When Nate had taken control of her body, Alexa had been free to simply be. While he had the book, and had promised to look into it for her, she could stop fretting about the what-ifs that the pages contained.
This meant, however, that she had room in her head to deal with some of the other issues in her life. Before she unlocked the door and started to drag the buckets of flowers outside for display, she found herself behind the counter, staring down at the cell phone that she held clutched tightly in her hand.
She reminded herself that there was no reason to be afraid—her mother was the one in the wrong here. The one who had lied.
But if she confronted Tracy—there was no going back. Their relationship would never be the same. No matter how complex that relationship was, Alexa still valued it more than almost anything else in her life.
Sucking in a breath so deep that she made herself dizzy, Alexa opened her contact list, and stabbed her finger over her mother’s name.
As she listened to the ringtone on the other end of the line, Alexa felt her pulse increase, a rapidly increasing tattoo that made her feel nauseous. It was a huge relief when her mother’s voicemail kicked in.
Voicemail didn’t interrupt, and didn’t talk over her. Yes… she could spit this out to voicemail.
“I have something to tell you,” she started in a rush, not bothering with a greeting. It was her mother, after all. There was no need to introduce herself.
“I… I didn’t tell you the whole truth about why I was coming to Florence. I… a woman named Eleanor Kendrick tracked me down. Said she’s my sister. And it looks like she’s right. At first I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know if I believed her. But now...”
Alexa swallowed thickly, took another deep breath. “There are… things, Mom. Strange things. Like the family picture that I found. There’s a date written on that back that says I was three when it was taken… but I thought Dad died when I was two. That’s another thing, I’m not remembering much but… I’m getting the feeling that…”
She sucked in a breath, dread coiling in her stomach. “Did we leave before Dad died? Is he even dead?”
She paused, leaning against the counter for support. She and her mother had rarely parted without telling the other that they loved them, but right now… she just couldn’t spit out the words. Instead she ended the call, then just stood there, for five minutes or an hour, she didn’t know.
Had she done the right thing? Or were some things better left buried?
She didn’t know. But it was done now. So she did as Nate had suggested, focusing on the present. Making her way to the front of the shop, she threw open the door and greeted a new day.
* * *
On the other end of the line, Tracy sat down on the floor of her greenhouse, right in the midst of her orchids.
How many secrets could one person keep?
Absently, she stroked her fingers over the velvet white bloom of one of her pretties. She hoped that the touch would soothe, the way her flowers so often did, but today the hole in her heart was too big to be healed.
As a parent, every hurt inflicted on your child was echoed in your own soul. You started to hurt even before they knew they’d been wounded. So what was she to do?
As Alexa had said, there were things having heavily between them… things she’d thought Alexa would never need to know. But what was the point in knowing those things when that knowing would only create pain?
But if Alexa had discovered Ellie… there were things that the older Kendrick girl knew that the younger didn’t. Things it seemed that Alexa was on a collision course to find out.
Wouldn’t it be better to tell Alexa herself, before Alexa uncovered the memories on her own?
Tracy trembled as she hugged her knees to her chest. She’d allowed herself only two weak moments in her life, once after Joseph, and once when she’d seen her flesh and blood lying broken in a hospital bed.
She wouldn’t weaken now.
Forcing herself to get up, she blindly made her way out of the greenhouse, down the hall and up the stairs to her bedroom. There she pulled out a box of monogrammed stationary, and the expensive pen her own father had given her at graduation.
There was so much to say, and no voice with which to say it. So Tracy put pen to paper, and began to write.
Dear Alexa…
Chapter Eleven
With the book in Nate’s hands, and out of her care, Alexa felt as though an anvil had been removed from around her neck. And if she tucked away her other worries, the questions about her past...
Maybe she should have felt bad. But with Nate’s words ringing in her ears—the ones reminding her to live in the present...
She embraced it, as best she could. Her budding romance with a sexy as sin, brooding former cop certainly didn’t hurt.
But the universe seemed to have a way of trying to make things balance... when too much went right, something had to bring it back down. So after a week in which Alexa found a groove in the flower shop, was more inspired to paint than she’d been in years, and spent her nights wrapped in Nate’s arms, the downward spiral came in the form of a letter, a thin envelope covered in what she instantly recognized as her mother’s handwriting.
The letter was addressed to Alexa… care of Estelle’s Blooms. This made Alexa’s heart rate stutter in her chest.
That Tracy had known where to send it... that alone was confirmation of so very many things. She’d mentioned that she’d found a flower shop that seemed familiar, and she’d told her mother about a family picture that she’d found.
Mailing something to Alexa care of her maternal grandmother’s shop? It was an admission. The tip of the iceberg. So, it was with trembling fingers that Alexa turned the sign to closed and locked the door, then leaned on the back counter. The envelope sliced through her finger as she eased open the flap, but she didn’t notice the stripe of pain, focused entirely on pulling out the sheet of her mother’s signature stationary and starting to read.
