“Amen to that.”
***
The kitchen at the Whitts’ mansion had become the gathering place for everyone in the house because Sophie always seemed to have something baking that drew people in. That Saturday afternoon, she was experimenting with a recipe she found online for cinnamon twists with white icing dip. She’d never been very good with baking bread, mostly because the oven in her apartment was inadequate at best. But when she pulled the golden brown twists from the oven, smiling at their perfection, the kitchen suddenly became full of hungry afternoon snackers.
It had been a long day for Kenny and as she made love to a cinnamon twist, she looked around at the others sitting at the table. Her eyes met Chelsey’s and she wished it was her breasts she was licking instead of the twist. She grinned at the thought as she watched Chelsey, laughing at something Tobias had said. Her grin turned to consternation as she wondered why Chelsey was suddenly running hot and cold with her. She didn’t know what she was doing wrong or how to fix it, but she knew she had to try. She’d never felt anything as strongly as what she felt for Chelsey, and it was a bit overwhelming. She was giddy in love and shaking with fear. At her lowest moments, Chelsey was there for her. She didn’t have to be kind and supportive. It wasn’t expected or part of her job, but Kenny knew that she cared. She could see it in her eyes, feel it in her touch, and in her kiss. Chelsey graced her with another smile, causing her heart to pitter-patter. Oh, yeah. If she needed to take it slow, Kenny would go as slow as she wanted.
“Mamá, your phone is ringing,” Tobias said, pointing at the phone on the farthest counter.
“Cógelo por mí, por favor.”
Tobias got up from the table and picked up his mother’s cell phone from the counter. He tapped on the accept button and put the phone to his ear. “Hola, María.”
“María?” Sophie jumped up and snatched the phone from Tobias and hit the Facetime app. “¿Cariño como estas?” Sophie walked out of the room listening to her daughter chatter on about basketball.
Kenny looked at Tobias when he returned to his seat. “Is that your sister?”
“Yeah, probably calling to ask for more allowance,” Tobias joked.
“Shouldn’t she be back from summer camp by now?” Kenny asked, realizing she had never met Sophie’s daughter before. The girl was a typical teenager with a busy social life and who never stood still in any one place for very long.
“Oh, yeah, she’s at basketball camp right now. She’ll be home next week before school starts up.”
“Wow, she is very… energetic.” Chelsey quipped.
“Like you weren’t that energetic at fifteen,” Kenny countered and winked at her. “I know I ran Grandma ragged with softball, basketball, and tennis.”
“I’ll bet you were a handful,” Jaylen said from the doorway, Lester standing behind her. Chelsey insisted Lester take a pastry before he left. Carla had been in earlier, and Tobias personally handed her one.
Kenny kept eating and didn’t acknowledge Jaylen. Like you care.
Unperturbed, Jaylen sat beside her, and Chelsey passed the plate of cinnamon twists to her. Helping herself to one, she glanced at Kenny. “I’ll bet you didn’t slow down at all during your teenage years. And the reason I know that is because I was the same way. Well, until I discovered drugs, that is.”
Kenny still had her head down, staring at the twist on her plate, wondering what Jaylen was really like at that age.
“You know,” Jaylen continued, “I wasn’t always a drug addict. I had a life full of friends and school activities. Hell, I was a cheerleader and at every Friday night football game, I’d be out there with my pom-poms doing the splits.”
Her head still down, Kenny scooped her finger in the icing and then licked it. “I was the school mascot,” she admitted.
“The panther?” Jaylen asked.
“Yeah, at the basketball junior high games.” There was a strangely comforting feeling knowing that Jaylen went to the same school she had. It made her seem almost real.
“I’m sorry I missed seeing you in that getup,” Jaylen admitted.
Her simple acknowledgment and apology opened up a crevasse in Kenny’s stone wall. “Yeah, I’m sorry you did, too.”
“Believe me, Makenna,” Jaylen said soberly. “If I had been in my right mind, I would have been there for you. I’ve missed so much of your life already, that’s why I’m trying so hard to be here for you now. To make up for what I’ve missed.”
