Mama’s head lolled; she was so drunk. “I loved him, but he didn’t love me the same way. He couldn’t have. He couldn’t have…”
“Mama, who…?”
“No one,” she answered, her smile sad. Resigned. “He’s no one, now. He has no name anymore. He’s just the man who raped me.”
I stared, her words slapping me across the face, brutal and harsh. That word, the ugliest heaviest word, carrying with it a lifetime of pain.
“That’s all he is,” Mama said. “All he can ever be. Except…he’s not. No matter how I try to make him nothing, he can’t ever be nothing.” She raised her tear-streaked face to mine. “Because he’s your father.”
The ground tipped out from under me and I fell to the carpet. My heartbeat had slowed to a heavy clanging in my chest, blood rushing to my ears.
“No, I…” I glanced around vaguely, not seeing. My mouth had gone dry. I couldn’t breathe. “It can’t be. He loved you. You said he loved you.”
“I thought he did too,” Mama said sadly, the sorrow emanating off her in waves. “But I told him I wanted to wait.” She shrugged, horrible in its finality. “He didn’t.”
The implications filled me. The cruel truth hollowing me out and leaving me empty.
Because what am I? The product of a nightmare. Mama’s nightmare in the flesh.
I don’t know how long I sat there, but voices surrounded us until the room felt suffocating. Bertie and Bibi and Rudy, all scolding or comforting. Letitia was kneeling next to me, speaking softly in my ear. I wanted to get up and run. I wanted to curl up in a ball right there on the floor.
Then strong arms wrapped around me and I burrowed into Ronan. Sought refuge in him, clinging to him and wishing I could crawl inside him and be safe.
“Ronan…”
“Ssshh.” He sounded angry. He felt angry, his body vibrating with it as he held me. He’d started to lift me, to get me out of there, when the doorbell rang. The house that had been bustling with raised voices suddenly hushed.
Rudy opened the door, and I heard men’s voices, indistinct. Then Ronan tensed around me all over again, holding me tighter.
“Shiloh.” Uncle Rudy’s voice was trembling. “These officers are here to see you.”
He stepped aside, and I saw two uniformed policemen in the doorway. A chill ran through me, leaving me numb. With Ronan’s help, I stood on stiff legs. Bibi had her hand to her mouth. Letitia’s eyes were wide.
“Shiloh Barrera?”
“Yes.” My voice didn’t sound like mine.
“Are you the owner of Rare Earth Jewelry?”
I felt the sledgehammer poised to fall again, about to change my life forever.
“Yes.”
Both men looked grim. Apologetic. “We’re going to need you to come with us.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The second trip to Rare Earth was fucking lightyears from the first, and I could hardly believe they both happened in the same night.
Bertie and Bibi stayed home with Shiloh’s mother who’d begun sobbing after spilling her secret and hadn’t stopped. The rest of us followed the cop car downtown. Rudy and Letitia took the Cadillac. I drove the Buick, glancing at Shiloh beside me. She sat silently, staring at nothing; her beautiful face was blank, shocked numb. Her perfect night, fucking ruined. I gripped the steering wheel tight.
The streets were empty, and the store was dark. The front entrance looked the same except for the police tape that ran across the front door and the squad car parked directly in front.
“It looks okay,” Shiloh said in a strange, small voice that made my stomach clench. “It looks okay…”
I grit my teeth.
“There’s been an incident…” the cops had said back at the house. I wanted more than anything for it all to be okay, but my gut told me it was bad. Real fucking bad.
I followed the cops around to the back parking lot, trying to bury my own rising nightmares at the sight of the red and blue lights. My only goal was to get Shiloh through this and then fix whatever the fuck needed fixing. All of it. Whatever it was, I’d make it right for her, somehow.
In the back lot, we climbed out of the car and I went to Shiloh’s side. She didn’t look at me or anyone else but walked tall and silent behind the cops to the rear door of the shop, to the first sign of damage. The wood around the lock had been pried away with a crowbar and the knob itself smashed off.
“They got in here,” one officer said—his nametag read Tran—leading us in. The lights in the backroom were on; everything looked intact. He nodded at the boxes of inventory—Shiloh’s life work. “Did they take anything?”
Shiloh shook her head. “Looks okay,” she said in that same strange voice. A flicker of hope lit up her eyes, but Tran shook his head.
“I know this is hard, but you need to see the rest.”
She nodded again, and we followed him into the shop that was dim.
“Responding officers made their initial inspection and dusted for prints, though, to be honest, there wasn’t much to dust.” He looked at Shiloh with a kind, sympathetic expression. “Brace yourself.”
He flicked on the light and Shiloh made a sound I hoped to never hear again as long as I fucking lived. Her hands flew to her mouth and she stared.
Letitia let out a little cry and Rudy threw his hands up. “Good goddamn.”
I said nothing, the rage burning me from the inside out. I could hardly breathe, never mind speak.
Motherfucking sons of shit-licking assholes…
Glittering under the pot lights Shiloh had installed during the shop’s renovation was an ocean of shattered glass. Every single display was smashed, including the front-facing glass on the cabinet that served as her cash register desk, the rings glittering with shards. The walls and floors were tagged with black spray paint in random zigzags and lines, the faces of the women in the artwork blacked out, and what was left of the display boxes were marked with haphazard sprays.
Shiloh had been so careful with every penny of the start-up business loan, keeping costs down and using her own talents to make simple things beautiful. She let me pay for a fraction of what I wanted to spend of my inheritance, insisting on doing as much as she could by herself.
And now she stood in the center of the rubble of her dreams that had, a few hours ago, been perfect.
I moved beside her, glass crunching under my boots, not knowing what to say or do.
“Who would do such a thing?” Rudy asked.
“That’s what we’re hoping you’ll be able to tell us,” the other cop—Murray—said, his notepad out. “Did you remove all your items from the window displays before close of business?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Anything else look taken?”
She stared blankly at the jewelry in the smashed and sprayed displays, covered in glass, some pieces shattered too.
“Don’t know,” she said dully. “Don’t think so.”
He frowned. “Not a robbery, then. Just straight mayhem. Whoever the perp was, they only wanted to cause damage.”
And then a ball of pure ice seemed to slam into my chest, making my blood run cold.