by Selena Kitt
“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Miles protested, laughing so hard he was gasping, kicking at the covers as he tried to escape this delightful torment and Tilly narrowly missed a little foot smacking her in the face.
“Watch it you two,” she warned, grabbing Miles from Beast and kissing the former’s forehead. “How’d you sleep, Miles?”
“Good!” he announced proudly. “No bed monsters. All my dinosaurs protected me. And I had my light saber, just in case.”
“Miles!” Meg called up from the bottom of the stairs. “Time for breakfast.”
“We’re having pancakes,” Miles informed them. “With blueberries.”
“Yum.” Tilly rubbed her stomach and Miles laid his head on it, settling between them.
“I think that would go well with coffee,” Beast said into his pillow. “Lots and lots of coffee.”
“Miles?” It was Meg again.
“Just a minute!” Tilly called as she cuddled Miles just a little longer.
“I hafta go see the sand lady.” Miles sighed at the thought of this laborious task and Tilly smiled. She knew he didn’t really hate going to the therapist—he called her “the sand lady” because she let him play in the sand tray in her office.
They’d followed the therapist’s advice so far. Tilly’s Aunt Meg and Kate had moved in with them, temporarily, for the transition, and they had told Miles the truth. Well, most of it. As much of it as a child his age could understand or needed to know—that Beast and Tilly were his “real” parents, that Tilly had been too young to take care of him after he came out of her tummy, and still had to go to school, so her Auntie Meg had taken care of him, instead, while his Daddy, Beast, had to fight in the war and couldn’t come home for a long time.
At the therapist’s advice, Miles was encouraged to ask whatever questions he wanted. So far, at least, he hadn’t asked anything too difficult to answer, much to Tilly’s relief. The hardest part so far had been the transition from no longer calling Megan and Kate “Mommy.” Tilly hated correcting him to say, “Aunt Meg” or “Aunt Kate,” because the two women looked so sad when she did—but Tilly, probably selfishly, wanted to hear him call her Mommy. Miles, sensing this, had come up with his own compromising solution in calling them “MommyMeg” and “MommyKate,” referring to Tilly as “MommyTiwwy.” Miles had no difficulty at all in referring to Beast as “Daddy,” though. Knowing Beast was his father was the least complicated aspect of the whole affair, and a sheer joy to Miles.
Tilly and Beast snuggled and played with Miles for a while before Meg called him again and he ran downstairs to his pancakes, after which Meg and Kate would take him to see the “sand lady.”
“Mmm now I get you all to myself.” Beast pulled Tilly on top of him, kissing her deeply, his hands massaging her arms and shoulders. She was still sore from the night before, after being trussed up quite tightly. Beast was making good use of all the rings on their bed posts, and he’d introduced her to a new toy the night before, a sort of fucking machine all of their own, like the one she’d seen the first night at the club.
“Shower’s gonna feel so good,” Tilly murmured, wincing when he hit a really sore spot.
“Well, we better hop to it, then.” He grabbed a parting handful of her ass as he rolled her to her side, kissing her once more before moving to get out of bed.
“Where do you think you’re going?” She twined her arms around his neck and wouldn’t let him go. “You don’t have to see the sand lady. What’s the rush?”
“Don’t you remember?” He raised his eyebrows. “We told Kate and Meg we’d meet then at the park after Miles’s appointment.”
“Oh. Right.” Tilly pouted.
Beast kissed the tip of her nose and got out of bed, padding naked to the bathroom. She smiled, thoroughly enjoying the view before he shut the door behind him. Then she pulled the covers back up to her chin, deciding to get a few more minutes of sleep while Beast was in the shower.
Downstairs, she heard the doorbell ring, but she stayed burrowed under the covers, knowing a servant would get it. Probably another delivery of flowers, she thought. Weeks after the funeral, they kept coming. Liv had been acquainted with more people than even Meg had known about—old business associates, friends from Vassar, the list seemed endless. These flowers and cards were a constant reminder of Tilly’s mother, but they made her smile, now, instead of cry.
A knock came on the bedroom door.
“Yes?” Tilly called, sitting up and grabbing her robe from the end of the bed. She quickly pulled it on. “Come in.”
Julia poked her head in, waving a Fed-Ex envelope, speaking in her particular nasal voice, “There’s an overnight delivery for you. I had to sign for it, so I thought it might be important. From Hensley, Kauffman and Clemens?”
Tilly frowned, taking the envelope, trying to remember why the names were familiar, and then she recognized one of them. Heathcliff Hensley, the man with the unfortunate name and even more unfortunate physique. Her mother’s lawyer. Or, one of them.
Julia shut the door behind her and Tilly opened the envelope. Inside were two more envelopes, both from the same place, one addressed to her, the other address to Beast. Well, to Conrad Beeston III.
It was a copy of her mother’s will.
