by J. J. McAvoy
I thought at least to Ethan, at the very least to him, I mattered.
Blinking a few times, I looked over to the entrance of the garage to see them all watching me. Wyatt, Helen, Neal, Killian, Sedric…oh, and Nari. I guessed they were back home now. They stared at me with wide eyes. It was Killian who slowly stepped forward.
“This was what you wanted, right?” I asked him, showing him the flame from the lighter I had. “Me to get punished? Revenge?”
“Calliope, calm down,” he said to me.
“Now, you’re telling me what to do?” I replied to him. “You? This great family of yours and none of you could trust him, but then I guess you were right, too, because he reduced me, as well. I’ve killed so many people. All of my life, people feared me and didn’t even know who I was—the grim reaper he called me. And now look what I am—a crazy woman in a garage.”
“Calliope, I understand—”
“Why does everyone keep saying that? I understand. That is a lie. You don’t. You don’t even like me. You’d love to see me go up in flames.”
“No, I wouldn’t—”
“I killed your mother,” I said to him and stopped walking. “I think out of all of you, I liked her the best. She was very reasonable and true to her word. She did everything I asked her to do. All she asked for was that I forgave either you or your sister for doing anything stupid out of grief. And that I make sure Ethan forgave you, too. He was tempted to break your legs the night after your sister poisoned me. But I told him to calm down, and he listened. I did that, not because I like you, but because I promised your mom. She left you all tapes. I have them. I no longer care to give them to you, though. I no longer care about anything.”
Let it all burn.
“You don’t mean that,” Evelyn said as she came into the garage, holding Gigi’s hands.
“Mommy?” Her little voice stunned me, and the mixture of fear and concern on her face hurt me even more. That was right…I had her. And how did I look to her? Crazy? Like my own mother?
Putting my arm down, I pulled my thumb off the lighter. However, when I did, I heard a footstep behind me. Turning, I held the gun up directly at Wyatt. He’d come around as Killian tried to distract me. I looked at the syringe in his gloved hands.
“It’s a sedative,” he said to me.
“I’m fine.”
“You shot your way down the house and in here where you were about to send us up in flames.”
“I wasn’t fine, then. Now I am,” I said, handing him the gun and the lighter.
He frowned but took them.
Ignoring the rest of them, I walked directly up to Gigi and hugged her to me.
“You’re sad, Mommy?”
I hugged her and lifted her into my arms despite the pain. “I was very sad,” I admitted, walking us back into the house.
“Why?”
“Papa hurt my feelings.” And he broke my trust, which broke my heart. And I didn’t know what to do.
I wasn’t sure what to do now.
I had no plan for what to do if I didn’t get to complete my plans. I had no plans for being stuck in the house while he went off, finishing my story for me.
I had seen it hundreds of times in movies. A strong woman breaking down and losing her mind because of a man. And each time I laughed or rolled my eyes, saying how could you not see it? Now it had happened to me, and still, I didn’t understand how I had gotten this deep. Everyone was laughing at me.
Inside of me burned as I thought of it.
“See what I got, Mommy,” Gigi said, sitting her brand-new electric toy Bentley with sunglasses, and in her passenger seat and backseat were Priscus and Verus, who enjoyed being driven around the room with her.
“I see. Papa got you a lot,” I whispered, looking at her whole room of Christmas presents. She’d gotten everything from clothes and dolls to toy cars, the other one being a Jeep, but her favorite had to be the fish aquarium Ethan had installed behind her bed, which caused the whole room to glow a soft blue.
I’d told him to wait with the damn fish, but he didn’t care about my voice or wants. He played me, and I…I let myself get played.
“Calliope?” The door opened as Evelyn came inside. “I thought you might be hungry.”
When she nodded, a maid walked behind her, holding a Christmas feast of food. The girl put it on the corner table in the room and quickly left.
“Thank you, Nana,” Gigi said, already driving forward.
