Must Love Lycans

by Michele Bardsley

  “Things are still not right between us,” murmured Damian.

  “No,” I said. “But they will be.”

  “Now who’s lying?” he asked. He grasped my wrist and lifted it to brush a kiss across the pulse. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”

  I nodded because the words had stalled in my throat. I walked to the front door and watched him cross the yard to the driveway. The garage door rolled up and he came out with a big, black motorcycle. He straddled it, kicked it on, and then gave me one last look before roaring away into the night.

  I locked the door and returned to the living room, feeling empty with a side of awful. I plopped onto the couch and picked up Werewolves Are Real! After glancing through the chapter on “The Bigfoot Connection,” I put it down.

  I didn’t want to read about werewolves. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to be one. Not that I had a choice. Still, being a supernatural being was better than being dead. Unless the afterlife was a big party. That’d be nice.

  Wondering about where my soul might go after I bit the big one wasn’t comforting, so I dropped that line of thought and let my gaze wander over the living room. It was such a man room. Big, dark furniture and chunky brass lamps. Damian didn’t own a television or a stereo system. He lived like a monk. Well, except for the sex. What did he do when he wasn’t being the security boss? He liked to read, that was obvious. But I wasn’t sure what else he did, other than work. Maybe he didn’t know what he liked anymore, either.

  My gaze fell on my mother’s book. It lay on the coffee table like a forgotten nightmare, taunting me with its stark cover. Big red words scrawled across the white background as though someone had written in blood: A Mother Betrayed.

  I dreaded the very idea of opening that book, but it was time to face what my mother had written. I couldn’t resist peeking at the dedication page first. It had become a habit over the years because I’d always hoped that one day I’d see my name there. My brother and sister, even my dead father, and Ames had all been listed in one book or another, usually more than one. But me? Nary a mention.

  I glanced at the page, and my heart tripped.

  For a moment, I couldn’t comprehend that my name was actually there, black on white: To Kelsey Rose. The giddiness receded soon enough, though. She owed me dearly for the content, didn’t she? Underneath my name was a Benjamin Franklin quote. I smiled. Mother did love quoting him: As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

  I skipped the acknowledgments and other nonsense, stopping only when I got to Chapter One:

  The day Kelsey Rose Morningstone came into my life was the same day my husband confessed he’d been unfaithful. He punctuated his betrayal of our wedding vows by presenting me with a pink-cheeked girl, barely two months old, and asked me if we could adopt her.

  For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I placed the book flat on my lap and stared at nothing. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t know about your father’s little indiscretion. That’s what Robert had said in my dream, or I should say that’s what Morrigu said. How had she known about my real mother? I shouldn’t be so shocked at the confession there in black and white. Not really.

  But it hurt. It hurt to know that Margaret Morningstone raised me out of loyalty to her husband, not love. Never love.

  “Oh, God,” I said with a soft, pain-filled laugh. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d won the Nobel Prize or discovered the cure for cancer or won an Olympic medal. She would’ve never approved of me. I was proof that her life wasn’t perfect, that her marriage hadn’t been solid. All those years of giving advice in books and on radio and on TV, of telling the world how to create a faithful marriage and a loving family, using her own as an example, of course—and then her cheating husband made it all a lie.

  I inhaled deeply, picked up the book, and because I was obviously a sucker for punishment, I read on:

  I was blindsided. Here was the man who’d held my heart for almost twenty years admitting he’d had an affair—and that he’d fathered another woman’s child. He begged for my forgiveness and pleaded with me to accept his daughter as mine, too. You see, he had no choice but to ask for my mercy.

