Need Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy Book Three)

by Dunning, Rachel

  I call Vikki.

  Vikki says she’ll call her pops and then call me back. Before clicking off, she whispers, “Blaze, you not gonna believe what Skate asked me to do! I have to tell you in person!”

  I try and act surprised. “What? Tell me now!”

  “No, not now, but, wow, sometimes it’s just worth waiting!”

  Yeah, and sometimes it’s worth having a sneaky friend that will kick your boyfriend’s ass on your behalf. “I can’t wait to hear it.”

  I really have no idea what Skate asked her (did he really propose?) but at least it looks like he’s doing something about letting her know he loves her. Which pretty much sums up the contents of the riot act I read him when he came by and ended up saving my ass. “One hell of a thank you I get,” he’d said to me afterwards.

  I’ve never been so glad I forgot to answer a text. Skate, like all typical men, was worried. Vikki wasn’t answering, I wasn’t answering. So he came by early to the apartment. Like a real macho dude. Thank goodness for male macho-ness!

  I gave him a hug, shaking and trembling with gratitude. “Thank you,” I said. Then I punched him in the stomach (he didn’t even flinch) and said, “If you break my girl’s heart I will personally cut your nuts off, and then I’ll get Trev to lay into you harder than he laid into Dino Moretti the night Deck got that chain whacked over his head!”

  Skate smiled as if he didn’t believe I could do it. “You know Trev likes me because he thinks I’m a good influence on Deck! And you know if I played it up enough—even with a little white lie maybe—I could get him to whip yo ass!”

  He smiled a little less. “You wouldn’t...”

  “For Vikki? I most certainly would!”

  He stopped smiling. “Uhm, cool, gotcha. Loud and clear.”

  And then I hugged him again, and thanked him again, and whispered, “I fuckin owe you, Skate. I really do. Thank you.”

  He patted my back. “Just take care of my boy like you take care of your girl, OK?”

  “I promise.”

  And that’s what I’m doing now.

  Taking care of my boy.

  -3-

  Vikki’s dad came through. Don’t ask me how, but he did...

  I get Mrs. Lerrington’s number and home address—Long Island, Nassau County. The same county in which Mr. Bernstein lives. The county in which all rich people live... That and Suffolk, of course. It’s actually New York, but it really ain’t.

  I figure I’m just gonna come out and tell her. I’ll be polite, sure, but there’s no point in beating around the bush. She’ll either hate me or love me. But whatever her reaction, it can’t be worse than what Deck and I are going through right now.

  I call her and she’s more than happy to see me. An hour later (the snow made it slower) I arrive at the sprawling landed estate which is the Lerrington property. Several acres of land with the colonial-style home set in the back. I’m at a wrought iron gate which is covered with dollops of snow. A white blanket spreads majestically behind it, but the road is clear. Must’ve been salted just this morning. Mr. Bernstein and this woman might live in the same county, but the Lerrington home dwarfs his by about ten times.

  This doesn’t feel like a home at all. It feels like a cold, overbearing giant. And it screams, Money. Lots of money.

  I ring the bell and a man with a perky tone (via the intercom) opens the gate. As I drive up to the main gate, a man in uniform takes my car keys while yet another shows me the way in. I wonder if they were the ones who salted the roads.

  I climb up the steps to the entrance of the mansion and Mrs. Lerrington is there, a hint of purple in her gray hair, but she has eyes that once must have been very bright green. Eyes which look, now, strained and tested. Her smile doesn’t reach those eyes. In fact, it shivers slightly. She’s a little hunched over, a little bent forward.

  She tells me she’s so glad to see me and that she never gets any visitors other than the ladies of her reading club and they only come around once a month or so. “When you get old, any number of things get in the way of your concentration, so it takes us a little while to get through even the simplest of books!”

  She looks positively enthusiastic at my arrival, even though I was quite clear when I called her up that I needed to talk to her about something serious—about her husband. Her answer had been quick, even a little distracted, “Yes, yes, well...” And then she had sighed, and said, “Dear, come on over anyway! We’ll have a chat!” and that final promise of “a chat” had come across with all the joy of a child expecting a birthday party.