“Gigi, this is for your mommy—”
“She can have it. I’m not hungry.”
Not sure, Gigi looked to me, and I forced myself to smile for her before nodding, telling her to eat.
“Go wash your hands first,” I directed.
“Right!” She backed up and made a U-turn—very well done, I might add for a six-year-old—before she drove into her bathroom.
“Don’t you think you should wash yours, too?” Evelyn asked, taking a seat at the foot of Gigi’s bed.
I didn’t understand what she meant until I looked down and saw my cut-up hands, which reeked of gasoline. I honestly hadn’t felt or smelled it until now.
“It’s not easy being Mrs. Callahan,” she said to me.
“Are you mocking me?” I asked.
“No, just talking to you.”
I didn’t say anything, so she went on.
“I don’t know your whole story, Calliope. I don’t even think I know even an eighth of it. All I know, all that matters, is that you are Mrs. Callahan now. And while you can take a moment to scream or cry, you can’t stay in despair. All that does is waste your time. Believe me, I know. One day I was Mrs. Callahan, then I lost myself to grief. When I woke up again, I had a few years left before some other woman was giving me orders, then another after her.”
The other being me, she meant.
“Ethan is going to live for a long time, so I’m sure I’m going to be here for a while.” Like a trapped bird with broken wings.
“Never be sure. A single moment can change everything,” she said with less steel and more pain in her voice. “But let’s hope he does manage live to be a 110 with you alongside him. Do you really think he wouldn’t step back for his son?”
“No. He’s too controlling. He’d be worse than his own parents at letting go. Why would it have to be a boy?” I asked, watching Gigi drive back to eat the food she had, her dogs waiting patiently for her to give them a piece of whatever she was eating.
“I don’t know why it has to be. That’s just how it’s been. Maybe Gigi will change that, or maybe your next one will keep it going.”
“What makes you think there is going to be a next one?” I didn’t even know if I had wanted to have one before.
“What makes you think there isn’t one right now?”
I froze.
When she didn’t say anything, I slowly turned to look at her.
However, she handed me a small Christmas present. “From Ethan.”
Because they were from Ethan, I wanted to throw them out the window.
However, Gigi came over, eating her canned yams with a spoon. “What did you get, Mommy?”
Taking the box from her, I opened it. Inside sat a massive diamond ring with diamonds in a four-leaf clover.
“It’s pretty, Mommy!” Gigi grinned.
“He said he would have gotten it as a necklace, but you would say it was a collar,” Evelyn replied.
I wanted to roll my eyes, but I was too tired. Instead of a collar, Ethan ended up giving me a diamond ring, like a celebrity who had stepped out on his wife and wanted to be forgiven.
However, that was the least of my issues. Ethan could have chosen any style of diamonds, but he had picked a four-leaf clover. That, plus Evelyn’s words meant…the four of us.
“Four is a lucky number.” Evelyn smiled.
I did not speak. Because I didn’t know how to feel about this. If I were pregnant, he could have only found out after…after when? I paused, trying to think,
but too many thoughts came to me at once.
Like when did we get on different pages?
When did his plan change?
Everything was going according to our plans until…until I was poisoned.
That son of fucking bitch.
He had known since then. He had been so concerned with making sure I rested and didn’t stress because he had fucking known then!
This was why he stopped me?
This!
Fucking controlling son of a no-good two-bit motherfucker!
He had never planned on letting me go. He was giving himself time. Time for whatever drug he’d been working on. He had lied and pretended to agree so I would tell him everything I knew.
He stopped me because he wanted another kid? A kid? Another fucking kid? That was it?
“I worked so hard,” I whispered, feeling a tear slide out of the corner of my eye. No one understood this feeling but me—even I wasn’t sure if I understood this feeling. I wasn’t sure if I was angrier at not finishing my plans, or pissed that it was Ethan who had stopped me. Or pissed at this baby. It was going to be a boy, wasn’t it? Only men could cause me this much emotional distress.