Dear Alexa,
I have started this letter half a dozen times, and can’t find any elegant way to broach the subject. So forgive the bluntness, and allow me to just dive right in.
I met your father my senior year in college, at the student bar on campus, here in Phoenix. He was older, not much, but enough that I was hugely impressed by his worldliness, the fact that he’d seen things that I hadn’t. He was a hippie a decade too late, one who couldn’t go a day without smoking pot and railing against ‘the man’. In short, he was everything that I, raised in conservative wealth and privilege, was not.
Your father was a poet, always knew just what to say, and I fell for him hard and fast. We married three months after we met, and another month after that I was pregnant… pregnant with you.
We were over the moon—I cannot tell you enough how very wanted you were, my sweet Alexa. Never doubt that.
But Joseph… Joseph’s mind was not entirely healthy. Sometimes it led him to do things that didn’t make much sense to anyone else… things like marrying a woman, getting her pregnant, when he was already married to someone else.
To Joseph, this wasn’t a big deal, because to his mind, the other relationship was over. The woman had left him, and had taken their daughter—that would be your Ellie.
But the fact that we were not legally married mattered very much to me… and to my parents. They disowned me, and you, which is why they’ve never been a part of our lives. People who are so cold, and who can so easily cast aside their blood… I didn’t want them in your life. They didn’t deserve the miracle that was you.
My parents had been our sole source of financial support—Joseph didn’t want his ‘wife’ to work, but he didn’t much want to, either. I didn’t come into my trust fund until I turned twenty-five. So we found ourselves moving to Florence, where Joseph was from, and moving in with his mother. She owned a flower shop, lived in a small apartment over it. And she was a miserable old woman.
I’d al
ready decided to leave when your father did something… unforgiveable. And to make it clear, I was taking you with me. Whatever happened, you were mine, and it was because I loved you so every much that I wanted to get us both out of there.
So you were right. Though Joseph Kendrick is indeed dead now, he wasn’t when we left. When you read the enclosed article, I hope you’ll understand why I felt it best to keep it from you.
There are other things we need to discuss, but for now, this is enough.
Please forgive me. I love you so very much.
Your Mother
Her father had done something unforgiveable? Alexa found herself snatching at the newsprint that had been carefully tucked into the letter. A whiff of her mother’s perfume drifted out of the paper, and Alexa’s heart ached, physically ached with the need to close herself in her mother’s arms.
She lifted the article before she could lose her nerve.
CONVICTED KILLER JOSEPH KENDRICK DIES IN FLORENCE JAIL
No.
Surely there was some explanation.
But as her eyes scanned the article, her stomach sank with dread. Joseph Kendrick—her father—had been sentenced to life for raping and killing a young woman in the town of Florence. His attorneys had plead insanity, claiming that their client had bipolar disorder.
While the diagnosis had been confirmed, it had been concluded that he had nevertheless been fully in control of his faculties at the time of the crime.
He had been remanded to a prison in Florence—the very one where Nate now worked.
The letter from her mother fluttered to the floor, gleaming white against the forest green linoleum of the shop. Alexa wavered, doing her best not to fall over.
This—this was what her mother hadn’t wanted her to know. That her father—her own flesh and blood—had been capable of something so very horrific.
A sharp pain sliced through her brain, making her cry out, bringing her to her knees. Something bright tried to punch its way to the surface of her consciousness, bringing with it so much pain that Alexa did everything she could to shove it back down.
The snippet of memory finally receded—for the moment, at least.
Alexa had no desire to remember anything from her past, not ever again.
She huddled on the floor until she grew stiff and the shadows grew long—she felt as though her blood was draining out of her body, leaving her cold and numb.
How was a person supposed to absorb this information? How had her mother?
Her mother. Clawing her way to a standing position, Alexa reached for her cell phone. When her mother answered, she only managed to strangle out one syllable.
“Mom.”
“Oh, sweetie.” There was a word of grief in her mother’s voice. Then a hint of control as she pulled herself together. “I take it you got my letter.”
“Yes.” The silence between them stretched out… and Alexa had no idea how to break it.
“Can you… can you forgive me?” Tracy’s voice cracked, and Alexa listened to it with disbelief. She’d never heard her mother sound like this before.
“I don’t blame you.” How could she, in this situation? There was no one to blame besides Joseph himself, and her father was dead and gone, leaving a mess as his legacy.
“You don’t?” Her mother’s voice was hopeful. This alone would have made Alexa reel.
Tracy Cunningham was many things, but she was not uncertain. She did not ask for forgiveness. She did not admit that she was wrong.
She did not show pain, and she never, never showed weakness.
“Of course I don’t,” Alexa whispered, staring down at her fingers. They were cold, like ice. So, so cold.
“I just… I need some time, Mom.” Her throat hurt as she spoke. “Can you give me that?”
“Alexa...” Tracy sounded as though she was going to say something else, but didn’t, instead murmuring in the affirmative.
