Broken: The MISTAKEN Series Complete Second Season

by Peak, Renna

  I shook my head, unable to believe a word he was saying. Unable to believe that there were any more tears I could cry. “Bullshit. I don’t believe a fucking thing you say anymore, Brandon. Not a fucking thing. And Daniel would never…”

  “He would. He has. And you’re probably next.”

  7

  Eighteen Months Earlier

  I went back to bed after the doctor left. I knew my parents were expecting me downstairs for dinner, but I didn’t feel like getting dressed. And my yellow t-shirt with the pink Hoyas logo wasn’t going to cut it as dinner attire, so I didn’t even bother. I just crawled back under the covers and fell asleep. Sleep was my friend. Sleep didn’t make me think about what I had done to Daniel.

  I forgot where I was again when I woke up. Forgot again what had happened. Until I sat up in bed and saw the black dress hanging on the bathroom door across the room, I hadn’t remembered anything. But the tears only stung at my eyes this time—they didn’t fall. I reminded myself again how selfish I had been. How unfeeling. How horrible I was that I had pushed him to take his own life. That I was basically the one who had murdered my fiancé—and then the tears found their way out once again.

  I took the dress from the hanger and placed it on the bed. I saw a black coat draped across the back of a chair, black tights and black boots on top of my dresser. Black. Black everything. Because Daniel was dead. Black because he was dead and it was my fault—I knew that whatever happened, I would never allow myself to forget it.

  There was something else on the dresser—a small pill bottle. I picked it up and looked at it, recognizing it immediately as one of my mother’s anti-anxiety prescriptions. It was a once or twice a year event—my mother actually thinking about me. Looking out for my best interests. It didn’t happen often, but this time it didn’t even make me feel good. She had given me her pills to make me numb. And it probably wasn’t for my best interests—I could almost hear her voice in my head, hissing at me. There will be press there, Jenna. You’d better not shed a single tear and make your father look bad.

  I read the label. Take one or two pills every four to six hours for severe anxiety or panic attack. Do not take more than four pills daily. I opened the bottle and poured one of the small white tablets into my hand before popping it into my mouth and swallowing it whole. Numbness seemed like a good idea right now. Numbness seemed like the answer to getting through this day—this funeral where people would be talking about my dead fiancé, and I would have to pretend like I hadn’t been the one who caused the entire thing.

  I took a quick shower and did what I could with my hair. I now looked like I had a reverse skunk stripe down the middle of my head—my phony blonde hair having grown so far out that my brown roots were taking over. If I’d had my hair done last weekend, Daniel might not have done it. He might not have…

  The pill started to kick in and my thoughts were fuzzy. Not warm. Not happy. Just fuzzy, like I was watching everything from above myself. Like I was at a movie theater watching what was happening to someone else. It wasn’t a bad feeling at all—it was almost nice. I could understand why my mother had grown to depend on these little pills to make it through what she thought of as her miserable life.

  I knew she wasn’t going to attend the funeral with me. She’d already told my father she had a charity event today and wouldn’t be able to go, but I knew the real reason was that she didn’t want to have to support me. She didn’t want to have to be nice or even make an attempt at being sympathetic. I knew she blamed me for what had happened, but I didn’t think she had any idea of how much I blamed myself.

  My father, on the other hand, was supposed to attend. He messaged me, telling me he was in the middle of a budget debate and that he would meet me at the church as soon as he could get away.

  I vaguely remember being picked up in a town car, where Daniel’s mother sat beside me and his father sat on her other side, staring out the window. I remember how he wasn’t able to make eye contact with me and just sat staring out the window on the long drive into D.C. His mother held my hand, and while she was usually talkative and chipper, she was subdued that day, as she should have been. Her only child was dead. Their only child. I could barely look at them, thinking about how I had taken away their only child.

  The church service dragged on, and I was thankful I had taken my mother’s numbing pills and that I had remembered to slip the bottle into my pocket before I left. If the edges of what I was able to see became any sharper, I knew I would take another. I didn’t want to feel anything. I didn’t want to cry any more tears. I just wanted the day to be over.

  I only half-listened to the nice things that person after person said about Daniel as they stood in front of the crowd of people to say their goodbyes. Kind things about what a good man he had been. What a good friend he had been. What a fine congressman he would have made. I wanted to believe them. I wanted to believe that he was the good person and I was the bad person, because it made more sense that way. Good people didn’t kill themselves. Good people didn’t not leave a note to explain. And I knew if I was the reason he had done it, it all made sense. He could live on in the memories of these people as a good person. I could blame myself for the rest of my life to make up for it.

  My father didn’t show up for the service. I stood in the line next to his mother to receive the condolences from those who attended. I barely recognized any of the people there—so many of them were the foreign dignitaries that his father worked with, and I would have never known them. They only knew me as Senator Davis’s daughter. Daniel’s fiancée. I just stood there, numb, shaking all their hands and thanking them for coming. It didn’t even feel real.

