by Emerson Rose
After an hour or so, I feel her relaxing and try to talk to her again.
“Tiana, baby, can you tell me what happened here? Did you do all of this?”
“Yes.” Her voice is hoarse and quiet but at least she’s talking.
“How long were you lying on the floor?”
“Since they told me it was him.”
“Who baby? Do you mean Jayden?”
“The man on the phone.”
“A man called you? What was his name?”
“Police.”
“They called to tell you Jayden’s in jail? Is that why you’re so upset?”
“No. I hope he rots there forever.”
“I’m sorry you’re going through all of this. Is Jayden the reason you destroyed the house? You did a pretty thorough job I must say.”
“I wanted to burn it down but I’m afraid of fire.” The sound of her hollow voice squeezes my heart when I think of her losing her parents in a house fire. She’s endured so much in her short life, she deserves happiness, she deserves more than me.
We lie silent for a while and I think she’s gone to sleep when her quiet voice breaks the quiet. “I love you.”
I fight back the urge to yell thank God but she yanks me back to reality with her next question.
“Why did you abandon them? How could you leave your wife pregnant with your child in a war-torn country and never look back?”
“I looked back all the time. I’ve regretted not being a part of Amari’s life every day for the past six years, but I thought she was better off without a blind father who didn’t love her mother. Mona and I were married before she knew about my sight. When she found out I wasn’t the golden ticket to America that she thought I was, she lost interest. We never loved each other, we married because of the pregnancy and that’s all.”
“You didn’t even stick around to see her be born.”
“I knew I would love her the moment I saw her and Mona didn’t want me there. She was very clear that she only wanted financial support when it came to Amari.”
“Have you ever seen her before this week?”
“Not in person. I send money and Mona sends photographs every week. I have a photo album at home.”
“Mona didn’t want you to stay?”
“No. She wanted to come to the US, but traveling when she was so late in her pregnancy, wasn’t an option. She found someone else to use, they’re divorced now as well.”
She’s quiet for a moment.
“Thank you for telling me everything.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, I wasn’t proud of my decision to let Mona raise our child alone, but she insisted. I took the easy way out for once in my life and I’m still ashamed of that.”
“You did what you thought was best at the time.”
“I did.”
Knowing the truth, Tiana presses further into the curve of my body and covers my arms with hers pulling them tighter around her.
“We good?”
“Yes, we’re good.”
“Do you want to talk about what happened here?”
“No, but you need to know.” She’s trembling in my arms. I rub her arms up and down trying to warm her but I don’t think it’s the cold that’s causing her to shake.
“Jayden didn’t go crazy, he is crazy. I feel like the Jayden I knew and loved was never real. He was so different when I came home.”
“He did change a lot after you arrived. I don’t remember him being so overprotective when you were in college but then again, I didn’t know him as well then and I didn’t know you at all.”
“No, Drake, this happened long before I came home from New York. I can’t believe I never saw it. I always thought he was protective of me because our parents died…” She begins to cry. I turn her to face me and she buries her face in my chest and sobs wrack her body.
I have no idea what she’s talking about, but if she’s forgiven me for keeping Mona and Amari a secret, I’ll comfort her for as long as she needs me to. I stroke her hair and softly whisper comforting words in her ear when she cries harder.
When she quiets down, she pulls away, sliding her hands on either side of my face to turn it to the side so I can see her better.
“He’s in love with me, Drake. My own blood brother is a pervert who’s in love with me. He wasn’t trying to be protective out of brotherly concern. He wanted to fuck me and marry me and have kids with me. He’s sick, he makes me sick, he makes me want to ruin anything he ever touched. I hate this house, I hate his fucking truck in the driveway and his damn mower and the flowers…”
She’s crying again and I’m still back at Jayden wants to fuck her. How the hell does she know something like that? She must have misinterpreted a note or a letter or something. This can’t be true. He’s Jayden, a Marine Captain, my best friend and neighbor, Tiana’s big brother. He’s just a normal guy.
“How did you find out about this?”
“He…” she gulps in a breath between sobs, “He told the police that he loved me and needed to see me. They told him I said no and he freaked out and started talking about a room in the basement that was proof of how much he loved me.
I reach over to the night table and grab a wad of tissues. She takes it and blows her nose.
“What room?”
“It’s sick, Drake, he’s so sick. I don’t want to go down there again. I left the door open, you can look at it if you want to.”
“I’m not leaving you. Does the room prove what the police are saying?”
“Oh God, yes, it’s horrible. There are pictures of me everywhere. Some when I’m sleeping, some when I’m working in the yard, running, cooking, showering, and not just recently. There are videos and photographs down there from when we lived in England. He’s been like this forever.”
My mind is racing. He’s been watching her, always. He’s probably the one who was sending her the videos. He wanted to scare her into coming home and keep her from becoming famous so he could have her all to himself. And when I started getting close, he sent some more to keep her scared, hoping she would seclude herself and hide. It all makes perfect sense now.