Kenny finally met her eye, and there was only sorrow when she said in a rough voice, “There’s no way you can make up for it.”
“Then maybe I could be a part of your future?” There was a wisp of begging in her voice as she looked at Kenny.
A beat, and then another. “We’ll see.”
Chelsey studied Kenny intently. It wasn’t a no. It wasn’t even the harsh rejection that she usually gave her mother. It was a possibility.
Kenny’s cell phone vibrated just as Miguel entered the kitchen followed by a young woman who walked with a pronounced limp and looked confused and angry at the same time.
Sophie walked back in, setting her phone and the counter. She caught Miguel’s arm just as he was about to leave and gave him two twists on a plate with a cup of icing.
“These look delicioso, gracias,” he said, and left the room.
Kenny looked at the number on her cell phone and then up at the stranger. She had a feeling she knew who she was even before she answered the phone.
“Hey, Ruth,” Kenny said into the phone, not taking her eyes off the woman. “Yeah, she’s here. I’ll call you back.” She ended the call abruptly and set the phone on the table. She stood up and held out her hand. “Anna Reed, I presume?”
“I was told I could find Jaylen Whitt here.” Anna said, taking a step closer to the table, but not taking the hand offered to her.
“Do I know you?” Jaylen asked, standing up as well, looking curiously at the girl in faded blue jeans, t-shirt with a skull on the front, wearing a windbreaker over it. Suddenly, she remembered where she had seen her before. Oh shit!
It was the girl who attacked her in prison. The one who proclaimed to be her daughter.
“You’re the bitch who gave birth to me,” Anna yelled, reaching for something inside her jacket.
“Gun!” Kenny screamed when she saw the glint of a muzzle. She dove for Chelsey, grabbing Jaylen’s hand as she pulled both of them down with her just as she heard a loud pop and felt the repercussion as the bullet passed by her ear.
“Are you crazy?” Tobias screamed.
Kenny heard Sophie yelling “¿Que esta pasando?” She reached for her gun and forgot that she didn’t carry one in the house. There was no need with three bodyguards around. “Tobias, get Sophie out of here. Go! Now!” She could see Tobias’s feet turn and run toward his mother. She knew they wouldn’t last long hiding under the table so she crouched on her knees, pushed off with her feet and tackled Anna’s ankles, knocking her to the floor.
Still holding onto the pistol. Anna scrambled to get up, but Kenny tackled her again, raising her fist and punching it into Anna’s stomach as hard as she could. Chelsey crawled out from under the table and helped pin Anna to the floor as Kenny pried the gun from her hands.
“No, you don’t understand,” Anna cried. “It’s all her fault!”
Miguel came rushing in, out of breath with his gun drawn. “Sofía said there were gunshots?” He quickly assessed the situation and holstered his weapon, then he knelt beside Kenny. “I’ve got her,” he said, flipping Anna on her stomach like she was a pancake and pinning her hands together. He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out plastic ties.
“Where the hell were you guys?” Kenny yelled irritably, pointing the gun down at Anna.
Miguel tied off Anna’s hands and then stood up. “There was someone in the front yard by the water fountain.”
“What the hell?” she exclaimed.
“The guy was on the ground
holding his junk, writhing in pain. I think the woman he was with must have kicked him in the balls. When he saw us, he went ballistic and we had to subdue him before he hurt the woman.”
“Who, his girlfriend?”
“No, it was an older woman. She was nice. She said that she lived here and—”
Kenny tucked the gun in her belt and pointed at Anna. “Watch her!” she yelled as she rushed out of the room with Chelsey on her heels. She tore through the foyer and out the front door. When she rounded the fountain she saw Sophie, Tobias, Carla, and Lester looking down at a very angry man lying face down on the ground with his hands tied behind his back. Kenny looked up and screamed, “Grandma! Oh, my God.” She almost knocked the older woman down trying to hug her to make sure she was really there.
“I’m all right, Makenna. Do you hear me, honey? I’m okay… sweetheart, you’re hurting my back.”
“Oh, damn,” Kenny said, releasing her and taking half a step back. “Sorry, Grandma.”