  The graveside service was much smaller, only Daniel’s family and their close friends. I could only imagine that that list should have included my parents, but neither of them were there. I watched as Daniel’s casket was lowered into the ground and wondered why it didn’t affect me at all. I hadn’t shed a single tear all day. The numbing pills had worked, and I was sure I hadn’t embarrassed anyone, including myself. I just couldn’t let myself believe that I deserved not to feel anything about this moment at all. Taking that pill was a mistake. I should have felt everything about that day. I deserved to feel every bit of guilt that I knew I would be feeling.

  I stayed there long after the small crowd had drifted away to some party being held in Daniel’s honor at some banquet hall somewhere. I didn’t want to go to a party. I didn’t want to celebrate his life. There was nothing for me to celebrate.

  I finally got up and went over to sit down next to the dirt mound that covered his new grave. There wasn’t even a headstone yet—just the dirt and the memory of that casket being lowered into the ground underneath it. The edges of my mind were finally beginning to sharpen—the fuzziness that had pervaded inside my head all day was finally wearing off.

  I patted the ground and let my tears fall into the fresh dirt. I could barely croak out a whisper, but I was finally able to say what I needed to tell him.

  “I’m sorry, Daniel. I’m so sorry.”

  8

  I don’t really remember how I made it home that night. I just remember walking in the front door of our home in Virginia and sliding behind the grand piano in the living room. I didn’t even take my coat off—I just sat down behind the piano. I had no intention of playing—it just made me feel better to sit there. It made me feel a little less anxious. A little less sad.

  I didn’t notice my mother sitting in the room until she came to sit next to me, facing the opposite direction on the leather bench. I didn’t say anything to her. There was nothing to say.

  We sat there in silence for a long moment before she finally spoke. “Don’t even think about playing that thing.”

  “I wasn’t.” If my chest hadn’t been so heavy with my grief, I might have actually felt angry that those were the first words she had spoken to me since my fiancé had died.

  Her voice was still, almost calm, but I
could hear the rage in it bubbling just under the surface. “What were you thinking, Jenna?”

  My brow furrowed under my confusion. “About what?”

  “It’s all over the news. You didn’t shed a single tear during that service. It was on television, Jenna. Did you not realize the entire service was televised?”

  My mouth dropped open, but I didn’t have words to respond. She had given me the pills. I was so sure that what she wanted was for me to be numb to this whole thing…

  “You’ve embarrassed your father and me enough. You are ungrateful. You are selfish.”

  I nodded. Everything she was saying was something I had already been thinking myself. It wasn’t a secret to me. This wasn’t anything new. All I could do was agree with her because this time, she was right.

  “And I’ve had enough.” She stood up and set another pill bottle on top of the piano in front of me—identical to the one still in my coat pocket.

  I wasn’t sure what her point was. It was so hard for me to know what to say to her—nothing I ever said was the right thing with her. “I took one this morning, Mother. I thought it was what you wanted me to do…”

  She turned her head slowly from side to side. “You’re an idiot, Jenna. An ungrateful, selfish little bitch who also happens to be a world-class imbecile. I guarantee you get that little genetic defect from your father.”

  Her words should have crushed me. They weren’t anything particularly new, but they didn’t have the same effect that they usually did. I had already been thinking the same things—it didn’t make me hurt any more intensely to hear them from her, too. It just made me positive that the guilt I was forcing myself to live with was well-deserved.

  She opened the bottle and dumped the pills on top of the piano. She began lining them up. “Pay attention, Jenna. One pill makes you numb for a good eight hours. Two pills make you numb for an entire day. Three will put you to sleep. Four pills make you sleep for at least a full day. Five and you’ll have trouble breathing.” She looked at me. “Are you paying attention?”

  I nodded, still not sure what the point of this was.

  “Six pills and they’ll have trouble getting you to breathe ever again. There are twenty-four pills in this bottle, Jenna. I assume you took one from the bottle I left for you this morning. That gives you forty-seven chances to do what I should have done for you years ago. Put you out of your goddamned misery. And get you out of mine.”

  I sucked in a breath, terrified. Was she really suggesting what I thought she was suggesting?

  She scooped the pills back into the bottle and handed it to me. “I never wanted you. I never asked for you and I never wanted you. Do us both a favor and don’t do this half-assed. You’re a Davis, after all. The Davis family doesn’t do anything half-assed, Jenna.”

  Tears began to stream down my cheeks, but there was no sobbing from me. Not this time. I didn’t even give her the satisfaction of looking away from the wall where my gaze remained fixed.

  “You blame yourself and you damned well should. You drove that man away. You’re a selfish little bitch, and you know which of you deserved to die. And it wasn’t your fiancé, Jenna. You should have been in that car. If you cared anything about anyone other than yourself, you would have been.”

  I stared at the wall across the room, unable to look at her. I couldn’t believe what she was suggesting. But I knew how she felt about me—she had been clear about that my entire life. Children weren’t in her plans, and I was an unexpected and unwanted surprise. But she had never gone this far. Never gone so far as actually suggesting that I would be better off dead.

  ”Your father is in the middle of a filibuster. I’m going to bed. No one will see you again until morning, so you know what to do.” She turned and I could hear her heels clicking on the stone floor as she walked away.

