Sadness filled his eyes. “I’m not. I’m sorry, Luna, but—”
“I know who my father is! He’s the man who sat by my bed when I was sick; he’s the guy who took me shooting when I was five years old; he’s the one who came to tell me my mother had died and then held me while I cried. He’s the one who came to rescue me when some stupid high school boy tried to rape me!”
“I know.” Brock took my hands again. “Just like a woman named Constance was the one who read me my bedtime stories and gave me my vitamins when I suffered from anemia.”
I shook my head. “Don’t compare my single-parent father to your nanny.”
He lowered his head for an instance. “Look, I just want you to go talk to this man. And then I’ll tell you why I think what he’s saying is true—or at least some people have perceived it as being the truth.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t that what we’ve said from the beginning? That this whole thing is about perspective? About how people perceive us, how we perceive ourselves? And sometimes, it’s about how people perceive the meaning behind words.”
“You’re talking in riddles.”
“Come with me and we’ll see who’s telling the riddles.”
***
The hospital room was dark, the blinds drawn closed and a curtain dragged over them. I could hardly see much more than the massive lump in the middle of the bed. But as I crossed the threshold into the room, there was movement that indicated there was a body there somewhere.
“Who’s there?” a voice, croaking like he had frogs living in his chest.
“My name is Luna. I think we might have a mutual friend.”
“Luna?” There was awe in that same voice now, though the frogs were still there.
“Do you know me?”
A light came on and a face was illuminated. He had a bandage around the top of his skull, but his eyes, though ringed black and blue, were visible. I moved closer, curious about this man who claimed to be my father. He was small, slightly smaller than average height. His body was a little wasted, like he’d suffered a long time with some sad disease. His bones protruded under his skin, his ribs visible all the way around his chest. And he had that protrusion in the center of the chest that always made me think of the starving children they used to show in those television commercials asking for aid for African children.
“You look just like her, you know,” he said, his eyes filled with tears as he studied me. “She was a beauty, your mother.”
“I’ve been told.”
“You were so little when she died, so you wouldn’t remember, but she was the best-looking woman I ever knew.”
“Did you love her?”
“We all loved her, sweetheart.” He sighed. “When Bart brought her to town, no man who ever set eyes on her was ever the same again.”
“My dad says that sometimes.”
“It’s the truth.”
I moved closer. His eyes, though rheumy from whatever disease he was suffering from, were blue. And his hair, what hadn’t fallen out or was covered by the bandage, was a silvery blond.
My hair was brown, my eyes gray. My dad said I got my coloring from my mother. She was a brunette, he said. But he wasn’t sure where my eyes came from. Hers were blue and his were brown. Maybe a combination of the two.
But they weren’t blue like this man’s.
“You grew up in Spring Branch?”
“Yeah. Bart and I were buddies once upon a time. When he came back from Iraq with that beautiful woman on his arm, I was so jealous I couldn’t breathe. I was married by then, too, but your mother sure turned my head. I would have given anything to have been the one to meet her first.”
“They met in Germany. She was German.”
“I know. She taught me a few words. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“We were friends, your mom and me. We shared a few drinks down at the Watering Hole, and sometimes we’d buy a bottle and go to one of the ranches and drink out in the pastures.”
“She drank with everyone.”
The man in the bed frowned. “Don’t talk about her like that. She was a good woman.”
“She was a drunk who slept around and broke my father’s heart.”
He pushed himself up in the bed and pointed a finger at me. “Be respectful. She was an angel, that woman.”
I shrugged. “You knew her better than I did, I suppose.”
“Of course I did. She was the best thing to ever happen to me.”
I pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and sat, studying him. “Tell me more about your relationship.”
He shrugged, lying back against his stack of pillows. “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, but we spent a lot of time together over the years. I could tell that woman anything and she would listen, and she wouldn’t judge. She was a true friend.”
“What did your wife think of your friendship?”
He rolled his shoulders. “She was gone before our friendship really grew. She got tired of the unemployment and the life we lived, moving from ranch to ranch, job to job. She took the baby and disappeared.”
“The baby? What baby?”
“My daughter. Geri. She’s about ten years older than you, I’d guess.” He studied my face for a long moment. “I really can’t believe how much you look like your mother. There’s nothing of your father in there.”
“I have his eyes.”
“No. His eyes are brown. Yours are gray.”
“Not the color. The shape.”
He shook his head again. “You look like my Uncle Paul. The slight almond shape to your eyes? That comes from him.”
I stood, pushing the chair back with my movement. “You’re a liar!”
“That’s why you came, isn’t it? To see if it were true?”
“Why would you tell everyone I’m your kid?”
“A lot of men have claimed to be your father, Luna. But I know it’s true because your mother told me so.”
“Bullshit! Bart Walsh is my father!”
