Sometimes he went into a fit of rage and tore the letter and the envelope into as many pieces as he could. Occasionally, he’d gone over to the stove and burned the letter. On other occasions, he managed to sit down and read the letters, and sometimes he cried when he did.
He didn’t quite know why the letters made him weep. Was it for himself, or for her? He didn’t know. He was confused. It was a horrible feeling, being confused. He preferred anger. That he understood. Its message was much clearer: She’s in the wrong. She hurt you so badly. Never speak to her again.
The whole thing was a mess, and there was plenty of guilt along with the pain. It made him want to scream out in frustration, so he generally tried to avoid having anything to do with the letters.
But sometimes he felt strong enough to mentally revisit his decision to not have any contact with her, and he would open the letter. Such was the case with this letter, which he opened and began to read.
My Darling Bron,
I know you probably won’t read this, and I probably shouldn’t even send it, because I know you don’t want to talk to me. But something in me, call it a little flickering flame of hope, exists, and nothing can put that fire out. Perhaps it’s something to do with being a mother. Not that I’ve been much of one to you in the past, as we both know.
But if there’s just one thing I’d like before I die, it’s to see your face again. To ruffle that hair of yours again. To hug you.
I will never ask you to forgive me. It’s not my place. However, I really am very sorry, Bron. I wasn’t right in the head to do what I did, to allow what I allowed to happen. That’s not an excuse, but I feel like I’ve lived most of my life asleep, and it’s only in the past ten years or so that I’ve woken up.
That’s when I started writing to you.
Anyway, I can’t continue to ramble on self-indulgently.
Really, I simply wrote to tell you I love you, and always will.
Oh, and I realize my movie is out at the moment and you’re probably seeing my face everywhere. I sincerely hope that doesn’t make things difficult for you, or bring back too many harsh memories.
Mother
There was nothing particularly new in it. She’d said it all before, except for the movie part, of course.
And he’d seen the posters of her everywhere. On the sides of buses, in ads in the newspaper, on TV. It had gotten under his skin. It was like she was everywhere, and he couldn’t escape thinking about her. That’s why he’d decided to give this letter a chance.
Generally, he tried to put her out of his mind. When a thought of her came up, he quietly let it go. He’d had so much practice at doing that he found he was excellent at meditation when he and his wife had tried it together.
But lately it had been harder to do.
The back door opened and the sound of it made him jump. He hadn’t realized how on edge he was.
“Hey, sweetie,” his wife Lily said. Her blonde hair was pulled into a messy topknot. Her face was red from running around in the yard with the girls, and she exuded happiness.
His daughters little blonde heads bobbed behind Lily’s waist.
“Hey, daddy,” little Jennifer, just five years old, said. “We were running races.”
“And I won!” Emily, the elder of the two at seven, said.
“That’s ‘cause you’re older,” Jennifer said.
“You both did very well,” Lily said, then grinned and raised her eyebrows at Auberon. “They beat me fair and square, Bron.”
Auberon smiled. He couldn’t help it, but even with their sunny energy around him, he still felt quite detached.
“Go upstairs and change, girls,” Lily said, then she walked over to the stove and switched on a burner to heat some water. “Are you okay, Bron?” Her eyes looked down at the letter in his hand. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“The Mother strikes again,” she said, taking mugs out of the cupboard. “Begging and pleading for you to come join her on her publicity rounds for the new book she’s going to publish, according to all the celebrity news.”
Rage bubbled up in Auberon, and he ripped up the letter in his hand before he even knew what he’d done.
Lily sighed. “I don’t know why you torture yourself like this, Bron,” she said softly. “Just throw them all in the trash. Why do you even bother to open them?”
“I don’t know,” Auberon said truthfully. “I just…”
“You’re still holding out hope she’s changed.”
“No, it’s not that. Well, maybe a little. I don’t know.” He pushed his head into his hands. “I don’t know what I’m looking for.” It was true, though, that he was looking for something. And he wasn’t sure whether he’d found it or not.
