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Our mother’s demise had started with a heartbreak. I looked like our mom when I cried. Maybe Jackson had been telling me something.
A sharp sting across my face and ice-cold water raining down on me jerked me into the present. I opened my eyes and found Bea breathing hard and glaring at me. She was soaking wet. I gasped as I realized I was soaking wet too. Blinking up into the rain, I saw that we were in my shower.
“If you think I’m going to let you do this to yourself, you’re really not as smart as I thought you were.” Bea slapped my face again and shook me. “You’ve had time to pick yourself up and you haven’t, so now you get me. Finish your shower. You stink and your hair could fill an oil fryer. I better see scrubbed pink skin and clearer eyes when I come back in here.”
I let out a shuddering breath and started crying again.
“That’s fine. You can cry while you shower. You can even cry when you dry off and come out to the kitchen to eat.” She gripped my face and leaned in even closer. “You’re going to be sorry you met this side of me.”
I wasn’t. When I was clean, fed, and fading quickly on a freshly made bed, I wasn’t sorry at all. I tried to thank her, but I was asleep before she could even step away from the bed.
59.
***Memphis***
Cartersatacrossfromme at the patio table and ate his breakfast while I drank a smoothie. He lifted his head to look at me every so often, but mostly he didn’t need company. He was a solo boy, through and through. Meanwhile, I was desperate to speak to someone who could speak back.
I was doing everything I was supposed to do, according to Bea, who I thought might have a dominatrix streak to her, but I still couldn’t escape the truth of what I’d done and what I’d lost. No amount of food, soap, or sleep was going to fix me.
It didn’t help that their mom’s books were made up of a large percentage of romance novels. I’d read through everything else, from a homeschooling book to a book that just described illnesses and medical procedures. If I wanted to read anything else, it had to be romance and I couldn’t do it. It’d only been a week since all hell broke loose. I couldn’t remember the conversion formula for how much time was acceptable for grieving a relationship, but I was still in my allotted time frame. Probably.
I’d been avoiding going outside the front door because I was frankly terrified of seeing the guys again. Throwing myself at their feet and begging for forgiveness probably wouldn’t get me very far, but it was what I figured I’d do. Staying inside the house day in and day out was slowly driving me back to the point of insanity. Seeing how easily I’d slid into that pit of despair really made me aware of how fragile I was at that point in time.
Bea stopped by once a day, but she said she was so busy at the main house that she couldn’t come more than that and she never got to stay long. I worried that I’d made her hate me, too. There were a lot of hours in the day for me to just sit and think. I was going to have to venture out.
Carter finished his breakfast and cleaned himself while staring at me. When he was done, he strolled over to the steps I’d made him and left me sitting there.
“That leaves me no choice.” I finished my smoothie and washed my cup before looking through my clothes and wondering if I could make my wardrobe last through a pregnancy. Most of my clothes being too small wasn’t a good sign.
I had one dress made of out a T-shirt material and while it technically fit, looking at myself in it made me feel beyond strange. It hugged my belly and made me look way more pregnant than I felt. It was also fire-engine red, so I felt like the Kool-Aid man.
I wasn’t going to let a dress stop me from going out and hopefully running into a friendly face. I just wouldn’t look at a mirror again. No problem.
The front door felt like a portal to a land I wasn’t supposed to enter. I felt like I was breaking all kinds of laws when I walked quietly down the path and out of the gate. I almost felt like a cat burglar, if cat burglars were starting to waddle and wore the least sneaky outfit ever.
I kept to my side of the maze and just walked around the path, looking at the flowers and hoping to run into Pete, especially. I nearly cried when I wound my way around a curve in the path and saw Pete trimming a hedge across the way. I moved off the path and rushed across the yard to see him.
“Pete! Oh, thank God. I’ve—” I cut myself off when I saw the look on his face as he saw me coming at him. “What’s wrong?”
He started gathering his tools and just held them to his chest as he made a quick beeline towards the main house. When I called his name a second time, he stopped and turned to face me with a sad look on his face. “I’m so sorry, Memphis. I can’t lose this job. You know it’s perfect for me.”
I held out my hands, trying to show that I had no ill intent. “I don’t want you to lose your job either, Pete. I was just coming to see if I could help you with anything. I…what’s going on?”
He looked around us and moved closer. “They told us all if we interact with you, they’ll fire us. They’re serious, honey. I’ve never seen them like this.”
I froze. “They said they wouldfireanyone who talked to me? Are you sure they said that? That’s so crazy, Pete.”
He looked over his shoulder and started backing away. “They made it very clear, Memphis. I’m sorry.”
I stared after him as he rushed away from me, dropping tools and scrambling to grab them as he went. I couldn’t understand it at first. It didn’t make a difference if I talked to their staff. Unless they wanted to hurt me. Cutting me off from their staff meant taking my friends away, leaving me miserable and all alone at the back of their property.
Anger was slow to build, but once it did, I’d worked myself into a frenzy. It was wrong, what they were doing. I was stomping across the yard, towards the main house, without taking a moment to consider if it was a good idea. I was going to give them a piece of my mind. I deserved their hate and coldness, but making me suffer all alone was cruel.
I burst in through the backdoor and went towards the dining room, where I heard speaking and could smell something delicious. If they were shocked to see me standing at the end of the dining room table, blazing mad, they didn’t show it.
I planted my hands on my hips and opened my mouth to shout the house down, but seeing them was a hit right to the chest. They looked different somehow. I wasn’t sure what it was, but they did. Their coldness was like a second skin that disguised the men I loved. I hated it. I hated everything about what I’d done and how I’d hurt them.
Jake’s words came back to me then. Hurt people hurt people. I’d hurt them and they were getting even. I didn’t like it, but I’d started it.
