I run my fingertips over the gray marble countertops that run into a silver tile backsplash. I walk into the next room and it’s painted a bold red and has three paintings on the wall that he got from my storage room. They were my favorite of the local artist that I found when we were walking around an arts festival last year. I knew he took them, but I had no idea what he was doing with them.
“What?”
“I’m tired of fucking you in that storage room or your Range Rover. I want to lay you down in a bed and worship you.”
This is Adrian’s cross. He wants to fix me so bad. I know he can’t, but it is so fun imagining he can. I take my shirt off. He smiles, grabs my hand and leads me upstairs. As we enter a royal blue room my breath leaves me.
“Did you decorate this yourself?”
“What?” He flings himself onto the gray and white down comforter. “You think I have bad taste?”
“I think you’re perfect and I wish I would’ve met you…”
“Hey,” he says motioning me to the bed. “Let’s not.”
I jog over and jump onto the bed next to Adrian. He rolls on top of me and pulls my bra off. I feel everything, his lips, his hands and his erection.
“Oh fuck,” I groan.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get to that,” he chuckles.
“I want to get to that now.” My need for him overcomes me. My hands frantically grab at his shirt and try to get it over his head. Then I run my hands over the muscles in his back as he hovers over me. “Ahhhhhh,” I groan.
He pulls his shirt off with one hand at the back of his neck. He has a smattering of black hair on his chest and it leads to a happy trail that enters his low slung jeans. My hands unbutton his pants and I reach in to palm his erection.
He grinds himself into my hand then I move my hands to his ass and push his jeans and underwear down. Pushing himself off the bed he takes his shoes off and drops his pants to the floor. It’s like one of those moments in movies, the moments you think about long after the credits roll. Time freezes and I see him standing in all his naked glory, his body is chiseled and dark.
“Take your skirt off,” he says, his hand on his dick, pumping up and down.
I stand up and pull my cotton skirt off. We’re standing close, but not touching except with our eyes. We are the exact opposite of each other, light and dark, suburb mom and criminal do-gooder. Adrian is a contradiction in himself, just like I am. I have no idea who I am, but I love who I am with Adrian. I drop to my knees.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Surviving Isn’t Living
Four Years After
I’m sitting on the bleachers watching Bash bat, when I hear Delilah yell, “Go Bash!”
Samantha nudges my leg with hers. She smiles at the attention Delilah is giving Bash, but I know it’s nothing to smile about.
If I could I would scream for her to run far away, like I wish someone would have done for me. I don’t though, I smile back and the parts of me that have started to heal incinerate burning me from the inside out.
“So have you talked to Seaver, he’s back from his trip?” Samantha asks.
I shake my head. I haven’t talked to Seaver since the last time I cried, four years ago. We’re not in high school, I don’t need him. The one man I yearn for has made sure I can no longer contact him. It’s for the best, he thinks anyway. I know him and he thinks I’m in South Carolina doing amazing things, but he’d be wrong. I’m here surviving again. I don’t understand why I can’t live, why I can only survive.
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no need to talk. We’re not friends. We have nothing in common.”
“You need more friends, you’re like a hermit. Meeting me for drinks where you can watch me talk to people doesn’t constitute a social life.”
“Oh, but it does,” I counter. My lips turn up in a smirk. “Staying in my house and staring into the ocean is not social, going to a bar and pretending like I talk to people other than you is super social.”
“I just wish I could help you,” Samantha doesn’t know, but she is the only thing that grounds me at all.
“You are helping.”
Samantha shields her eyes as Bash hits the ball over the left fielder’s head. “Whoop,” she cheers.
“Go BASH!” cheers Delilah, as her mid-drift shirt rises and shows her flat stomach. She reminds me of myself and the edges of my vision dull to black.
Needles stab me all over my body and I close my eyes. I haven’t had a panic attack since Sebastian was alive.
“Becs,” Samantha’s face is in my face. I can feel her close in on me.
Without opening my eyes I exhale slowly and terror creeps up my toes, freezes my knees and reaches like fingers squeezing my abdomen. My eyes fly open and my hand flies to my mouth. I jump to my feet and run down the bleachers toward the parking lot. I hear footsteps behind me. I stop, bend at my waist and vomit in the grass. I’m shocked and no longer have a prescription for panic attacks. My eyes are wide when I look up and see Samantha’s concerned face.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” I admit.
“Well, Lord knows you’re not pregnant.”
I examine the blades of grass.
“You had these before, right?” She walks over and smoothes my hair and nudges me toward my car. “We’ll make sure Bash knows you were sick and had to leave.”
“I don’t understand…” I’ve been getting better. I’m better. I’m supposed to be better.
“It might be food poisoning,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.
“Yes,” I agree. “Food poisoning,” I mutter. I twirl my hair into a twist and grab a pen from my purse to hold it.
“Bec,” Samantha’s voice breaks a little and I meet her gaze. “I’m worried about you.”