Lily added instant coffee to two mugs and poured boiling water into them. “Bron, I hate to see you like this.”
“Well then, don’t look, because there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“Don’t tell me how to be,” he said, getting up from the table.
She walked over with the coffees, a look of gentle concern on her face. “Hey, hey, hey, don’t get riled up. Come on, let’s sit down. Drink your coffee. Tell me what you’re feeling. I know it’s tempting to bottle it all up, but it’ll only come out later in one ugly form or another, so you might as well sit down and let’s talk it out.”
Auberon sighed and sat down. He took a sip of his coffee and felt a little better. “Fine.”
Lily rested her elbows on the table, cupping her mug with her hands. Her big blue eyes were set on him. “So…?”
“It’s not so easy to just cut her off.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, Bron, but you haven’t spoken to the woman in about twenty years, right? I’d say that’s pretty much cut off.”
“No,” he said. “I mean, the possibility. Or… her presence, I suppose. It’s not an easy concept to define.”
“Okay, I’ve got you,” she said. “I understand what you mean. Now, from an outsider’s perspective looking in, this doesn’t make sense. The woman abandoned you and washed her hands of you, just because a man told her to.”
“She sent me to boarding school,” he said tightly. “She didn’t abandon me on a highway or anything.”
“Yes, but…”
“You don’t know what she was going through.”
Lily rocked back in her chair, looking confused. “Are you defending her?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know! Look, I…”
“What’s brought all this on?” Lily asked. “Last thing I remember, we were calling her the Wicked Witch of the West.”
“Yes, we were,” Auberon said, looking her dead in the eye. “And that was real easy to do, wasn’t it? Easy to dehumanize her. To demonize her. And I did it, because I was deeply hurt. Not because she’s a wicked witch, but because she hurt me.”
“Which is precisely why I hate her guts,” Lily said. “How can you expect me not to, after all the pain she’s caused you?”
Auberon sighed. “I don’t know. Seeing her face everywhere. She looks so old now. Vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable!” Lily scoffed. “An iron bar is more vulnerable than your mother.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Auberon said. “You don’t know the half of it.”
Lily sat back and crossed one leg over the other. “Well, everything I know and don’t know is a result of what you’ve told me. If you have more information, go ahead. I’m listening.”
“Will you stop being like that?”
“Being like what?”
“So angry!”
“We’ve both been angry at her for the past ten years we’ve been together. I’m not the one flipping the script. You are.”
“She’s my mother,” Auberon said tersely. “I’d appreciate if you listened with an open mind.”
“Fine.”
They were both irritated. It took a while for it to
fade away, and for Auberon to get in the right frame of mind to tell her what was on his mind. He took a deep breath, and let out a long sigh. “What I haven’t told you about is what she was like before I was sent away.”
“You said you didn’t remember.”
“I didn’t. But I do now.”
“Since when?”
“I don’t know.” It had been dawning on him gradually. Little snippets of memories had started visiting him spontaneously. It seemed her face was everywhere on billboards and bus stops for not only the movie she’d starred in, but also since she’d started promoting her soon-to-be-published tell-all book.
He hadn’t looked at a picture of her for at least seven years, perhaps longer, and looking into those same blue eyes, though they were now surrounded with wrinkles, had changed something within him.
“So, tell me.” Lily’s words brought him back to the moment. He hadn’t realized he’d drifted away into thought.
“She was the best mother anyone could ever have asked for,” he said. “There was a time, when it was just her and me. No men. It was like magic. Like heaven. There were no screaming matches in the house anymore. We went for picnics in the park with my army of teddies, and she’d make up amazing stories about Bron the Adventurer who went around the world.