Tilly sat cross-legged on the bed, flipping through the document. There weren’t any surprises that she could see—it was pretty much what Heathcliff had told them. Beast had spent the last few weeks familiarizing himself with the family business, a task that made him moody and scowl a lot. There was a lot to learn, and due to Liv’s illness, things had been sliding, but there were plenty of people on hand waiting to advise him.
Tilly had mentioned her business degree that was just going to waste, and Beast had jumped at her offer to help. He wasn’t cut out for running a multi-national corporation, and really, he just wanted to get back to doing what he was good at—being a superhero. Or, really, being a cop, which was pretty much the same thing, as far as she was concerned.
Tilly went to put the will back in the thick white envelope, and another, smaller one fell out. It was addressed to her—Mathilda—in her mother’s handwriting. Just seeing that brought tears to her eyes. Goddamnit. Did it ever end? Just when she thought she could go a day without crying, something would remind her.
She turned the envelope over in her hands, considering. She could put it back, put off reading it. Go surprise Beast in the shower and maybe make them late for their park date. That thought made her smile and she wiped her tears away. The last time she’d seen her mother alive had been emotionally draining, but it had also been incredibly freeing and satisfying, too. So what was this, then?
Tilly sighed, knowing that whatever it was, she had to open it. If she didn’t, she’d be thinking about it until she did.
Another knock sounded and Tilly looked up. “Come in!”
Julia came in carrying a breakfast tray—coffee for Beast and Tilly, and blueberry pancakes. Tilly thanked her, watching as she set the tray on the night table, assuring her that they didn’t need anything else.
When Julia shut the door and went downstairs again, Tilly opened the envelope with trembling hands. She tried to still them as she unfolding several handwritten pages on her mother’s letterhead stationary—Olivia Giselle Garrett. She’d never ordered new stationary with her married name on it, Tilly realized.
The letter was written in Liv’s perfect handwriting, penmanship Tilly had never perfected, although she’d practiced, in hopes of being able to excuse herself from gym. But she’d always gotten caught, because she could never quite match Liv’s style.
Dear Mathilda.
Tilly closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, knowing her mother must have written this sometime before her last collapse. Before she’d really started heading downhill so very fast. This would be her mother, speaking from the grave. It was a thought that made Tilly shiver. She opened her eyes and began to read.
Dear
Mathilda,
If you’re reading this, I’m gone. And I’m sorry.
Goddamnit, Tilly thought, squeezing her eyes closed again. She’d spent a lifetime with the woman who had written this letter, and had never heard her utter an apology until she reached the end of her life. Then, it seemed, she couldn’t say it enough. Not that Tilly didn’t appreciate it—she truly did. But sometimes, sorry came too late.
I’m sorry for so much. Maybe it’s taken being diagnosed with something fatal, facing the end of my life far sooner than I ever expected, to make me realize just how many mistakes I’ve made. I have a lifetime of them to make up for, and I don’t have that much time left to undo them. But I’m going to do my very best now.
Tilly sniffed, reaching for a Kleenex from the box—the staff left them everywhere these days, because you never could tell when and where someone would burst into tears in the Beeston house—and blew her nose. She smiled, hearing Beast singing off-key in the shower, reading on.
Her mother wrote the words, I love you, Mathilda, and while she’d heard them spoken from her mother’s own lips before she died, here was proof. In writing.
I love you, and Miles, and Conrad, and I swear to you, I never meant to hurt anyone.
Tilly nodded, reading onward, the words her mother had spoken the day she died. Maybe she’d been afraid she would go too soon, or be too weak at the end, to say them? But it was all there—Liv reassuring her daughter that Miles belonged to her. That she regretted forcing Tilly to hide her pregnancy, regretted taking Miles away, depriving Tilly of those early years of being a mother to him. Regretted the horrible triangulated mess she was leaving for Kate, Megan and Tilly to try to mop up, with poor, innocent Miles in the middle.
I don’t have any excuses, Mathilda, except to say I love you, and was just trying to protect you. Maybe, by the time you’ve read through this letter to the very end, you’ll understand why, and maybe you’ll even be able to forgive me.
But Tilly had already forgiven her, and in the end, it had taken far less effort than she thought it would. She wasn’t angry about it anymore. Sad, sometimes, at the loss of time—with Beast, with Miles, and even with her mother. The mother she’d been at the very end.
When I met your stepfather, I fell head over heels in love with him. I’ve had two great loves in my life, and he was the last. The four years we had together, I think, were some of the happiest of my life, and when he left us—I was lost. I felt angry, betrayed. How could he leave me like that? Didn’t he love me enough to stay? I blamed him, I blamed myself, and Mathilda—I even blamed you. I thought, perhaps, if I hadn’t already had a child, a distraction from our relationship, that maybe he would have been able to love me more.
I know now that he had slipped into a deep depression, that his state of mind when he took his own life didn’t have anything to do with me, or our family. He was haunted by demons that felt too big for him to battle, and I’m not angry with him anymore. But I was, for a very long time. And I clung to the only thing I had left of the man I had loved.
His son.