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.” Alexa ended the call, threw aside her phone. For a long minute she stood there, staring into space, uncertain of what to do, what to feel, what to think.
Live in the present.
What did she need, right that moment?
The thought spurred her into action. Racing upstairs, she gathered her sketch book, a fresh box of charcoal pencils. Pulling a zippered hoodie over her T-shirt in case it rained again, she locked the shop up behind her, climbed into her car and drove.
She wasn’t surprised to find herself outside the prison—the one that Nate worked at. The one that had housed her father. Climbing from the car, she stared at it, hate roiling through her, mixing with confusion to make a heavy weight in the pit of her stomach.
Propping the sketch book on the hood of the car, she let her fingers begin to move, drawing without looking down. She drew shapes—hard, unyielding blocks to represent the prison itself, crossed with the diamonds of the chain link fence. The barrier that kept the inmates in, and the rest of the world out.
When she focused on the barbed wire, she winced, and her fingers flew to her throat. She traced the raised pattern on her skin with her hand, shuddering as something—a fragment of something that was broken inside of her—pressed against her, so close to breaking through.
Did she want it to? Did she want to remember?
She shook at the thought, pushing it violently to the side and letting herself continue to draw, the need to exorcise these demons with paper and ink very nearly violent.
She was beginning to wish that she’d never come to Florence at all. Because the barriers inside of her had been damaged, and there was nothing to keep them from crumbling down. And heaven help her when she remembered everything.
Because just knowing, knowing without remembering? It was bad enough.
Chapter Twelve
Nate resisted the urge to look at his watch for the millionth time. His shift today had dragged, mostly because he was counting down the moments until he could see Alexa again.
“Hey. Hey, Fury.”
Nate ground his teeth together in an attempt to stem his irritation. It didn’t help that the last few days he’d been tasked with shadowing Eugene Higgins.
Stark had been right—something was brewing with the inmate. It was driving Nate nuts that he couldn’t figure out exactly what it was.
The man was a loner, reviled by the other inmates because of the nature of his crimes. Nate wished he didn’t know even as much about them as he did.
When he’d started this job, he’d adopted a policy within himself—he only wanted to know as much as he had to in order to stay safe on the job. He knew that if he delved too deep, confined to memory some of the atrocities that the men housed within these walls had committed? He wouldn’t be able to treat them the way he needed to. Because part of the job of correctional officer was not just to keep peace, but to make sure that the rights of prisoners, such as they were, were respected.
If he knew the details about the murders, the attacks, the rapes that these men had committed? He’d start making plans to bury them all alive. It was a kneejerk reaction from his years on the force... he’d spent so long mired in the dregs of society, it had become second nature to separate the world into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ He’d had the power to do away with the ‘them.’
But that was no longer the case. He had to maintain some semblance of camaraderie with these men in order to ensure their compliance.
Some days were harder than others. Like every day since Eugene Higgins had decided that Nate was his best buddy, all because Nate had taken a shiv meant for him.
Nate rubbed his healing shoulder wound absently, wondering how he would have reacted had the situations been reversed. He would have felt gratitude too, he knew. But this... this bordered on the extreme. Especially since he hadn’t acted for Higgins specifically—he would have done the same thing for anyone.
“Fury!”
Nate’s jaw clenched. He’d been ignoring Higgins’ attempts to get
his attention for the last hour, maintaining that he had work to do. But maybe if he saw what the inmate wanted, it would make the last minutes of his shift tick by quicker.
“What is it?” He didn’t miss the grin that spread across the other man’s face when he finally, finally caught the attention of his idol. It was... eerie, the way that Higgins had focused in on him so entirely.
“I made you something.” They were in the middle of recreation time, and Higgins had behaved well enough lately to have earned himself a few privileges. He’d been sitting alone at a corner table for most of the hour, alternating between trying to get Nate’s attention, and focusing on his flex pen and sheet of paper.
“No gifts, Higgins.” Gifts could be interpreted as bribes by the warden, and more that than, Nate wanted nothing from a man he now knew to be a rapist. Chances were that Higgins, in his twisted little mind, was using this as a levelling device, a way to bring himself up to Nate’s level, or Nate down to his. To cement their ‘friendship.’
Not healthy and also not wanted.
It was the flash of pure rage in Higgins’ eyes when Nate refused that caught his attention, far more so than the scratchy writing that covered the sheet of paper, front and back. A chill slid down his spine, a finger of ice, and he straightened, felt himself pull on the face that he’d once used on the streets of Los Angeles—his mean-as-a-snake cop face.
“Is there a problem, Higgins?”
For the longest time, the inmate didn’t respond, just locked eyes with Nate, a testosterone fueled staring contest. Though circumstances dictated that Nate would, by necessity, win, it didn’t stop the unease roiling in his gut at the lack of emotion in the other man’s eyes.
“No,” Higgins said finally, dropping his eyes back to his paper. “No problem.”
“Good.” Nate stood back, ostensibly turning his attention elsewhere, but still watching the other man with his peripheral vision.
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