Within Temptation

by Tanya Holmes

  The news hit me like a shockwave. I felt my way to the nearest chair. No matter how disgusted I was, Auntie had been a mother to me, and I still loved her deeply.

  When I’d recovered my power of speech, I asked, “Are you all right?”

  “No.” Her hand trembled around the goblet. She gazed into the brown liquid. “Are you leaving me too?”

  I stared back dumbly for a second. “Yes.”

  “But this is your home.” She made a coarse motion and the liquor swished around in the goblet. “You can’t just leave!”

  “I’ll sign Briar over to you and Uncle,” I said in a quiet voice. “I can’t live here anymore.”

  “What do you mean? After all I sacrificed to keep this family together? You’re all…you’re all so ungrateful!”

  “Auntie, please.”

  “Please what? How do you expect me to remain calm when everything I’ve built is crumbling around me?” She looked lost. Tears dripped down her face. “Sears says he’s moving out. Now you’re turning on me too.”

  “I’m not. I’m just trying to fix a mistake.”

  “You haven’t made any, save this Butcher Boy nonsen—” She stopped on a gasp and shoved to her feet.

  “Good afternoon, ladies.”

  I tore around. Trace was silhouetted in the hallway. We looked at each other, and I could still see the pain I’d left him with earlier, deep in his eyes.

  He glanced away first.

  “How did you get in?” Auntie demanded.

  “The door.” Trace sauntered into the room as if he owned it. “I told the old woman with the nasty blue wig not to announce me. She didn’t care anyway. Said she didn’t work here anymore.”

  I pressed a palm to my heart. “That was Mrs. Ordon. The housekeeper. Auntie, what in the world— Where’s Gerard?”

  “I fired him. I fired them all.”

  “But he’s been with me since…since Mother!”

  “Obviously it was time for him to move on.” She flopped back down and drained her goblet. “Get out, both of you.”

  I was still in stun-mode when Trace settled into a chair next to me. “I just stopped by to let you in on a little secret Tori Mills—”

  “I found your sedatives,” Mead announced. He rushed in so fast he didn’t notice Trace and I sitting off to the side.

  “I thought I told you to go home,” Auntie snapped.

  “Mom, please.” Mead uncapped a prescription bottle, shook a pill out, and handed it to her. “I wasn’t about to leave you like this. Where is everybody? The house is completely empty. I can’t even find that stupid—”

  Auntie’s panic-stricken features must have tipped Mead off because he dropped the pill bottle and spun around. His surprised expression slid into a murderous frown. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  Trace grinned. “Tori says the mayor’s been decorating Lilith’s grave with calla lilies.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “What is he talking about?” Auntie asked.

  Mead’s frown turned uglier. He scowled. “Who the hell cares? He’s lying.”

  “If you don’t believe me, call the flower shop,” Trace said. “Tori’s got it on her computer—at least the past five years or so. Now why would you do that, Mr. Mayor? As I recall Shannon said somethin’ about Lilith not being on your list of favorite people. Naw, wait a minute.” He issued the rhetorical question to me. “Wasn’t the word you used ‘despised’?”

  I sat forward, heart racing. “Mead?”

  Auntie turned to her pale-faced son. “Is it true? Have you been visiting that whore’s grave?”

  I blinked at her choice of words.

  “Mead!” Auntie pleaded.

  His expression turned defiant. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Every year on her birthday. Every year without fail I’ve laid flowers on Lilith’s grave. So what?”

  “Why would you do that?” I asked, nonplussed. “After all the vile things you’ve said about her. It makes no sense.”

  My cousin shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. He stalked to the window and glowered outside. “I have my reasons.”

  “Reasons?” Auntie snapped. “You’ve been secretly pining!”

  “Leave me alone,” Mead muttered.

  She raised her voice. “Year after year, defiling yourself over a whore who couldn’t care less about you.”

  “Tell me somethin’, Mr. Mayor,” Trace said through thin lips. “Did you happen to pop by my mama’s grave during one of your secret visits?”

  Mead just chuckled to himself, his back still to us. Something dark and bitter vibrated beneath that laugh.

  “Answer me!” Trace growled.

  “Perhaps.”

