Wishing Well

by Lily White

  “Had nothing to do with it,” I insisted. There was no way I would let them drag Maurice into this. If my brother were found to have committed murder, he would end up in a state psychiatric facility. I refused to let that happen to him. “Speaking of which, did you get in touch with John? How is my brother doing?”

  “You’re worried about your brother? Are you kidding me right now?”

  I simply stared at him.

  “Your manager said they got him to the basement. Whatever the hell that means”

  When relief withered my shoulders, he ground his teeth. “You kill me, you know that? This is serious, Vincent. They have cadaver dogs out there looking for the pieces of that man who was killed.”

  That information did not bode well. Scrubbing my palm down my face, I asked, “Just out of curiosity, how deep down can those dogs smell?”

  His eyes rounded. “I’m not sure. Why?”

  Shaking my head, I answered, “No reason.” Except for maybe the two other bodies I’d disposed of when accidents happened.

  Fucking Hell, this was bad. “So, what now? We go through the arraignment? The judge sets my bail? What happens then?”

  Cursing under his breath, Stephen clicked his pen, the noise an outward symptom of his disbelief and anger. “Then we allow the police to conclude their investigation and decide on charges. As your attorney, I’m highly recommending you come clean about who actually ripped apart that man and killed the woman.”

  “Penelope, I said, genuine sorrow coating my voice. “Her name was Penelope Graham.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what her name was. All I know is that if you don’t come clean, she’ll be the woman you get the death penalty for.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Faiville Prison; 12:01 pm

  Meadow was in tears as the guard led her from the interview room for shift change, her jaw practically dragging the table after listening to Vincent’s reiteration of events. She didn’t have a single second to ask him more about it before the door popped open and she was informed she’d need to leave for a half hour.

  In truth, and for the first time since she’d started that interview with Vincent, she appreciated the interruption. Meadow felt broken, crushed, suffering the same injuries her sister had suffered as a fight broke out around her.

  After being led to the waiting area where she took a seat on the benches that were as uncomfortable - as inhospitable - as all the feelings inside her, she wished she’d brought the police reports and autopsy reports with her, if only to confirm what she thought she knew.

  Barron had suffered such brutal injuries that the medical examiner could only guess which one had been the trauma that killed him. As if a pack of animals had taken hold, his body was torn apart, was shredded by the rage of a man who, until now, Meadow believed had been jealous. She’d guessed, she’d KNOWN, Vincent couldn’t have been the one to do it, leaving only Maurice to have lost control.

  But in all the days she’d spent studying those reports, in all the years she’d thought back to what she’d read, she’d never considered the possibility that the rage of the man who killed Barron had been in protection of her sister from the man who’d intended her harm.

  How stupid had she been?

  As for her sister’s body, the injuries were also inconclusive. Bones broken, skull crushed in, skin ripped and torn. There were several guesses as to what had been the fatal blow. Meadow assumed the injuries had been intentional, not that they’d occurred as one man attempted to protect her body from another man who could have cared less.

  In the end, she was right, Vincent hadn’t been the aggressor - he hadn’t been the villain in this tragic fairytale ending. And he hadn’t been wrong to say that it was the too perfect timing that had made it possible for the story to end this way. As if fate herself had danced the streets of the city, the sway of her hips causing soft winds to blow and push all the characters into place.

  Too perfect, that bitch we call fate and her timing.

  But even in that, Vincent didn’t know all of it. He didn’t understand just how perfect the timing had been. Only Meadow knew, and it was her turn to tell him. It had been her one card - the ace that would send him to death screaming.

  Not anymore. Now it was just a pathetically sad fact that if she hadn’t been so angry and afraid, she could have prevented tragedy and senseless death.

  “Are you ready to go back? Or did you need another few minutes?”

  Swiping at the tears that dotted her cheeks, Meadow glanced up at the grim faced guard by the gate. Standing on the other side, he peered out at her from between the heavy bars, his hands wrapped around one on each side of his body. Her expression must have set off warning signals in his head. “Did he say something to you in there that made you so upset? You don’t have to finish this, you know? You can walk away and let that bastard die all by himself.”

  His words made her cry harder. For all of his games, for the tangled webs he’d spun and the joy he took in trapping his prey, Vincent Mercier didn’t deserve to die at all.

  It had all been about his brother. About Maurice. The deaths, the accidents, the cages and chains: it had all occurred because one man hadn’t known how to help another. But not because he hadn’t tried.

  People would celebrate Vincent’s death tomorrow.

  Meadow wouldn’t be one of them.

  Slapping away the last tear, Meadow answered, “I’m ready,” while hating the crack in her voice. Standing from the bench seat she would never warm again, she took measured steps toward the imposing gate, winced at the sound of the pneumatic hiss and stepped through to finish an interview she wished had been conducted years before.

  Before...

  She would have done anything in her power to save him.

  Led inside interview room three, she didn’t lift her head, didn’t dare meet Vincent’s eyes until she’d steeled her spine and was ready. What she found when she finally glanced across the table broke her even more. For the first time since they’d started this dance, Vincent looked at her with pity behind his emerald green eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice a soft whisper.