  Inside, she has another uniformed man (number three and counting) bring us tea. We sit on comfortable couches in what I guess is “the parlor” (I always wondered what one of these would look like.) It’s large and stately and filled with things that come from a different age, or simply a different part of town. Gold trimming and porcelain statues that could be Greek- or Roman-style, some china, an ornate table whose legs curve and swirl fancily. “Hand-crafted,” she says when she sees me looking at it.

  “Oh.” There really is nothing else to say to that.

  I’m sitting on a velvety red settee across from the swirly-wirly table. On the table itself are a few magazines. Robb Report and Reader’s Digest seem to be a favorite.

  I start playing with my hands, not sure how to approach this topic. I’m also feeling pretty uncomfortable in her presence, because despite her age, she looks elegant, well taken care of. She has on a pearl necklace and stylish earrings even though she’s at home. Did she get dressed up for me? Does she dress up every day waiting for her husband to come home to her? Does she sit here and read in this lonely room, listening to the echoes of footsteps of her servants outside in the hallway?

  I figure I better approach this subject quickly, because if I ponder much more on it I’m going to back out for fear of ruining her ideas of the type of husband she has, despite the veneer of money he no doubt splurges on her.

  Looking down at the torn jeans on my knees (thick, warm leggings underneath!) I start, “Mrs. Lerrington—”

  “Blaze, was it?”

  I look up. “Uhm, yeah, Blaze.”

  “That’s a lovely name indeed.”

  “Well, it’s really Błażej”—pronounced Buwhazhay. “I changed it. It’s, uhm, Polish.”

  “Is that so?” Her eyes go wide with interest.

  Yip, this might take a while...

  We get onto talking about where I grew up, why my name’s Ryleigh now (“Because the man who was my father split on us but he was Irish apparently and I liked this last name so I chose it”) and why I changed it at all (“Because I didn’t want to get stereotyped for being Polish when I feel completely American”) and what led me to “decorate” my arm in such fancy designs. We actually have quite a detailed discussion about my tats. I tell her about Savva and how many of them—the lower ones, the wolf, the dead tree, the skull—represent a dark time in my life. She nods, she listens, she smiles, she drinks her tea (I’ve been here an hour and we’re on the second pot now), she sits up straight.

  Several times I try and broach the subject I came here for but she gives me an almost reproachful frown and says only, “We’ll get onto that, dear, but we must first acquaint ourselves with each other. It’s the polite thing to do.”

  The more I talk to her the more I like her. I don’t sense any pretense in the way she’s listening to me. I find myself smiling, laughing, asking her about her own life (“I’m English, moved here when I was only twelve. Some of the accent stuck, but most of it disappeared.”) Somewhere along the line she starts talking to me about her husband. She tells me how she used to ride horses and do shows (wow!) and she was “quite the fox in my younger days!” A glint forms in her eyes and I even see her cheeks rouge. She tells me how she was doing a showjumping competition and she was in the final round “and then this gentleman came over, wearing a Stetson. And he stopped by my horse just before I was about to enter the course, took his hat off
and said...” She smiles, blushes. “He said to me, ‘Misseh, now if you ain’t one-a the finest gals on a horse I ever done seen, why, I-a, I jus’ don’t know. I been tryin ta figure out how the hell to say hi to such a gal but, uh, well, I... I’m-a speechless! You’re...staggeringly beautiful, ma’am. And it’s my damndest pleasure to make your acquaintance!’ And then he bowed gently, took his hat off and held up his hand to me.”

  I laugh like mad, so does she. She really did his accent well.

  “He’s Texan, you see? And he was studying law down there. I lived up here in New York with my family. And he was...attractive... Very attractive! He was firm and tall and handsome and well-to-do. Of course, the Texans are all a little different, but he came from a big family, a wealthy family. That kind of stuff was important to my father...”

