When my Judith forced me to stop eating sugary foods, I’d often stop by Mrs. O’Malley’s house. She always had a pan of brownies or a sheet of cookies ready to offer me. Something sweet and tasty.
Her sweet child. That’s what she’d always call me. I didn’t mind. I liked her company and the sweets. She felt like more of a mother to me than Judith ever did. She even visited me at Millwood more than Judith.
“Well,” I sigh, shrugging my shoulders and then letting them fall limply. “Not good.” I tilt my head as I look at her.
“Oh, of course, sweet child. I can’t imagine how difficult it has been for you these past few days. Your mother was a sweet woman.” I want to stop her right there, but I hold back. She wouldn’t understand. “And judging from the ruckus earlier,” she continues, waving her hand in the air as she looks around her, “bad luck just seems to follow you. Come here.”
She sticks her hands out and beckons me with her bony fingers. She wraps her arms around me and I do the same.
“Now, I’m just about to take out a fresh batch of brownies.” She whispers to me. “How about you come over and have one.” We break from our hug.
“Oh, I’m not sure.” I should probably stay here and wait for Gretchen, but what’s the harm in a brownie? Besides, she won’t be here for another hour or so. I’ll be back by then.
“I won’t take no for and answer.” She jokes with her hands on her hips and her eyebrows raised.
“Oh, alright,” I relent, feigning exasperation. “I can’t say no to a brownie, especially yours. Are there chocolate chips?”
“Are there chocolate chips, she says?” She repeats through a laugh. She grabs my arm and leads me down the steps.
“Of course! And you won’t say no to seconds either!” She pipes back, jabbing a finger at me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LEAH
I’VE BEEN HERE LESS than 10 minutes and I’ve already eaten three brownies. Three! They’re just so warm and gooey and fresh. Constance was right, I couldn’t say no to seconds… or thirds…
Fourths? I’m not addicted. I promise.
I don’t know how she does it. I’ll have to get the recipe.
“Another one, dear?” She calls to me from the kitchen. My hands clench the sofa as I rock back and forth, reeling from my sugar high. As much as I want to say yes, I tell her no.
“Well, at the very least, let me refill your milk.” She swoops in and whisks away my glass before disappearing back into the kitchen.
My eyes wander around the room. It’s what you’d expect from someone her age—whatever that may be.
Old, frayed wingback chairs flank a large wood-burning fireplace; quilts with floral patterns, color fading from them, hang from the chairs. There’s a strange assortment of knickknacks and pictures collecting dust on the mantle above the fireplace. A battered china hutch filled with unused plates and saucers and cups looms to my right, next to the kitchen. Springs creak and whine as I shift my body on the avocado green couch.
Everything is dated and covered with a thin layer of dust and old-person smells.
I’m waiting for a cat or ten to spring out at me somewhere.
But, that doesn’t happen, so I’m a little disappointed.
I stand up and walk to the mantle. There’s a portrait of a girl at the far end that attracts my eye. She seems strangely familiar and I can’t place why.
“My daughter, Abigail.” Constance says wistfully as she places the milk on the coffee table. I nearly jump at the sound of her voice. “She was a darling. My sweet child.”
She walks to my side and places one hand on my back. “She’s always reminded me of you.” She touches Abigail’s face with her finger, leaving a clean, dustless circle on the glass. “I remember when you first moved in. I thought I was losing my mind. I thought my Abigail was back.”
I can see some resemblance. We have the same hair and eyes, even our smiles. It’s strange how I never noticed it before. But I guess I never paid much attention to the decor. Not when brownies are on the table…
“But it was a fool’s dream.” She lets out a heavy sigh and takes the frame from my hand. “She passed long ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, it wasn’t a surprise. She wasn’t a healthy child. Always sick.” Her voice sounds distant and weak. She places the picture back on the mantle, stares at it for a moment then turns back to me. A faint smile flickers on her mouth. “You’d think as a nurse, I’d be able to care for my own child.”
