by JA Huss
It’s weird.
She disappeared for good after that.
And then one day at the end of senior year I saw her with this guy at a park just a few blocks off campus. And there was a kid there. A little baby, like… I dunno. Less than a year, for sure. They were taking turns pushing him in one of those baby swings and he was laughing, and smiling, and having a good time.
So I got out of my car and walked up towards the playground. And she saw me, and then he saw me, and she picked the baby up and turned her back, and he headed straight at me, hand out in front of him. One of those stay back gestures.
And he said, “He’s not yours. So don’t start no shit. We did the DNA test a long time ago, Jordan. Just leave her alone.”
And it hit me.
That feeling in my gut.
When I realized that he knew me. He knew all about me. And it didn’t even matter if it was lies. Because of course, whatever he thought he knew, it was all lies.
I just felt violated because he knew me.
And I knew nothing about him.
Because he was the real boyfriend and I was the other man.
I just never knew it.
Even though I don’t think about her, I do think about him. I wonder… did he ever figure out who she really was? Did he ever figure out that everything she told him was a lie?
And I feel really sad for him. For that kid, too.
Because people who lie like that… it’s a psychosis. It’s a mental illness.
And people like him… like me… we just live with it.
Because it makes the food go down.
My phone buzzes on the seat next to me, drawing me out of the past. I reach over, pick it up, and accept Darrel’s call.
“Give me something,” I say.
“Shit, I had to pull favors for this one. Someone really wanted these people to stay unknown.”
“What? Why? Why do you say that?”
“Because, OK, look. I got their names. Nathan and Marie Thompson.”
“OK?”
“And the kids are Chris, he’s the teen boy. Then Rylee, the small girl. And Abbey, the baby.”
“Right.”
“But it’s Marie Thompson I had trouble with.”
And this is when that feeling comes back. “Why?” I ask.
“Because I couldn’t find her real name. Like, she changed her maiden name before she got married. But I had a hunch her new maiden name was her old middle name, because it was Sara. Marie Sara. So I went digging for Marie Sara’s old name. And bingo. Got her.”
“Who is she?”
“A very troubled girl, from what I can tell. Sealed juvenile records. Like sealed up motherfucking tight, ya know?”
“Shit,” I say.
“But I got a judge to open them,” he says. “And I got a picture. Sending it now.”
I stare at my phone, waiting for the ding of a message.
I know what she looks like. At thirty-five, anyway. Because I saw the pictures before I dropped them off at Law’s office weeks ago.
But what I really need to know now is… what did she look like at seventeen?
“There he is!” my father says as I walk through their front door. I can smell dinner. Smells of my childhood. Roast chicken, and potatoes, and a hint of spicy seasoning that’s probably my mother’s homemade salad dressing.
He claps me on the back and says, “Did you have a nice day off?”
“Well,” I say, walking into the large open kitchen area where my mom is cooking. She turns and looks over her shoulder at me, smiling as she wipes her hands on her apron.
My mother is classic upper class. By that I mean the old-school kind. Not modern-day I-can-have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too. Not at all. Janet Wells made a choice back when she was twenty-two, and that choice was to be wife to Jack Wells and mother to yet-to-be Jordan Wells. That was her choice, and even though I’d often look at Ixion’s mother and think, God, she’s different—always going places, always involved in things, always… missing when it came to Ixion, which is why his house was the perfect place to hang when we were smaller—I used to think, That’s not my mother. She doesn’t look like my mother in any way.
My mother is Barbara Bush classy. She wears tailored suits and dresses. Pearls and subdued makeup.
Ixion’s mom… let’s call her Melania. She was flashy. Maybe a little bit slutty, if I’m being honest. Not that she wasn’t a lovely lady. She was. Just not the same kind of lovely as my mom.
Ixion’s parents were always loud. They argued like it was a sport. Like the winner got prize money at the end. It was a lot of swearing, and arm-flailing, and dramatic accusations.
My parents… I don’t think I’ve ever heard my parents argue.
“It’s so nice to see you, Jordan,” my mom says, placing both hands on my cheeks and giving me a kiss. “What have you been up to?”
“What have I been up to?” I mumble, looking at my father. He’s got his back to me, grabbing us drinks from the bar.
“What’s that?” my mom asks.
I look down at the folder in my hand and wonder…
“Here,” my father says. “Come sit down and have a drink while your mother finishes with dinner. Leave the boy alone, Janet. He’s working hard, that’s what he’s been up to.”
I’m looking at my mother when he says that, her smile falling a little further with each word. But then she rallies and the smile is back. “Go have your drink. Dinner is almost ready.” She rubs my arm and then the smile is real. Just for a moment, it’s real.
She turns and goes back to her meal prep.
So I take my attention to my father, who is already sitting in his oversized wingback leather chair, sipping his Scotch.
“What is that?” my father says, nodding his head to my folder.