  I held the bottle tightly in my hand and pulled the other from my coat pocket. Forty-seven chances to do the right thing. Forty-seven chances to never feel anything again. It was the first moment of clarity I’d had in almost four days.

  I stood up and walked down the long hallway and up the stairs to my bedroom, almost thankful that it was on the opposite side of the house. I could take the pills, crawl into bed and that would be it. No one would suspect I was dead for at least a day—I’d been in bed for the past three days anyway. At least I had been until this morning. Until the funeral. Until they put my fiancé into the ground. Until they put him where I deserved to be.

  And she was right. I was an ungrateful little bitch. I was spineless, selfish and completely ungrateful for everything that had been given to me. And I knew I didn’t deserve to live anymore.

  I went into the bathroom and filled a glass with water, setting it on top of my piano. I peeled off my coat and the long-sleeved black dress that screamed death. I stripped down to my panties before pulling on my favorite yellow Hoyas t-shirt again. I didn’t care who found me or what they thought. I loved that yellow and pink t-shirt, and I was sure that was what I wanted to be wearing when I died.

  I sat down behind the piano, almost enjoying how the back of my thighs stuck to the leather of the bench I had sat upon so many times in the past. It was a good memory. A happy one—and I didn’t have many of them to hold onto. I couldn’t think of anything happy other than playing the piano for so long that my thighs would stick to the leather of that fucking bench.

  I pulled out the music for my favorite piece—the Mozart concerto I’d played to win the Young Musician award—the national concerto competition that had allowed me to tour the country almost seven years before. The piece I was most proud of having learned—one of the most difficult pieces in my repertoire that I had learned when I was only fifteen. It had been at least two years since I had played it at all. Daniel had hated that piece, but I loved it. It made me feel alive. It seemed only fitting that it was what I would be playing when I died.

  I opened the first bottle and poured all twenty-four pills into my hand. I tossed them all in my mouth and gulped them down with a drink of water. I did the same thing with the twenty-three in the second bottle. Forty-seven chances. And then I began to play. And just like every other time I played, I lost track of time…

  9

  Yesterday

  I shrugged his hands from my shoulders, trying my best not to allow myself to acknowledge the feeling that what he said felt like a punch in the gut. Daniel was many things. He’d lied to me. He’d treated me like shit. He had made me believe that he had killed himself and allowed me live with that guilt for far too long. But I knew—I knew he hadn’t done the unspeakable things that Brandon was saying. Him, on the other hand … I could definitely believe it about Brandon.

  “You have to let me explain, Jen. You need to give me a chance…”

  I shook my head. “I’ve given you so many chances. So many…”

  “One last one. That’s all I’m asking you for. I can explain everything. I know why Cade wasn’t there…”

  Robin’s voice came screeching down the street. “Are we going to do this or what? I’m getting wet, here…”

  He looked into my eyes, searching for something. “Please, Jen. One chance. If you don’t believe me when I’m done, I’ll let you go. I’ll let you go and I’ll never come looking for you again.”

  I felt my stomach flip as if it was responding for me. I still loved him. I still loved him and I knew I had to at least listen to his explanation, as unlikely as it might be that he wasn’t lying to me. Even though everything seemed to point at him, even though I knew I should blame him for everything that had happened … there was something. Something that said I at least had to listen. At least that.

  We walked down the sidewalk, stopping in front of his car where Robin stood drenched from the rain.

  He unlocked the passenger side again, opening it and motioned for me to get in. He walked around to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel, opening the window. He looked over at me as he pulled a paper from the dashboard i
n front of me. He signed the bottom, then held it against the steering wheel, motioning for Robin to lean in to sign the paper through the window.

  “You’re not going to let me in?”

  He shook his head. “You’ve been in my life long enough. If you want out for good, sign it then get the hell away from me.”

  I could see she was holding back tears as she leaned in to sign the paper.

  He handed the paper to me. “Will you notarize it so she can stay the fuck away from me forever? Can you do this for us?”

  I nodded and didn’t even look to read what it was I was stamping. I signed my name inside the seal and handed it back to him.

  He held it out the window for her, and she grabbed it, stuffing it under her shirt to keep it from getting wet in the sprinkling rain.

  “Brandon, we should at least say goodbye … hug or something…” Her eyes were almost pleading with him.

  He turned on the ignition and looked over at her. “Move.” He pressed the button to roll up the window and she walked back over to the sidewalk, watching as the car pulled away.

  I turned to face him. “What was that?”

  He shook his head. “Something I should have done a long time ago. Something I never should have done in the first place.” He glanced over at me. “I let her out of that goddamned contract. The only reason she keeps coming around.”

  I let out a sigh, almost from relief than from anything else. “And tonight was the best time to do it?”

  He glanced at me again. “I was busy last night.”

  I rolled my eyes, remembering why he had been busy only twenty-four short hours ago. Remembering what we had been doing before my father had called him into that meeting in the back room of that restaurant in Sacramento. If we could have just stayed in that hotel room, none of this would have happened tonight. I wouldn’t have seen a dead woman in her son’s bathroom. My stomach clenched again at the memory. I turned to face him again. “Explain.”