“Me too.” I get in my car.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
When the Dam Breaks
Five Years After
I’m standing in my den watching a morning news show. I have a conference call with a magazine who wants to do a spread on my recent jewelry collection. It’s filled with metal and sea glass, the blues and greens are serene and classic. I look down at my phone and realize I have thirty minutes.
I pour myself another cup of coffee as I gaze out over the angry waves. The ocean is brown and green today, no gorgeous blue in sight. I love the power and restlessness of the ocean, it can be calm and tranquil and thirty minutes later you’ll get ripped from your happy paddling to be swallowed whole by the tide.
My ears hear a name that is imprinted on my heart and I spin quickly to hear the news story. The mug I’m carrying clatters to the floor and cracks in two, coffee seeping into the area rug I bought a few years ago, as I see police leading a man away from a museum. The man is clad in tight black clothing, his mocha skin alight with all the cameras aimed in his direction. My heart constricts when I see him. He doesn’t look into the camera, but keeps his eyes trained down. I sink to the ground next to the broken mug and listen to the rest of the story.
“Adrian Carroll is alleged to be the mastermind of the group behind recent burglaries up and down the west coast that have baffled the police for years. Carroll’s group is alleged to have stolen millions in artwork and jewelry.”
The news changes topics and I examine the broken mug, it’s broken in two giant pieces, easily fixed. I grab the pieces and smash them into the floor then I step on them, the shards cutting me causing me to exhale with relief.
The uncanny hope that I’ve carried with me since I accepted Adrian’s lie that we would see each other again withers in front of my eyes and I lose the tenuous grasp on reality that I’ve clung to for the past five years.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Letters to You
A—
I didn’t go insane quickly or due to a traumatic situation, at least I convince myself my life wasn’t traumatic. Maybe it was and I was just used to it, adapted to the madness. I slipped into insanity wi
th a casual non-committal. Days of being overwhelmed transformed into years that I cannot remember and honestly do not wish to. My life wasn’t hard, it was not full of peril and danger.
It was a life of quiet lies, unfulfilled promises and failed attempts to be something I couldn’t quite figure out what I wanted. I drifted through time with this group or that group, with no friends to really ground me. He took that away from me. My sanity. But he stole it from me without me realizing until it was too late. He took it and then I couldn’t find where he hid it.
You were the first glimpse into something real that I’d had in a long time. My son was my oasis in the hell that consumed my life. My life is steeped in this blackness, this evil that pervades my thoughts. I thought it’d be over after he was gone. I was wrong. There is no other place for me other than my kid’s smile and the twinkle in his eyes. Even that haunts me now. I am not sane around him, but tried to protect him from the devil that was Sebastian. It took me four years of dating, one wedding day and one year of marriage to fully understand the depth of what Sebastian was doing to me.
It was only when my son brought it to my attention that I thought others could see what was happening…that something real was happening, it wasn’t just my imagination. My fucking thirteen year old son told me it was okay to leave.
This causes me great consternation. One, my son saw what he was doing. Two, the person that I used to be so long ago surfaced for just a moment when I thought maybe I could leave. I did leave, then I went back just like every other time I’d left. This time it was different. It was final. I’d made it that way.
He systematically isolated me from my family and friends. He ate away all and any self worth I had, which in turn made me think I deserved what he gave me. This happened for so long I no longer had the ability to see how I should be treated, but my son did. He saw it.
This time I was able to make it so that he thought he was winning. I’d finally figured out how to get out, make it so that he would think he won, but there was no other alternative for him. You helped me do that. It was you who made me realize I could do it. You were the only true thing in my life, besides my kid. You looked at me and saw me. The me I’d become, not the one I was or the one I pretended to be. You solved my problems and I don’t know how to thank you.
My psychiatrist told me to write in my journal every day, but most days I just write to you, because you saved me. I write this not to change your mind, it’s been over five years and I haven’t heard from you. I’m delusional, but not about you. I understand that you set me free to give me back what I lost. I don’t blame your reluctance to really get involved with me. It just proves you’re smart. I simply wanted you to know how I ended up where I am, who I am. I have to start over and I just wanted to start over with you.
r
Epilogue
Six years later
I clear my throat as I iron my shirt. My mom taught me how to iron, not by actually teaching me, but from my observing her. She was always very good at appearances, making sure no one knew what really went on in our family. I put my arms through the sleeves of my white linen shirt and button it as I gaze out at the beach. The sun is watching over the ocean carefully and I smile to myself. It’s my birthday today. I’m twenty-five, my magic number.
I get my mom’s keys and lock the house. Although I don’t live here anymore, I’m the youngest second year associate at a huge law firm in Charleston. My skill at analyzing risks for litigation and lack of any emotion whatsoever has gotten me far and fast. Who knew my mom’s high school boyfriend would have such pull getting me a job in Charleston? I skip down the steps and walk under the house to where the old Range Rover sits. A few years after we moved here Mom broke down and bought another Range Rover just like the one she left in Portland. I lost my virginity in this vehicle. My mom would die if she knew that. My mom would die if she knew half the shit that I’ve done.