“You did, so very hard, and it wasn’t for nothing. Look around. You earned and fought for so much that your daughter drives a toy Bentley and has a life-sized dollhouse outside. You achieved more than anyone else. Don’t let the one thing you didn’t get cloud you from seeing that…put a light to the ring.”
I didn’t know what she meant. She offered me a small flashlight. Taking the ring out of the box, I put the light on it, and it cast pictures around the whole room.
“It’s me, Mommy!” Gigi exclaimed as she got out of her car to look up.
It was pictures of her. Not just her, though. When I turned the ring, there were pictures of Ethan and me. All the images we’d taken over the years together. Some with his family and me. Photos I’d never seen before of myself…even of me sleeping. It was our lives in diamonds.
“Mommy, that one’s messed up.” Gigi pointed to the blurry black and white photo. But it wasn’t blurry. It was as clear as an ultrasound could have been. Leave it to Ethan to do a pregnancy reveal for me and not the other way around.
“Being a Callahan comes with a lot of pain,” Evelyn said as she looked over the photos, too. “But there are also a lot of smiles. We just have to work hard for them. Fight for them. We have to glue ourselves back together when we are broken. As the head, Mrs. Callahan, it’s your job to make sure it happens, no matter what, and despite everything. This was what you wanted, too, remember?”
I closed the gift box.
Exhaling as I blinked the tears away.
He broke my wings and threw me into his cage. And right now, I needed to heal. But I was going to fly, goddammit. One way or another.
“I need to go wash my hands.”
HELEN
We sat just left of the bed, watching our father sleep, completely oblivious to anything that had happened or was happening. Neither of us wanted to admit the fact that we knew it wasn’t just exhaustion. We knew it wasn’t just grief. Grief was the reason behind it all but the drugs…that was why he was so weak. Ever since our mother had died, he’d chosen to dull his pain. We tried to stop him, we tried to calm him down, and I spent my time watching him. But somehow, if I just dozed off or turned my back, he’d find something to take. He didn’t care what. I searched the whole room and instructed the entire staff, yet he still ended up on something. And I still didn’t know where his stash was.
This was what Calliope had done to my family. She’d ruined us. I didn’t care what she said. I didn’t believe her.
“You should have let her burn,” I whispered to my brother as he sat quietly beside me.
“And if the fire spread to the entire house? How would we get him out?” he asked.
He was right. It wasn’t reason talking; it was hate. No matter what Calliope did or said, I would always hate her.
“Besides, I want to see what Mother left us,” he added, and I scoffed.
“Do you really believe her?”
“Yes, she didn’t care about anything at that moment. Why would she use it to lie? She doesn’t care if we hate her.”
I squeezed my fist. “She thinks it’s okay. That she sacrificed our mother because she may have been sick. She wants to throw off all the responsibility of her actions on Mom. I won’t let her. She stole the precious time we had left—”
“Who would they have been precious for? Maybe us but not Mom.”
I looked to him, not sure how he could say that. “We would have had a final Christmas, a proper goodbye—”
“She would have been like he is now,” he cut me off. “No, she’d most likely be worse because meds wouldn’t have helped her pain. So, she’d be in bed aching, crying, and Dad would be spending his time trying to figure out how to save her. Calling every doctor, having her poked and prodded, tested over and over again. We’d hold on to the hope he’d find a way and be in denial. Like you are in denial right now. We’d all be scared and in pain, ignoring her voice as she was in pain in order to keep her alive just a little longer. It wouldn’t have been proper goodbye. There are no proper goodbyes. It would just be her in pain, watching us in pain.”
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. “You don’t know that. Even if it happened like that at the end, when all hope was lost, we could have stayed around her. Instead, she was stabbed and left on the floor.”
