“I love you. I always have. We’ll get through this together.”
He pulled me into him, so I sat on his lap, wrapped my arms around his hips, and laid my head back on his shoulder.
This was how we were supposed to be. We had our second chance at a life together, and this was it. I couldn’t explain how much I just wanted to break down and cry happy tears. Everything we had been through, it didn’t matter; we would be together. Through everything, it would end with Brooks and me together, like we’d talked about years ago.
The End
Epilogue
“Merry Christmas!” Margo said as she strode through the front door.
I rushed from the den to the entryway to embrace her and Easton. “I can’t believe you two live next door. This has been so nice having you guys so close. I hope you could find parking.”
Margo and Easton laughed. “Well, it’s so crowded out there, we just walked the shoveled path.”
I grabbed the crockpot from Margo to set on the island as Easton opened the fridge to fill it with the beer he brought. “Where’s Brooks?”
“He’ll be down. He’s just getting out of the shower.”
“Sounds good. Either of you want anything to drink?”
“I’ll take a beer,” Margo answered.
“Erika?”
“No, thanks. I have my tea.”
“Sounds good.”
“I love the holiday décor!” Margo exclaimed as she wandered into the living room.
“Thanks. Brooks and I picked it out. Starting out our holiday theme with this year.”
“I have to say, this is the first time I’ve seen a Christmas tree decked with black and orange,” Easton said.
“The silver ribbon and bows make it exquisite. It’s original. It’s perfect. It has you written all over it, Erika,” Margo added.
“Thanks.”
“Hey there, bud!” Easton hollered as Brooks descended the stairs. “Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas to you,” he responded as they shared a brisk hug. “Margo, Merry Christmas,” he said as he hugged her.
“I was just telling Erika how nice it looks in here,” Margo said. “You two did well.”
“Well, it’s unique. I’m used to the varied colored lighting and décor, so this was a change for me. And you know what, at first I was a little skeptical, but it’s grown on me. I love it. It turned out nice. It’s excellent for a cabin. Erika has great taste.”
“Thank you,” I said as he hugged me. “Easton put some drinks in the fridge if you would like one.”
“Now that sounds good,” he responded as he headed towards the fridge.
“So, any plans to move back to your hometown?” Margo asked.
“No. We agreed we’re going to create our life together right here. And we can’t move with you two next door now.”
Margo laughed. “Same here. When you first moved up here, I thought for sure you’d move back in a month or two. But now I see why you stuck around. It may not be the same reason I stayed, but it’s nice up here.”
I laughed with her. It didn’t take long for Margo and Easton to fall for each other. The day in the hospital, when they first met, was a nice icebreaker. Ever since that day, they’d been together. It was nice to see them happy.
“Things happen for a reason,” Margo said. “There’s always something good that comes out of something negative.”
“Okay, ladies!” Easton yelled as he strode from the kitchen carrying some wine glasses. “I think it’s a perfect time to prepare another toast.” He handed Margo and me each a glass.
Brooks followed him to the living room with his own wine glass and stood next to me, draping his arm around me.
“To new beginnings, new friendships, and a remarkable life together. May every year going forward be better than the last.”
“Cheers!” we said in unison as we lifted our glasses and took a sip.
“I have something else to include in the toast,” Brooks said as he set his wine glass on the mantel behind us. “Easton, Margo, you two are amazing. I’m glad you’re in our lives, and we can share our futures together. I don’t know where I’d be without both of you. Easton. You’ve made me a better man, and for that, I thank you. I don’t know how I’d ever be able to repay you for your generosity, your spirit, and your strength.”
“Thanks, man,” Easton said as he wrapped his arm around Margo.
“Erika,” he said as he turned to me. “Thank you for taking me up on that offer years ago. We knew it was the wrong thing to do, and I knew you were married. I knew you were divorcing him, and I just couldn’t wait. I didn’t want to lose you then. I’m glad you said yes to an evening out that night. I’m glad you allowed me to be the guy you leaned on during your struggles and rough times back then. I would carry all your broken pieces all over again. I wanted to be the one to take all your pain away, to make you realize you’re worth more than what you thought. You meant the world to me back then, and you mean the world to me now. I’m grateful for you. I don’t want to imagine my life without you. I want to spend every single day of the rest of my life with you. I want to be there for you, challenge you, make you proud, support you, and grow with you. Every dream we’ve talked about is within our reach, and I want to reach them all with you by my side.”
I clasped my hands over my mouth when he went down to his knee and held up a ring.
“Erika Corinne Mackle, would you marry me?”
I broke down as I stood there staring at him, Easton, and Margo. “You two knew about this?” I demanded through joyful cries.
Margo nodded as she dried the tears from her eyes.
“Oh my God!” I shouted. I looked back at Brooks. “Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!”
He rose and slid the ring on my finger.
“How’s that for a happy ending to one of your books,” he whispered as Margo snapped pictures with her phone.
The End
Life has been crazy this last year. Erika and I have been updating the cabin and the garage. Our plans are to stay here and start our own family soon. The neighbors are wonderful and the views from our home are postcard worthy.