When I crank the SUV the music blares through the speakers and it’s some southern rock song that I’ve heard a million times. The heat is oppressive and it’s not even nine o’clock. It’s over ninety degrees on the island. After her jewelry company took off she wouldn’t touch the money Dad left her. She put it in a trust for me so that neither one of us could get to it...until today. Today I’m a rich mother fucker.
My fingers tap the steering wheel as I pull onto the only road back to the mainland. I have an hour drive, but it’s necessary. I pass the time reminiscing. I hum a very happy tune as I drive over the bridge from the island. My grandmother offered to make me a cake, but I’m doing this instead. I don’t really like cake or my grandmother.
Everyone says I look like my dad. You should see the contempt in my mother’s eyes when she looks at me now, well for the last decade. There are days that she refuses to look at me. It wasn’t always that way, but when she became increasingly unstable her eyes blamed me for everything, including making her go into a mental facility.
At first it seemed as though she was fine with my dad’s death, then something broke inside of her and it was like a dam giving way. Sometimes I think I may feel sorry for her, but it passes just like clouds in a late afternoon thunderstorm. I did what I needed to do to help things along so that this day would occur.
My dad knew who I was when he found out about Rex. It had scared my mother so much that I didn’t dare admit that it was me and not Dad. I remember she told me that he got out and they couldn’t find him while tears ran down her face. My mother hardly cried in front of me, but she sobbed for days about Rex and slept in my room for weeks after it. I felt oddly powerful to have such control over her. Rex took my mother’s attention from me. He was always around. I didn’t like it. I fixed it. I fixed him.
The late Sebastian Pryor has been labeled so many things since he died. Abuser. Scary. Liar. Sociopath. I vacillate between wishing I had normal feelings, my dad had explained I had an advantage over normal people, and glad that I don’t feel what others do. My mother broke apart in front of me time and time again, it only took a little nudge to finish her off. She’s so easy to manipulate. I learned from the master.
I pull into a parking space and look in the mirror. I smile. It looks genuine. My phone goes in the console; they don’t allow cell phones in this place anyway. I look up at the all brick facility in front of me. It looks oddly stately in a way, giving its residents the semblance of normalcy in a beautiful setting.
Opening the door I take in the smell of lilac, it’s my favorite thing about coming here. They use gardening to get the residents to focus on something productive.
“Hi Amber.” I wave and use a wide charming smile at the attendant at the front.
“Hey Bash, your mom is looking forward to seeing you. She had a really rough week.” Amber’s mousey brown hair hung in a shapeless cut around her shoulders.
My face falls. “Really? What happened?”
“She got a delivery and it sent her over the edge, she was put in her room all day.”
“Oh no,” I cry, but I’m smiling on the inside. She was getting ready to get out; now this will extend her third stay in this mental rehabilitation facility. It is a facility that focuses on women’s emotional well being with holistic approach. This extension is a blip on the radar. There will be a news story that will come and go without much ado. “Rebecca Pryor, wife of Sebastian Pryor, in rehab again. She just hasn’t been the same since her husband died.” Poor thing...
“She’s in the common area and will be excited to see you.”
I hit the counter twice giving her a charming smile. “Thanks Amber, see you later.” I head to the right. I typically come at least once a month so that I play the loving son. The son that misses his mother and wants her to get better. I know she’ll never get better. I wonder how many times she has to come to this place before I can just put her in some sort of assisted living facility for the rest of her life.
“Good to see you Bash.” Amber calls to my back.
I walk through the
cheery hall. It’s painted blue to be serene, but it drives me into a rage and I stop for a minute to calm myself before I enter into the common area. A smile appears on my face, but I want to punch something. It’s the only thing that helps me feel things. I spend all my free time at the gym hitting bags and people.
My mother sits silently in a chair reading a book. She’s so brittle behind her beauty. Her brunette hair is gathered in a loose bun. She’s gorgeous, my mom, even though she can’t tell if she’s sane or not. It’s really not her fault and sometimes I even wish I had a normal bone in my body where when I hugged her I meant it. Like she has some sort of beacon her eyes lift to find mine.
Her eyes are vacant today, which means she’s on heavy medication.
“Bash,” her usual light voice, dull and empty of any emotion.
“Mom.” I hold my hands out to her and pull her up into a hug. “You okay?”
“Better now that I see you,” she lies. Even now, even after everything she denies what I am, what I’ve done. She sinks back down in her chair, her book tossed to the table next to her.
“Well, they said you had a rough week.” I sit next to her, but I won’t be long.
She blinks, but it’s more like she took a three second nap. Clarity spreads across her features and she turns away from me, her hands restless in her lap. She knows I sent that cuff. The cuff that would cause her to go into her room for days. I thought it would be a fun reminder of who she was, where she’s been.
“Mom?” My voice is caring, my face is anything but.
“It was you,” she whispers.
“Of course it was,” I answer, finally giving her a real answer.
“Why?” she whispers, afraid to look at me.
I don’t answer for a long minute. Sobs erupt from her and I look appalled and concerned as all the heads turn our way. A therapist I haven’t seen before stands and begins heading in our direction.
Quiet Lies Page 24
