Chain of Title

by Robyn Roze

  ****

  Gingerly opening and flattening the crumpled paper on top of the dresser, Shayna traced her finger over the sharp stroke of each letter that he had written. Breathing in sharply, allowing a tear to drop onto the note, she shook her head in disbelief, anger, and loss. Shayna had known this was exactly where she would end up the moment she wadded the note and threw it across the room. She had foreseen fishing it out from under her dresser to stand staring at it like some lovesick girl. She huffed at the thought.

  She was sick.

  Sick of losing the men she loved.

  Waking up to a note on Sean’s pillow when she reached for his warm body this morning was not the way she had planned to start the day.

  Now his sweet words from last night, the plans they had made while wrapped sweaty and naked in bed, came into painful focus. They had agreed to leave Mt. Pleasant, sell Gaetano’s, his loft, and her house. Maybe they would find a place to settle in the future, but for now, they had decided to travel wherever the winds took them. Live each day as if it were the last, moment by moment, together.

  A ragged breath pushed from her lungs. She understood now that Sean wanted to soothe her last night and allow them both to indulge in the fantasy, in the dream of their future, before reality slammed into them, upending everything. They had lived happily in that bubble and that was all they would get. She would never see him again. She knew that now.

  The reasons were many and complicated. The Morales mission was suicide and doomed to fail. If by some miracle Sean made it out alive, Shayna knew he still wouldn’t come back. He didn’t really believe she could forgive what he had done, or maybe he couldn’t forgive himself.

  She dropped to her knees, staring at his words, wishing desperately that they could fill the chilling emptiness hollowing her out. If she stared at them long enough, maybe he would reappear, or maybe she could disappear.

  Words had never meant much to her before, but now, they were everything, all she had left of him. Sean followed through on his words with actions, and now was no different. The truth in the words he spoke to her the first night they made love caused her head to hurt and her heart to break. He was right, true to his word once again.

  She would never get him out of her system.

  CHAPTER 29

  The icy January air sliced across Shayna’s face and she tugged her wool scarf up around her mouth and nose for protection, breathing in deeply before releasing a powdery gossamer cloud in front of her. The canvas tarp whipped and snapped in the unforgiving wind and then she felt Jack slide his arm around her, tugging her into him and warming her immediately. She wanted to look up at him, but couldn’t. She hadn’t been able to make eye contact with anyone. She shared responsibility for this gathering and the circumstances that led to it.

  Closing her eyes, she tried once again to push away the image of Frank’s mangled, decaying body from her mind. Jack and Dani had begged her not to do it and with dental records, it hadn’t even been necessary. There was no doubt whose body had washed ashore. However, punishment was required for her complicity, and she knew the monstrous sight of the man she had once loved would haunt her forever, punish her forever, awake or asleep.

  The ripples from seemingly harmless choices, when measured against the reality of the present, had abandoned her in purgatory. She hadn’t understood how her decision to see him that day, made in anger and haste, would ultimately impact so many people’s lives. She would always regret having gone to his house, upset over a piece of land. She sniffed and blinked back the tears, glancing down and mindlessly scraping at the thin layer of snow beneath her shoe, trying to make sense of it all. If she hadn’t gone that day, maybe Frank would still be alive. Maybe Sean would have spared him.

  Maybe.

  However, at the end of the day, Sean was responsible for his actions, just as Frank was for his. With all that had happened between them, she had never wished him dead, never wished him harm, just wanted him out of her life. She squeezed her eyes tightly at the unforgiving finality of that wish, now come true—careful what you wish for. Tears pushed at the back of her lids.

  Now Danielle’s father was dead.

  Shayna knew how that felt, and she had never wanted that for Dani, not this early in her young life. Not only did Danielle have to deal with the link between her kidnapping and Frank’s gambling, but also with his death. Shayna knew who was responsible for that, but she was good at keeping secrets. Of course, the FBI concluded it was a hit by Morales’ people, made to look like an accident or suicide. Either Frank hadn’t been able to come up with the full amount, or he had and they killed him anyway.

