“Who’s Clarissa?” the woman asked.
“That isn’t important,” he said sounding frustrated as he waved the gun around a little.
I should have told her Clarissa was dead. She hadn’t moved far enough to see behind the couch. “He shot her,” I blurted feeling like a ten-year-old tattletale boy.
She moved closer, and I knew the moment she saw the girl. Her hands cupped the gasp that left her. She dropped down, and I couldn’t see her because I refused to let go of Jess. A strangled cry escaped her.
“Jeff, how could you?”
“She was a liability Mom, and Ethan asked me to do it. It was the least I could do for my brother don’t you think.”
“I didn’t ask,” I refuted.
“Such the liar you are little brother. I could almost be proud of you.”
“Stop it both of you.” She stood and angled towards Mr. Miller, who shut his mouth. “Jeff, what are you doing here?” She waved vaguely around as evidence of his crazy.
“Mother, it’s time I get my share. He grew up privileged and had everything. Don’t you think I deserve an easy life too?”
“Jeff, we talked about this.”
“About what? About how you lied to him and told him I wasn’t his when he came around. You sent him back to that woman so he would marry her and not you.”
He was speaking to her but glaring at me. She moved to step into his line of sight, blocking me out. She wasn’t tall enough to block him totally. Therefore, I couldn’t use the moment as a possible escape attempt.
“Jeff, Thomas came to me because he found out about you. It was the summer after we graduated high school.”
When she spoke about my father, Thomas, her voice turned small as if she were ashamed of the words that were coming out.
“There was a party and I’d crushed on him my entire senior year. I was drunk, too drunk. There were guys, and I did some things I wasn’t proud of. When I found out I was pregnant, I hoped he was the father. I’d loved him so, I think I wished it.”
She exhaled. “Lonely and forced on my own because of my choice, I applied for child support naming him as the father years after you were born. He was served. He came to me immediately. His longtime girlfriend left him because of my accusations. Although he was ready to do the right thing, he was miserable without the woman he truly loved, and it wasn’t me. However, I didn’t stop things when one thing led to another after we both grieved over our lives. It was one night I will always remember.”
The longing in her voice mirrored the feelings I had for Jess. I could relate to loving someone and not being able to have that person.
“When morning came, I sent him back to her. I told him, you weren’t his in order to get him to leave. I canceled the child support case. Months later when Ethan was born, I was at a loss for what to do. A friend was watching you while I was in the hospital giving birth. I didn’t have a way to support another child. Daycare was expensive for one even though you had started school. With my nursing hours, I had to pay extra for the daycare program at the hospital, which had longer hours for people like me. Adding a newborn to that, and I would have been working just to pay to work. As the main hospital in the area, I wasn’t that surprised when I ran into Thomas. Only, he was on the maternity ward. At first I panicked wondering how he found out. He saw me, and it didn’t take him long to put the timing together. I confessed that Ethan was his as he confessed his wife, the girlfriend I’d sent him back to, had lost their child. With dark shadows under his eyes, he unraveled a horrific story about his wife hemorrhaging on the operating table after she gave birth to their stillborn son. They had to take her uterus in order to save her life, and he had to make that call. I did the only thing I could.”
She glanced back at me with tears streaming down her face. “I gave you up,” she said, voice breaking. “I didn’t want to. But with him, you could have two parents who could love and take care of you.”
“What about me mother?” Mr. Miller growled.
Her head snapped back in his direction. “He didn’t fully believe me about Ethan, rightfully so. He had DNA testing done at the hospital on Ethan. He was already making a name for himself, in the business world and had to be cautious. I didn’t blame him. I’d lied to him before. How could he just trust my word? Also as part of our deal, he insisted on having you tested. He would have taken you both despite my protest. Ethan proved to be his. Jeff, you weren’t.”
The look on Mr. Miller’s face was murderous. I feared for the woman that didn’t cower beneath his gaze. “You’re lying!”