  Trace’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  Mead rounded on him, teeth bared. “That your low-life mother had no business in the same cemetery as Lilith! Dig her up. Get her out, you psychotic piece of shit!”

  Before I could draw another breath, Trace barreled into Mead, head first. The two men went flying, slamming into the wall in a knot of arms, legs, and fists. Chairs writhed back and forth.

  “That’s enough!” Auntie screamed.

  I scrambled toward the rolling ball of testosterone in an attempt to grab something—an arm, a leg—anything to make them stop. But then Trace crouched on his knees, straddling Mead who lay flat on his back.

  He proceeded to pummel my cousin’s face, barking out words in between each powerful blow. Twelve years of rage thundered in his voice. “Mother fucker!”

  “Trace, no!”

  He ignored me. “Tossed dog shit on my mama’s grave!” Whap! “Pissed on it too!” Whap! Whap! Whap! “Let me rot in Gainstown!” Whap! Whap! “Left Lilith bleedin’ like a stuck pig!” Whap! “You gutless cunt!” Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap—

  BOOM!

  The gunshot exploded off the walls in an ear-popping roar. Trace froze mid-punch. I wheeled around. Auntie stood with her hand raised to the ceiling, her body looking ridiculously small, compared to the huge smoking gun she clutched.

  “You’ll stop this madness right now,” she shouted.

  After the men uncoiled from the floor, she dropped her arm, as if the gun weighed a ton. Trace righted the chair. Mead staggered to his feet.

  “Why?” She tossed the bulky weapon inside a drawer. “Whatever possessed you to visit that woman’s grave?”

  Mead wiped at his bloody face with the back of his hand. His left eye was swollen shut, his nose looked to be broken, and his bottom lip was split. This was not the pompous Mead Bradford I’d always known. This was a man stripped of the last vestiges of arrogance, an arrogance he’d worn like a shield.

  “I never stopped loving her,” Mead whispered.

  Auntie fell into her chair and stared up at her son, eyes wide. “How could you after everything she did?”

  Mead didn’t answer, just joggled a shoulder.

  Trace righted his chair, sank onto the arm, and braced his knees. The knuckles on both his hands were bloody.

  I looked from Mead to Trace, then back to Auntie. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen next. My lawyer and I have an appointment with the prosecutor’s office tomorrow morning.” When Auntie’s eyes widened even more, I glared at Mead. “You’re lucky West Virginia doesn’t have the death penalty. If it were up to me, you’d fry for what you did to my mother.”

  “Go to hell!” Mead yelled.

  I ignored him and glared at my aunt. “Everyone else involved will pay the piper too.”

  She looked stricken. “Shannon—”

  “Don’t ‘Shannon’ me. You’re all liars!” I screamed, giving in to a sudden rise of hysteria. “You’ve covered up the truth just to keep Mead’s sorry ass from prison. Trace didn’t kill my mother. Your son did. You let an innocent man go to jail to save this worthless excuse for a human being!” Auntie wept as I stalked to the desk. “Admit it! For once in your life tell the truth!”

  She buried her face in her hands. “Not my so
n, no.”

  “Stay in denial,” I spat. “I don’t care anymore!”

  Blood dripped from Mead’s face. “Well, I didn’t kill her!”

  “Sure you didn’t, you crazy fuck!” Trace hammered back.

  Auntie sobbed to herself as the yelling escalated, with the three of us going at it at once. The men barked obscenities and threats while my high-pitched voice rose above their thunderous shouts every so often.

  A minute into it, Auntie pounded her fist on the desk and the arguing abruptly stopped. “Enough!” she blurted, her face painted in misery. Silence reigned for a few spellbinding seconds until she whimpered, “It wasn’t Mead. It was me.”

  I stared saucer-eyed and dropped into a secretary’s chair in front of the desk.

  Trace came to stand beside me, his steps uneven. Mead, who’d gone snow-white, shook his head in denial, then slowly retreated until he’d backed into a bookcase. He slumped to the floor, speechless.

  “No….” It was the only word I could form and it came out a breathless sound.