He laughed. “Bart was nothing more than a husband on paper to your mother. The moment they arrived in that town and she discovered the beauty of vodka, they stopped being anything else to each other.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“No, you’re the one who doesn’t know.” He sighed. “He didn’t treat her right, Luna. He was angry all the time, trying to get her to be something she wasn’t. But she refused to divorce him because she knew he would be a good father no matter what, and she needed that for you. She didn’t have that in her own life.”
I’d heard just about enough. I didn’t want to know about my mother if that was the kind of person she’d been. I knew my father. I knew he’d worked hard to provide for me, that he had a temper, but he did the best he could do. And I knew he’d fought to get work even after he’d hurt his back so badly that he could barely straighten up, let alone walk. That was the kind of man my father was. My mother was a lousy drunk who would have died of cirrhosis if she hadn’t died in a car accident.
To hell with him. I had no idea what this had to do with the harassment I’d experienced in high school and over the last week, but I didn’t want any more of it.
“Take me home!”
Brock followed me to the elevator, staying close but not too close, until we were alone in the contraption. When I turned, he was waiting, ready to hold me or fight me, whatever it was I needed. I chose hold.
He wrapped his arms tight around me, his hand moving over the back of my head.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why did you make me meet him?”
“Because we think he’s the reason you’ve been harassed these past few days.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to hear about it. Not just yet. I only want to go home.”
“We can’t take you home, Luna. Not until this is over.”
I screamed into his shirt, frustrated at the whole da
mn situation. He only held me tighter, his arms reassuring around my body.
The elevator door opened, and I reluctantly pulled away. We made our way to the parking garage where he’d left the SUV we’d come in. The driver was waiting by the entrance to the elevator bay, the engine idling quietly in the noisy garage. I climbed in first, reaching for Brock as he took a seat beside me. I snuggled into him as we pulled out of the garage and into the daylight of the bright afternoon.
“What a lovely couple you two make. I’m so glad my actions brought you together for the final moments of your lives.”
My heart froze. I sat up, glancing into the driver’s seat for the first time since getting into the vehicle. She was a petite woman, with blond hair and blue eyes, her skin like porcelain even in the hot Texas sun.
“Who are you?”
“I’m your big sister, sweetheart.”
“Geraldine Thomas,” Brock said.
I had no idea what was happening, but I knew simply from the crazy sparkle in her eyes and the glance she gave me in the mirror that she was the one who’d been torturing me all week. Not only that, but I knew her voice, knew the contours of her face. This was my art teacher from high school, Ms. Sanders.
Suddenly, everything was beginning to make sense.
Chapter 24
Brock
The house was out in the middle of nowhere, a trailer with no skirting, no apparent plumbing, nothing to make it a permanent structure. Just an old trailer stuck in a pasture like a lot of trailers cowboys left abandoned after a long, cold winter.
Luna was tied to a chair with zip ties, her ankles and wrists secured to the legs of a common kitchen chair. It was the only furniture in the house, unless you counted the oil lamp that was the only source of light, glowing pale on the floor across from Luna.
I was lying on the floor, a needle sticking out of the middle of my arm. She thought she’d knocked me out, but all she’d done was fill a callus with fluid that was now leaking back out. There were some advantages to having spent six months in the hospital, eight months in an assisted living facility, and a year in physical therapy.
I watched, my eyes only partially open, as the woman yanked at Luna’s hair, turning her head this way and that, trying to get a good look at her features.
“He bragged about it, you know? Told the whole town that you were his from the moment your mother began to show. Told everyone that he put you in her belly. It was what made my mother leave him.”
“He’s not my father.”
“Are you calling my daddy a liar?”
“He’s a drunk, just like her!”
Geraldine slapped Luna, causing her head to roll back on her spine. “Shut up!” she screamed.
I wanted to get up, wanted to knock her to the ground. But I had to wait, had to find the right moment.
“I didn’t realize it was you at first. I came back to this rotten town to be close to my daddy, to build a relationship. I found him lying in the middle of a pasture, talking to the sky like it was your mother. Like she was standing up there looking down at him.”
“That must have been hard.”
“I told him who I was, begged him to let me help him. He let me take him home, clean him up. Even sobered up for a few days. But then he fell right back into the drinking, right back into calling her name to the night sky. Nothing I could do or say would bring him back to me. But by then I had this contract to teach art at that stupid school! I couldn’t get out, just like my poor mother.”
Geraldine stepped back from Luna and studied her for a long moment. “I thought when I met you, it would be over a cup of coffee somewhere. I had this image of you in my mind—this petite blonde, a carbon copy of me. But you weren’t. You had this dark skin and dark hair, and those haunting gray eyes. You were fucking beautiful and I was this ugly duckling who couldn’t even get the fat, middle-aged math teacher to look my way. He’d sure look at you, though.”
“I’m sorry, Geri.”
“Don’t talk to me!” she cried, slapping Luna again.
Geraldine walked around, pacing the empty living room of the narrow trailer. “I found him here once, you know. Sick and dehydrated. I dragged him out to my car alone and drove him to the hospital. They rehydrated him and he was just back out in the pasture the next night, swigging a bottle of vodka and yelling at the sky.” She sighed. “I hate him.”