She reached out and stroked his cheek, but he tossed her hand away like her touch burned. “I’m not. I’m sorry. I should have told you. But at the time, you had already told the kids at school about your Dad. When you had asked why you didn’t have a Dad like the rest of the kids, I gave you one. I hadn’t known at that time I told you that he wasn’t your biological. There had been a possibility he was.”
He reached for my camera, which I’d left on a side table. He picked it up and smashed it on the ground making her jump and me cringe. The camera cost several grand. It lay in pieces with a broken lens aimed in my direction as if it mocked my life.
“Why didn’t he tell me when I went to see him?” he bellowed before he morphed before our eyes into a little boy who wanted answers. His slumped posture and his defeated breath told a story I knew all too well.
“He was a good man. I’m sure he didn’t want to be the one to give you such news. It was my responsibility. Had I known you’d gone to talk to him, I would have told you.”
He touched his forehead with the gun. “It doesn’t matter. Fuck him, fuck you, fuck all of you.” He pointed at me with the gun. She moved to intercept him. “Don’t do it, Mother. I’m not happy with you at the moment.”
She stepped back and worriedly glanced at me.
“Give me the fucking numbers little brother. We’re still brothers. You can’t deny it when you look just like her.”
“Will you leave us unharmed if I do?”
“Yeah, I don’t fucking care about the lot of you.”
I didn’t care about the money. He and Clarissa had no idea about grandfathers’ inheritance. I would use all that money to track him down and have him brought to justice.
“Fine.” I rattled off the string of numbers and letters that corresponded to an account I had no idea what the balance was.
He smiled and held up his phone. I wondered how he would remember it when he hadn’t written anything down. “None of you move.” Using his other hand, he pointed the gun at us as he sidestepped towards the door. She pivoted to keep facing him as he moved.
When he got to the door, he said, “It was nice knowing you little brother.”
The gun was pointed at me as he opened the door. I hadn’t expected him to leave me alive. He’d told me too much. His hatred of me was off the charts.
Time slowed giving me what I needed to do what I did.
“I love you,” I whispered to Jess and squeezed the hand that I’d been holding. My eyes widened when she gave a faint squeeze back. I glanced back at the woman who gave birth to me. The word Mom formed on my lips just as the sound of gunfire reached my ears.
fifty-three
Jess
The one thing I learned throughout my experience was that love was endless. It had no beginning and no end. I couldn’t point to the exact moment I fell in love with Ethan Hart. I just knew that I had. It was very possible that I’d begun to fall the first moment we met. When I landed in that pool of love, it was entirely by happenstance. I hadn’t set out to fall in love with him. All I knew was it didn’t matter if we’d begun our journey in high school, college, or if we’d met in a nursing home as aged seniors. He was the one for me. There would be no replacements no matter what the future held. He would always hold a huge place in my heart that would forever be his territory, his and his alone.
I wiped away a tear as I processed the jumble of events four
years ago that had taken several days to untangle in my mind.
The memory began with Ethan holding me in his arms. His voice brought me around after I’d blacked out from the unexpected blows Clarissa dealt me. He murmured the words he loved me as he squeezed my hand. I tried to squeeze back since I couldn’t manage to open my eyelids, which had felt like weights had been attached to them.
Then there was a piercing wail by a woman I would learn was Ethan’s biological mother. I’d met her since then, and she was a very nice woman. Ten times better than the woman who’d posed as his mom. Anyone could see the resemblance between him and the woman who birthed him. How would I have handled seeing a kid that looked like my husband’s former transgression? Although I’d heard the story, Ethan’s parents had been broken up when Ethan was conceived. Ethan and I had broken up for a time. Could I have forgiven him if he’d slept with someone else while trying to get back in my good graces? I wasn’t sure of the answer, but in the end Ethan had been an innocent. His mother’s anger was directed at the wrong person. She should have directed it at her husband and not the boy she’d formally adopted. Then again, according to what I learned, his mom and dad had been having problems.