I wish Jaden were here with us. A part of me died when he died. It’s been a journey for both Erika and I to learn how to live with that void. I made a bench and we set up a memorial place on the edge of our property that overlooks the water. He would have loved it here.
As for his mother, she’s still sitting in jail awaiting her trial, and pleading not guilty. I’m still trying to come to terms with how a parent can strangle their own child out of spite to the other parent. Neither Erika, nor I are looking forward to seeing her face. But justice needs to be served. And we will do everything we need to do for Jaden.
Thank you all so much for taking the time to read
Brooks & Erika’s story!
If you enjoyed their story, please consider leaving
a review on Amazon! If you’d love to see their story continued, please let me know. I can see something from their past interfering with their future. So, if enough of you want more of their story, please let me know and I’ll start working on a second book for them.
If you’re interested in some of my other books, you can check them out over at www.vklockwood.com.
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Here’s a peek into my 2020 release...
The Shadows
are Falling
V. K. LOCKWOOD
For seven long, devastating years...
I took every word she ever spoke to me with a grain of salt; however, the pain was fierce enough to draw unwanted tears. The emotions led me over the edge, mentally and physically. I wished more than anything to get revenge on her, make her pay for what she did. For all she destroyed and everything she took away from me. The destruction was all around me, ambushing me and trying its best to smother me to death. That’s what she wanted—to watc
h me die. Well, that’s not what I’ll give her.
They ask me to write what it is I’m feeling inside. They tell me I need to be honest, and whatever I write will remain confidential. They think I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know better. I know more than they think I know. And I will tell my story. The full story—the truth. I will let the world know what happened.
My Dearest Kassie,
I watch you. I’ve followed your life for years now. You think
you have the life of your dreams.
But your past... Do you ever lie awake at night,
thinking about your past?
Because I do, every night.
Or should I say our past?
You know the truth and I know the truth.
The one critical downfall in this...
You forgot to tell them the truth.
PROLOGUE
I SAT IN MY CAR, WATCHING the stillness of the multi-million-dollar luxury mansion at 1851 Chatelet Hill Drive. The place I once called home. I clenched my teeth and felt my body tense when I saw her—the woman who stole my husband, my daughter, my name... my life. She sashayed down the concrete drive to the mailbox, her hip-length, light golden-blonde hair flowing behind her. I gripped the steering wheel tighter, never wanting to see her face again. But it was everywhere. I couldn’t look in the mirror without an uncontrollable sense of revulsion for that woman. There was no evading her face when it was identical to mine. My body identical to hers. Our skin, hair, voice, mannerisms, sapphire blue eyes—identical. Right down to the very mole on the inside of our left thigh. But that’s it; that’s where the identicalness ends.
I’m certain she assumes I’m still shut away in the psych ward where she left me. She did everything in her power to make sure I stayed sedated and stashed away under her birth name: Kassie Darrick.
I remember that day seven years ago as if it was yesterday. The day my life became an intrusive nightmare; one I never saw coming. One that took me on a rampage fueled by the twisted lies of my very own identical twin sister. I awoke in her hospital bed, wearing her clothes and peering at the exact framed photo of my daughter I had given to Kassie.
For seven years I suffered from Kassie’s demands to the doctors to keep me sedated and drugged while she lived the luxurious life, pretending to be me... Alaina Shepherd. She loved my husband and raised my daughter, Hailie. I cried, begged, screamed, and prayed. I loathed her every visit as she described her life. I endured seven years of what was my life, pierced deep in my soul at the hands of my sister as she gloated and pranced around in her expensive clothing, advertising her extravagant lifestyle and filling me in on the details and the moments that she unremorsefully stripped from me.
From my room in the psych ward, I watched her attend the televised formal events and fundraisers related to my career; a well-known, pursued artist. She was living the dream career I had built. I was certain she would run it into the ground. But surprisingly, after all these years, she had not.
Tonight, she is speaking at the most distinguished art show in the country, exhibiting all my paintings, as her own of course, and there is nothing that will stop me from attending. Kassie Darrick does not understand what the real Alaina Shepherd is capable of. I am going, and you can bet I will make it known what a conniving fraud she truly is.
“ARE YOU ALMOST READY, Kassie?”
“Yes! Just a minute!” I shouted back to Jonah from upstairs. I wanted everything to be perfect tonight. Life had become so complicated and I quickly learned, especially after just being released from the psych ward, that I still had to play the hospital’s game. I had to stop telling people I was the real Alaina Shepherd. If I continued screaming and pleading with everyone to believe me, they would have me readmitted for sure.
I’d spent the past week preparing for this very event. Everything was going to be perfect, right down to my formal, floor-length red gown; an exact replica of the gown I was wearing the night Corbin Shepherd, my husband, first laid eyes on me. And my hair, lying around my shoulders, perfectly styled in waves exactly as it was that night almost a decade ago.
