Perfectly Loved

by Lacey Silks

  I killed her brother.

  And all I could do was squeeze her tighter and curse the bastard who’d taken so much away from us, who’d stolen so many years of our happiness. She’d stayed away from me because she wanted to protect me. It wasn’t because she didn’t care or didn’t love me. Millie was always afraid for me, because every time she turned around, Savage was there. I clenched my fist around the decorative pillow at the side and set my jaw to lock. Pain shot through my tooth, zapping me out of the pool of hatred to focus on the culprit of it all. His time would come, and I hoped that Savage had been wise enough to leave the city.

  And even though I had so much anger inside of me, I had to concentrate on Millie now and the sorrow that poured out of her. She’d lost so much. No wonder she hated me. All these years Savage made her life a living hell, and I didn’t even know it.

  I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.

  “That night at the bar, nothing happened with Laurie. She was forcing herself on me,” I told her.

  “It doesn’t matter, Dave. I know you. And even if you cheated… I… but Savage…”

  “I would never cheat on you, baby. I loved you. I always have, and I always will. Do you hear me? I won’t let anyone or anything keep us apart any longer. Jesus, I wish I had known before.”

  I squeezed her tight against my body, holding on for all the months and years we had lost. I didn’t know how long we stayed this way, but it must have been a while. My phone vibrated, and I texted Justin back that I wouldn’t be coming in to work today. I had some unfinished business with an asshole that had frightened my girl, my Millie, for years.

  “Do you need help with anything, baby?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not even sure what she wanted.”

  “I doubt she had anything planned.”

  “Then we’ll do a simple funeral. I… I’ll make the calls from Mrs. Bowers’ place.”

  “He won’t hurt you again, Millie.”

  “I know. I feel safe there. I don’t know if I can ever come back to the city.”

  Tonight, I would ensure Millie never felt fear again.

  An hour later, I watched the nurse wheel Millie’s mother out of the hospital room. Millie had left minutes earlier, to order flowers for the funeral, and then went straight back to Mrs. Bower’s house.

  “Sir? Are you related to Ms. Carlton?”

  I wanted to tell her that I was the only real family she’d ever had, the only one who had never stopped caring about her, but I didn’t.

  “Yes. What can I do for you?”

  “She didn’t fill in her address on one of the forms.”

  “I can do that.”

  I scribbled on the paper, double-checking that Millie hadn’t missed any other fields. The last thing she needed now was a call from the hospital asking her to return to the place where her mother had died. It wasn’t until I was sitting back in my car that one of the lines I’d read shocked me. I scrunched my brows, staring at a swaying tree in front of me. The wind had picked up and was howling between the buildings and through the parking lot.

  “It couldn’t be.”

  I felt an urge to leave the car and go back to the hospital to double-check the papers, but I was already certain of what I’d seen. My mind had just been too occupied to make the connection before. I grabbed the white envelope off the front seat and pulled out the enlarged photograph. There it was, around Mrs. Bowers’ neck, peeking out from underneath a shimmering scarf: the blue pendant Millie had worn most of her life. Now it was resting in a box at my apartment. It hadn’t been visible on the small picture when we saw it, especially since the photograph was black and white. But the pentagon shape and size was a perfect match; which along with Millie’s mother’s maiden name that I’d read on the hospital paper as Bowers confirmed that Millie was Beatrice’s lost granddaughter.

  Chapter 23

  Millie

  How do you plan a funeral for someone you didn’t know? I mean, she was my mother, and I couldn’t help the tears because somewhere deep inside me I had still longed to feel her touch, the way I did when she cupped my face and caressed my cheek at the hospital. I’d dreamt of all the ways in which she could comfort me when I had a bad day at school and imagined the warmth of her arms around me in an embrace. I’d role played our mother-daughter escapades countless times as I was growing up, wondering how she’d teach me to paint my nails, listening to the sound of her voice as she gave me advice on boyfriends, feeling the touch of her cold hand against my heated forehead when she checked my fever. But she had never done those things. I hadn’t felt that kind of love from someone else until I met Dave and the whole Mayers family. Yet that craving for maternal affection never left me. The need opened this sealed dam of emotions I’d been holding onto for years, releasing my tears in torrents.

  I blew my nose into another tissue and trashed it under the sink in my apartment. Before heading back to Mrs. Bowers’ house, I picked up fresh clothes, more toiletries, and a couple more blankets for Mrs. Bowers. The past week, her place had felt more like my own home than where I lived.

  I’d already ordered the wreath of daisies, which apparently were my mother’s favorite. At least, that was what one of the nurses said she mentioned earlier. I also called the funeral home to make arrangements. But who else was I supposed to notify? Did she have any siblings? How about cousins? Jeez, I didn’t even know if anyone else related to her was still alive. What about friends? My head hurt, and I decided to take a nap before I picked up the phone and called anyone else.

  When I arrived at Mrs. Bowers’ house later, she was sitting in her cozy chair, completely covered in cat fur. I set my bag by the stairs to the attic, looking fondly upstairs.