Tilly remembered what Beast had told her about his father, how he’d felt cursed. Hearing it from her mother’s perspective felt strange. She had lived through it—so had Beast. And while she knew her mother had been heartbroken, she had never really seen it through her mother’s eyes quite like this before.
Tilly shook her head, sighing. Liv had always been Beast’s champion, even when Tilly’s stepfather had been alive. But after Conrad had passed—her connection to the man’s son had grown stifling. And the more controlling Liv got, the more Beast pushed back. He grew angry, sullen, far more rebellious than before. He got into fights in bars he wasn’t even old enough to drink in yet. Liv had pulled quite a few strings to keep him from being prosecuted—on more than one occasion, Tilly remembered.
Soon after, his hands still bandaged from his latest bare-knuckle bar fight, he’d enlisted. Liv had been distraught. Tilly and Frankie had spent much of that summer before starting high school poolside at Tilly’s house. They’d started bar raids then—Liv was too distracted, spent a lot of time in her room.
That was the summer of trouble. The summer Frankie had tried and encourage Tilly to try smoking—both cigarettes and pot. And the year they’d stolen lingerie from Victoria’s Secret, trying to smuggle it out under their clothes, getting caught by the portly blonde security guard who stood a foot taller than both of them and whose breasts were like bowling balls under her uniform.
Finally, Tilly’s Aunt Megan had staged a sort of intervention, reminding Liv that she still had a daughter to take care of—a daughter who was going to end up rebelling far worse than her stepson ever thought about doing at the rate she was going.
Tilly had been grounded for a long time after that incident. She hadn’t been prosecuted for the shoplifting, though. And while her mother had been strict before that incident, Tilly remembered it getting exponentially worse after Beast had gone into the Marines.
After Conrad enlisted, I was distraught. I was afraid he would end up like his father—spiraling down into a deep depression he couldn’t escape from. I promised myself I would take care of him, after his father died, but I understood that he wanted—even needed—to live his own life, so I gave him that space. Until that summer after you graduated high school.
That summer. Tilly remembered Beast coming home for holidays during her high school years, but they hadn’t crossed paths very much. She didn’t see him again on a regular basis until he moved home the summer after his first tour in Afghanistan. Tilly had always wondered why Beast had come home, what Liv could possibly have said to get him to return.
I knew something was wrong when he asked me for his father’s gun.
Tilly stared at the words on the page, her heart thudding hard in her chest.
Beast had done what?
He wanted the gun his father had used to commit suicide with, but I refused to give it to him. I told him I didn’t have it, that I’d gotten rid of it. But I lied.
Tilly tried to imagine the state of mind Beast must have been in at the time. She knew he was having nightmares—she slept right down the hall from him that summer. She knew he was angry, sullen, even depressed. His usual taciturn nature had turned to a near monk-like silence. He answered questions, when he did so, in grunts. The older teenage brother she’d remembered, the one who teased her and occasionally stuck up for her, was gone, and this brooding man had taken his place.
Somehow, he knew I was lying. So finally, I agreed to give it to him, but only if he came home for three months. If he came to live with us, if he would see a therapist, and take the medication they recommended. If he did that, then, after the summer, I would give him what he asked for.
Tilly stared at the paper, stunned. That’s why Beast had come home? Because Liv had bribed him? And what had he wanted his father’s gun for, exactly? Of course, whatever it was, Liv had been worried about him. And Tilly had been worried, too. It had been Beast’s nightmares that had initially drawn her to his room.
When Beast started coming back to himself, I was so thrilled to see him happy that it took me too long to realize what was happening between you two. I saw you together, I knew you were growing close, but I didn’t realize. I just knew that you made Conrad happy, you brought him back to us, and for that, Mathilda, I will forever be grateful.
Tilly lifted her head, staring blindly at the wall, remembering the summer she had fallen in love with Beast. They’d been so lost in each other, they’d forgotten themselves. They thought they were careful, they tried to keep it a secret, but Tilly’s mother had known. Or at least, she had sensed it. But she hadn’t done anything. Not until…
I acted too late. The damage had been done. I sent him away, Mathilda. I sent away the man you had fallen in love with—and I loved him, too, as much as I would have loved my own son. But I couldn’t let you ruin your life the way I had mine. I had to choose, and Mathilda, my darling daughter, I chose you. A
s horrible and twisted as I know that sounds, it’s true.
I refused to keep my promise to him—I wouldn’t give him his father’s gun—and I knew that would make him angry. I said and did things I’m not proud of to force him to leave—and to keep him from coming back. You need to know that he didn’t want to go. When I confronted him, he confessed his love for you, which did nothing but horrify me further and solidify my decision. He told me he was going to take you away with him.
And I knew then that I would lose both of you.
I can’t tell you how sorry I am, how ashamed, that I told him I would cut you off if he refused to leave. I used the love I knew he had for you to send him away for good. I don’t know what I would have done if he had called my bluff, but he loved you too much to take that chance. He loved you enough to leave, Mathilda.