I never knew she was a nurse. Although I guess now that I think about it, I don’t really know all that much about her.
“We both know what it’s like to lose someone we love.”
“Yes.” I was thinking about my father. Not Judith.
I was beginning to feel light-headed, so I sit back down on the couch. Constance sits beside me. She smells of flour and chocolate and something else I can’t place.
Her hand finds my knee and she asks me, “How are you coping, dear?”
“It’s been tough,” I tell her. “But Luke has been helping me through it.”
She seems to tense up when I say his name.
“Oh, that’s nice, dear.” She tells me through gritted teeth. I can sense she doesn’t mean it, but I don’t know why. She seemed spooked by him the night my Judith died. Like she knows something I don’t. “I saw the police taking him away in handcuffs.” She says airily as she hands me my glass. I grab it and take a gulp without even thinking if I’m thirsty or not. It’s what you do, I guess. When someone like Constance offers you something, you take it. Even if you don’t want it. Even if…
The dizziness is getting worse. My hand shakes and I spill some of the milk on my shirt.
“Oh, sweet child. I’m so sorry. You’re going through enough as it is. And here I am dredging it back up.” She slaps her hands against her thighs. “I’m so sorry.”
“No.” I shake my head, trying to get my bearings. “It’s okay. I’m just feeling a little queasy.”
“Oh, no.” She wraps an arm around me while the back of her other hand grazes against my cheek. “Why don’t you go to my bathroom and get yourself a little something to settle your stomach. I’ll be right in to help you if you need it.”
I tell her okay and get to my feet. I’m a little shaky, but okay. I can walk just fine, but my head I beginning to pound.
It must be the stress. So much has happened that my body was bound to shut down at some point. It always does.
I brace myself against Constance’s medicine cabinet for a moment and close my eyes. Even the light is beginning to be too much.
Constance has enough bottles and vials and tubes that she’d have no problem running a small pharmacy out of her house.
I never want to get old.
I rummage through the bottles, reading one label after another. The names seem to be written in another language—so foreign and complex. I can’t find Advil, or Tylenol, or even aspirin. Nothing is recognizable except for…
Except for…
Fear grabs hold of me and I drop the bottles I’m holding. The pills rattle in them as they bounce around in the sink.
My eyes flit to a small vial, reading it as Constance calls to me. “Is everything alright in there, dear?”
“Ye—Yes.” I sputter as I back out of the bathroom, my hands clinging tightly against my chest.
The same drugs that were found in Judith’s toxicology report are in Constance’s medicine cabinet.
This can’t be happening. This can’t be true. Judith was…
The room is spinning and I trip and fall onto the bed.
I can’t move. My muscles feel heavy. Everything is…
Constance walks into the room. She’s wearing Judith’s nightgown and her locket.
Get up. Get out of here. Now!
But it’s too late. My vision’s becoming blurry; there’s a haziness covering everything around me.
The last thing I hear before ev
erything fades to black is Constance.
“I hate seeing my sweet child sick.” She coos.
And the last thing I feel is her cold, bony hand as it brushes against my cheek.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LUKE
THE DRUNK TANK.
They put me in the fucking drunk tank. There are no benches, no place to sit. The air is acrid with the scent of urine and I’m sure the floor is covered in it as well as any number of other bodily fluids. The floor is a sticky mess and each time I lift a foot, it feels as though I’m peeling velcro from the bottom of my shoe.
Miles thinks I killed Judith. Says he has proof, too. It’s as much amusing as it is alarming. What proof? I didn’t kill her. Scout’s honor. Hell, ever since I found out she was dead, I assumed she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, chased it with a bottle of wine. She wasn’t the most stable person. It seemed like something Judith would do. The final passive-aggressive act: Do you see what you did to me? You did this to me. I had no other choice. It’s not me; it’s you.
Adamant until the very end.