I toss it down on the coffee table in front of the couch, then pick up my drink from a coaster and take a seat in the matching wingback chair that faces his. “There’s something I need to ask you,” I say, looking down into the glass of dark amber liquid. I consider taking a drink, but then decide not to, and set it back down on the little side table to my left.
“Shoot,” my father says. “What’s on your mind, Jordan?”
I glance at my mother, who is all the way across the large room, still busy doing something with dinner, not paying any attention to us, and then take my full attention back to my father. “How long?” I ask.
He smiles at me. “What? How long what?”
I glance at my mother again, making sure she’s not listening. “How long did you keep Marie Sara Claiborne as one of your little sex slaves?”
His eyes narrow as he calmly tracks them to the kitchen. To my mother. To make sure she’s not listening. “Keep your fucking voice down,” he whispers.
“When did you get her?” I ask. “How old was she? Because when you sent her to me that night in the cabin, she was definitely not eighteen.”
“We can talk about this later, after—”
“Fuck that,” I say. My voice is low. Even. But very clearly angry. “Fuck. That. We’re talking abut it now. Did you kill her? Did you kill that family last year?”
“What fucking family?” my father growls.
“The Thompsons. Because Marie Sara Claiborne turned into Marie Sara Thompson. Funny how you never mentioned that I bought the house they used to live in. Seeing as how…” And I have to stop here. Because this… this was the hardest thing to hear. Of all the revelations Darrel told me on the phone ten minutes ago, this was the hardest. But it needs to be said. “Seeing as how her oldest child was my half-brother.”
That poor fucking kid. He looked like such a good kid. Such a normal fucking kid.
And it kills me now. Knowing I had a chance to… I don’t know, look through his room? Find clues about who he was? And I just threw it all away and sold the rest off in an estate sale.
I sold my only sibling off in an estate sale.
My father glances at my mother
again. She’s in the kitchen humming. And I’m not sure if that’s just something she does these days, or if she’s deliberately trying to drown out the conversation going on in her living room. “It was an accident.”
“Fuck you it was an accident. Was bringing Marie up to see me when I was twelve an accident? Was telling her to fix me an accident too?”
“You’re getting this all wrong. I’m trying to help you, Jordan.”
“Help me do what?” I ask.
“Help you navigate your way through the… through the personality issues you have, son.”
I actually laugh. “Personality issues? Is that what you’re calling it? No,” I say, shaking my head. “We’re not gonna talk in code tonight. It’s called bisexual, Dad. I’m bisexual.”
He puts his hand up and says, “Just wait a minute. That’s not what it was about.”
“No? Funny. Marie Sara told me that’s exactly what it was about. I’m supposed to like girls, right? Well, newsflash, I do like girls. I just like them with guys.”
“I’m not judging you, Jordan. I just wanted to make things easier for you than they were for me. What’s wrong with that?”
And that’s when all the shit Darrel just told me slides into place. That folder is thick with evidence he’s collected. My father’s past. His history.
And it looks uncomfortably similar to mine.
“I didn’t judge you when you got involved with those people in LA. I didn’t judge you when you joined that club. I didn’t judge you when you started up this game business. And do you know why I didn’t judge you, Jordan?”
I swallow. Because I do. Only I don’t want to hear it.
“That’s right,” he says. “I had those relationships too. I had clubs like that too. I played my own games back in my day.”
“You killed her,” I say, hurling the accusation with absolute calm. “You killed her, and you killed her family, and then… then what? Did you somehow convince me to buy that house? Is there evidence there? Was that…” Oh, shit. I want to throw up. “Was that house your… club?”
He glances at my mother again. And now I’m sure she knows we’re in here discussing things. I’m sure she’s hiding in her kitchen. I’m sure she’s pretending she can’t hear this conversation.
Because she’s been doing it her whole adult life. Pretending that Jack Wells was a pretty good catch.
I don’t need an answer. Because I already know. In the three seconds since those words came out of my mouth everything fell into place.
My father had a sex club. Only it wasn’t husbands and wives looking to swing or add a third or fourth. It wasn’t consensual. It was… something sick. Something poisonous. Something that led to Marie Sara being driven up to the Washakie Ten cabin to service a twelve-year-old when she was only a kid herself.
It was games, all right. It was dark secrets, and dark places, and my mother. Here, in this house, pretending it wasn’t happening.
I just stand up and say, “Mom. I can’t stay. I just got a call and I…I have to take it. It’s an emergency. But I’ll… I’ll come by next weekend or something, I promise.”
“Jordan!” she calls after me.
But my father cuts her off with a sharp, “Go back in the kitchen, Janet,” and follows me to the front door.
I swing it open, letting it bang hard against the doorstop, and just hop down the front steps towards my car.
“It’s not what you think,” my father says. “And frankly, some of what you’re saying sounds insane. Just ludicrous.”
“Is it?” I say, halting my escape so I can turn to face him one last time. “Then tell me what I’m missing.”
He shakes his head a few times. Standing there, looking down at me from just across the threshold of the doorway, trying to find the words.
