. “I need to see you. Can I stop by?”
Thirty minutes later, he was seated in John’s cozy office. His brother was going through the file and was visibly shaken by what he was reading.
“Mom and Dad got that from Ainsley. They went to see her Monday.”
“Holy hell, Benny. This is dangerous information.”
Ben frowned. “You think so?”
“Oh, yeah.” John laid the file down and rubbed his mouth, his gaze still on the folder. “Shit. I can’t… I’m not supposed to reveal confidential information about former clients. But the guy from the dealership? He was a client of Dave’s,” he said, referring to the job with an accounting firm he’d left earlier in the year. “I’m familiar with his finances. He was in pretty dire straits when this letter was written. If she’d offered to cancel that debt? He’d have jumped at it. He almost lost everything back then. And the only reason I’m telling you this now is because this would have hurt
all of us if it had come out. What was her mother going to do with this?”
“From what Mom said, if Ainsley didn’t marry Doug, her bitch of a mother would have sent those letters. Ainsley didn’t know she was pregnant when she left town.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell John the apparent truth about the miscarriage, not given that John and Zanny had suffered their own loss a few months back.
John’s face was somber and sympathetic. “That news changes everything.”
“Yeah. I guess it does.” Ben stared at his brother. “How do I reach out to her? How do I take that chance? Put myself out there again?”
John looked out the window to stare out over the wide green lawn that stretched away from the building. “Do you really think you can go on with your life and be happy if you don’t try? If you don’t give her a chance to at least explain? See how she feels?”
Ben sat forward and rubbed his neck, thinking hard. “She could crush me. I wouldn’t blame her.”
“I don’t think she will. You were too angry, too close emotionally, to see her face clearly the other day. Knowing you were hurt, I think that hurt her as much as anything.”
“If it were you?”
John’s lips quirked up. “What do you think? You saw what Zanny and I went through. I could have walked away after she threw me out the second time. But I had to stay in the fight.”
“Why didn’t you walk away? I know you were hurt.”
His brother sighed. “I was, and I was angry. I tried to convince myself that I’d be fine without her. But I knew I wouldn’t be. I kept waking up in the night, reaching across an empty bed for her. I couldn’t hold her or hug our boys on the way out the door in the morning or go home to her in the evenings. I couldn’t pick the phone up and call her if something funny happened or if I ran up against a hard problem and just needed to hear her voice.”
He gave a self-conscious shrug. “I could live without her, but I wouldn’t be happy. I’d just be going through the motions. And I wanted to be happy. So I waited until Zanny was ready to take me back. Because I can’t imagine my life without her. And she’s worth more than my pride. That wasn’t an easy realization at first. We’re supposed to be manly and invulnerable and let the women be the weaker sex. That’s complete and utter bull.”
