by Trina Solet
They were almost ready to head out. Only a few last things were left to be stuffed into their bags.
"Are you sure you're not going to visit your mother?" Reese asked as he made sure he had everything in his backpack.
"Not planning to," Blake told him offhandedly.
"We can make a quick stop. She's the only one who can give you any answers now about your father and what he did and why," Reese pointed out.
Blake shook his head. "She would just lie." The thought of speaking to her filled him with distaste, but Reese didn't let up.
"You owe it to yourself to try. Maybe now that your father is gone, she has less reason to lie."
"Maybe," Blake said. He did wonder about that possibility.
"I'll wait in the car though," Reese said deadpan. Then he added. "And we have to stop at one other place before we go."
"Where?" Blake wanted to know, but Reese acted coy.
"I'll tell you when you finish up at your mother's."
Blake still wasn't sure it wouldn't be a waste of time to see her. He was about to tell Reese about his misgivings when they heard familiar voices and knocking on the motel room door.
"Thank God you're still here," Dee Dee said as Blake opened the door.
"Just barely," Reese told her and Finn.
"So we're just in time to say goodbye? No breakfast?" Finn asked, looking from Reese to Blake.
"We said goodbye last night," Blake reminded him and Dee Dee.
"We ditched school for you," Dee Dee said mournfully. Clearly ditching was a big deal to her.
"This means I'm definitely not going," Blake said to Reese. He didn't want to give up spending time with the twins. Really any excuse not to visit his mother was fine.
"What?" Finn and Dee Dee wanted to know.
"He is going to go see his mother," Reese told them. He obviously thought that was still happening.
"Oh," the twins said with funny looks on their faces.
"They met her," Blake said to explain their expressions to Reese.
"You should go. We can bother Reese for a while," Dee Dee told him solemnly.
"Actually, the three of us can go ahead to Wellinger's and you can meet us there," Reese said.
"That's where you wanted to go?" Blake asked. He couldn't believe it. What a strange thing to want to relive in their last hours in town.
"I can't pass it up." Reese grinned devilishly.
"Great. Show them the place where you almost broke your neck," Blake said. It had been a terrifying moment, and Reese looked like he wanted to celebrate it.
"You went first. That was your silent declaration of love even if you didn't know it," Reese said.
"You could have died," Blake told him. He didn't like how cheerful he looked about that little adventure.
"You were there to save me," Reese said, proud of how crazy both of them had been.
Blake's blood ran cold at the memory.
The twins had been looking back and forth between them, getting more impatient by the second.
"What? What you are you talking about," Dee Dee wanted to know.
"Stop being mysterious," Finn said.
"Reese can fill you in," Blake said as he opened the door ready to head out. He grabbed both his duffel bag and Reese's backpack to put in the car.
Reese swooped in and kissed him. Now Blake's face felt burning hot, and he really wished the twins weren't there. Then he realized that he might not see them for a while. In that case, he didn't mind if they hung around that morning. They could keep Reese company while Blake made the unpleasant visit to his mother.
Chapter 20
Tierney Lane hadn't changed much since Blake lived there. He wished it had. The only good memories he had were when Reese came by. As he saw his mother's house come into view among the old trees, Blake had to gather the courage to get out of his car and approach. Just being on this street was like stepping into the past.
This was one of the oldest neighborhoods in Meadowview. All the families with old money owned houses here. They weren't as flashy as the houses by the country club, but the neighborhood had tons of prestige. That's why Blake's mother was determined to buy that awful house.
After the divorce, his mother couldn't afford to live in the good part of Meadowview any more. She had received a lump sum from his father. That was the money that paid for the house on Tierney Lane. Blake knew that his mother had a small trust fund from her family. That's what they lived on, but it didn't even come close to the kind of money Jim Monroe had.
That's why she latched on to anyone as long as they came with a fat bank account. Meadowview was the right place to find men with money, but none of them stuck around for long. Blake didn't either.
He didn't think he would ever be standing in front of that house again. The worst house in the best neighborhood, his mother had called it. The house was falling apart around them, but she had no money to fix it up. She did get one of her boyfriends to pay for patching up the roof. She wanted him to pay for a whole new roof, or even better a whole new house. It never worked out that way. Her greed always exceeded the power she had over the men in her life. She could never make them stay and fork over any kind of serious money. That's why she grew so desperate and latched onto the old man who lived across the street.
Blake turned away from his mother's house to look at the mansion that had once belonged to Mr. Fenwick. It wasn't the blocky, old thing he remembered. It had been remodeled and modernized, but that didn't erase the sick feeling it still gave Blake when he looked at it.
He had been in high school, almost done with his senior year. All sorts of plans were swirling in his head. Most of them involved getting as far as he could from Meadowview. That whole thing with Mr. Fenwick cinched it.
Mr. Fenwick was very old and had lived in that big, boxy, old house across the street. He was friendly to Blake when he was little, unlike some of the other neighbors, who transferred their dislike of his mother onto him.