  Auntie’s weeping continued for several moments before she lifted her head again, her red eyes dripping with tears. “Shannon,” she rasped in between sobs, “when you started asking questions, the secrets began taking a toll on Sears—on our marriage. But neither of them—Sears or Jackson—knew I was the one who….” She pulled a hanky from her breast pocket and wiped her eyes. “That’s what put Sears in the hospital. That’s why he’s leaving. I told him. I told him everything. Oh, God.”

  “Why did you kill her?” Trace asked, his voice shaky.

  She drew a deep breath and stared out of the window. Her eyes appeared vacant, detached. “It wasn’t enough that Lilith came from money. Or that she had a life of unbelievable privilege and her choice of every boy in town.”

  Mead wept quietly in the corner, his angry eyes downcast.

  “I knew how she felt about my husband. I just never said anything.” Her voice was almost tranquil now. “And when Harrison died, she went after Sears with a vengeance, but he despised her. He’d always thought her shallow, and secretly blamed her for Harrison’s heart attack.”

  I listened in bemused silence.

  “Sears’ rejection sent her over the edge,” Auntie continued. “There she was, an ex-beauty queen from old money. She couldn’t see how a rich boy like Sears had fallen for a mousy girl from Temptation. Trailer trash at that. It drove her crazy.”

  “So that’s why you did it?” Trace asked. “Because she wanted your husband?”

  She closed her eyes briefly. “No. It was one thing to go after every man in town—my husband included—but when she went after my son….”

  “I already told you,” Mead exploded from his corner. “I went after her!”

  Auntie spoke in monotone. “He was barely 21. A baby. And she slept with him. I-I couldn’t just do nothing. She’d already violated my marriage. Was I to let her get away with violating my son?” She shook her head, trance-like. “Mead was destroyed.”

  I managed to throw some words together to form a question. “Is that why you almost flunked out of Yale, Mead?”

  “I didn’t want to live without her,” Mead whispered. He glared at his mother. “I could have changed her!”

  “Fool,” Auntie murmured. To me she said, “Lilith used him to get back at Sears—and to take a swipe at me. That’s what was behind Mead’s acid tongue where she was concerned. He denies it, but deep down he knows she used him like a pawn. He’s been confused about her ever since. And over the years…his feelings for Lilith evolved into a twisted love-hate—”

  “Shut up!” Mead snarled.

  She looked at me. “The morning Lilith…died, I went to the estate to confront her about you.”

  “Why?” I said, bits of my heart falling away.

  “The abuse. I overheard Mrs. Campbell and her servants talking during one of Lilith’s dinner parties. Then I saw the bruises myself. I had no choice but to ask her about them. I knew she’d deny it, but I still needed to gauge her response. At that point, I didn’t know about her and Mead. My only intention was to speak with her about you.”

  “And?” Trace asked, his tone hard.

  She palmed her forehead, lifted the tangle of hair from her eyes. “I didn’t tell Sears. I wanted to confront Lilith first. We were supposed to play tennis that afternoon at the club, so I got there early that morning to invite her to brunch. I found her by the carriage house. In the garden.”

  “Oh, God.” Tears gathered in my throat. “I was asleep in the loft. Mother must’ve gone looking for me.”

  Auntie sniffed. “I tried to broach the subject carefully. But she…she just snapped. All her rage and bitterness exploded. She told me how stupid I was. That she’d been screwing my son for months. That she’d even had him in my bed!”

  “Stop it!” Mead yelled.

  “She went on about Mead’s birthmarks. How he tasted.”

  “Damn it, shut up!” Mead roared again.

  Auntie glared back at him. “Then she told me how she’d screwed with his mind. How she enjoyed every minute.”

  “So you killed her,” Trace said, his voice eerily calm.

  “I couldn’t let her destroy all I cherished. She mocked me with her perversions.” Auntie gazed off. “Then came the personal attacks. She said I didn’t belong in Sears’ world. That I was trailer trash. I don’t remember grabbing the spade. I do recall that it was still stuck in her chest when she ran. I yanked it out after I caught up with her and stabbed her again. I can’t remember how many times.” She sniffed. “Then I cleaned the spade off afterwards and tossed it in the driveway.”

  Mead sobbed fitfully as my heart imploded.

  I struggled to my feet, but my legs felt like noodles. “She was…my m-mother.”