  I rolled my eyes. Egotistical much? God, she was melodramatic. Had it really played out this way? She could say anything she wanted. My father was dead, and I was a disgrace. Any attempt on my part to speak out would only be viewed as the crazy talk of a disgruntled, ungrateful orphan. I hadn’t known my father, certainly no charming toddler memories popped out, so I had no idea what he’d really been like. My mother had kept his papers and pictures, other than the family portrait she’d kept on the living room mantel, locked away. My few attempts to ask to read his journals or cull through the photos resulted in lectures so blistering, I stopped asking. She’d claimed my father, and whatever legacy he left behind, for herself—and she had no intention of sharing.

  His young lover had died, you see. Though Bert would not tell me more than that, I could see through the pain of his betrayal, his love and devotion for me. Everyone makes mistakes. And everyone deserves a second chance.

  I took a moment to absorb that my birth mother was dead. I couldn’t harbor the fantasy I might find her, or reunite with a parent who actually wanted me. I supposed it was a good thing, in a way. After all, I might not be around to make any reunions. I swallowed the knot in my throat. I would think about it later. I had to find my own redemption before I could seek that of others.

  Even though I risked spontaneous combustion, I continued reading:

  As I have advocated often to other couples facing marital hardships, I considered what I wanted, and what I needed, and the answer was easy: Bert. He’d been my rock for so long, I realized that I could forgive him for this indiscretion. I knew I could, and should, soldier on. For me. For Bert. And for Kelsey.

  My husband and I recommitted to our marriage, and we raised Kelsey as our own. Even when my darling Bert died two years later, I remained committed in my duty to the child I’d claimed. I believed that with the right guidance and firm affection, she would grow into a lovely young woman and a productive member of society.

  And she did.

  She graduated from both high school and college with honors. Not long after her twenty-fourth birthday, she “put out her shingle,” and in no time at all, she’d found career success as a psychotherapist.

  I paused. She actually sounded proud of me, but I knew better. This was a typical Margaret tactic—she would build me up by stating all the things I’d done right . . . so she could tear them all down by pointing out every single thing I’d done wrong. For just this teeny-tiny second, I wanted to bask in the approval. How pathetic was that? I’d been riding Damian about this very issue, and look at me, holding on to the past just as hard. I ached so badly for my mother’s acceptance. Would that feeling ever go away?

  I could close the book. Leave it alone. Pretend Margaret meant those kind things, that I was a daughter she could be proud of.

  No. I’d learned my lessons from Robert. Fear wasn’t an excuse for inaction. No matter how scared I was, how much I did not want to know the depth of my adopted mother’s resentment, I couldn’t turn away from her words.

  Of course, how could I know that such a gifted child harbored within her a terrible monster? I had no information about her genetic propensities. Bert told me only that his paramour’s name was Sylvia, that she was an artist, and that she was healthy in both mind and spirit.

  It became my goal to understand why he felt the need to step outside the marriage, to assess his needs, and my own, and meld them together to better our relationship. During this process of reflection, my conclusion was that Robert’s midlife crisis had propelled him into a relationship with a flighty woman who fed his fantasies of being youthful and robust. He had to believe that she was “healthy,” because to admit, even to himself, she was mentally unstable would mean his daughter might one day suffer from those same destructive behaviors.

&nbs
p; He would not tell me how Sylvia died, and it soon become clear she had committed suicide. I had many hints from my husband about this truth, though he did not confirm it—except through psychological clues that only I could discern. I further determined that Sylvia had gone into post-partum depression after the birth of her child. As many case studies have shown, post-partum depression affects women on so deep and terrible a scale, some attempt to kill their children or themselves.

  It certainly was not Kelsey’s fault she inherited her mother’s frail mental health. But her subsequent actions, both as a psychotherapist and a human being, were her own. How the daughter of my heart could put aside all that I had taught her and fall in love with a serial killer, I will never know.

  If only I could turn back the clock and help her to be a different person. But we all know you cannot change the past, and you cannot change others. I did all I could as a mother and a mentor to help Kelsey be a good person.

  It is no one fault’s but hers that she allowed Robert Mallard into her life and into her bed. Her love for him blinded her to the atrocities he committed in her name. Even so, she was not a victim. She was a passive participant in a serial killer’s sick games, and she very nearly paid with her life.