“Well, I’m not. I thought I’d never see you again,” Deirdre said, rubbing the tears from Kenny’s cheeks. “Thank you for not giving up on me.”
“God, I never would, Grandma,” Kenny muttered as she hugged her grandmother again, this time very gently.
“And, Chelsey, it’s so good to see you again,” Deidre said with genuine affection.
“I am so relieved to see you, Deidre,” Chelsey replied, taking her hand and giving her a light hug.
“Grandma, I have a couple of surprises for you,” Kenny said. “Are you up for it?”
“If you have to ask then it doesn’t sound like something I want to be surprised by.”
“It would definitely be something that you would need to sit down for, but as that isn’t possible out here…” Kenny was rambling, stalling for time to figure out how to tell her grandmother about Jaylen and Anna.
“Makenna, it’s not going to get any easier,” Deidre gently chastised. “Just tell me, please.”
Kenny exhaled as if preparing to do the long jump and blurted, “Jaylen and her other daughter, Anna, are in the kitchen.”
“Oh… oh, my.” Deidre stumbled back and Kenny, on one side of her, and Chelsey on the other, reached out to catch her if she fell.
“Deidre, let’s get you inside where you can sit down,” Sophie suggested, taking Kenny’s place beside her.
Sophie and Chelsey escorted her around the fountain and up the steps to the front door, followed by Carla.
“What should we do with him?” Lester asked.
Kenny squatted down and looked into his face. “Are you Harold?”
“Yes, who are you?” he sputtered.
“You seem to think that I’m your daughter,” Kenny spit out.
Lester helped him to his feet and held his arm.
Kenny stepped closer, so close to him that he could feel her breath on his face. “End of the game, asshole, and you lose. If you had come to me and told me that you were my father, I would have given you millions. As it is, you get nothing. You’re going to prison penniless with Peckerwood stamped on your forehead and Billy Bob Bubba will keep you warm at night. Cha-ching!”
“No, that’s not the way it was supposed to go,” Harold pleaded. “That’s why we lowered the price.”
“We, who? Who was your partner, Harold?”
Chelsey came charging out the door. “Kenny!” she shouted, running up to her.
“What’s wrong? Is it Grandma?” Kenny asked in a panic.
“No, she’s fine. It’s Jaylen,” Chelsey choked out.
“Oh, God. Did Anna shoot at her again?”
“No. She’s gone. Jaylen is gone!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“What the hell do you mean, she’s gone?” Harold demanded to know.
Chelsey step closer to Kenny, not taking her eyes off of Harold.
“She told me to bring her mother here,” he continued.
“How did she do that when she didn’t have a phone?” Kenny questioned.
His confused look turned to pride. “You’re not very good at this stuff, are you? We did a simple little search on the Internet and found the pictures of your house.”
Kenny remember when she and her grandmother were house-hunting online. They looked at the floor schematics and photos of each room of several mansions before they settled on this one. “You hid the phone the night of the party, didn’t you, you bastard?” Kenny asked, her temper beginning to flare again.
“Pretty ingenious, wouldn’t you say?” Harold asked, and waited for her conformation.
Kenny looked back at Harold, her face set in stone. “Lester, would you take this piece of crap to the garage and chain him to something, please? I want to talk to him first before the police arrive.”
“You got it,” he acknowledged and roughly shoved Harold toward the garage.
Chelsey still felt panicked, jittery, but tried to ignore it. “She must have slipped away while we were dealing with Anna, and then this distraction out here. Nobody noticed her.”
Kenny raked her fingers through her hair. “She played me. It was a setup from the start.”
“She played all of us. How could she do this to you, Kenny?” Chelsey asked, almost gasping at how pale her lover had become. She realized too late how much Kenny was hoping her mother would become a part of her life. That bitch.
Kenny had shut her emotions off. She knew she would have to push her feelings to the side in order to take care of her grandmother. She also had to fight back the urge to cry so she could concentrate on tracking down Jaylen. “Wait. Did anyone check her room? Maybe she ran up there.” Why am I grasping at straws? I know she’s not up there.
