Enemies & Lovers

by Christine Zolendz

  She pulls up her front zipper before I can and looks at me with some kind of weird longing that makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable. “Will you stay then? The car you drove here in doesn’t look like it could handle—” I lose interest in listening to what she has to say. In another life I would have asked after her son Matteo and what became of him. But in real life, I smile tightly and shove her gently out the door.

  “I’m just grabbing whatever I can of hers and leaving in a few minutes.” I wave as she climbs over a snow drift. Ms. Lowell’s right, though, my 1995 rust box isn’t going to be able to drive through snow like this. I slam the front door closed. I don’t even wait to see if she got to her car safely. This is the first moment I’ve been alone in the Infidelity Fuck Palace and I have shit I have to deal with. I have no time for anyone’s bullshit sympathy.

  I pull my phone out with shaky hands. There are ten unread texts to add to the ones I’ve received over the past few days. Each from the same insane number. My mother’s.

  All of them trying to blackmail me.

  The first text came the day I found out my mother was gone. There was no message, just a picture. A picture of me in someone’s bed posing topless. Then every hour after the first picture was sent, another came through. Each image worse than the one sent before. Me in lingerie. Me masturbating. Me masturbating with strange objects. Me in extremely explicit situations with shadow-blurred-out men.

  After twelve hours of incoming photographs a message was sent telling me what I needed to do if I wanted all the pictures to be destroyed.

  Find the offshore accounts Silas Montgomery set up for my mother and transfer them over. If I refused, the pictures would be sent to the entire parent-teacher-diocese email list of St. Maria’s. I’m not so sure the diocese would be as forgiving as Saint Maria herself after seeing some of those images.

  There’s no doubt in my mind I would lose my job. I don’t have tenure and I’m still trying to get my credentials to become state certified. If these pictures got out, I would never be able to work as an elementary school teacher again. Everything I worked for over the last few years would have been all for nothing. I can barely pay my bills now with what little I make as an uncertified private school teacher and I owe a ton on my student loans.

  No matter what I do with my life, everything always comes back to what my mother and Silas chose to do, and I’m the one who always has to pay the price for their sins.

  Another text pinged on my phone.

  Mom: I’d hate for all these to go viral.

  Yeah, me too, asshole. I don’t bother opening the image on my phone. It’ll just be some other sick, twisted picture I don’t want to see. I look around the house wondering where to start. Where would my mother keep all her personal documents?

  This floor has an open design plan, a kitchen and dining area impeccably clean, and a grand living room that looks like it came straight from some luxury home goods catalog. I rummage through all the kitchen drawers and cabinets to find nothing but expensive gadgets and bullshit novelty items. Every picture I find of her and Silas I break with my fist. This woman had a wine station and an enormous rotisserie oven built into her fucking wall while I donated my own eggs at the age of eighteen to help pay for rent and my first few college credits.

  I never knew she lived like this. The last time we spoke she told me she was working in a small office bringing home a meager salary, just enough to get by on. She wished me well in my college endeavors, but she wanted no part of her past. Nothing to remind her of where she came from and who she was. How long did she live this way, while I worried about my next meal? How long was their affair going on? Was it the entire ten years since I’d been exiled for her sins? Or did she and Silas meet again, years later, and reignite the flame that died between them the night Vaughn and I walked in on them?

  I tear through the drawers in her dining cabinets. Nothing.

  I rip through her bedroom drawers and closets (she had two enormous walk-ins), only to find an obscene amount of sex toys and other questionable paraphernalia, but still no bank papers.

  I walk back into the living room and slump down on the couch in tears. How am I ever going to get through this? What’s going to happen when I don’t find anything? What if there isn’t even an offshore account, or what if there is and it’s not enough for this person? And how would they know any of this? Who is it? Why can’t they just leave me out of it? What the hell am I going to do when I lose my career over this before it truly even starts?

  Going to the headmaster is the only thing I can think of doing—the headmaster or right to the diocese to explain my situation. I’ll make my entire case on the fact that I work in St. Maria’s, she’s the patron saint of forgiveness for fuck’s sake, they would need to hear me out. If Saint Maria Goretti could forgive her attempted rapist and killer, they should be able to forgive me for a handful of pornographic pictures I don’t ever remember taking. I type out a quick email to the headmaster of St. Maria’s and ask to meet with him as soon as I return from my bereavement leave.

  A new alert blasts out of my phone, this one from the National Weather Service issuing a blizzard warning and snow squall. What the hell is a snow squall? Is that some kind of bird? Outside the window, the world is pure white. I hang my head in my hands and cry, I need to get home and talk to someone before it’s too late, but I guess I’m stuck here for the night or until the weather clears and I can drive my shit box of a car out of here alive.

  Chapter 3

  Vaughn

  It began snowing early this morning. Soft, fat flakes swirling down like feathers, leaving a blanket of white over everything. I watched it from my father’s study as my mother, sister and I waited for the executor of his will and all his lawyers to leave. They’ve said enough. It’s over.

