Masks and Lies
By A C J McKechnie
© Copyright 2016 Alexis C J McKechnie
Cover image courtesy of tiverylucky at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Cover design by I AE Morrison
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All character names and personalities in this book are entirely fictional, created solely by the author. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.
Events that occur in this book are also entirely fictional, again created by the author and any resemblance to actual events are also purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Epilogue
Prologue
Sitting down at the kitchen table opposite the older woman there, Kendra Wilcox took in her mother’s form and smiled. Unlike some mothers, Kendra’s mom was a real friend to her, more like a sister than a mother really. Not that her mom didn’t care for her like she should, she always took care of the both of them, but for the majority of the time the pair of them hung out and did fun stuff together. Always had.
It most likely had to do with the fact that the age difference between them was relatively small. Barely seventeen years wasn’t a huge amount of difference in ages, especially not when her mom was always so fun-loving. But looking at her mom now, Kendra realized that the woman didn’t look like her usual jovial self. Something was wrong.
“Hey, Mom,” she tried, in an effort to either get her mom to tell her what was wrong or perhaps even to get her to just liven back up.
“Sweetie,” her mom said with a timid smile before shifting in her seat.
“What’s up?” Kendra asked nonchalantly. Perhaps if they both ignored the strain on her mother’s face, then they could avoid whatever momentous thing was sure to occur.
Sighing, her mom rubbed at her head before looking up at her with sad eyes.
“Mom, what’s going on?” Kendra asked quietly, deciding that clearly this thing wasn’t going to go away. It needed to be dealt with, so they should just get on with it.
“I … I’m not entirely sure how to start,” she said then gave a bitter laugh.
“Okay,” Kendra replied slowly as she watched her mom shake her head at herself. “Well, how about you start somewhere?” Kendra suggested.
“Dammit,” her mom mumbled before looking about herself uneasily. “I never thought this would happen. I honestly thought I’d never have to do this. Somewhere underneath it all I was worried that something might happen, but the chance seemed so remote that I didn’t truly think it would ever be an issue,” she rambled heatedly to herself, and Kendra was left staring at her friend and parent in confusion.
This wasn’t like her mom at all. Her mom wasn’t a worrier. She wasn’t serious like this. She wasn’t someone who dwelled on the problems that she had around her. She faced them, head on. Tackled them. And won. Every time she’d won. She’d endured so much in her thirty-seven years already and had done it all alone. Completely alone with the exception of Kendra herself.
“Mom,” Kendra said softly. “What’s going on?” she tried once again as she grabbed her mom’s hands in hers.
“It’s … well, it’s your father, Kendra,” she said as she looked up at her with eyes full of apology.
“My father? What are you talking about? That waste of space has nothing to do with us. Hasn’t done since he walked out on you the morning after getting you pregnant,” Kendra said in confusion. Anger had disappeared years ago. When she thought of the man who’d fathered her now she only felt detachment. Maybe pity that he’d turned out to be such a low-life. A little bit of sorrow for her mom. But that was all. She’d accepted the fact that he was a man who didn’t deserve any emotional response from her. Even anger.
“I … I never lied to you, Kendra,” her mom said, ignoring the questions that she’d asked.
“You never lied,” Kendra repeated as puzzle pieces tried to fall into place. In other words, her mom may not have lied but she had done something similar to it.
“But … but I did deceive you. Misled you. Let you believe something that wasn’t true. Not true at all,” her mom said and looked into Kendra’s blue eyes with her own deep brown ones.
“And what would that be?” Kendra said in a monotone. She knew it couldn’t be good. She knew that things were going to be altered between them from now on, and a part of her screamed at her to just ignore it all and pretend that the past fifteen minutes or so hadn’t happened. Run away and pretend that life was exactly the same as it always had been.
“Your father … well … things weren’t quite how you think,” she said and winced.
“How were they then?” Kendra asked in that same emotionless tone again as everything around and inside of her went cold. She’d spent twenty years with an image in her mind of her father, one which according to her mother might not be accurate. Might not? Heck, judging by her mother’s behavior it most definitely wasn’t accurate.
“Your dad,” her mom started, and Kendra finally felt something. Surprise. Her mom had never referred to her past indiscretion as anything other than Kendra’s ‘father’, now all of a sudden he was her dad? Kendra had a very bad feeling about all of this.
“What about him?” Kendra asked in stunned disbelief.
“Well … oh, hell,” she said, and Kendra looked up to see her mom crying. “I thought it was for the best, sweetie. I really did,” she sobbed. “I never thought anything would happen to change things. I thought it better to let you believe what you wanted. I never really thought when I told you about him that you’d form such an image about him, but then it seemed to work in our favor. You weren’t interested in him, and I thought it all for the best. I never thought anything would happen to make me have to change your opinion of him.”