  She remembered Agent Kepler explaining the coroner’s report in excruciating detail. Even with all of the damage to Frank’s body from the fall, sea life and exposure to the elements, the examiner ruled out suicide based on evidence she had found of a stabbing—distinctive scoring on underlying bone from a blade. Shayna closed her eyes and choked back a sob. Maybe it was for the best that Sean had left.

  Maybe.

  The amens and shuffling brought her eyes up, and she caught sight of Frank’s portrait, his sapphire eyes seemingly locked on her alone, judging her, beseeching her, causing her to gasp and her guilt to spread like fire through her veins. Dani leaned against her, and handed off a single rose. Shayna intentionally pushed the thorns through her gloves and into her skin, the pain; both punishment and confirmation that she existed, bringing her focus back to the present.

  “Come with me, Mom,” Dani whispered, linking her hand with Shayna’s.

  Shayna nodded numbly, and approached the sleek ebony casket with its shiny silver adornments. They placed their roses on the glossy surface and waited a few moments before stepping away as others began to approach and leave their offerings. She wanted to run, hide, go home, and never leave again.

  With the service concluded, Shayna started walking down the gentle slope and into the full force of the winter storm threatening above them with its gray clouds heavy with snow. She could feel others following her, but she didn’t want to talk. She just wanted to leave, to be left alone to wallow in her misery. She deserved it.

  “Mom,” Danielle called behind her. “Wait up.”

  She slowed and eventually stopped. Danielle and Harper came to stand in front of her while Jackson and his family huddled off to the side, braving the blustery elements.

  “We’re going to Uncle Jack’s. Why don’t you come too, Mom. Please?”

  Shayna shook her head. “No. I want to go home, sweetheart. Another time, okay?” she asked weakly.

  “Mom you need to be with people. You’ve been shut up in that house since...” Danielle trailed off and looked at the ground.

  Shayna’s eyes flicked to Harper. “Have you two made a decision yet?” she asked glancing between the young couple, noting Dani’s perturbation at the abrupt change in subject.

  Danielle frowned at her mother and then she looked up at Harper. Her sapphire eyes immediately softened and a smile won out. She turned her father’s eyes back to Shayna. “We’re going to elope, Mom. We’ll have a reception or something when we get back.”

  Shayna was relieved. “I think that sounds perfect, love. Still thinking about touring Europe?” They nodded and wrapped their arms around one another. Shayna’s heart clenched. The news was welcome. The idea of a wedding without Frank to walk Danielle down the aisle was too much to bear right now. “When do you leave?”

  “Next week. I’m getting you out of that house before we leave, Mom,” Danielle warned with her head tilted, raising her brow and tightening her lips.

  “It’s a deal, sweetheart.” Shayna hugged them both and then waved to Jackson and his family as she walked away, pulling her coat tighter. He scowled and shook his head. Clearly disappointed that not even Danielle could convince her to join them. She understood their concerns. They were valid. She had become a bit of a recluse since Sean left, and everything else that followed only compounded matters.

>   Split up.

  Broken up.

  God, she hated telling people that was why Sean was absent. It was so far from the truth. Torn apart was more accurate. Not what she had ever wanted, but she wasn’t given a choice. Sean took it from her.

  The drive home had become treacherous with the drifts and blowing snow, especially on her side of Lake Indigo. Kicking off her shoes and dropping her coat on the floor of the mudroom, Shayna made her way to the kitchen and tossed her purse and keys on the counter. She pulled a bottle of wine from the refrigerator and poured herself a glass. She had repealed her prohibition on alcohol. It somehow made her feel closer to Sean. He always liked a glass of wine in the evening. Now she did to.

  Stepping into the great room and turning on the fireplace, she weaved around the piles of boxes and items pulled from the attic: Dani’s keepsakes, pictures, photo albums and paper work strewn about. The place looked ransacked, but there really was a method to her madness. There were so many decisions to make. Shayna was ready to clean house, to start letting go of things, especially the past.