“And we’d stay in bed late on Sundays, watching TV or reading the newspaper, and I’d pretend to understand it all, even though I didn’t, because it made her laugh when I read her complicated things with my little boy voice. And…”
Out of nowhere, rage pumped through his veins. There was no more thought. He pushed his coffee cup forward, and it spilled all over the table, drenching the pieces of the torn-up letter and beginning to drip off the side of the table onto the kitchen tile.
“Bron!” Lucy said, horrified, jumping up.
It was so out of character for him, but Auberon couldn’t apologize. He couldn’t rush for the dishcloth to mop up the mess. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t switch back to his normal, placid self. All he could do was stand on the spot, his entire body shaking out of control.
“Bron? Bron?” Lucy said, coming up to him and trying to touch him on the arms.
He jerked back as if she was a stranger, a horrified look on his face. Lucy was suddenly terrified. “Bron? Are you okay? Do you want me to call an ambulance? Can you talk?”
“No ambulance,” he managed to get out, though it was an extreme effort. He had the strongest urge to smash everything in sight, but just barely had the presence of mind not to do so. “Out. I’ve got to go out.” He rushed out the back door without a word, pushing Lucy back when she tried to follow him.
CHAPTER 6
Lacie and Tyler were staying at Kat and Blaine’s house for the weekend. Kat was scheduled to leave later in the day to fly to California to join Marie for the launch party for Marie’s new tell-all book.
Kat was in the bedroom, finishing up some last-minute packing, while Lacie was in the kitchen preparing a chicken stir fry for dinner. Lacie was eight months pregnant and she was just able, with some difficulty, to maneuver around the kitchen, given the size of her large bump.
Suddenly, she felt light-headed and weak. She called out to Kat as she grabbed the kitchen counter to keep from falling. Kat dashed into the kitchen just in time to have Lacie collapse into her arms as her knees buckled. Blaine was at home and when he heard the commotion in the kitchen, he rushed in. Seeing that Lacie was in considerable distress, he immediately called for an ambulance to come to the house to take Lacie to the hospital.
“Just try and stay calm,” Kat said to Lacie. “Blaine’s called an ambulance and it will be here momentarily to take you to the hospital. You’ll be there in no time at all,” she said in a nervous tone of voice.
“But Mom, you’ve got to go to Kansas City to catch your flight to California. Just go, Mom!” Lacie said as furiously as she could manage, although her voice was fading, and she looked dangerously pale. “You’ve got to make it to Marie’s book launch party.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lacie,” Kat said.
Blaine was out in front of the house, impatiently pacing up and down the driveway, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Tyler was at work. Kat, sick with worry, helped guide Lacie onto a kitchen chair. “Just breathe, honey,” she said, pushing Lacie’s hair out of her eyes.
All of Lacie’s strength broke down in the face of Kat’s kindness, and tears began to stream down her cheeks. “Is this just labor? Is something wrong? Is the baby going to be okay?”
It didn’t look anything like labor to Kat, not that she was an expert on that topic, but she had no idea beyond that. “Of course the baby will be okay, honey. And so will you. Just keep breathing nice and normal, yes, just like that. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Good.
“You know, I saw a woman on TV go through this, now that I think about it. It wasn’t a big deal at all. It was just the position of the baby. It was lying against her lungs, and it made her a little dizzy. It’s probably just that.”
Which was all fictional, but Kat just wanted Lacie to relax, since she could see fear in Lacie’s eyes, and she knew that fear could easily tip over into a full-blown panic attack. The number one priority right now was to keep Lacie calm. Kat was prepared to do whatever it took, even if it involved a little white lie.
Kat kept up a continuing line of inane chatter throughout the ambulance ride to the hospital in order to keep Lacie from panicking. The ambulance crew told Lacie to spread her legs as wide as she could and lean down as far as her bump would allow, so she wasn’t looking up. Blaine managed to put on a brave face, although Kat could practically see the worry buzzing around in his head.