“Mom, you’re rambling,” Kendra interrupted. “What exactly are you trying to tell me? You told me that you had a relationship with him and he left after he’d gotten what he wanted from you.”
“I never said that,” she denied and her brown eyes flashed with anger. What the hell she had to feel angry about Kendra wasn’t sure, but finding her own anger right now wouldn’t be constructive. She still didn’t know what exactly was going on and what had prompted such honesty from her mom at the moment, and getting angry wouldn’t make that happen any time soon.
“Well, what did you say then?” Kendra asked slowly.
“I said that I fell for your father. That he swept me away. That I gave in to him. Then I said that he walked away from me after everything.”
“After he’d slept with you,” Kendra surmised.
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bsp; “No,” her mom said and swallowed hard. “No, he didn’t.”
“I think you’ll find that my existence is proof that he did,” Kendra said with raised brows. “Cleary the man slept with you.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. Yes, of course I slept with him. But he didn’t leave as soon as he’d taken what he wanted.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We spent about three months with each other. He didn’t treat me like a one-night stand, Kendra.”
“So what? He left when you got pregnant then?” Kendra asked with a furrowed brow. That was much worse. Maybe that’s why her mom hadn’t told her.
“I think maybe I should start at the beginning,” her mom said.
“That might be helpful,” Kendra mumbled in agreement.
“I met your dad at my sixteenth birthday party,” she said, and Kendra watched as she smiled in reminiscence. “We spent the next month almost inseparable from each other. He was amazing. Charming. Wonderful. Completely out of my league. I know I raised you with morals and to wait until you were married, Kendra, but my parents didn’t teach me that. So I happily went to bed with him.
“I loved him,” she said simply with tears in her eyes. “He loved me,” she added quietly, and Kendra was shocked to hear the sincerity in her mother’s words. The woman honestly believed that the man had loved her.
“What happened then?” Kendra asked with a furrowed brow. She couldn’t understand what had gone wrong between the two of them to cause her father to leave. Something must have though. After all, he wasn’t about. He had left.
“Like I said, we spent the next three months together. Then … well, then I found out that I was pregnant.”
“And he left?” Kendra asked in confusion even though she didn’t think that had been the case.
“I never told him,” her mom whispered softly and averted her eyes. “He never knew about you.”
“So, why did he leave then?” Kendra asked, starting to feel frustrated over the whole situation. “If you were in love with each other, what happened?”
“He proposed,” her mom said, and Kendra’s eyes widened at this shocking piece of news.
“What?” she gasped out. The man had wanted to marry her mom, and she hadn’t accepted? All this time Kendra had thought that her father had been a piece of dirt who’d used and abandoned a young girl, but clearly things weren’t as she’d believed. Weren’t as her mom had let her believe.
“He proposed. Said he wanted us to be together. Wanted to marry me and start a family. We were so young, Kendra. I was only just sixteen, and he was eighteen. He was just graduating high school. Ready to set off and conquer the world. He said he wanted me by his side while he did so. He had all these plans, sweetie. All these ambitions. He had everything set out in his mind. A way to conquer his past and mine. We didn’t exactly come from a prosperous background.
“And I knew that he could do it. I knew he could. He’d succeed and get everything that he wanted. He’d succeed and make it. But not with a baby. If he’d have known about you, he’d have abandoned all his plans and been stuck living like we always had done. He’d have been stuck where we were. He’d have taken whatever job he could find. Some sort of menial work. He’d have done it and he’d have lost his chance to be what he was meant to be,” her mom said and the tears continued to stream down her face.
“I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t stand in his way. I refused to let him sacrifice his future for us.”
“So you turned him down,” Kendra said flatly. As much as she could feel her mom’s pain she still couldn’t believe how much the woman had deceived her in it all.
Kendra got that her mom had been a sixteen year old kid who’d just found out that she was pregnant. She got that she loved her boyfriend enough to send him on his way. She got it, she really did. And a part of her felt such sympathy for the woman across from her. But an even bigger part of her was wondering how different life could have been for them all had her mom not driven the man away.
Bottling up all of her emotions, she just looked at her mother dispassionately and said, “You said no.”
“I said no,” her mom said and swallowed hard. “And it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Even when I told my parents that I was pregnant and alone, it was nothing compared to telling your father that I wasn’t going to be with him anymore. It broke my heart,” she sobbed, and Kendra looked down at the top of her mom’s head where she’d rested it on the table in front of them.