  It’s been two weeks since my father went for his morning run, never to return. My mother spent the majority of that time in this study staring at his empty chair, cursing under her breath. Even though Botox froze her features long ago, her animosity toward my dead father was loud and clear. Is that one of the steps of grief? Being so full of rage with the person who died? It isn’t his fault. How could it be? Maybe she really isn’t angry with my father, maybe she’s just bitter about the entire situation. I mean, who gets married thinking they’d be a widow before the age of fifty? Not Margaret Montgomery, that’s for sure. She got married thinking she was going to be a billionaire’s wife and Silas Montgomery would take care of her until the end of time.

  At his memorial service she threw one of those metal folding chairs at his casket and had to be carried out. The press had a field day recording the entire stunt. My sister, Chloe, stuffed her full of Valium to get her back inside the car so her driver could bring her home. I was barely able to stomach his funeral myself, but this shit seems worse, the executor and lawyers explaining my father’s last wishes.

  More final.

  The grand finale where everything in the Montgomery family got ripped open and poured out. Every one of my father’s secrets put on display for all to see.

  My mother trembles where she sits, watching the lawyers gather their belongings.

  Each of us received a small white envelope containing our inheritance, or in this case, lack thereof. Fuck if I know when my father planned this all out, he was only fifty-three years old. I never really thought about him dying or what came after. I guess I always assumed my mother would get everything.

  In the end, all his money went to charity. Every cent. My mother and sister both opened their envelopes to their entire inheritance being a charitable donation to one of my father’s favorite causes. Even the Montgomery family estate was donated directly to a children’s charity with explicit instructions to renovate it into a children’s hospital, accompanied by a generous lump sum to help them accomplish the task to completion. I’m the only one in this room who received a real inheritance. My envelope, smaller than the others, contained a deed to a plot of land on the t
op of a mountain.

  Real estate no one in the family knew about.

  There were other envelopes too, I saw. A small handful without names or labels affixed to them. Secrets, I suppose. I’m sure my father died with a myriad of them.

  My mother clears her throat, “Are you really telling me that’s all? That there’s nothing I can do?” Her voice cracks and tears spill down her cheeks. My mother is a young version of forty-eight. She keeps herself fit and surgically altered, but these last few weeks have seemed to age her to where no plastic surgery will ever be able to correct. “I was married to that man for twenty-six years and you’re telling me that he’s giving all my money away?”

  “We are truly sorry for your loss, Mrs. Montgomery, but these were his last wishes.” I’ve never seen lawyers exit a room so fast. My father planned his entire net worth to be sent out of reach from his family—he found every loophole to basically disinherit us, and come out looking like a fucking saint doing it. My mother stops trembling, now she’s full-on shaking.

  “Vaughn, what did he leave you?” she demands.

  I slip the small envelope in my back pocket. “Same as you.” I need to see the plot of land for myself before I share the knowledge of it with anyone else. My father and I had an estranged relationship for the last few years. We hardly spoke. I left his tyranny the second I turned eighteen and made a spot for myself in the world as far away from his business and his bullshit as possible.

  “Vaughn? Can there really be no way of contesting his will?” Chloe whispers from next to my mother, her skin pale and eyes wide.

  “It didn’t sound like it, did it?” I walk away from the window and rub my hands over my face. I need to get out of here before either one of them decides it’s too dangerous for me to be driving in the snow. They’d nag me until I promised to stay, and I can think of nothing worse than being stuck here with both of them ramming their feelings and thoughts down my throat. “Why not give your own lawyer a call? See if there’s anything he could appeal or do—”

  “You always take your father’s side. How can this not bother you?” My mother pulls herself up off the couch and brings her hands against her chest. “Your self-centered piece-of-shit father left me with nothing. How am I supposed to survive?”

  “You have no money of your own?”

  “Of course I do, but your father was worth almost five hundred million a year. That’s the kind of life I’m used to.”

  “I guess you’re going to have to try and get used to another kind of life now, Mom. I’m not sure if this is because you’re grieving or you really hated him, but greed doesn’t look well on you.” I grab my things from off the table and pause at the door. “What about life insurance? Didn’t he have any?”

  “Nothing. He left me nothing. Just gave everything away to strangers. What am I supposed to do, get a job?”

  I leave the room not knowing what else to say. Yeah, I’m surprised. Utterly shocked my father left nothing for my mother. I know the last decade of their marriage wasn’t great, but leaving her with nothing seems callous, even for him.

  Everyone inside the walls of the Montgomery estate knew it was a horrible relationship, but not disinheritance sort of horrible.

  On the surface, to everyone outside, their marriage was complacent. They showed up to functions and parties together. Took pictures and did whatever was socially demanded of them. But in reality, behind closed doors, they’d stopped respecting one another, loving each other. They never fought, they just tiptoed around each other and us with a boiling resentment that spread through the entire family like a contagious disease.

  My mother never forgave him for his infidelity with Libby Radcliffe. Neither did Chloe or I, for that matter. But my mother stayed with him and used his wealth as if it were his retribution for all he’d done.

  As I slide my arms into my coat, I remote start the car. The cold draft that sweeps through the front foyer sends a shiver across my shoulders. This storm wasn’t supposed to hit us until later tonight. “The weather guy is a fucking moron.”