  She picked up Frank’s Last Will and Testament. The man had not changed a thing since the divorce. She shook her head in disbelief. Now she would have to administer his estate. Shayna let out a loud sigh. More punishment. Fortunately, his substantial life insurance would go a long way to paying off his debts, along with the key-man policy that CCL had on him. In the end it would work out, and the mess he had created would be resolved.

  A pile of framed photos caught her attention. Reaching over, she picked one off the top. It was a picture of her and of Frank in happier times—younger, smiling, arms draped easily around one another. They looked like the perfect couple, contented and settled with each other. She bit back the sting of tears and placed it back on the pile, looking around at what was left of Frank Chastain’s life. She’d had his personal effects from his house brought here last week—now a mish mash with her stuff. Danielle didn’t want to go through anything yet. She wasn’t ready. Shayna planned to sort, organize and box everything up and store it for Danielle, until she was ready to face it someday.

  After adjusting the flames in the fireplace, Shayna shifted over to the windows and watched as the snow piled up on the deck. From the looks of it, she wouldn’t be going anywhere for a few days. That was just fine with her.

  Sipping wine and examining her reflection, she tortured herself with the question that gnawed relentlessly at her. The question that kept her up at night.

  Why had she been able to forgive Sean so easily and not Frank?

  Why Sean?

  In the reflection of the window, she noticed the glint of a metal box near the fireplace. Pivoting and ambling toward it, she stared for a moment and then felt her heart begin to race as her fingers threaded through the handle. Putting the wine glass down, she sat with the metal box on her lap, gliding her hands all along the smooth oblong container. There was no reason to open it. She already knew what was inside—her mother’s letters.

  She shook her head softly. Ben Montgomery had never stopped loving Abigail. That fact had always angered her, defied all logic. Why didn’t he ever let her go? Why didn’t he ever move on? How could he have possibly loved her until the day he died after everything she had done? How could he have forgiven her?

  Shayna’s breathing picked up as comprehension began swirling around her and then sucker punched her. The air all but left her lungs at the sudden clarity. She finally understood her father after all these years, because she now knew she was no different. The acute understanding thundered in her head until it ached.

  Sean was her Abigail. She had forgiven him for something that others—friends, family—never would. And they certainly would never understand her ability to do so. She didn’t completely understand it herself.

  She thought back to her parent’s story. Abigail was sixteen when she became pregnant with Jackson. Ben was nineteen. They married immediately and went on to have two more children. Abigail felt trapped, but Ben never did. However, knowing her father, Shayna imagined he felt guilty, complicit, for Abigail’s ultimate unhappiness and eventual abandonment. He had said as much.

  Before Alzheimer’s completely robbed him, Ben had made a comment for which there was no context. It didn’t belong in the discussion they were having that day and now it resonated deeply. That moment played with vivid clarity in Shayna’s mind. How he had looked her directly in the eyes and said with utter sincerity and lucidity, it wasn’t all her fault, squirt. Don’t hate her forever. Shayna shuddered. Clearly, he had forgiven Abigail. But had he ever forgiven himself?

  Could she ever forgive herself?

  Shayna exhaled sharply in unexpected relief, as so many years of anger seemed to fade and melt away. She understood now, really understood her father—understood herself.

  A silent stream of tears ran down her cheeks as memories played in her head. Withholding forgiveness and hanging on to so much anger over the years about Abigail, Wes, and Frank, had become suffocating, unhealthy. The chains from the past that she still carried had grown too heavy. She needed to cut herself loose to have any hope of continuing to put one foot in front of the other, any hope of putting her life back together.

  With a deep sigh of contemplation and burgeoning hope, Shayna hesitated to think she might even get a few consecutive hours of sleep tonight. Maybe these recent revelations would quiet the usual cacophony in her head now that she was finally willing to face them and deal with the stifling overgrowth in her life—thanks in no small part to Sean. Because of him, she had finally learned that she was capable of forgiveness, even when others wouldn’t understand how she possibly could.