“You never stopped loving him,” she surmised, and her mom pulled her hands free to wipe her tears while she nodded in confirmation.
“To this day I never stopped loving him,” she affirmed, and Kendra suddenly understood why her mom had never dated, never found another man to take her father’s place. People had always wondered why Marilyn Wilcox hadn’t searched for a surrogate father for Kendra, and suddenly Kendra understood.
“Why are you telling me this now, Mom?” Kendra asked cautiously. What had prompted such honesty?
“Because somehow they’ve found out.”
“They?”
“Your father, and the people around him.”
“I don’t understand,” Kendra said with a furrowed brow.
“Your father, Kendra, he’s Howard Powers,” her mom said softly, and Kendra’s eyes widened in utter shock.
“You’re joking,” Kendra said as she shook her head numbly.
“No, sweetie. I’m not. And he knows about you.”
“This can’t be happening,” she said in stunned disbelief. “My father is one of the most powerful and rich men in the whole of the United States? The man who’s just been asked for personally by the President himself? The man who’s been assigned the task of sorting out the housing crisis because of his impressive work in the construction industry? That’s my father?!” she said in absolute awe which made way to anger.
“You mean to tell me that we had to struggle and scrimp and save every day of our lives when all this time the man responsible for me has been living a life of absolute luxury and pampering!? You mean you worked yourself to the bone every damn day when he had more than enough to spare!? I didn’t get to go to college, Mom! I didn’t get to do what I wanted to do my whole life because we could never afford it!
“I never begrudged it! I never cared! I never complained! But you could have changed all that! You could have been treated right! The man loved you! The man wanted to marry you! I could have had a DAD!” she screamed before bursting into tears. “I could have had a dad,” she said more softly as tears started to stream down her face and she laid her head on the table.
“I could have had a dad,” she said once more into her folded arms and shook with the force of her sobs.
Chapter One
Two Years Later
Kendra looked around her apartment and sighed with relief. She was home. It had been a long time, but she was back. Looking over at the answer machine, she flinched at the flashing light but ignored it and instead headed back towards her bedroom.
Falling down onto her bed, she stared up at her ceiling and smiled. She’d certainly had an eventful year. Staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars that she’d painted on the ceiling had her thinking back to all the adventures that she’d had.
After her mom had dropped the bombshell of her father’s identity she’d hightailed it out of the woman’s small house, only taking the time to pack up a small bag of essentials. She’d taken off on a journey around the country for the next few months as she’d tried to sort it all out in her head.
She’d sent her mom postcards from wherever she went in an effort to make sure that the woman didn’t worry about her, but that had been the extent of their communication. She’d then landed in a little township in the middle of nowhere and fallen in love.
Not with a man. Heck, no. That wasn’t going to happen. But she’d found Granville and had instantly fallen for it. So she’d stuck down roots there. Sh
e’d found a job at the local diner and had been offered the upstairs apartment to use as well. She’d made friends, but hadn’t divulged what had sent her on her cross-country escape to anyone except for one person.
The people of Granville never pried either. They didn’t care about the reasons for her flight, they only cared that she was taken care of. So she’d stopped crawling into a bottle every night, and instead crawled into the familial feeling that exuded in the little place.
She wasn’t proud of her behavior, but when she’d left her mom’s she’d gone to a bar for the first time, been lucky not to get carded, then tried the age-old solution of getting drunk. It had worked. At the time. She’d been free of her thoughts and her cares. She’d enjoyed herself. And she’d ended up repeating the same actions often.
She’d woken up that first morning on the couch of someone’s apartment and had freaked out big time though. When she’d woken, it had been to a pair of compassionate blue eyes who’d told her not to worry, nothing had happened, but that he’d been concerned about her and had felt that she wasn’t safe on her own. She’d gone back with him to his apartment and passed out in his lounge.
Nick had been amazing. The man had listened to her pouring her heart out about everything, then told her that drinking wasn’t the answer. She’d agreed with him at the time. She’d felt awful. Like death warmed up.
Then her mom had called her, worried, and Kendra had decided that the pain in the morning was worth the oblivion at night. So she’d hightailed it out of Nick’s home and jumped into the first car that had stopped for her, getting out of there as quickly as possible.
When she’d used up all of her savings moving from bar to bar, and had even pawned some of her old jewelry, Kendra had decided that she’d needed to find a job to replenish her funds. She’d found herself in Granville and had tried out the little bar there. The man had smiled and sent her to the diner where she’d met Betsy. The woman had taken one look at her and shoved her into the apartment upstairs, demanding that she shower and sleep.
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