  “They’re cute,” I said. All five of Dorothy’s kittens, along with their mother, were nestled in Mrs. Bowers lap.

  She pulled a tissue from the box set beside her and blew her nose before coughing loudly. I was afraid she had a reoccurring chest infection, and if she didn’t see a doctor within the next few days, she’d get sick.

  “One day, you’ll have a litter of your own.” She tossed the soiled tissue into the garbage can by her side.

  “I know that according to you, hell has frozen over, but pigs ain’t gonna fly.”

  She broke into a second coughing fit, her whole body shaking along with the little balls of fur. I put on the kettle and prepared two mugs of tea.

  “You’re not looking or sounding too good. Can I get you some medicine?”

  “I already stuffed myself with garlic.”

  “That’s not enough. You’ll get pneumonia in this weather. Winter’s coming sooner this year. The Indian summer was just a tease. It’s already snowing outside.” I added three logs to the fireplace just as someone knocked on the door.

  “It’s Dave.” I felt my cheeks heat. “He said he was coming soon.”

  “Of course he did.” Mrs. Bowers wore her I told you so look with pride as she put on a hat. I shook my head. She wouldn’t stop teasing me about the two of us being back together until the day she died. Which I hoped wasn’t any time soon, because I’d witnessed enough death for today. I wasn’t particularly thrilled about sharing the news of my mother’s passing with her simply because this house was a happy place for me, not a sad one, and I wanted to keep it that way for as long as I could.

  My smile faded as soon as I opened the door and my fantasy of this house remaining a peaceful and happy memory floated away with those pigs that could fly. I pushed the door to close it, but Savage was quicker. His brutal shove threw me down to the floor. I saw Mrs. Bowers stash the kittens in a box, get up, and head our way with her cane.

  No!

  Everything happened so quickly that I forgot to warn her or scream, and now Savage was beating her with her own cane. I got up and jumped on his back, choking him with my arm. He slammed backward into a wall. A nail from a picture frame that fell to the floor embedded itself in the center of my lower back, and I probably screa
med in agony, but I couldn’t quite remember. The pain seared up my spine and through my body, causing my sight to blur. The feeling of pins and needles invaded my toes and eased upward until my knees buckled. All I could feel was the throbbing pulse in my back where the nail had penetrated my skin. I saw Savage approach me in slow motion. Mrs. Bowers was lying down on the floor, motionless. Savage hit me on the side of my head, and I passed out.

  * * *

  My head throbbed and my ears were ringing. I opened my eyes to darkness and tried to reach out with my hand to clear them, but I couldn’t; my wrists were tied. I tried to stretch my leg out, but my ankles too had been tied, to what I thought to be a wooden chair. There was a dull pain in my back, and I remembered the nail puncturing my skin. I pressed against the wooden chair I was sitting on and felt the sting. My fingers were numb from cold and so were my toes. Actually, I was pretty sure that I couldn’t feel my toes.

  “It’s about time.” Savage acknowledged my moan of pain from somewhere in the room. The smell of sulfur near my face sent panic through my limbs as he lit a match and slowly walked away with the small flame until he lit a candle.

  “What do you want, you bastard?” I spat the blood that had collected in my mouth to the floor.

  “Well, you’ve got the bastard part right. Miss me, Carlton?”

  “What did you do to Mrs. Bowers?”

  “What nature should have done to her long ago.”

  Had he killed her? I knew Mark Savage was capable of a lot of things, but murder? Yeah, that too. I had no doubt he’d kill without a second thought.

  “Don’t look at me like you just met me, Carlton.”

  I deserved to be mocked. I should have taken his release a bit more seriously and locked myself up on the other side of the planet. How did he find me? Did he follow me from my apartment tonight?

  “For a moment there I thought I lost you. When you didn’t appear at your apartment, I followed Mayers a couple of times, then saw your car at the mart this morning and followed you to the old hag’s house.”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  While I’d often thought of Mrs. Bowers as a witch or worse, I never meant them to be cruel. Did I sound as bad as Savage? If she lived, I promised to apologize and never refer to her that way again.

  Savage didn’t reply. Instead, he rolled out a black cloth on the kitchen counter. The clinking of metal against metal pinged in my ears.

  Shit! This wasn’t good. What the hell was he planning? I had to get away.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “You came here after I was released. A pretty secluded place, I must say, but you’ve always had a thing for abandoned houses, haven’t you?” Savage looked out the window. “I thought it would do us some good to be in a place where no one can hear you scream.”

  I looked around the familiar room and realized that we were, in fact, at the old house. My gaze immediately flew to the kitchen cupboard where I’d stashed my gun, and as Savage turned back toward me, I looked the other way.

  “Are you going to untie me?” I asked.

  He leaned his head to the side, contemplating for a moment. “You move off that chair and I’ll shoot. If you think I won’t, then you’re mistaken. I don’t fucking care if your eyes are closed or open or if you’re wounded or barely alive when I fuck you, so do not fucking get off the chair. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. He pulled a blade through the plastic tie tags at my hands and ankles. I remained seated, hoping I’d get a chance to grab his gun. If I was going to get out of there, there was no way I’d let Savage leave this place alive and haunt me for the rest of my life.