“Wyatt said her true toxicology report showed she’d been injecting some toxins. It wasn’t given by Calliope. The whole time she had one of the maids help her brew it into her leaves in her tea. The plant is in the greenhouse hidden among her roses. She went there to take it. That’s how Calliope found out. She had—”
“Stop, I don’t want to know.” It made the feeling in my chest hurt so badly I had to rub my chest. “I don’t care. I don’t care. She was our mom, and she deserved better.”
He said nothing.
So, we went back to silence.
And in that silence, I also wanted to burn this place down. This godforsaken house and family that my mother had given all of her life and soul to. Over and over again, she’d given everything, and for what? For fucking what?
“How is your relationship with Wyatt?” he spoke up again softly, his eyes shifting on to me.
“Why does that matter?”
He didn’t answer.
And I didn’t push because I didn’t know what my relationship was with Wyatt anymore. Honestly, over the last year, I hadn’t paid much attention to anything but my father and my own pain. Right after my mother’s death, he’d disappeared for days. Only to come back and tell me he had been searching for answers. And he was sure it was Calliope who stabbed her. From there, I only focused on my father, my pain, and my desire to kill her.
Where had Wyatt fit into all of that?
My memories were just flashes of me screaming at him and him just standing there looking at me with sad eyes.
It wasn’t love anymore, but pity.
I had no clue how to fix this. I didn’t know how we were expected to function with our hearts ripped out. Everything was just broken now.
The Callahan family was broken.
That’s what my mother died for…a broken family.
Knock.
Knock.
“Not now,” I said.
The door opened anyway, and in came the woman I wanted to strangle the most, dressed in new clothes and a fresh face. Immediately, we both got up, but she ignored us and walked over to my father.
“What are you doing?” I snapped.
Again, she ignored me, and it was only then I noticed the tablet in her hands. She placed it toward my father, who still laid there like the dead. With that, she got back up and moved back to the door. Just as she left, the video came on, and my mother’s tired but smiling face was on the screen.
“Declan? Sweetheart, I’ll give you second,” she spok
e, and like magic, my father’s eyes opened. He didn’t move, and neither did we. My mother’s smiled so wide they made my eyes begin to sting. “I hope you’re listening. And I hope I do this video well. Calliope’s been very patient with me as I’ve choked a few times, trying to get the words out. So first and foremost, I want to say I am sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to a hundred and ten with you. I am so sorry. I really, really wanted to. I swear I did, baby. I swear.”
The tears rolled out of my father’s eyes as they spilled out of mine.
“I don’t know why my body is weak. I don’t know why the cancer came back. We worked so hard to kill it the first time. You worked so hard to see me through it, too. It sucks. I hate it. I want to live. I don’t want to die. I’m so scared of dying.” In the video, her eyes filled with tears, too. And she was handed a box of tissues by who I could only guess was Calliope.
“Should I start over?” she asked her.
“I don’t think you are ever not going to cry,” Calliope’s voice went on. “Keep going as you are. I’ll cut out all the bad parts.”
My mother nodded, blinking away her tears a few more times. “I don’t want to die, but I am dying. And it hurts. Every day it hurts physically, mentally, and emotionally. But even still, my biggest fear isn’t dying; it’s what will happen to you all once I am gone. I know you, baby. I know what’s in your head. First, your parents, and now me. We’ve all left you, and it is not fair. It hurt you badly. I think about how you will deal with that, and I can’t think of a way. I wrote you letters; Calliope said she’ll give them to you. But I doubt that will be enough, right? I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you. And I’m sorry about how I left you with no chance to fight back or try. Part of me wanted to tell you and the kids, but I couldn’t. Knowing kills the joy in everything. And I’ve had so much joy with you. With our children and our family. Can you live to protect that for me? Live and protect what I was forced to let go of? Helen is so stubborn; she’ll never accept this. I don’t want her to ruin her own life. Darcy, I’m scared Darcy will become something ugly and ruin his too. Baby, please…even if you're angry at me, or my choice, please forgive and protect everything I couldn’t.”