  I dropped the book. For the longest moment, I couldn’t even think straight. All the lies and suppositions and bullshit Margaret had manufactured was for one purpose only: to seek revenge on a man who’d been dead for more than thirty years. She couldn’t make him pay for the loss of her pride, for the one imperfection that marred an otherwise proper existence. I would always be the living, breathing reminder that her husband had not wanted her. Was it that I was the only available target for her rage? Did she actually believe this drivel she’d contrived? Had my father’s adulterous behavior truly broken her? Or had something else happened between them? Margaret Morningstone was nursing a pain so big, so horrifying that the only way she could lance it was by destroying me.

  And she thought I was the one mentally unbalanced?

  Hah.

  I didn’t realize how furious I was until I ripped the book in half. I tossed the mutilated pages to the floor and stood up. I wanted to scream.

  I was done with this crap. I was tired of being her goddamned scapegoat. She had no right to lie about me, to write those vitriolic things about me and my father and my mother. Who the fuck did she think she was?

  Somewhere inside me the lycan poked up its snout and howled. I felt off kilter, my mind fogged by my fury, but I had clear intentions. Oh, yes. I knew exactly what to do. I grabbed the BMW keys Damian had left on the coffee table and hurried out of the house. Quarantine, my ass. Quarantine this!

  I started the car and plugged in my moth—her home address into the GPS. Then I peeled out of the driveway, laying on the gas. Nomorenomorenomore. It was my mantra, the only thing I could think as I automatically followed the cheerful electronic voice’s directions.

  I don’t know how long it took to get there. I only knew that I sorta woke up parked in the crescent driveway, just a few feet from the porch steps. She lived in a stately manor with perfect winter landscaping. I cataloged random details: Widely spaced marble columns. Big, square windows accented with black shutters. A set of red double doors pinioned with two huge Christmas wreaths. The house of my childhood. A place I’d never really felt welcome, and now I knew why.

  Before I realized I’d even moved, I was at the door. But I didn’t knock. Courtesy? She didn’t deserve courtesy. I yanked on the shiny gold handle and to my surprise, the door opened—well, more like it came off its hinges. I tossed it behind me.

  “Frau.”

  I looked over my shoulder and saw one of Damian’s brothers. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he made sure I was being watched over. “Which one are you?”

  “Drake.”

  “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “You are not a prisoner,” he evaded. Then he grimaced. “Damian found the book. He read what your mother wrote. He’s on his way, Frau. He said to do what you must.”

  The knot of anger pulsing inside me loosened. Damian had my back. He didn’t care that I’d taken his car and left Broken Heart. He knew where I was going. He trusted me. And he wanted me to do whatever I thought best.

  “Kelsey?” The horrified voice of Margaret filtered in from the foyer. She was dressed in a pink silk robe, a gin and tonic clutched in her hand. “What happened to the door?”

  “If you touch the house alarm,” I said, my fury instantly going to inferno levels, “I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped.

  Drake whipped past me, a blur of silent motion, and in a nanosecond, he was next to her, hand wrapped around her throat. She looked shocked, and then terrified.

  And I took a helluva satisfaction in that.

  “Answer her question,” he said in steely voice.

  “Yes,” she said. “I understand.”

  “The living room is to the left,” I told him. “Is anyone else here, Margaret?”

  She hesitated too long.

  “Where’s Ames?”

  “He doesn’t live here anymore.” Her expression soured. “We’re getting divorced.”

  Well, that was interesting news. Good for Ames. “Then who’s here?”

  “Selma, of course, but she’s been asleep for hours.”

  Selma was my mother’s longtime housekeeper. She lived in the small guest house on the southern edge of the property.