  “I understand now, Dad,” she whispered to his memory.

  Now, she needed to learn how to extend that forgiveness to others.

  Maybe even to herself.

  ****

  “That’s not the way I remember it, Jackson,” Shayna teased, emphasizing his name in just the way she knew made him nuts. She loved the easy banter and teasing that had finally returned between them. She giggled and shrugged at her big bear of a brother, who rolled his eyes and waved her off as she put the casserole in the oven while he continued massaging the steaks with his special seasonings. Her brother loved to cook out—even in the dead of winter. He was officially nuts.

  “I can’t believe I still have to put this crap next to real meat,” he scoffed, grabbing a package of hot dogs with a look of disgust.

  “Oh, they’ll come around eventually. It’s only your youngest that still want that mystery meat. And they won’t be young that much longer,” Shayna said with a pang of nostalgia.

  “Hey, when does that niece of mine get back anyway?”

  Shayna glanced out over the desolate expanse of Jack’s rolling backyard visible through the two-story wall of windows. No green in sight. No life anywhere. She really hated the winter and its cold reminder of what was ahead of her.

  “I imagine she and Harper will come back when they get tired of sexing it up and running around naked on nude beaches.” She flicked her eyes over her shoulder. Bingo. Her brother was officially mortified. Shayna tried hard to bite back the laughter.

  “I cannot believe you just said that about your own daughter.”

  “I can’t believe you don’t remember being that age and—”

  “And she’s your daughter!”

  “And she’s doing exactly what she should be doing. I’m jealous as hell, if you want to know the truth.”

  Jackson’s hands flew up to cover his ears. “Okay, I’m officially done with you. Don’t want to hear it. I have grilling to do.”

  “You’re such a prude! This is exactly why I miss Scotty.” She grinned with her head tilted, knowing how much that comment would irritate him.

  His eyes narrowed. “If I didn’t have prime rib in my hands right now, I’d squeeze you until you took that back.”

  Shayna warmed on the inside remembering those long ago, cherished days when he use to
do just that to get his way with her.

  “There will be none of that, Jackson Montgomery,” Emily quipped as she tossed her keys in a bowl and set her bag on a barstool. Then she yanked off her purple beanie, stuffed it into her coat pocket, and smoothed down the strawberry blonde fly aways. “Our kids have gotten enough bad ideas from you,” she said with a feigned scowl, as she zeroed in on Shayna for a hug. Jackson headed outside and Natalie and Jake followed behind their mom, the youngest of the Montgomery brood. Shrugging off their coats, the twins smiled, waved, and then took their karate-outfitted bodies in the direction of the door leading down to the recreation room.

  “Out of those gi’s first,” Emily ordered without ever turning back to look at them. She had eyes in the back of her head. All mothers do. “Now that Jack is outside, we can talk,” Emily said, as she pointed the remote and turned on the TV.

  It was customary for the TV to be on at all times whenever Emily was in the room. Shayna could hear Anderson Cooper’s voice in the background. No surprise there. Her sister-in-law was a news junkie. Emily grabbed two bottles of water and motioned to Shayna to join her at the kitchen table.

  “I am so glad things have gotten back to normal, Shayna. Jack will never admit it, but he was kind of lost without you when all that business was going on with your mother and then,” she glanced down at the floor, “everything else that happened.”

  Shayna exhaled softly. Everything else that happened had brought her to her knees and forever changed her, leaving no one to talk to about it. Keeping the hurt locked away and not giving it a voice had always been second nature to her in the past. Now, as never before, she wished there was someone she could talk to about it, wished for a way to be free of it.

  She clasped Emily’s hand. “I’m glad, too, Em. I really am. I missed all of you.”

  “You know Jack really misses Frank. They were close and he was always so good with the kids...” she trailed off clearly seeing images from the past.