“Did you find any of the footage from that night you went out in New York?”
“What? No, oh my God.” She closes her eyes absorbing what I’m suggesting.
“It was him, wasn’t it? He sent the videos. Do you think he had someone drug me? Maybe there are more videos of the rest of that night, we can see if…”
“Do you want to see that? I mean if it happened.” I’m a firm believer that some things are better left unknown, but if she can’t go on without the truth I’ll understand.
“I don’t know, part of me wants to know, but I’m trying to deal with so much right now. I don’t think there’s room in my grief room for that.”
“Grief room?”
“Yeah, I had this therapist once who told me to put all my sorrows in a room in my head and deal with them one at a time.”
“Let me help you deal with some of them. I’m here for you, I’m not going anywhere, ever.”
She blinks her puffy, sad eyes while she considers my offer.
“There’s more, more to tell.”
“I’m listening.”
“Jayden was responsible for setting the fire that killed our parents. He wrote about it in a journal I found in his horrible room. He wanted me so badly, he killed our parents to have me. And then when we moved here to live with Aunt Marla, he killed her too. He put something in her drink that caused her heart attack. It was him, he did everything, he killed them all.”
“He admitted to this in a journal?”
“Yes, and to the police.”
My God, what has he done? Who is he? I’ve been living next-door to a psychopath. I’ve been working and drinking and watching football on the weekends with a deranged man. I feel duped and deceived, but only a fraction of the amount that Tiana must be feeling.
Her entire life is not what she thou
ght it was. No wonder she tried to flip this house upside down. He took out anyone who ever loved her, anyone he saw as a threat to him.
“I can’t believe I never saw… I don’t even know what signs a person like that would exhibit.”
“Me either and I’m his sister. His flesh and blood.”
“What’s going to happen to him now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think the UK extradites criminals and I don’t know how he will be charged with crimes he committed so long ago in another country.”
“But he admitted to it, right?”
“Yes, but I’m sure someone will claim that he’s unstable. So fucking unstable…”
“Baby, I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t help at all to say it, but I am and I’ll be here any way you want me to be, forever.”
“Forever?” she asked.
“Forever,” I promise.
“You’re all I have left.”
“I’m all you need.”
“You’re incorrigible,” Tiana states.
“Your point?”
“I love incorrigible,” she smiles.
“And I love you,” I tell her, tenderly.
Chapter 25
Tiana
Two Years Later
Discovering the truth about my brother devastated me in ways I never could have imagined. The deceit and betrayal of what he did, created a dark space in my mind. And to this day, I am unable to fully trust anyone other than Drake.
The rage inside of me built until it was a dangerous thing, threatening to destroy me. But Drake wasn’t about to let that happen. His love for me never wavered. I would never have survived this without him.
Jayden is in prison, on death row for the murder of my aunt Marla. I will never receive justice for my parents’ deaths. It happened fifteen years ago in another country and there is no proof, even though he continues to admit he did it. I’ve made peace with that after a lot of therapy and a million long talks with my husband.
Drake and I married eighteen months after we met. He proposed one romantic spring evening while walking through a park on Bluebell Island. It is where we now live in a sprawling ranch home with our dog Buddy and soon to be son or daughter.
I’m five months pregnant with our first child and Drake is almost completely blind. We have been each other’s calm in the storm that has been our lives over the past two years. He was there for me after Jayden went to prison and I broke down. I was there for him when he retired from the Marine Corps and adapted to living without his sight.
I think we’re past the difficult times, not to say there won’t be other hurdles, but I pray nothing will be as bad as what we have gone through so far.
It’s time to start living.
Epilogue
Three Years Later
Five years ago, I was a different person. Five years ago, terror struck my life but I also met my savior. Tonight, I am going to celebrate five years with the greatest man I’ve ever known.
“So, where’s he taking you?” Suki asks, flopping onto her stomach on my bed.
“I don’t know, it’s a surprise.”
“It’s Thursday, who’s teaching for you tomorrow?”
“Mrs. Albertson, she doesn’t know crap about music but I left a lesson plan for her to follow, she should do fine.”
I teach music at Park View Elementary School on Blue Bell Island, ten minutes from our house. Those who can, do; those that can’t, teach, they say. Drake says that doesn’t apply to me because I can do both, but I don’t care, I love my life now. I would never trade it for fortune and fame. I believe Drake’s view that everything happens for a reason more than ever now.
“Well, I’m glad you got the day off. You two deserve a three-day weekend alone with no kids, how long has it been anyway?”
I turn and check out my ass in the mirror making sure it looks good in my new dress. My wide eyes snap to hers in the glass, “Five years.”
“What? No way, you guys don’t go away for the weekend once in a while?”
“No. We spent the first two years together recovering from one thing or another and then we had Jack and then Sydney”
“Yeah, I guess you have been kind of busy.”
I roll my eyes. “A little.”