  “For what?”

  Vincent was too still in his seat, too remorseful and calm. For some strange reason she suddenly missed the arrogance, the humor, the razor-edged wit of the man now looking at her with keen understanding in his expression. “You just heard the details of your sister’s death. That can’t be easy for anyone.”

  If only he knew...

  Wrapping her arms around her abdomen, she attempted to hold herself together. And with minimal strength in her voice, she said, “You weren’t the villain in this story. I mean...you were...but at the same time, you were not.”

  A quick shake of his head, just one soft movement. “No, not in that part, at least. In others?” He shrugged. “Perhaps I was.”

  A journalist shouldn’t lose herself this way, not a real one, not the type that is tough as nails, that could set herself aside from the story and look at it from an objective place.

  She couldn’t. She’d lost the ability to fight.

  “How,” she asked, her throat clogged by emotion, her lungs struggling to take a steady breath. “How did Barron end up in the garden with my sister?”

  Seconds passed in silence, Vincent studying her, dissecting her, before breathing out and admitting, “That, I don’t know. From what my attorney told me, the police reviewed the security tapes from the hotel. They saw your sister arrive, they saw Barron come and go, but how those two ended up together is a mystery I fear we’ll never solve. It’s the timing I mentioned.”

  I glanced up at him to see him flare his fingers in resignation. “How did the woodcutter show up just in time to save Little Red from the wolf? How do the princes of every fairytale appear at exactly the moment they’re needed? I used to think those stories were comical for the way everything just neatly fell in place. I used to think they were so opposite to reality. But after
this story, after countless other tragedies where people were simply in the wrong place at precisely the wrong time, I don’t laugh at fairytales anymore. Even life has its neat and tidy endings that we have no choice but to accept.”

  Another short period of time where the only sound in the room was the gentle hum of the air conditioning. Meadow was lost for that moment, at least until Vincent rattled his chains.

  “But that’s not all there is to know about this particular ending, is there?”

  Lifting her eyes, she found him leaning toward her, closing the distance she so desperately needed.

  Meadow needed space from the tragedy, the shattered lives, the secrets and the pain.

  Oh, God, the pain...

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she answered weakly, her own lies crushing her beneath their pathetic weight.

  “Don’t lie,” he answered softly, “not now, not after we’ve reached the end.”

  Tension traced across her bones. He can’t know. There’s no possible way.

  Reaching as far as the shackles would allow him, Vincent could only touch the tip of his finger to her chin. She wanted to straighten her posture, to stop curling her body over the edge of the table just so she could move out of reach. But, yet, that small bit of contact comforted her more than she wanted to admit.

  “How could you let Maurice die?” she asked, pure agony coating her words.

  “I didn’t mean to. I did everything I could to help him. He’s why I walk voluntarily to my death. But that’s not what we need to discuss at the moment, is it? We have time for that after locking in the final piece of this tragic puzzle.”

  Meadow lifted her eyes, the truth of her secret written clearly across her face.

  “Barron finding your sister, the choice of which night Maurice and I would go to the garden, those weren’t the only factors with perfect timing, were they? There was one more factor that added to this fairytale ending, and I think it’s only fair you tell me.”

  Her eyes locked to his, gold-flecked brown meeting the emerald green as all veils and pretenses were torn aside, the secrets finally being revealed.

  Vincent blinked, his dark lashes a fan across his skin for only a moment before the green pinned her again.

  “How is it your sister was at the hotel that night? And why did you choose to run after witnessing what happened, Penelope ?”

  Heart seizing, she clenched her eyes shut, opening them again to see him staring at her with knowledge written into the color.

  “You know?” she asked, her mind drowning in disbelief.

  Vincent simply nodded his head. “I’ve known since the moment you first entered this room to start the interview. I’ve known the entire time.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Penny

  Vincent left the room with his shoulders shaking. Lately it seemed he no longer got his enjoyment by torturing me with games, but rather by torturing me with making suggestions Maurice would take to heart. Five seconds ago and we’d merely been eating lunch, even if messily so due to Maurice’s fun in force feeding me. But now, the beautiful man with glimmering green eyes was staring at me like I’d become the meal he would eat, the food on the table no longer holding his interest.

  “What’s a reverse cowgirl?” he asked, his head tilting slightly to the side.

  My face fell into my palms. Mumbling against my hands, I answered, “It’s nothing. Just forget Vincent ever said anything.”

  Deep laughter floated across the table, his hand reaching out to tug mine from my face. “It doesn’t sound like nothing.”

  Shaking my head in disbelief, I laughed along with him. “I’ll teach you what it is after our walk in the garden tonight. Deal?”

  Cocking a brow, he smirked. “Deal. But what can you teach me now?”

  When he looked at me like that, I wanted nothing more than to grab his face between my hands and kiss him until we were both breathless. But for as long as we’d been ‘friends’, he still hadn’t allowed me that one bit of intimacy. Sex, Maurice could handle. In fact, it was a demand he made several times a day. But kissing, he wasn’t there yet. I didn’t know if it was a trust thing and I’d asked Vincent if he understood why Maurice had that issue. Even Vincent didn’t know. The only guess he could make was that the last person Maurice had willingly let kiss him had been their mother.