  “I’m your mother!” Auntie shoved to a stand and her eyes turned wild. “Who raised you? Dried your tears? Rocked you to sleep when you had nightmares? Stayed up when you were sick? Held you when your heart was broken? I’m your mother! That woman just baked you in her foul womb.”

  My knees hit the floor.

  Trace moved to comfort me, but Auntie had already rounded the desk. The hatred brimming in his eyes was almost palatable as she knelt before me and clutched our hands together. The smell of brandy was pungent on her breath.

  “That woman abused you,” she said to me, oblivious to Trace’s fiery stare. “But I-I saved you.”

  “Mother was a flawed woman,” I said, grief tearing me apart. “But she did not deserve to die. You let an innocent man go to prison. You allowed everyone to believe….” I jiggled my head to clear it. “That I could do something so vile to my own mother? Just to keep yourself out of jail?”

  Auntie squeezed my hands. “You’d already lost a mother. I had a son and a life I adored. I couldn’t give that up.” Her tears dropped along our entwined fingers. “I was born and raised in a damn trailer park. Secondhand clothes. Macaroni and cheese five days a week. Not enough money to pay the bills! Then Jackson introduced me to Sears and everything changed.”

  “My God.” I met her tearful eyes. “Uncle defied Grandfather Bradford to marry you, but you never felt the same. That’s why Mother resented you, isn’t it? She knew Uncle married you for love, and you married for money.”

  “Make no mistake. Sears got great satisfaction in choosing me. Thumbing his nose at the family.” She gave a bitter laugh. “But he turned into his father anyway. We both did.”

  “Admit it,” I said. “You never loved him.”

  She looked askance as Trace and Mead listened, their attention trained on her. “What’s passionate love? Does it put food on the table? Does it buy social standing? Or power? Sears has no room to complain. I made him a wonderful home and became the sort of wife a man of his position is expected to have. I did everything by the book and was never an embarrassment. As for love, he could get that from his mistresses.”

  “Oh, Auntie.”

  “It’s all gone now,”
she muttered, looking lost. “Everything I worked for. I don’t understand it.”

  “Who the hell are you?” I said, sobbing.

  “How could you ask me that?” She wiped at the tears streaming down my face. “Honey, you and I…we have a special connection. You’re the daughter I never had. I thank God for you. Please believe I’ve always loved you as if you were my own.”

  “Was it love, or guilt?” I asked.

  She blinked. What little color she had left in her cheeks, fled. Mead cried softly while Trace stood in moody silence a few feet from where we knelt.

  “Answer me, Auntie. Did guilt drive your ‘love’?” At her tortured expression, I nodded. “All the love you showed me over the years. What was the strategy? Encourage me to succeed, be there whenever I needed you, then marry me off to a successful man, and your conscience is cleared?”

  Auntie drew back as if she’d been struck. She got to her feet, her gaze lasered on her son, on me, then to Trace. With a whimper, she stumbled and rounded the desk, flopping down in her chair again.

  Then without fanfare, she dragged the drawer open, grabbed the gun and pressed it to her own chest.

  Trace yanked me to my feet and shoved me behind him. “Put it down, Miz Bradford.”

  “No.” Auntie looked determined. “I need to finish this.”

  I lurched to get around Trace, but he held me captive with one arm. “That’s why you fired everyone?” I sputtered. “So you could kill yourself?”

  Trace held up a palm. “Ma’am, please. Put it away.”

  “Drop it, Mom!” Mead scrambled to his feet.

  “Auntie…don’t do this!”

  I kept trying to break free, but Trace tightened his hold, almost painfully. “Stay behind me,” was his whispered order, but his attention was locked on my aunt. In a calm voice he said, “You don’t want to do that, Miz Bradford.”

  “There’s nothing left.” She was talking to the ceiling. The gun jerked in her hand, made her left breast jiggle. “My children despise me. My husband is gone. It’s over.”

  “Stop talking crazy!” Mead barked.

  Trace lobbed an incredulous look at him, as if to say ‘you’re not helping,’ then took a careful step forward, still keeping me at his back. “When my parents killed themselves, they left us with a hole that’ll never be filled.”