Proof… It’s all a bluff. Throwing me in here with some bullshit charge, trying to wear me down. It’s a game. He has nothing but a hunch and he’s hoping I’ll give something up. But the truth is that I have nothing to offer. No information that will blow this case open. I didn’t kill Judith and I have no idea who did.
I’m leaning against the back wall, my arms folded across my waist, waiting. Waiting for the whistling, corpulent officer with sausage link fingers and mustard stained lips to slink down the narrow corridor, open the door, and tell me I’m free to go.
It should be any minute now. Leah should’ve already called Gretchen, and Gretchen should’ve contacted my lawyer. Any minute now. Or so I think.
How long have I been in here? Fifteen minutes? An hour? Five? It’s hard to say. Time seems to stand still in a place like this; it’s a separate world governed by its own set of rules. I’ve never been behind bars before now, and I don’t plan on being behind them for much longer. Or ever again, for that matter.
The only thing keeping me sane is thinking about Leah and the moment we shared. I’m counting the minutes until I can hold her in my arms, taste her lips. I can imagine the softness of her lips pressed against mine.
I never intended to fall for her, but that’s how it works, right? No matter how much you plan, life has its own way of doing things. I’ve decided it’s best not to question it. At least, not all the time.
When this all blows over in the next hour or so—hopefully, sooner—I’ll take Leah and we’ll leave Milton for good. She may choose to go her own separate way sometime after that, but that’s her choice. I only want the best for her and if that means she wants something or someone else, so be it.
She’s been through hell and I’m not about to put her through it again.
But I hope she chooses to stay. We could be great together, and there’s no one else I can imagine by my side than her.
I let out a heavy sigh and raise my head to look around the rectangular cell once again.
There are two other men. Both of them were here before me. One’s mumbling incoherently to himself in the back corner to my right, high on something.
He’s a ragged man. Stringy, long brown hair falls in dirty clumps on his shoulders. He waves his dirt-smeared hands animatedly in front of him as though in a heated argument with an invisible person. Every now and then he lets out a wicked laugh. The type of laugh that’s more unnerving than it is comforting. A mad man’s cackle.
To be honest, I’m surprised that there aren’t more like him in here.
You would think that larger cities—Austin, New York, Boston, wherever—would have worse drug problems than Milton. That may be the case. More people, more drugs. But the problem is more or less hidden. Swept under the rug, so to speak. You could go days, weeks, months, hell, even years, without seeing someone doped up.
In Milton? There’s not much space to hide. It’s out in the open.
In the bigger cities, the drug addicts are nameless. Degenerates with whom you share no connection. Here, they’re your neighbors, the people who serve you in diners, the guy who bags your groceries at the local market.
The boy next door. The preacher’s daughter.
You know them, or are at least familiar with them.
Sometimes I’m glad that Robert kicked me out when he did. It was a blessing of sorts. This town seems to have a toxic effect on people. You might be able to fight it off for a time, but sooner or later it will infect you in some form or another.
No one’s immune. Not even me.
The old man squeals as he thrusts a spindly arm in front of him.
“Oh shut up you haggard fuck!” The other man (hell, he couldn’t be more than a day over 21) shouts with a drunken slur across the cell. He’s rail thin. His thinness is accentuated by the baggy clothing that hangs from him like sheets on a clothesline. A stick figure. Two beady black eyes under thick black eyebrows glare across the room at the old man who seems unaware of anything but the conversation he’s having with himself.
“Jesus fucking Christ…” He breathes, bringing his hands to his head, massaging his temples.
I snort and shake my head.
“The fuck you laughing at?” He spits at me.
His eyebrows form a thick line across his forehead as he stares at me, his mouth open in a snarl.
I shrug and shift myself so my back is turned to him. The last thing I needed was another altercation. It would only complicate my already complicated situation. What’s a silly kid to me?
“That’s what I thought.”
