“She should have been locked up long ago. Long before she came to live with me. Did you know that she took in whores? She built this house for them all and had doctors come in and take care of them free of charge. I put a fucking stop to that.”
“Then how would you have gotten Steele and Aster?” His mother paled to the point that there was no color in her face at all when Kari spoke softly to her. Even her lips had gone white. “She told me that had she had to do it over, she would have kept them and not given them to you and your husband to raise. It was the biggest mistake she’d ever made.”
“You have no idea how many times I wish she had.” His mother looked at him. “I’m guessing she didn’t tell you the lies my mother spoke of? Just as well, they’re as untrue as…well as you seeing ghosts. I did what she made me and that was it. How the hell was I supposed to know that you’d be defective? And Christ, you’d think that even after we did it, she’d at least leave us her money. But oh no, not her, she left it all to you. You and that sister of yours.”
“You’re not my mother.” His mother laughed, and Steele felt his heart pound hard in his chest. He wondered how much harder it would have gone had Kari not put her hand over his. “Who is?”
“Ask her. She thinks she knows it all.” Then she laughed again. “Or better yet, let me spin a tale for you. All lies, but I so love a good lie, don’t you? And since there is no one here to deny or tell you any different, I’ll make it a good one.”
Steele nodded. He wasn’t sure that he wanted another tale today, a lie or not, but was pretty sure that he would need this information sometime. And if his grandmother had any part in this, he really wanted to know.
“Your grandmother was friends with everyone. Even those who weren’t in her own social clique. As I said, at one time, before your father and I stepped in, your grandmother was harboring unwedded woman with children on the way. Shameless. Had we not gone in and had her declared incapable of caring for herself, there is no telling what she might have gotten into.” His mother leaned back in her chair and smiled at him. “There were so many of them that it was hard to keep track. And she’d find them jobs too. Stupid bitch had no idea how others were talking about her. But when the city decided to give her an honor for her work, I had to put my foot down. There was no way we’d live it down if it got out beyond our little town.”
“But she wasn’t, was she? She was as sane as…well, as sane as me.” His mother nodded, then laughed. “So Aster and I were not your children, but those of one of the women that grandmother helped. And you had to take us in. Why was that? For punishment of something else?”
“Oh, more than that. You’re your father’s children, but not of my body, thank God. Even back then, before this other mess that we were accused of, your father needed more than I could give him, bless his heart. And he went to the home to get a little action on the side. Why not? It wasn’t as if these women weren’t spreading it for anyone who came around with a dick. This woman—I don’t remember her name—she was more than willing to give it to him. And when she ended up knocked up, your grandmother talked us…blackmailed us…into taking the two of you.”
“Bethany Cartwright. Her name, it was Bethany Cartwright. And she’d been pregnant before her husband was killed in an accident. And had lost the baby due to stress. Her father had thought that helping with the new babies with your grandmother would do her good. It had for a time, until your husband showed up.” Steele looked at Kari when she said the name. There was no way…. Steele looked at his…well, he supposed he shouldn’t have to think of her as Mother any longer.
“Is she dead, Eloise?” She winced at the sound of her name. “Our birth mother, is she dead?”
“How the hell should I know what he did with her? He said that he’d taken care of her. So far as I know, he did just that. We didn’t need her kind coming around and blackmailing us; or worse yet, telling the world that he raped her. We all knew it wouldn’t be true, but you know how people like a good tale. I do know that she never bothered us again.” Steele felt sick to his stomach. They’d killed her. He knew it as surely as he was sitting there. “And when your grandmother found out, she blackmailed us into raising you as our own. Fucking brats messed up everything for us.”
Steele stood up. He had to get out of there or kill her. When Kari stood too, he thought they were finished. But she looked at his mother and smiled. Steele hoped to God she never looked at him that way.