I knew she’d visited her parents a few years ago when I was already in LA, but that was the extent of it as far as I was aware.
The drive to my father’s mansion ticked by silently and gave me time to think and regulate my heartbeats. Cliff kept his mouth shut, probably remembering I was not my chatterbox stepmother. I didn’t bother to raise the privacy glass. Help squinted at the side window, pretending I wasn’t there next to her.
This weekend was important to me. It was the weekend when I would finally tell my father about my plans.
Help didn’t mention the blanket, and I didn’t mention how my brain almost fucking detonated when I caught myself doing it. Such a small gesture. Such a huge impact on my mood.
At the eight-car garage behind the house, Cliff pulled her duffel from the trunk.
“I better head to see my parents.” She jerked her thumb toward the servants’ apartment. “I haven’t been here in a while.” The accusation in her voice suggested I was to blame for that. “I hope my mother’s not in your kitchen. Or am I allowed inside now?”
Another accusation. Hey. I wasn’t the one who’d made them live in the servants’ apartment. Truthfully, I would have offered them a place inside the house, considering it was empty. It was Josephine who was a fucking haughty snob, but no one would’ve believed me. Jo’s mask was solid.
“I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Tonight. I have an urgent meeting with my lawyer, and I need you to take notes.” She wasn’t going there to take notes. Originally, I’d hoped to talk her through my plans for her on the plane, but she’d fallen asleep.
I sometimes forgot that other people slept. An average person would spend twenty-five years of their lifetime asleep. Not me. I was fucking wide-awake.
I was tempted to wake her up on the plane, but she’d looked so out of it, I was sure she wouldn’t understand half the crap I had to tell her anyway. And all of it was important.
At any rate, my justification for the trip seemed to pacify Help, and she shot me a polite smile.
She was starting to get comfortable around me. I pitied her.
“I’ll have dinner with my folks and see you later then.”
She clutched her duffel to her chest and ambled down the pavement leading to her former home beside the garage, while I headed for the iron double-doors at the front of the cold mansion where I’d once lived. Before I turned the corner, I twisted my head back toward her.
She was standing outside the door to her parents’ quarters. When it opened, she jumped into her mother’s open arms, knotting her legs around her thick midsection and letting out a happy squeak. Her dad clapped and laughed. Soon, the three of them were half-crying, half-laughing with joy.
When I pushed my front doors open, no one was there. Nobody waited for me. But that was hardly news.
My stepmother was probably already back in Cabo with her friends. Thank fuck. And my father was probably upstairs in his bed, marching his slow way to death after his third heart attack in the last five years.
But this time, his cold, vicious heart was going to lose the battle.
Death. Such a mundane thing. Everybody died. Well, eventually. But almost everyone fought against it. Sadly, for my father, he had silent enemies who prowled in the dark.
One of them was his son.
He was so hot on getting rid of my mother—so relieved when she finally died—that he forgot his time would come too. And it did, with a little push from Mother Nature.
Karma was working extra hard with this piece of work. Dad had been in great shape for a sixty-eight-year-old. He ate well, played tennis and golf, and had even cut back on the cigars.
But the work of saints is done through others.
It was time for everyone to get what they deserved for the death of Marie Spencer.
Daryl Ryler was long since dead.
Baron Spencer Sr. would soon be dead, too.
And Josephine Ryler Spencer would have nothing to live for. Nothing.
“Dad?” I called out, rooted to the foyer floor. He didn’t answer. I knew he wouldn’t. His third heart attack had left him weaker than ever. That was after the stroke he’d had between heart attack two and the most recent one.
Now, he was wheeled by two nurses everywhere and was barely able to communicate anymore. He was lucid, but his speech was gone. His ability to move his limbs had vanished too. My father could barely lift a finger to point at what he wanted or needed.
He once thought of my disabled mother as a burden, a liability that marred his balance sheet…now he’d become a liability to Josephine.
What goes around, comes around.
I dropped my suitcase in the middle of the vast, dark entrance hall—the curtains were always drawn in my house—and climbed up the stairs. “I’m coming for you, Dad.”
This was the last time I was going to speak to him.
The last time I would pretend to give a shit.
When I got to his room, he wasn’t there. My father hardly ever ventured out of his bedroom when home. His male nurses sometimes took him to the library, and if I didn’t find him there, with Josh or Slade, then he was probably at the hospital. Again.
I went down to the library, and sure enough, it was empty. I stood in front of the oak desk and swiped my palm across it. Once upon a time, this had been my mother’s favorite room. We used to spend so much time here together. We would sprawl on opposite ends of the sofa, reading silently and occasionally glancing at each other, exchanging grins. I was only six when the tradition began.
Sharing the silence. Our love for everything written.
Even after the car accident, when she became a quadriplegic, we still did this. Only she didn’t sit on the sofa anymore. But I’d humor her, reading Little Women and Wuthering Heights for her aloud. Needless to say, they weren’t my style. But that smile…her smile was definitely worth the hassle.
When she died, Jo and Dad abandoned the room. But then Daryl Ryler, Jo’s twin brother, started using it for a whole other reason.
Beating me.
I knew I should hate this room after everything Daryl had put me through in here, but it always drew me back. Because my mother’s nurturing smile, a balm to my starving soul, was what I thought about when I entered the library.
Not the way Jo locked me inside while Daryl smacked me with his ringed hand until my chest was cut and bruised. Not how she lied about what happened when he whipped me with his belt until my legs were covered with welts and blood.
Head bowed, I now stared at my hands pressed against the desk. This was a position I knew too well. It’s how I’d stood when they punished me.
My palms shook against the wood, and I knew what it meant. I was going to crash soon, the sleep I found so elusive demanding its due. But first, I needed to get Help to assist me with my plans concerning the will, and I also needed to break the news to Dean about her before he found out about it from his dad.
I fished my cell out of my dress pants and dialed his number, tossing the phone on the desk after putting the call on speaker. Dean answered after the third ring.