I remembered waking in the hospital with my family all around. Mom, Dad, Kyle and even my sister Jenna had been there. Mom and Dad’s face held worry and a bit of anger. No doubt they’d found out about the baby.
Kyle was the first to come over then pushing past Mom and Dad. “Jessa, are you alright?” He hugged, and I let out a whoosh of air as he all but dived on the bed to get at me.
“I’m fine,” I croaked. “I can’t breathe though.”
He moved back, and my lungs expanded. He smiled and stepped away. “Now that’s she’s awake, I’m going to get something to eat. Are you coming Jenna?”
My twin, the mirror image of me, except she’d cut her hair and dyed it a rainbow of colors smiled weakly at me. My anger of what done she’d that past year started to melt away. In light of everything, did I want to never have a relationship with my sister again? She left the room without saying a word, and I almost called after her. Having a conversation with her might have been less painful than the frowns my parents sported.
“Jessica Shelby I’m happy you’re alive but I want to throttle you.”
Mom’s face was rigid. Dad, who was normally on my side, wore an extreme version of the parental expression of disappointment. I rushed in to speak, to explain.
“I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to get pregnant. It was a mistake.” Then it hit me. “Where’s Ethan? Have you talked to him already? Dad you didn’t kill him, did you? You didn’t tell him he couldn’t speak to me. Where is he?”
Their faces spoke of pain. I knew I wouldn’t like what they had to say next.
It was Dad who broke the news. “Jessa, I can’t say as a father that I expected something like this to happen to you. Yet, I’m sad to give you the news that you lost the baby.” He squeezed my hand and opened his mouth to say the rest.
I held back the tears as I shook myself free of the memory. I quickly glanced at the empty passenger seat and the offering I’d brought along. I drove towards my car to my apartment. It would need packing up soon because guests would be arriving. I couldn’t believe four years had passed and I would be graduation from college this weekend. It would be a moment of celebration, not a moment of mourning.
I pulled into my designated slot and headed for the elevator. I could do this.
fifty-four
The sound of the shot rang in my ear as a ghostly memory. The cry of a woman in pain, as she raced for her son, wasn’t what’d knocked me flat on my back. I’d held on even as the pain had seared my chest.
I thought about all I learned after to piece everything together. Jess had gotten a text from my phone asking her to come over. Only I’d had my phone. Forensics showed that Mr. Miller had cloned my phone. When questions were asked, the only time I’d been away from my phone was at the club when some guy had handed my phone back to me. The detectives believed that in a crowded place it was easy for someone to pickpocket me by bumping into me and distracting me from its removal. The phone had been given back to me after it had been cloned, so that I wouldn’t know the difference.
A new phone number had been programmed in which was why I hadn’t received any phone calls. After Mr. Miller had been released, he forwarded my real number to my fake number because he knew Mr. Hunt would call me. Jess hadn’t answered my text of I love you after my debacle when she told me she thought she was pregnant because it had come from the new number I’d been given, one she didn’t recognize. She’d answered the ones I’d sent prior to the cloning, which is why they suspected the club was where the switch occurred. Mr. Miller or Clarissa or whoever they had working for them had been the one to receive her response. That’s how they found out about our baby.
They also ascertained that Clarissa had been corresponding to Mr. Miller while he was in jail. She was smart enough to craft her words in a way that prison guards who read all incoming mail didn’t suspect her messages. She’d been the one to send me the letters. Her fingerprints were all over them. She had been cocky or stupid enough to think I wouldn’t turn them into the authorities nor scared since her prints weren’t in the system until after her death.
Security had followed Jess to my flat. She’d come to my place before, so they assumed she was inside with me. I wasn’t being tracked so they had no idea that I wasn’t there. Once I showed up panicked, they knew something was wrong. After hearing the gunshot, they contacted the authorities. When they showed up ready for hostage negotiations, they were in the middle of locating a phone number to call when Mr. Miller opened the door with a gun pointed at me.