“No, I don’t think so,” Chelsey replied.
“Come on,” Kenny said, running for the front door. She crashed through the foyer and up the stairs. When Jaylen was out of her bedroom, they didn’t bother locking the door, so Kenny ran right in and began searching the closet and the bathroom. The room was empty.
“Kenny, there’s a note,” Chelsey said, pointing at the bureau. A folded piece of paper stuck out from under the hairbrush.
Kenny snatched it up and unfolded it. She scanned the letter and then slumped down on the bed.
Chelsey took the letter from her trembling hands and began reading it out loud.
‘Makenna,
I know that we got off to a rocky start. I just wanted to get to know you and I knew Mom wasn’t going to let me. I was desperate to see you, and no, it wasn’t just because of the money. I wanted to show you that I wasn’t the monster Mom made me out to be. But then, when you acted like I was no better than the trash at that recycling plant, I knew that I had to find another way to be in your life.
Well, what better reason could I have than to help you find Mom? She didn’t know it was me, by the way. I made sure of that. I’m not that cruel. I know it wasn’t the mother-daughter reunion I was hoping for, but at least we learned how to be civil with each other... almost. If I’d had more time, I really think you would have come to love me as your mother. But people like Chelsey kept getting in my way, and then you figured out where they were and I knew our time together was over.
So, thank you for the money. I promise, I’ll put it to good use.
I do love you.
Your mother, Jaylen’
“That bitch!” Chelsey exclaimed, laying the letter down and looking at Kenny.
Rocking back and forth, Kenny was fighting the anger, the tears, and the emptiness.
Chelsey sat down beside her on the bed. There were no words to make her feel better, so she rubbed her hand across Kenny’s back to let her know that she wasn’t alone. A moment later, she felt Kenny tremble, and she pulled her into her arms and held her as she cried.
***
Deidre watched as Anna struggled against the plastic ties, saying every cuss word she could think of. She had her daughter’s eyes and the same bulging vein in her forehead when she was angry.
Sophie was maki
ng fresh coffee, Miguel was standing just inside the door, keeping an eye on Anna and his protectee, Sophie. Tobias was talking with Carla, who then left to check the outside perimeter. Deidre and Anna were sitting at the table, one relieved to be home, the other desperate to break free.
“They tell me that your name is Anna. Is that correct?” Deidre asked.
Anna jumped up, shouting obscenities at her. Miguel stepped closer and put both hands on her shoulders, forcing her to sit down again.
“I understand that you tried to shoot my daughter. Would you mind telling me why?”
Anna’s frown deepened but her struggle lessened.
Deidre rephrased the question. “Why would my granddaughter want to shoot her own mother?”
Finally, Anna stopped struggling and asked, “Who the hell are you and what kind of bullshit is that?”
“I am Deidre Whitt, Jaylen’s mother and apparently, your grandmother,” Deidre answered calmly. “I do not pretend to know what drove you to this, but I must say, you are your mother’s daughter.”
“Fuck you, bitch,” Anna exclaimed.
Kenny, who had just walked in, yanked Anna’s head back, reared her hand up, and hit her square in the jaw. “You call my grandmother a bitch again and I will crush you, understand?”
Her eye twitching and already turning red, Anna was too angry to care. “Tough talk considering I’m tied up,” she said sarcastically. “Untie me and we’ll see who crushes who.”
“Bring it, bitch,” Kenny growled.
“Makenna, please,” Deidre implored. “Enough.”
Kenny grudgingly relented and stepped back, still glaring at Anna.
Anna snickered at Kenny. “Oh, mama’s girl, huh? Figures.”
“No, I’m a grandma’s girl and damn proud of it,” Kenny countered. “And by the way, your foster mom, Ruth, who told me she would give her life for you, is making herself sick from worrying about you. You must be so proud.”
Anna lowered her eyes, her stomach suddenly twisting. She only had one person in her life who loved her unconditionally and that was Ruth. Anna, so set on revenge, had forgotten that. Kenny was wrong, she wasn’t proud. She was mortified. “Is she all right?” Anna asked quietly.
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