  And she tells me more, how Mr. Lerrington moved here for her! How he joined the law firm and then, later, on making senior partner, took it over completely and changed its name. She tells me about her children, how they’ve grown up and moved on. She has five in total. “I was busy in my day!”

  She tells me things that make me endlessly sad. She tells me things—indirectly and overly euphemistically, but the nuances are clear to read—that give me the unmistakable idea that she and her husband had enjoyed wild and uncontrollable passion in their heyday. In other words, for us laymen of today, their sex had been hot.

  Then she sighs. “Alas, somewhere along the line...” She looks behind me at the French doors that look out on their exquisite grounds. Her eyes quiver, and the bright shimmer of them fades. I wonder how many times she’s thought of what she’s thinking of now, and how much time it must have taken for that shimmer to fade permanently, leaving her eyes only a dull green now, devoid of spark and fire.

  While she’d been telling me about “the old days,” that spark, that glow, had returned ever so briefly. But now, as she sits here looking beyond me out into the white lawn, considering the point of her “alas” that she still needs to tell me about, her eyes become gray.

  And empty.

  “...alas, Blaze, I...got old...I think.” She shrugs, looks at her tea-cup, puts it back on the saucer. The sudden silence in the room, after the mirth of the last three hours of talking, is eerie. Like sudden death. Cold and empty and...without passion.

  The heat is gone from the room, much like the heat has gone from their lives, their relationship. And their love.

  “I had Brian, he was our last. He’s twenty-six now, living down in North Carolina with a fine woman that he met. A lovely girl. I was thirty-seven when I had him. No complications despite my age. Well, after him...” She sighs again. “...things changed. Frank changed. I found out about the first woman—a young and spunky hussy of twenty-three—two months after Brian was born. It burned me when I found out about that one.”

  I feel my tongue dry up and realize my mouth is open. She knows! And she’s known for twenty-six years!

  “I hated Frank. Hated him! All we’d been through together, all the children we’d had—Susanna, our oldest, was only fifteen then! And Brandon, my fourth, was only three! It killed my heart. Plates were thrown. I slapped him, I hit him. I got angry at him. And, eventually, after endless tears and apologies and promises from him that he wouldn’t do it again, I made love to him. And that was that. It was over, forgotten. And I loved him again.

  “The next woman was a year later. Oh, maybe it had been earlier, but I only found out about her a year later. There was less anger this time, more bitterness. There was some swearing. The children heard it, and that I regret. If I were to do it again I can’t tell you if I’d leave Frank, but I will tell you that I would have spared my poor children the drama. They didn’t need to know about these things. Children need to believe in true love. It’s important, important for personal growth, for hope, for many things. I believe in true love. I do. I don’t believe in perfect love, however.

  “Well—oh, more tea, Blaze?”

  I look at my cup, it’s empty. “Yeah, sure.”

  She pours me some and continues talking. “We made up again. And when we made up it was always in the bedroom, let me tell you that. And, oh my, was it good. I always forgot when I was with him. He was so...well, I’m sure you know all about that kind of thing!

  “The third woman was two years later. I didn’t bring that one up, never told him I knew of her. But I grew colder, less easily pleased. At least Frankie never lost interest in me. I believe it happens with other men, when they cheat on their wives. Yes, the heat was less, but never completely gone. But I turned him away a lot. It disgusted me, him being with other women. Nonetheless”—another deep sigh—“I grew lonelier with time. And I needed him. Not a man, you understand. I needed him, inside me, stroking my hair”—she does this now lightly—“breathing his hot breath against my neck.

  “I remember crying the first time I let him inside me after I discovered number three. He asked me after, ‘What’s-a wrong, darlin?’ And I said, ‘Oh, nothing, you old brute!’ and then we laughed and he kissed me and we rolled in the bed. And he said, ‘I love you, Melissa Lerrington. You know you’re-a the only one I ever gonna love, dontcha?’

  “Well, that brought on the tears in full force, let me tell you!”

  I’m feeling a little teary myself now.