I know Corbin will be there this evening. He attended every event of mine and stood by my side as the proudest husband in the world. He was my biggest supporter and traveled with me to every gala event, sometimes putting his own events on hold or rescheduling.
When I first met Corbin, Kassie had been in the psych ward for just under three years. I would visit every week and fill her in on life outside the hospital, in the hopes that she would want to get her mental illness under control. I talked to her about Corbin often, and then when I had Hailie ... oh, Hailie. She’s the reason I was impelled to play the hospital’s game the entire time I was falsely admitted. My baby. Although she wouldn’t be much of a baby now. She would be seven years old, but she’s still my baby.
I never thought for one second Kassie would take things into her own hands, attack and switch places with me. The thought never crossed my mind. Not once. I had no idea what she was conspiring to do that day. I should have suspected something when I noticed how cheerful she was. Looking back, that alone should have been a red flag. Kassie was rarely light-hearted, and refused to speak or make eye contact with me. The doctors said that’s how she is every day, emotionless and melancholic. I blamed it on her meds. I talked to her doctor about regulating her meds better, but he assured me the medications and the dosages she was taking were exactly what she needed to be taking for her level of mental illness.
Mental illness ran in my family. For the past fifteen years, my mother has been hospitalized in a different psych ward in my home state of Idaho. My father left when Kassie and I were toddlers. My mother always said it was because he found some younger woman who was much better-looking than her. Someone who was immature enough to believe his lies. She would relentlessly degrade my father. In fact, I don’t recall a time she ever said anything kind about him.
Over the years, I grew to believe my father probably ran off because of my mother. There were numerous times Kassie and I wanted to run away because of her, too. One could never predict who you would be getting when you walked through the door of our run-down, one-bedroom efficiency apartment. Our mother could be happy one minute, then flying off the walls the next.
Growing up, Kassie and I stuck together. I tried to help her, hoping she wouldn’t fall into our mother’s black hole of psychological death. I fought and I fought to make Kassie feel normal, but it began to be almost impossible to reach her. In her early teen years she began to degrade herself, just like my mother degraded my father all those years.
We didn’t have much for close family growing up, and the close family we did have did all they could do to try and take Kassie and me away from our mother. I often wondered if life would have turned out better had they succeeded. Would Kassie have had a better childhood and outlook on life? Would I? Over the years, as we got older, we sided with our mother and cut ties with all our relatives. She brainwashed us to think they were the wrong and spiteful ones, when in reality it was our very own mother.
When Kassie and I turned sixteen, the county came in and took our mother away. I still don’t know all the details of what happened that day, but I do know they took her away kicking and screaming. That I recall vividly. She kept screaming to anyone who could hear her, that it was all Kassie’s fault. I never understood what she meant by that. To this day, I still don’t understand. And poor Kassie never forgot that moment. It’s as if it’s tattooed on her soul. My mother always labeled Kassie the evil one, the devil child, the child with no future. Why a mother would do that to her child, I’ll never know.
I tried my best to console Kassie as we were tossed into foster home after foster home for the next two years. Our relatives refused to take both of us, and demanded the county split us up so I could live with them and Kassie remain in the foster system. I despised them for that. I fought to stay with Kassie. I fought hard to keep us together; even if she had turned into a devil o
f a teen, she was still my sister. I wish I could have gotten her help back then when she needed it the most. Maybe things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did.
“ABOUT TIME! OKAY. OFF record. I have to say this ... Damn! You... look... stunning!” Jonah exclaimed as his jaw dropped. I just shook my head and grinned as I slowly walked down the stairs, holding the train of my red gown in my right hand and the railing in the other. It had been a long time since I had not only worn a gown, but heels. I had to get used to walking in them again.
I reached the bottom step and held my hand out. “Shall we, Mr. Hartman?” I smiled as Jonah stood there in some sort of trance. I just grinned. All I could think about was Corbin, and how his jaw had dropped the exact same way when he saw me in a similar red gown almost a decade ago.
“We shall,” he nodded as he grabbed my hand, and led me out the front door and down to the awaiting limo.
Jonah Hartman was one of the psychiatrists from the hospital. Since I was now an outpatient, he was in charge of supervising and making sure my adjustment back into society was going well. He knew that my meeting my sister after all these years could potentially cause a relapse in my recovery. And since I was hell-bent on going, and it was against the outpatient policy to attend any such public events alone, he offered to come with. I didn’t object. He knew I would break all rules to attend this event even if he didn’t come with.
Jonah was in his late thirties. He was tan, handsome, and muscular. If you talked with most the other nurses at the hospital, they would tell you he resembled an exotic Chippendale dancer. His black hair was beginning to show some gray. And his dark brown eyes were, I have to admit, mesmerizing at times. He looked to me like he should have been a coach or taken up football or some other active sport instead of sitting behind a desk all day long. Carrying around a briefcase and clipboard didn’t suit him well. But he was dedicated to his career. He was an amazing psychiatrist. Different from all the others I’d met over the last few years.
The Stranger In the Guest Room Page 10