  “Mr. Montgomery, sir. Do you need me to clean the snow from your windshield?”

  “Yes, please, Willard, thank you.” I pull out my phone while I wait and type the address to the parcel of land my father left me. The GPS says it’s a fifty-six-minute drive away. I don’t know what it can be, and it may very well be a stupid plan to drive there in the beginning of a blizzard, but my curiosity is getting the better of me. Hopefully it will end up being something my mother could do something with.

  I just have a gut feeling I need to keep my mouth shut about it for now. At least until I know more.

  The drive up in the white-out conditions takes two and a half hours. The roads are full of snow and assholes who can’t drive in it. I pull into a long winding driveway, aggravated and angry, until I catch a glimpse of a scene from a goddamn wintery landscaped painting.

  What the fuck?

  Tall evergreen trees powdered with snow surround a small, picturesque log cabin. A stack of wood is piled up against one of its sides and a wreath of green and red garland hangs from the front door. A soft golden glow streams out from an enormous front window frosted in the corners like some small holiday decoration. What the fuck did my father do here? Why did he have this and why did he leave it to me? Why couldn’t he have just left this to my mother or Chloe?

  I climb out of the warmth of the car to the blanketed silence of the snow.

  My gut twists. How could one man have so many secrets? Disinheriting an entire family and having a secret house in the mountains? Was this just a place he would feel he could get away to?

  I trod through the drifts and stand on the front porch of the cabin, the bottoms of my pant legs heavy with snow. A movement just behind the windowpane catches my attention. Is there someone inside?

  Did he have this place staffed? Is that who could be inside?

  I rub the sleeve of my coat over the foggy window making a circle to peek through. On a light gray couch sits a woman with long, champagne-colored hair. It spills in wild curls and waves over her shoulders as she hangs her face in her hands.

  Her shoulders tremble lightly.

  It looks like she might be crying.

  When she lifts her head, something moves deep inside my chest. She looks so familiar. I know this woman. She leans forward, putting her hands over her face and wipes away the wetness that glistens on her cheeks. It looks like her world is falling apart. My heart races in my chest. Why does this woman look so familiar?

  When her eyes flash forward, the color blue is so striking I jump away from the window and press myself against the cold wood surface of the house.

  Those blue eyes.

  My heart aches sharply.

  I remember those eyes. My entire teenage life was spent dreaming about those eyes and how they looked at me.

  It’s fucking Claire Radcliffe.

  Anger and rage explode through my veins. What the fuck is Claire Radcliffe doing in my father’s secret cabin?

  Chapter 4

  Claire

  The inside of the cabin is dead silent, but the howling winds coming from outside grate at my ears. The lights flicker and zap. I squeeze my eyes shut and pray the storm stays outside. It’s a silly thought, I know. I’m safe inside, of course I am—let the wind scream all it wants. I’m pretty sure Silas Montgomery built his mistress a fortified stronghold to defend her from all of nature’s tantrums up here on this mountain. Hell, the open beams that cross the ceiling held her dead weight and heavy sins just fine.

  God, my thoughts are too morbid.

  I’m just angry and still in shock. I can’t believe—no, I don’t want to believe—the two of them were here together hiding from everyone. My tears aren’t from sadness, they’re straight up rage and bitterness. How could she have done this? Again? I clench my phone in my hands as it buzzes once more. Now she’s got me involved, and once again I’m going to get hurt because of her thoughtless actions. What
was it about Silas Montgomery that made that woman so stupid? How could any man be worth giving up everything in your life for? It’s incomprehensible to me. It’s downright pathetic.

  A sharp pounding bursts against the door. The suddenness of it jars me, bolting me off the couch. Adrenaline snaps in sparks across my chest. I back away, my calves hitting into the hard edge of the coffee table.

  Maybe it’s Ms. Lowell and she couldn’t get her car out of here. But wouldn’t she have the keys to this place? So, it couldn’t be her clobbering at the door.

  Maybe it’s the crazy person who’s trying to blackmail me.

  I lurch forward and move toward the door, my heart thumping hard the whole way. If it’s the blackmailing text idiot, he or she is going to be in for a real surprise when I let loose my crazy on him.

  I rush past the fireplace and try to grab for the fire poker leaning against the stones, but the door explodes open and a gust of icy snow and wind stops me dead in my tracks. Standing in the middle of the open doorway, against the backdrop of a white-out blizzard, is none other than Vaughn Montgomery. I never make it to the fire poker—I’m like a wild animal caught in headlights. A gust of frigid air whips past him and rips goose bumps up my arms.

  “What are you doing in my father’s cabin?” he growls.

  Shit. I suck back in a hard breath and back away. He’s enormous. Flushed cheeks and clenched teeth. The tendons in his jaw tense and coil. His once-beautiful bright eyes narrow and give off a steely glint of pure hate. Fat flakes of snow melt and drip from his hair, streaming down his cheeks.

  “Well?” he snaps. He kicks his leg back and slams the door shut behind him, cutting us off from the outside. Like a savage, he practically tears his coat down his arms, balls it up in his huge fists and throws it up against a wall.