“Did you know, Blaine,” Kat said, “Lacie broke her arm when she was six. She fell off a bunk bed. And here’s the funny part, when she was about eleven we were talking about our favorite memories, and she told me breaking her arm was one of the best moments of her life.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because I got a new Gameboy,” Lacie said, her voice cheerful. Her shoulders even shook with a giggle. “With a Super Mario game cartridge.”
“Yep,” Kat said with a smile. “And she was somewhat of a celebrity at school. All the other kids signed the cast on her arm and wrote jokes on it.”
“Oh, yeah,” Lacie said. Her voice was a little muffled, but sounded jovial enough. “And that dumb Bobby Harrington wrote a joke about poop, and I had to have my friend Estelle draw a big star pattern over it. I wasn’t about to have ‘poop’ written on my arm.”
Kat snorted with laughter. “Oh, dear. The good old days, right?”
Blaine shook his head with a smile.
“Oh,” Kat said, delighted to remember some new information. “I believe Bobby’s misstep inspired the start of the Girls Rule, Boys Drool secret club.”
Lacie’s shoulders shook with laughter. “You’re right, he was the inspiration for the club. We had a secret handshake and membership cards and all.”
“And they had their inaugural meeting in the backyard. Lacie, Estelle, Heather, and another little girl… Diana?”
“Yes,” Lacie said. “Oh, Mom. That’s too funny. I’d forgotten all about that.”
Kat looked up and saw they were getting close to the hospital. Worry began to set in again, but she tried to calm herself, just as she was calming Lacie.
Blaine had called Tyler at work, and he was waiting for them at the entrance to the hospital when the ambulance arrived.
“Are you okay?” Tyler asked, looking Lacie up and down and then hugging her around the neck a little too tightly.
“I think so,” Lacie said.
“Let’s get you inside so you can get checked out,” the ambulance driver said.
Kat desperately wanted to go into the exam room with Lacie, but she knew it was only right for Tyler to be the one to accompany her. Lacie was a fully-grown woman now, with a husband. That fact was hard to remember sometimes. Lacie would always be her baby.
It was a tense wait for Blaine and Kat. As soon as Lacie and Tyler disappeared with the doctor, they let their worry pour out.
“You kept up some pretty good talk in the ambulance,” Blaine said.
“I didn’t want her to start panicking,” Kat explained. “Well, that would apply to us too. I know we were both on edge. I could see it in your face.”
“If anything happens to Lacie or the baby,” he said, shaking his head, as if he couldn’t bear to think about it.
“Don’t,” Kat said. “Don’t even go there.”
Thankfully, everything was fine.
Lacie and Tyler came back into the waiting room, and Tyler mimed wiping sweat from his brow. Lacie rubbed her bump protectively.
“I just had low blood pressure,” Lacie said. “They’re going to run some more tests, but they don’t think it’s anything serious.”
“They say it’s normal for some women during pregnancy,” Tyler said. “Something to do with the hormones and changes in circulation.”
“I’m thoroughly sick of hormones,” Lacie declared, which made all of them smile.
“Unfortunately, you’re going to see a lot more of them,” Kat said. She got up and gave Lacie a hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay. What will they do for the blood pressure?”
“They told her to avoid taking a hot bath” Tyler said, “or stand up too quickly.”
“I’m also supposed to drink plenty of water. They’re going to do some more blood work, just to check and make sure I haven’t got anemia or something else.”
“And they may need to prescribe something for her, but that’s the worst case scenario.”
Kat let out a deep sigh of relief. “Now, that’s a worst case scenario I can live with.”
“Well… Mom?” Lacie said.
“Yes?”
Lacie put her hands out, like she was waiting for an answer to a question.
“What?” Kat asked, smiling.
“Aren’t you going to go?” Lacie asked. “You have a massive launch party to go to.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Kat said. “I’m staying home tonight to check up on you. If you’re okay in the morning, then and only then will I go to Beverly Hills. And maybe not even then.”
Murdered in Hollywood Page 4