  And then a few months later, she’d died.

  So, perhaps it was fear - a fear I was determined to show him was misplaced. Vincent had given me some ridiculous speech about how a kiss gives life or brings death, whatever the hell that meant, but I refused to let Maurice continue walling himself off from any of the best experiences in life.

  So, at night while he was sleeping, I would kiss him all over his face. And one day, I would do it when his eyes were open, when he was looking at me like I was his world, when I’d finally reached a point with him that he could trust I would never leave his side.

  “I can teach you patience,” I answered, grinning like an idiot to see the content expression of his ridiculously beautiful face. It wasn’t fair how handsome both Maurice and Vincent were, and perhaps Maurice’s issues, those problems that kept him apart, had been a favor to the women of the world. Dealing with one was enough to suck you into a vortex of sensual confusion and leave you with the inability to breathe, but if these two had ever gone out on the town together, I knew there would have been a slew of broken hearts left in their wake.

  “Patience? Why?”

  “Because I need to get a shower and I have errands I need to run today,” I explained, my sister on my mind.

  It had been a few weeks since I last sent an email and after stopping by the Internet cafe to answer whatever messages Meadow had sent me, I had every intention of stopping by a store to purchase a phone with the earnings from my last paycheck. No longer concerned that Vincent would boot me onto the streets, I wanted to make my life more convenient. Why I hadn’t bought one weeks ago was beyond my understanding, but perhaps my own fear of what could happen with Vincent’s mercurial moods had made me a bit too leery of draining her savings.

  His moods didn’t matter anymore. Nothing would strip me away from Maurice.

  Concern edged his eyes. “Will you be back in time for the walk?”

  Smiling to comfort him, I wanted to reach out to wipe the worried lines from his face, but knowing he would only pull away, I curled my fingers into my palms. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Not one damn thing. Okay? And if I don’t make it down the basement in time, I’ll wait for you by the employee door leading outside.”

  Maurice nodded his head before settling back into his seat. “Okay.”

  And if I wanted to keep that promise, I would have to get going. Already, the day was getting late. Standing from my seat, I pressed two fingers to my lips and blew him a kiss. “I’ll be back, Maurice, and then we’ll find out what I can teach you later.”

  He nodded his head and it killed my not to be able to hug him, to hold him in a way he still wouldn’t allow. Maurice’s idea of physical affection often led to rough sex, and there was no time for that, not if I wanted to send the email to my sister, buy a phone and make it back in time.

  Not only that, but I needed to shower. Doing so in the basement only led to Maurice climbing in to dirty my body after I got it clean.

  “I’ll see you when I get back,” I called out, leaving the yellow room to race down the hall to the elevator. After going to my room on the fifth floor, showering and getting dressed, I left the hotel via the back employee gate of the garden.

  It didn’t take long for me to reach the Internet cafe, and by now the clerk recognized me well enough to call out my name as I entered. “Penny! How are you today?”

  “Good,” I answered, tossing enough money to buy myself a half hour.

  Shaking his head, he opened the cash register and handed me a receipt with the login code. “Why haven’t you bought a phone yet? Coming here all the time has to be a pain in the
ass.”

  “I’m buying one after leaving here today.”

  The cashier grinned. “Well, in that case, I’ll miss you. Desk three is open.”

  “Thanks!”

  Within seconds, I was at desk three, logging into my email provider to find dozens of emails spanning the past few weeks, each subject line becoming more panicked and urgent. When I reached the email with the subject line, MOM IS DEAD!! , my heart was a drumbeat in my throat and I clicked to open it.

  Tears burst from my eyes, my hand flying to my mouth as if that would stop the loud sobs from escaping my lips. I could barely read the words through my tears that wouldn’t stop streaming, could hardly understand what Meadow’s email was saying.

  Apparently, she’d been sending me emails for over a week to let me know my mom and her new husband were in a car accident, that neither of them had survived. When I didn’t answer, she’d lost her patience and had written me this email with the horrible subject line, hoping it would catch my attention.

  Meadow was an intelligent girl. She had a good head on her shoulders. She knew where to find me. Why hadn’t she called the hotel to let me know the news? Perhaps, her shock, her pain, her agony from losing mom had made it impossible for her to think logically. Telling myself I would ask her that question when I had a chance, I scrolled through the next several emails with the details of the funeral she was planning. Refusing to have it without me there, she made plans to come to the city to find me, and her last email, dated that morning, told me she’d arrived into town safe and sound.

  She was staying with her best friend, Gia, at her house in our old neighborhood. Glancing at the clock on the computer screen, I calculated driving distances and determined I could make it there to see her and get back to the hotel on time.

  Panic and grief have a way of scrambling the mental wires, logic becoming absent as emotion takes control. I should have gone back to the hotel and called Gia. Meadow should have called the hotel to get in touch with me. When you take all the ‘should haves’ and wrap them up in a neat little package, you see just how ridiculous the mistakes had been. But who has time for that when their heart is tearing in two? My sister needed me just as desperately as I needed her.