For years after Mrs. Fenwick died, Blake would see Mr. Fenwick shuffling in his garden with sheers in hand, painstakingly trimming the plants or watering them. He always waved when he saw Blake. After a while, Blake hardly ever saw him. The few times he caught sight of the old man, he was wearing a robe and slippers late in the day. A few times he was in bare feet and only wore pajamas.
One day Blake saw him walking down the street, dressed only in his pajama bottoms. He had his watering can in his hand, and he looked around in confusion. Blake took him home. Back in his own house, Mr. Fenwick was himself again, and he thanked Blake for his help.
It was pretty clear that he was starting to lose it, Alzheimer's probably. He didn't have any family nearby. He had a maid who came in once a week, but no one to take care of him. That's when Blake's mother decided to befriend him.
"The poor man, he has no one." That's what she was counting on.
She started going out with Mr. Fenwick and got him to spend some money on her. But that was all she got out of him. She couldn't make him marry her while he was still somewhat competent. By the time she might have been able to get him to the altar, Mr. Fenwick had deteriorated so much that the marriage wouldn't have been valid. There was already talk about his strange outbursts in public as he became disoriented and sometimes belligerent.
Blake expected his mother to give up after their outings became embarrassing, but she still visited Mr. Fenwick at his house. Blake didn't know why she still went over there. He found out when she asked Blake to come along.
She claimed that Mr. Fenwick needed him to move some boxes from the attic. Once Blake arrived, Mr. Fenwick didn't know anything about that. He really didn't know much of anything at all.
When Blake came in, his mother pointed to him and said to Mr. Fenwick, "Look. There he is. He's here. You know who he is, don’t you?"
Mr. Fenwick stared blankly at Blake. Then he reached out to him and started to cry. He called him "My boy."
Blake didn't know what to do. He
looked at his mother. She was smiling. Blake backed out of the room and left.
"You need to leave that poor old man alone," Blake told her when she came home. He didn't know what she was up to, but he knew it had to be something underhanded.
"Poor? Ha!" His mother laughed. Seeing how Blake looked at her, she sobered a little. "There's no harm in it. It makes him happy." She told him how Mr. Fenwick had lost his son in the Vietnam War. It was easy to make him believe Blake was his dead son. Half the time he believed Blake's mother was his dead wife.
Blake warned her not to try to use him again, but he couldn't keep her from going back there. She even tried to get him to go, but he refused. In fact, Blake did go back when his mother didn't know about it. He followed her, wanting to see what she was up to.
Hiding in the garden, he circled Mr. Fenwick's house until he heard his mother's voice through an open window. He went closer and crouched under the window to listen.
That's when he overheard her telling the old guy, "You don't want your son to starve, to go homeless like all those poor Vietnam veterans you hear about. You don't want him to have to sell his medals. He needs your help. Fifty thousand, that's all. It's for your son. That's not a lot to ask for a hero. Here. Just write your name. That's all. Just write your name."
Blake risked a look so he could see what she was doing. His mother was holding out a checkbook in front of Mr. Fenwick. As he was seated hunched over his desk, she tried to make him hold a pen. She kept closing his fingers around it, but the old man was looking off into the distance and his hand kept opening. For a moment, his eyes fell on Blake at the window. The old man started to smile. That's when Blake saw his mother hit Mr. Fenwick. She hit his head with the flat of her hand several times, and the old man started to cry pitifully.
Blake climbed in through the window and pulled his mother away from him.
"If you ever come here again, I'll call the police!" he told her.
Mr. Fenwick was still crying like a child. Blake's mother was screaming at Blake that he was just like his father. With her insults in his ears, Blake tried to console the frail old man. As Blake told him that he was going to be OK, Mr. Fenwick clutched at his hand and cried for his daddy.
After that, Blake asked around the neighborhood and finally got one of the neighbors to track down Mr. Fenwick's estranged daughter. She flew into town and had Mr. Fenwick put in a home.
But it didn't end there. A number of valuable items were missing from Mr. Fenwick's house, including his late wife's jewelry. His daughter asked Blake's mother about that. She blamed the maid.
Blake was sure that his mother was responsible, and Mr. Fenwick's daughter seemed to agree. The whole neighborhood shunned his mother after that.
In his own way, Blake did too. It was too painful to look at her so Blake stayed out of the house as much as he could. He got two part time jobs so he would have money when he moved away. Without Reese there, nothing was left to keep Blake in Meadowview.
With every passing year, with every step toward adulthood, Blake had been seeing his mother more clearly. In his eyes, she had once been beautiful but unpredictable, quick to get angry, never happy with any gift or any gesture of love. Now Blake saw a monster, a creature always grasping for money and capable of anything.
At the end of his last year of high school, Blake packed his belongings and left town, left his mother. He only regretted that he hadn't done it sooner. He should never have let Reese leave town alone. He should have gone to him, gotten on his knees, begged his forgiveness, and asked him to run away with him just like they planned. To this day, he regretted waiting around to finish the school year and get his diploma instead of going after Reese as soon as he could.