She continued to pace, dragging her fingers through her hair. “And then that cheerleader bitch blackballed you. Told everyone you were a whore like your mother and that you were sleeping with the entire football team, except her boyfriend. That’s when the connection was made, when I realized who you were, who your mother was. I asked some of the other students, learned the truth about you. I couldn’t believe it—this bastard child my father had with some drunk was a beautiful, talented artist. I couldn’t stand it!”
She spit at Luna, missing her by barely an inch.
“You not only stole my father from me, but you were better at my own chosen profession! I hated you more than him. That’s why I put the fish heads and the crap and the pig’s blood in your car. That’s why every time people started to forget, I’d do it again. Four times I had to go around looking for the most vile things I could shove into that rust bucket of a car of yours. To make it look really good, I went to the principal and insisted action be taken against Heather Masters, knowing full well he’d never go up against her father and risk losing the library money from him!”
“You’re so smart, Geri.”
Don’t do that, I wanted to say. But I was still pretending to be unconscious.
“I am smart. No one ever gives me credit for it.” Geraldine sighed. “They pushed me out after your senior year. Said art was not a resource they wanted to waste money on. I moved around for a while, took jobs in several different states. Then I settled in Denver, took a job working in a pottery shop. It was a good life, a quiet life. Even had a steady boyfriend for a while. But then I saw your face on the news and the hatred came back, the anger.”
Geraldine suddenly turned and slapped Luna again, making her head snap back. Blood began to trickle from her nose, the side of her face swelling slightly.
“You were famous, about to go to Fashion Week in Paris and peddle your jewelry. They were all talking about how good you were, how you would likely be offered this coveted spot in this guy’s company. It made me sick.”
“That’s why the pig’s head in my fridge?”
“To remind you where you came from. Getting into the house wasn’t hard. I saw your assistant in the news spot, and realized she was calling herself Angela Powers, but that it wasn’t the Angela Powers who was in my class four years ago. She might have fooled Jenny and Tony, but she couldn’t fool me.”
“Angela gave you information on my schedule?”
“No. But I was able to put a virus on her iPad that allowed me to get the information myself.” Geraldine scoffed. “The old Angela thought you were a standoffish bitch. This new one, though, thinks you hung the moon. She adores you and she never would have done anything to hurt you. I think she would gladly have given herself up if you asked her to.”
Geraldine was still pacing, moving back and forth in front of the door. It crossed my mind that I could knock her right through the door if I charged at her at the right moment. I just had to get into position without her noticing.
“The bomb at the hotel? The gunwoman on the streets? What was that about?”
“The bomb was just to get you out in the open. It wasn’t that powerful. It wouldn’t hurt anyone, not too badly anyway. The gun… well, maybe I do want to hurt you. I’m tired of you taking everything from me. I want my life back; I want it the way it would have been if you weren’t around. Maybe if you died, my father would finally see that I’m all the daughter he could ever want!”
“The cops at the airport?”
“That was just an anonymous tip-off. I figured if they arrested him, you’d be vulnerable, and I could p
luck you off the street. But he was smarter—or dumber, depending on your perspective—than I anticipated.”
Now was the time. Geraldine was coming to the end of her story. It was now or never.
I waited for her to turn her back to the room and I pulled myself up on my knees. Just as she turned again, I jumped at her, grabbing her around the waist and forcing her forward. She crashed into the door just as I’d hoped, but it didn’t break. We fell to the floor in a hurting pile of flesh, and she began to fight almost immediately despite the fact that the weight of my body must have knocked the air out of her lungs. We wrestled and she kicked her feet, then began to scream. I didn’t understand what was happening until the heat rushed up over me. It was a feeling you don’t forget.
We were on fire.
I jumped to my feet and forced the door open, dragging her out onto the grass and rolling her, putting out the flames. There were a few on my pant legs, but I got those out easily. However, by the time I looked back at the trailer, it was completely aflame.
And Luna was still inside.
It was like déjà vu. Had I made the wrong choice again?
Chapter 25
Luna
The flames rose quickly all around me as soon as the oil lamp smashed to the floor. The moment Brock opened the door, the cool evening air fanned them like fresh fuel thrown on a bonfire. I screamed as he dragged Geraldine out the door, tossing her onto the ground to put out the flames on her legs.
I couldn’t move. The ties were too tight on my ankles, my wrists. All I could do was scream and pray. I prayed like I had never prayed before. I couldn’t believe this was the way I was meant to go! I couldn’t go this way, couldn’t go now! Not now!
Pain seared through me as the flames grew close, just the heat of the fire causing my clothing to begin to smolder. Tears were my only defense, but they weren’t doing much in the way of protecting me.
Where was Brock?
Could I really ask Brock to come into this mess? After what he’d been through, was it fair to expect something like that? But he was my only hope.
Maybe fire wouldn’t be as bad as whatever Geraldine had planned for me.
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