She rolls onto her back and throws her arms over her head, “Good thing you have good ol’ Auntie Suki to babysit.”
“Thank you. We appreciate you coming to help. Giselle will be back tomorrow, I promise you won’t be stuck with them all weekend.”
“I can handle it if grandma doesn’t show up, you go and have fun. Do me a favor, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t get pregnant again.”
“Oh hush, you act like we have a dozen kids.”
“You have two more than me. Dylan doesn’t want kids yet. I keep telling him I’m not getting any younger over here. I’ll be thirty next year. I can feel my eggs drying up.”
“Mommy!” Jack yells running through the room with Drake on his heels. They’re playing hide and seek, their favorite game. You’d think it would be difficult for Drake to be the seeker but he has developed supersonic hearing with the loss of his sight. He can hear you breathing a mile away. I know because he always finds me.
He says it’s not my breathing but my scent that leads him to me, though.
“You can’t hide from me, I hear you.” Drake wiggles his fingers and Jack squeals when he scoots under the bed. He’s a goner. Drake roars as he charges the bed and grabs Jack’s foot right before he disappears under the bed skirt.
Suki sees the attack and looks at me, “How’s he do that?”
Drake pops up with Jack giggling in his arms, “I can still see.”
Her mouth falls open and she sits up on her knees looking at me for an explanation.
“He likes to make people think he can still see. It’s stupid. I told you not to do that, Drake.”
“It keeps people on their toes. They’re never sure if I’m watching them or not. And by the way, you tell me to do a lot of things that I don’t do, Mrs. Sassy.”
“Mrs. Sassy? That makes you Mr. Sassy then, right?”
He shrugs and Buddy waltzes into the room to see what’s going on. Buddy is Drake’s service dog, but he’s off the clock, so to say, when we are home.
Sydney starts to cry on the video monitor and I close my eyes.
“I’m on it,” Suki says jumping off the bed. “You guys are nuts. I’m going to play with the only normal person in this house.”
“Sydney is not normal, take that back.” Drake doesn’t like anyone to refer to his children as normal. He’s all about individuality and considers normal an insult.
“I will not. She hasn’t had time to be corrupted. Out of the four of you, she’s the most normal member of the Valentine family.”
“You know we can leave tomorrow when my mother gets back in town. We don’t have to leave our remarkable, unique, talented daughter in the hands of this mediocrity lover.”
“Oh, will you stop, please? Your remarkable, unique, talented daughter will be fine with me for one night.”
These two have developed an odd relationship since Suki and her husband Dylan moved to North Carolina to take care of his ailing grandmother. They bicker and banter, but they agree on one very important thing, they both love me.
With Jack slung over his shoulder laughing; Drake carefully counts his steps from the bed to the door and leaves the room with a huff. Suki isn’t far behind him when Sydney lets out an exceptional yelp followed by a long scream. Maybe he’s right. She seems to be a uniquely loud screamer. Not a talent I’m excited for her to have.
Buddy sits down and stares at me as if he’s waiting for an explanation.
“I don’t know, Bud, I really don’t know.”
I watch Suki pluck Sydney from her crib. She rocks her back and forth and tries to convince her that screaming isn’t the answer. Wow, does she have a lot to learn about babies.
I tur
n back to the mirror and jump when Drake is standing an inch away smiling like the cat that ate the canary.
“Shit, why are you sneaking up on me?” I ask.
“Because I’m good at it.”
“That you are.”
“I want to check out your dress,” he tells me.
I hold out my arms, “Check away.”
He starts as he always does, with his hands on my face tracing my cheeks and my jawline ending with a thumb on my bottom lip.
“My dress is down here.” I move his hands to my hips and he slides them up to my breasts.
“I am aware of that. It’s beautiful.”
“You can tell that from copping a feel of my breasts?” I ask with a smile on my face.
“I don’t really give a shit about the dress, I want what’s inside of it,” he retorts.
He brushes his thumbs over my taut nipples and I sigh. God, I miss uninterrupted sex. Having kids really changes things.
His warm hands slide down the black fitted silk dress and around to cup my ass. Pulling me against his solid chest, he pushes his cock against my tummy.
“I can’t wait to have all of this to myself for three whole days.” The growl in his voice sends a shiver up my spine and I slide my hands over his broad muscular back.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Who cares? You’ll never see the outside of the hotel room.”
“Neither will you.”
“Ha. Ha. Very funny.”
We have long since stopped being careful about his blindness. We shock people with our jokes and non-politically correct references, but as the years roll by it’s less and less a disability and more a way of life.
“You should probably punish me for that,” I suggest teasingly.
“You’d like it too much,” he responds with a wink.
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Your point?”
“This is my point.” His mouth crashes down on mine and he reaches back to close the door. His fingers feel for the zipper of my dress and he lowers it trailing the tips of his fingers as it opens.
“Mm, I can’t wait until tonight, I need you now,” he murmurs against my neck.