  “He really did love me. He does love me, I believe. But he’s weak. A foolish man. But that he loves me, and that I’m the only one he loves, is not in question for me. Never has been. And so the years passed. We had this house, watched our children grow up here. They all turned out fine, I believe. Susan’s the realistic one, the tough one. Marianne’s into girls. It’s not something I expected, but she’s a bright girl, works hard, is kind to her mother. So I let her live her life as she wants. Brian’s in North Carolina, as I told you. Then there’s Brandon, Keith. Three boys, two girls. Well, one and a half—Marianne’s half male. Fine.” She shakes her head at this with a smile. “And that’s my story, Blaze Ryleigh. I married a man who loved me endlessly at one stage. But I love him more, so I forgave him more. He’s the only man I’ve ever been with, and that’s how it will be until I die.

  “Oh we don’t make love anymore! It’s difficult when you get older. The body’s pumps just...well...they get a little stuck sometimes! It’s different for men. I think whoever put us on this earth rigged it that way for a reason, to keep the race going. And, to be honest, I don’t need that kind of love anymore anyway. When the pumps stopped going for me, well, so did the desires. I like it better this way. It keeps my mind free to focus on the things I was too distracted to focus on when I was younger. Gardening. Reading. Watching the sun set.

  “So, Blaze, tell me: Who is he with this time? And I sure hope that it isn’t you because that would sorely disappoint me!”

  I start waving my hands wildly. “Oh, no, no! It’s not!”

  She smiles politely.

  Ah, she was joking.

  I tell her about Tatiana. Mrs. Lerrington asks me, completely businesslike, how old she is, what her position at the firm is.

  Then I tell her about what she’s doing to Declan.

  And here she frowns slightly. “So...she is using my Frank to fund a lawsuit in order to ruin the relationship of a couple who clearly love each other?” The statement comes out as a semi-statement-question.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh, my. Oh, my. No. No. That just won’t do. That just won’t do! Women is one thing. But to bring his business into it, the firm’s money! And for such a nefarious purpose!” Her voice is rising to a sharp pitch now and she’s sitting up poker-straight and stiff.

  She stops. Sits back, eyes still scowling firmly.

  She looks at me. “Blaze...” She lifts her tea-cup, takes a sip, puts it back down, and then says something that throws the room into motion: “Consider it handled. Completely and utterly dealt with.” She swipes her hand left to right when she says handled. But her gaze, ever firm, ever serious, ever deadly, stays fixed on
me.

  She leans forward, looks straight at me. And waits.

  My stomach has done a forward and backward lurch. Tears have formed at the back of my eyes, tears of relief. Because I know it is handled. I just know it! Just like that. The look in her eyes, the look of years and decades of experience in dealing with this man, her husband, the man she loves.

  A woman scorned...

  It’s the look of the complete ability for forgiveness. And the utter possibility of hate.

  It’s clear to me now, how they’ve survived. She’s understood his weaknesses, realized that letting him delve into them was better—in her estimation—for her and her family, and even for her and him, than trying to change a dog that never would.

  She would have died without him, died inside and out. So she let him have free rein “within reason.”

  I don’t agree with it. But it’s not my place to agree or disagree with it.

  She never let him ruin their home life, made him take their kids on vacations. And made him satisfy her in the bedroom because, damnit, she is his damned wife after all and if she says it’s over between him and one of his hussies then BY GOD ALMIGHTY: It. Is. Over!

  And she has this power for one, and only one, reason: This treacherous liar, this fickle and cowardly man, this weak-willed and flesh-driven fool of a husband...loves her.

  He loves her endlessly.

  He can’t promise her his faithfulness. It’s a promise he can never keep. But he’ll do what he tells her, at least for a while. She gives him leeway, and gets some in return.

  It’s not my place to judge this arrangement. It’s not my place to say it does or doesn’t work, that it’s wrong, right, smart, foolish.

  Melissa Lerrington is a wonderful, caring, passionate woman. She’s a proud and, most of all, loving woman.

  Her man will never know just how much he’s wronged her.

  But she’s going straight to heaven.