  “Haven’t you done enough? You’re the reason Timothy’s dead. I’m pretty sure that makes us even for whatever you think it is I owe you.”

  “Not nearly, Carlton. And need I remind you that it was your boyfriend who shot him? My father was right: you’re just like your mother. You’ll disown your family the moment you get a chance, for that fucker Mayers.”

  Savage was either drunk or stoned. He wasn’t making any sense.

  “Unlike you, I didn’t abandon my family.”

  Now I was certain that he was crazy. “You don’t know shit about me,” I said under my breath.

  “I know more than you think, Millie. Way more.”

  That hellish grin covering his face disgusted me. What was he talking about?

  “The only way to make right of your mother’s mistakes is to do to you what my father should have done in the first place.”

  “My mother died this morning. There’s nothing you can do to hurt her now.”

  “Well, we’ll just see about that, won’t we? You think she’ll turn in her grave when I fuck you? You know, the way she fucked my father?”

  My mother had fucked a lot of men, and his father was only one of the many that had rolled through our trailer, but I didn’t tell him that. I wanted to curl into a ball and cry. Whatever he had planned, I wished he would just get it over with. He stepped toward me slowly and crouched in front of the chair.

  “I was going to make my father proud. That’s why I took Timothy under my care. But Mayers shot him.”

  Care? And how would that have made his father proud? When I’d lived there, if you could call that living, Mr. Savage couldn’t have cared less about anything his children, or foster children, did.

  “You’re a fucking moron. You didn’t have to torture an innocent boy for all those years. He did nothing to you.”

  “He needed to pay for your mother’s mistakes. And for yours as well.”

  “You manipulated him! He was in a good home. He had a chance, you asshole, and you ruined it all.”

  Savage grasped my jaw between his fingers. “Is that a way to talk to someone who has your life in his hands?” He then, in utterly disgusting slow motion, licked my face with his full tongue, diagonally from under the left side of my chin up and over my nose and my right eye, along my temple. I wanted to hurl.

  Something cracked outside. Savage covered my mouth with his stinky hand before I got a chance to scream. He blew out the candle and darkness consumed the room. “You move and I’ll shoot you,” he whispered, and pressed something into my ribcage. I could only assume it was a gun.

  The front door cracked open. I couldn’t breathe or move. I prayed that a wolf or a bear had crept inside the house. But when I saw his silhouette, I stomped my feet, and Savage fired. Except he didn’t fire at me; he fired at Dave. And I screamed until my throat hurt and the echo came back at least three times around.

  Chapter 24

  Dave

  I dialed Millie’s number over and over again, but it kept going to voice mail, which meant that she was probably at Mrs. Bowers’ house and had no reception. The news I had to tell her would need to wait until I saw her. Maybe that was for the better. Telling her that Mrs. Bowers was her grandmother couldn’t be done over the phone. This had to be said to her face. The old lady would surely get a kick out of it, and I could already imagine the shock, and perhaps a little bit of happiness, on Millie’s face.

  I parked on a street I remembered too well, staring in the direction of the house I’d seen Millie walk into that first day we met. It had been years since I’d last walked down this street, following Millie to where she was hiding out from her foster family. The house she slept in had been torn down since, and only a barren square lot remained. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, looking across the street, wondering whether I should take the gun with me.

  Tonight I would ensure that Savage could never lay a hand on Millie again, nor blackmail her. If it hadn’t been for that asshole, we could have been together, and I wouldn’t have shot Millie’s brother. We’d lost so many years because of him, and I never even knew the extent of his manipulations.

  After inhaling what I hoped was courage and strength, I walked up the three steps on the porch.

  “Savage, open up!” I banged on the door of the abandoned house.

  I
bunched my hand into a fist again, but before I got a chance to hit the frail wood, the door opened. I rammed into him, dragging him up by the collar of his shirt and pushing him right against the wall.

  “What the fuck?” he mumbled. His alcohol-infused breath stank with hunger, but it wasn’t Savage — at least, not the one I was looking for. Mark’s younger brother, Caleb, tried to fight me off without success.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  An old man with a shotgun came into view as he stepped out of one of the rooms. I let go of Caleb and raised my hands, saying, “I’m looking for Mark.”

  “So is the rest of the world. Why don’t you ask them where he is?” the man barked. His two front teeth were missing and a whistle escaped from his mouth as he spoke. Aging with grace wasn’t old man Savage’s forte.

  “I was told he lives here.”

  “He stopped by to get a pack of smokes after he was released, but he hasn’t been back since.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be…”

  “An asshole?”

  I felt my hands shake and my heart bang in my chest like it wanted to escape. The adrenaline rushing through my body was meant for Mark, not these innocent people.

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “You’re Mayers’ kid, aren’t ya?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You should have let him burn in that house. He won’t rest until he gets revenge.”

  Was he referring to the time I went to get Millie’s necklace back, and Mark knocked over the candles? Probably.

  “Revenge for what? He’s the one who’s been going after Millie all these years.”