He fired and they fired at the same time. It was a good thing he wasn’t a good shot. He’d hit me an inch below by clavicle on the left missing vital organs but causing some minor internal bleeding. When I’d woken in the hospital, Jess’s Dad had been there. I remembered how the conversation went and everything that had played out after.
“Ethan.”
“Yes.” My voice was raspy, and I knew a lecture was coming.
“My wife is getting coffee, but I want to talk to you. We’ve already had this conversation with Jessa. I can’t say that I’m happy you and Jess are having premarital sex, but I’m not too old to realize what it’s like to be your age. You both have a bright future ahead of you.”
I waited for him to tell me that he wanted me to stay away from his daughter.
“As much as you both are young, I see in you what I saw in me when I looked at Karen. I know you’ll do right by Jessa. I trust you’ll be more careful in the future. There is plenty of time for kids in the future. Dare I hope that you will marry my daughter before we get news of a baby in the future?”
I rubbed the bandages on my chest where an ache throbbed for a child I’d never met or would meet.
“Yes, sir.”
His smile was genuinely warm. He patted the back of my hand before Jess’s mom walked in and gave me her advice. I hadn’t seen Jess yet. According to her parents, she was fine. I loved her more than I loved the oxygen in my lungs. It was possible I wouldn’t be able to breath without her.
So when Mr. Lambert and the prosecutor, Ed Hunt, walked in my hospital room shortly after Jess’s parents left, I inwardly cringed. I wondered if I would get to see her before I was hauled back to Maryland to face charges of murder. We were still in Pennsylvania, so I was actually surprised Mr. Hunt had come.
“I don’t have to tell you Ethan, I’m disappointed you didn’t tell me what was going on before you left.”
Defensively, I balked. “I didn’t have time. He gave me two hours to get to him. I didn’t know what he would do to her if I were late. I had no idea he’d allowed Clarissa to hurt her.”
I learned that Jess confirmed that other than Clarissa’s vicious blows to her stomach, she hadn’t been harmed.
“We could have helped,” Mr. Lambert admonis
hed.
“That’s not why you’re here is it.”
I’d told Mr. Lambert about killing my father. I still had no idea how Mr. Miller knew. Had he guessed? I would never know.
“No, it’s not.” He glanced at Ed, who took over the floor.
“Vincent has told me everything. In the last few days, we’ve reviewed all the evidence. Although your father’s death was determined to be a suicide because of the fraud investigation by the FBI and SEC, everything had already been double-checked. There was a possibility that he’d been killed by a partner complicit in the crimes.”
I wondered if Mom had been a suspect.
“Although your fingerprints were found on the gun, they weren’t found anywhere around the trigger. If what you say is true about the suicide note being leverage Jeff Miller demanded of your father, the shooting would be considered an accident.”
“No,” I said dumbly. I was getting off, but I didn’t want to. I wanted the guilt to go away.
“Ethan,” Mr. Hunt said gently. “Trust me when I tell you everything has been looked at thoroughly. I suggest you talk to someone. If what you say happened, it was a terrible accident. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
But I did. I’d turned to alcohol as well as other things to get away from the guilt. I’d used sex as another distraction. I’d drunk enough to fill a brewery. No matter what they said, had I not picked up that gun, Dad would still be alive.
“You can’t be sure of anything,” Mr. Hunt said as if reading my mind. “Jeff could have still killed your father. He’d had every intention of killing you.”
That was true. He’d said he’d leave us alone after I’d given him the account number he wanted, yet he shot at me without a second thought.
“What about Carly?” I asked. “He admitted to me he killed her”
Both lawyers traded glances.
It was Mr. Hunt who spoke. “With Jeff dead, we have no location of her possible remains. He was a criminal and based on your statements, he lied to your father to get what he wanted. The local authorizes here will use your statement and inform her parents. But until we have a body, the case could remain a missing person case with notes that it’s potentially a murder committed by the deceased, Jeff Miller.”
Broken Lens Page 27