When he finally left Meadowview, Blake had no idea where Reese was. At every turn, Blake failed him. But at that time, Blake still hadn't figured himself out. It was only after he got away from his mother and her cloud of hate that Blake could start to think clearly and realize who he was and become his own man.
Now after years of not missing her, Blake was finally going to see his mother. As he stood next to his car, Blake took a deep breath before he could take even one step closer to his old home. Just looking at that house brought back so many bad memories. He almost turned around and left. But then he remembered how, years ago, Reese would wait defiantly for him in front of that house though he knew Blake's mother hated him. He smiled thinking of how Reese waved at her where she stood in the window glaring at him.
With both the past and present Reese giving him courage, Blake walked up the crumbling walkway onto the rotting planks of the porch and knocked. His mother opened the door in one swift motion and beamed at him as she invited him in.
The ingratiating smile was weird, but in most ways she hadn't changed that much. Her dark, wavy hair still cascaded down her back, gleaming and luxurious. Long, spidery eyelashes set off her blue eyes. Her figure was flawless, curvy but trim. Even the people who hated her, and there were many, admitted that she was beautiful.
Blake did see some signs of expertly done cosmetic enhancements. He wondered which boyfriend had paid for that. Her flaws were never on the outside though. The ugliness was all on the inside, and too many times Blake had seen it spilling over.
Though his mother insisted he sit and have a drink with her, Blake refused. He stood while she poured herself a drink from the bar in the living room. Looking around, he saw new, expensive furniture, but the new rug couldn't hide the warped floor that had suffered years of water damage. Everything he saw of the place told him that the house should just be torn down.
"I bet he didn't leave either of us anything," his mother said acidly after a good sip of her brandy. At least she got to the point without insisting on chit-chat.
"That wouldn't be a surprise," Blake told her, keeping his tone even.
She turned to him decisively. "You need to hire a lawyer."
"No," Blake said without even hearing her out. He knew she wanted to use him to get his father's money. It wouldn't have been the first time.
She once told him that she tried to get a friend of hers to talk to his father, to ask him for money for Blake to go to "a decent school". His father's answer was, "Tell that woman that she and her spawn got everything they are ever going to get from me." Blake's mother repeated this to him at the top of her voice. Blake was a little kid then, and he was afraid to ask her what spawn meant, but he knew it had to be bad.
"You are his son. You have a right to an inheritance. As his firstborn, you have a stronger claim than those two," she said with contempt. "You have to contest that will."
The odd thing was that she had never gone to court to try and squeeze money from his father. It always puzzled him.
"What did my father hold over your head all this time? You never dragged him into court while he was alive. How was he keeping you in check?" Blake wondered. No scandal would have kept her from the kind of money his father had. It had to be something much worse.
"I didn't do anything," she claimed.
Blake thought of a way he might be able to get some truth out of her. "If you want me to contest the will, I'll need to know why I was cut out of it in the first place."
"Let the lawyer handle it," she insisted.
"I bet you already have one picked out," Blake said.
She admitted it right away. "I do. He has handled this kind of thing before. He's very good." She went over to get her purse and pulled out a business card. She tried to hand it to Blake, but he wouldn't take it.
"I'll call him only if you tell me what my father had on you. I won't go into a courtroom without having all the information. Tell me or I walk out," Blake told her.
She thought for a moment then took a deep breath. "I didn't do anything. It was Don."
Blake remembered him. He was around in the first days after they got kicked out of his father's house. Don and Blake's mother had a lot of hushed arguments. He didn't stick around for long though.
Blak
e decided to play along. "OK. What did Don do?"
"He talked about what if something happened to your father," she said trying to veil her real meaning.
"Happened to him?"
"Like an accident," she said with a shrug.
"And my father found out what you were planning," Blake guessed.
"He had private investigators following me, spying on me, recording me!" she screamed indignantly.
"And he got proof, not only that you were cheating on him, but that you were plotting to kill him," Blake realized.
His mother was not the least bit ashamed or remorseful. She was very much herself. She ranted. "He brought it on himself. He was going to divorce me. And according to that ridiculous prenup he made me sign, I would get practically nothing!"
"So you decided to kill him." Blake wasn't surprised. This was who she was.
"He was horrible!" she claimed.
"Was he hitting you?" Blake asked.
"He was suffocating me. I wanted to live, to travel, to have fun. All he did was work. We only ever traveled for business. And if I spent too much money, he would yell," she said like she expected Blake to take her side.
"Obviously he deserved to die," Blake said. He wasn't sure if the sarcasm would be lost on her or not.
"You would have been rich," she said. That was true.
"As his only son, I would have gotten most of his money, which you would have control over."
"You can still get it," she told him. "Maybe not all of it, but some of it at least."
He looked at her. She wanted to make him rich, make him into one of those men she cajoled into paying her bills. Blake realized that he had been free of her all this time only because he had no money. He was of no use to her.
With her in the picture, Blake couldn't imagine his father's money bringing him anything but misery. He sincerely hoped that his father left him nothing in his will. Picking his father's pockets now that he was in the grave was unthinkable to him. What Blake wanted and needed from him, he would never have.