I smile creeps onto my face. I like this kid’s spunk. A little overconfident, but that’s better than being timid. Unfortunately for him, he needs the bite to back up his bark. Judging by his frame, he doesn’t have it. He’ll have a tough lesson to learn if he keeps up with that mouth in the form of a swift punch to the jaw. I won’t be the one to teach him though. I need to get out of here.
I let out a sigh and focus on Leah.
Not much later, I hear the steady thump of rubber soles against the concrete floor. The thumps turn into thuds as the guard gets closer. He’s not whistling but as he comes into view, he licks his mustard stained lips as his sausage link fingers fumble to open up the door to the cell.
“Luke Hammond,” He snarls, his eyes darting around the cell until he spots me. “You’re free to go.”
I follow my corpulent friend in blue as he guides me down the narrow corridor and through a few doors until finally leaving me at a window to collect my things.
“Name?” The lady asks. She’s older. Her auburn hair, pulled back behind her head, is striped with thin streaks of gray. She wears thick, horn-rimmed glasses and looked more like a librarian than a police officer.
“Hammond. Luke Hammond.” I smile.
She rolls her eyes and retrieves the few items I had when I came in.
“Sign here.” She says, shoving a clipboard with a form that has far too many words on it. Signature on the line. No problem.
Moments later I’m out the door, stretching my stiff muscles and breathing in fresh, clean air. There’s a faint sound of sirens in the distance, but otherwise it’s calm, relaxing even. In a few short hours Leah and I will be out of here.
But where is she?
Something about this didn’t make sense. Actually, a lot of this didn’t make sense. I would’ve expected to see Miles, fuming at my release. Not to mention Dave, my lawyer who’d be wearing a satisfied, shit-eating grin.
But no one is here. Something is wrong.
I check with the officer at the front desk to see if I can talk with Miles. He’s not here, the man tells me. I could leave a message if I’d like and he’d make sure he’d give it to him when he returns.
Great.
Where the hell was Leah? And Gretchen? And Dave? They were the ones who got me out of here, right? Who else could have
? Nothing was adding up, but I found myself walking aimlessly toward the house.
I’m no more than a 100 feet from the police station when Gretchen’s BMW screeches around a corner and parks in front of the station. She stumbles out of the car, her hair wild, some of it matted against her cheeks, and slams the door behind her. She trips over the curb and onto the grass.
“Gretchen!” I yell, waving my arms.
Her eyes dart around as she tries to locate me. I jog over to her; she’s still sitting on the damp grass when I get there. The smudged makeup around her eyes make her look like a raccoon and her eyes are bloodshot and puffy. I’ve never seen her like this before. She won’t even look at me.
“Gretchen,” I say as calmly as possible. “What’s going on?”
She sniffles. Her shoulders heave along with her chest as she takes ragged, breaths. I’m afraid she might hyperventilate.
“Just calm down.” I kneel down and rub her shoulder. “Take deep breaths and relax.”
It seems to work. Once she starts focusing on her breathing the tears stop streaming down her cheeks and she finally looks at me.
“Leah.” She rasps.
“What about Leah?”
“She’s… She’s…” She looks away from me. I look down and see that she’s pulling fistfuls of grass from the ground. I place my hand on hers, stopping her from pulling anymore.
I lower my gaze and force Gretchen to look at me. “Gretchen. I need you to tell me what’s going on.”
Her eyes get wider and it seems as though she’s looking through me, not at me.
“We have to go. Now.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LEAH
IT’S DARK.
I can’t see anything except for the sliver of light that shines underneath the door and the yellow cone it paints on the carpet. The room smells damp and musty, mildewed cloth and the various odors that have been collecting in the old carpet over the years. My limbs feel heavy; I try to lift them, but they aren’t responding to my commands. I can’t sit up. My head… my stomach, too, they both ache horribly and I feel strange. Not myself. It feels as though I’m floating—no—like I’m on a rollercoaster; there’s so much movement and I swear I’m going to fall through the bed at any moment.
Stepbrother: Scar Tissue - the Complete Serial (An Alpha Stepbrother Romance) Page 10