  Drake led her into the living room and pushed her onto one of the sofas. He stood next to her, his expression cold. “Don’t worry about the guards,” he said. “I took care of them before I joined you, Kelsey. Damian and the others will be here soon.” He peered down at Margaret. “She may let you live, you know.” He bared his teeth in a terrible smile. “But I doubt my brother will.”

  She paled, and then she turned her gaze to me. “Kelsey,” she said in that dictatorial tone I knew so well. “You cannot be upset with me for writing the truth. I wanted to call you and let you read the manuscript first, but my lawyers cautioned me that maintaining contact could indicate my own culpability.”

  “You are so full of shit,” I said.

  She glanced at Drake and offered him a trembling smile. “I don’t know what she told you, Mr.—?”

  Drake lifted an eyebrow, and didn’t answer.

  “—ah, that is, she’s suffering from delusions. Do you really want to be mixed up in all of this? The police have been searching for her for more than a week. I’m afraid she’s in a lot of trouble.”

  “I think you are confused about who is in trouble,” he said. He offered a polite smile. “I’ll give you a hint, Frau. It is not Kelsey.”

  “The police?” I asked, alarmed. Then it hit me. “Your book came out, and you made them look like assholes for believing I was a victim.”

  “You are a person of interest,” she said smugly.

  “Because you accused me of colluding with Robert!”

  “Didn’t you?” she asked. Her eyes gleamed triumphantly. “Through my research, it became obvious to me that you were obsessed with Robert. His idea of courtship was serial murders. Why do you think he brought that girl to your house?”

  “Wow. That’s a lot of hatred, Maggie. Couldn’t hurt your precious, imperfect Bert for fucking around on you, so you painted a bull’s-eye on me.”

  Her calm facade fractured, just a little, but she rallied. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I was an infant! It wasn’t my fault I was born to my father’s mistress, or that he asked his wife to raise me.” Rage churned in me, and it took all my self-control to push it back. I wanted scream at her and pummel her. She knew it, too. If I broke, I would make her lies into truth.

  She shook her head sadly and then offered Drake a conspiratorial “see what I mean” look. “Oh, Kelsey. Your father made a mistake, and I forgave him. I took you in. I raised you.”

  “Did you love
me?”

  Her expression froze, and she visibly swallowed. But she was too much of a trained professional, not to mention an experienced television personality, to give anything else away.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. “How long did you wait for me to mess up so badly, you could finally justify all that festering resentment of yours?”

  “I didn’t fall in love with a serial killer,” she pointed out in a completely reasonable tone. “You did. And you’ve compensated for that horror by painting me as a villain.”

  “How could I paint you as a villain? I didn’t know I wasn’t your daughter until I read it in your book.” Well, first I’d been told in a dream, but I wasn’t going there. “All I’ve tried to do my whole life was measure up to your expectations. I sat straighter, I got all A’s, I ate all my vegetables—even Brussels sprouts!” I looked at Damian. “She made them with this awful sauce that made them slimy. It was like eating swamp poop.”

  He shuddered. “That’s disgusting.”

  “You have no idea,” I said. Fury was roiling inside me like lava spilling over a volcano’s edge, and with it, came a torrent of tears and a suffocating sense of grief. “You always had another criticism, another lofty goal I fell short of, another payment due for what my father did. Do you get that part? I didn’t hurt you. He did.”

  She faced me calmly, her expression giving nothing away. God, she was cool customer. And why did I even bother? What had I hoped for here? Closure? Margaret would never admit she was flawed. She’d never find redemption or healing because she couldn’t admit she wasn’t perfect. She’d convinced herself that she was right. About everything.

  “You told the world I was in love with a serial killer. You said that I’d slept with him!”

  “You did, Kelsey. Don’t deny it. I have evidence—”

  “The hell you do,” I said.

  “You’re not well, darling,” she said in a soothing tone. “Now that Robert’s dead, you can admit how sick—”

  Drake’s growl interrupted her. She gaped up at him and put a quaking hand against her chest. She sucked in a breath, and then opened her mouth again.