He’s never going to find them.
There are no words that can excuse what he is.
“I didn’t have anything to do with you buying that house. I have no idea what possessed you to purchase it.” He stops to stare at me. And for a second I see the dad I thought I knew. The one who taught me how to play t-ball with me in the back yard. The one who showed up for parent-teacher conferences in second grade. The one who took me turkey hunting the fall I turned ten.
“Where did you go?” I ask him. “What happened to you? How could you do this? To me? To them? How?”
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just… Jordan, listen to me. Just… just let it go. Dragging things up from the past rarely fixes things. I know that better than most. But I was desperate, that’s all. I’m sorry. Just move on and forget about them. You got along just fine before they came back. You can do it again. Just—”
“Wait, what? What did you just say?”
“I said you got along just fine. You were doing just fine. I’m sorry. I should’ve left well enough alone. I see that now. I just… I didn’t want you to buy that building.”
“What?”
“You need to let that place go, Jordan. Just like I did when my partners and I sold it.”
“What? You and your—”
Holy fucking shit.
I did have it wrong. My father wasn’t running a sex club in the mansion.
He was one of the original owners of Turning Point.
I just shake my head at him. “I feel sorry for you.” And then movement over his shoulder catches my attention… and there’s my mother, standing in the hallway, wiping her hands on her apron. Her eyes lock onto mine and she frowns.
My father follows my line of sight, turns, and snaps, “Go back to the kitchen, Janet!”
She turns away without a word and then he’s talking again.
“I had to keep them away from you. All of them. Your… your entire future was at stake, Jordan. You knew that as well as I did. That’s why you blamed Ixion.”
At the mention of Ix’s name I freeze. I lose time. I… I don’t know what happens to me, other than that sick feeling in my gut turns into something even more revolting.
“You,” I say, looking up at my father and meeting his gaze.
“I did what I had to. Just like you did.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No…”
“I need you to take over the firm, Jordan. Do you think that my partners will continue my legacy? Do you think I built this empire just to let it fade with my death? No,” he says. “No. You were born for a reason, son. And now it’s time to take your place.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“He was going to turn you in. You would’ve been kicked out of law school. Banned from practicing even before you got your degree. What you did was a felony, Jordan. That’s why you blamed him in the first place. You knew he’d be confused and take the fall. Because you two were tight. You practically groomed him from childhood to be your fall guy. And I know you think you loved him, hell, maybe you think he loved you back. I don’t know. But this was not a forever kind of deal. This was a heat-of-the-moment deal. You knew he would sell you out. The minute he got word that his father disowned him and wrote him out of the will, he would’ve sold. You. Out.”
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. “No. Never.”
I don’t even feel the need to fight about it.
It just is.
Never would Ixion ever do to me what I did to him.
So I turn, and walk away, and don’t look back.
Because my father isn’t worth the breath it would take to explain how I know that.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I don’t know how I feel about this… this… strange multi-generational story that I have unwittingly become a part of. The circle of deceit, and lust, and game-playing rocks me back on my heels and begs for a solution.
But what kind of solution?
The most disturbing thing of this whole day might be that I can’t think straight. Can’t make sense of any of it.
I am the one who always has the answer. I am the game master. I am the one who
controls all the pieces on the chessboard. I am the one who determines the winners and losers.
And now I find out all these years I’ve been nothing but a player in his sick game.
I don’t even know what that game is. I don’t want to know what that game is.
I just want out.
My phone rings and when I look at the screen it’s Alexander.
I don’t answer it, not because I don’t want to. I do. I want to tell them everything. I want to tell everyone everything.
But I’m driving and… I just don’t know how to start that conversation. Because I don’t even know what I’m into.
I have no fucking clue.
So I drive over to their house, park on the crowded street a few blocks down, and walk to their building by way of the park, texting him back to let him know I’m on my way.
When I get up to their floor, the double doors to the penthouse are already open. Augustine is standing there, backlit by the setting sun, frowning.
“Fuck,” I say, running my hands through my hair.
“Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you for two days!”
“Out,” I say.
“You haven’t been home,” she says, taking my arm and pulling me inside.
“No,” I say.
Because that mansion isn’t my home. That mansion was Marie Sara’s home. Her and her husband, Chad Thompson. And her teen boy, my half-brother, Chris. And her little girl, Rylee.
And little baby Abbey.
And now, because of my father, they are all dead.
And for some sick, sick reason… I bought that house and now I live in it.
Why the fuck did I buy that house?
How did I even hear about it? Law? Someone else?
No… no, it was an email. It was just a stupid LuxuryHouseHunt.com email. We have a home you might be interested in…
“Jordan!” Augustine snaps.
“What?” I say, snapping out of my introspection.
“Are you even hearing me? Come inside.”
I do, I follow her inside and focus on Alexander, standing in front of the window that overlooks the park and the downtown skyline.
“You have to let us explain,” he says, just as I hear the definitive click of the doors closing.
