“It’s his name.” Her voice is flat. “And who the hell are you to tell me what to do?”
“Don’t talk to her like that.” His low voice is a warning, but still doesn’t seem to affect Adele.
“She’s nothing, Andrew. Worthless. Why do you spend time with her? Is she good in bed? Does she spread her legs for you constantly and that’s why you keep her around?” Adele sounds downright manic. I refuse to let her insults affect me whatsoever.
She’s so beneath me for what she’s done to Drew, she deserves to rot in hell.
“At least I’m not some child molesting piece of shit,” I mutter under my breath.
The gasp I hear come from Adele clearly indicates I didn’t mutter low enough. “What did you say, you little bitch?”
Holy shit, I’ve stepped in it now.
“She knows, Adele,” Drew interjects harshly. “She knows everything.”
The heavy silence that settles over the three of us is almost painful. I can’t look at her. I keep my focus on my trembling knees, trying my best to keep my breathing even and controlled. I glance at Drew out of the corner of my eye, see the tick in his jaw, the way he’s gripping the steering wheel so tight, his knuckles are white.
“Well.” Her voice squeaks and she gives a little cough. “So. You told her everything, hmm? She knows about our little affair?”
“Molesting a fifteen year old boy is a far cry from having an affair.” I clamp my lips shut and close my eyes. My mom always said my big mouth would get me in trouble.
I guess she’s right.
“Fine, you want her to know everything, then I’ll go ahead and tell you what I wanted to say in private in front of your big mouthed whore instead.” Her voice is sweetness and light, so unnerving I can’t help but lift my head and look at her.
I don’t like what I see. There’s a murderous glow in her eyes and her mouth is curved upward in a crazed smile. She’s clearly on the verge of losing it.
“We should go,” I whisper to Drew and without a word he starts the engine.
“Don’t you want to hear what I have to tell you?” she asks in her creepy sing-song voice.
“Not really.” He keeps his gaze trained on the steering wheel.
“That’s too bad. Because it’s about Vanessa.”
He turns to look at her, as do I. “What about her?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you this for what feels like forever, the timing was just never right. But you need to know. I’ve always felt it was the truth…I wasn’t sure. I know it now though. Without a doubt, I know.”
“Spit it out, Adele.”
My stomach is churning as I wait. Fear makes my palms clammy and I clutch at my knees, scared out of my mind at what she’s about to say.
“Vanessa’s not your sister, Andrew.” Adele pauses, the smile she shoots my direction devastating. “She was your daughter.”
* Chapter Thirteen *
Day 7 (Departure), 11:30 a.m.
Where there is love, there is pain. – Spanish Proverb
Fable
Almost two hours later, and I still don’t know what to say.
I’m in a perpetual state of shock over Adele’s devastating confession. I’m not the one who’s most traumatically affected by it either. I’m scared to death by the way Drew’s taking it. Which is, zero reaction whatsoever.
He’s cold as ice. Expressionless. Emotionless. Void of anything and everything.
I’ve spent six full days and nights with him. I’ve seen him at his lowest and highest points. His most angry and his most caring, yet I’ve never seen him act like this. I don’t know what to do for him. And he won’t talk to me.
It ends up being the longest, quietest four plus hours of my life. Traffic was brutal. The weather shitty, with constant rain and slick roads, making it nearly impossible for him to see through the windshield, the rain fell so heavily.
He flicked on the radio at the very start of our journey, a clear indicator he didn’t want to talk, so I didn’t press. But I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to. There were so many questions and I had no answers.
Was Adele telling the truth? Had Vanessa really been Drew’s daughter? Did his father—her husband—have any sort of clue? Had he been aware of their affair? Exactly how long had it gone on anyway?
From my calculations, she’d done this to him for a long time. At least four years. In the bits that he told me about the day Vanessa died, I have a feeling Adele dragged him into the house and had her way with him. So while they were fucking, Vanessa drowned.
Brutal but the truth, I can feel it. Hence that extra heaping dose of guilt he piles on himself.
I’m not angry at him though, and I can’t hate him for what happened. It’s not his fault, no matter how much he thinks it is. She trapped him into this crazy, sick relationship, and he didn’t know how to get out of it. He was a child when she started playing her twisted game.