Those dreams seemed so far away now. Another lifetime.
“I told you Doug cheated on Roni. He always made sure she knew, just to twist the knife. What would she do? Leave him? He knew she wouldn’t. He knew just how much she loved him, how far he could push her, and he used her love to control and manipulate. Looking back, I think it was a game to him. He was a sociopath at the least, more likely a psychopath.”
Her father had taken Roni’s love and twisted it to his own ends. It had been horrible to watch as an impressionable young girl. Even then, she had known it was wrong.
Her mother had loved him so much and Jess would have been surprised if Doug gave his wife and family even a passing thought throughout his day.
She was silent for a long time, listening to the wind and the waves and the dog’s soft breathing. She didn’t want to tell him the rest. How could she stop now, though?
“When I was fifteen and Rachel thirteen, he...pushed her past the breaking point. He threatened to leave, which of course was nothing new. I can’t count the times he had done it before. Something felt different this time and I think...I think she felt it, too. He started packing his bags, telling our mother the whole time about the other woman he was leaving her for. Her name was Susie. She was younger than Roni. Prettier. Smarter. Everything my mother had once been but that he had ground out of her over the years.”
Once upon a time, her mother had been soft, loving. Jess had flashes of memory of Roni reading to them, of her making cookies, of her playing dolls with them.
Sometimes it shocked her to remember her mother had been seventeen when she had Jess and would have only been a few years older than Jess was now when she died.
“This was apparently her breaking point. As he walked out into the living room with his suitcase, Mom followed him, begging him not to go. When he...when he laughed at her, she pulled out his own handgun that he kept stashed by their bed and, without saying a word, shot him three times in the heart.”
He inhaled sharply. “Oh, Jess.”
“A lot of that night is a blur. I do remember that Rachel and I both screamed. It went on and on. That seemed to wake Mom out of whatever trance or spell or whatever she had slipped into. She stared at us then she stared down at our father, who I think was dead before the second gunshot.”
This was the worst part, the part that had replayed over and over in her head for many years after that night. Sometimes she still woke up from dreaming about it, shaking and nauseous.
“Roni...our mother looked at us both one more time for maybe five seconds and then without another word, not even an ‘I’m sorry,’ she lifted the gun to her own head and squeezed the trigger.”
29
Nate
She had told him it was ugly. Nate didn’t know what he had been braced to hear but a murder-suicide where her mother had been the murderer probably wouldn’t have made the list.
He could feel her trembling, barely imperceptible shudders that broke his heart. He wasn’t sure she would welcome his touch but he couldn’t sit beside her and let her shake without at least trying to offer comfort.
Without asking permission, he eased an arm around her shoulders. After a frozen moment when he held his breath, thinking she would shove him onto the sand, she sagged against him, nestling in like a tiny bird finding safe shelter in a hailstorm.
“That’s what haunts me most,” she said after a long pause, speaking as if from some distant place. “Roni knew damn well we were there. She looked at us. It was like she didn’t even see us, like we didn’t matter one iota. I’m not sure she even spared a thought for us, for the carnage she was leaving behind in our lives. She didn’t care.”
Her voice wobbled a little, breaking his heart. “She knew and she didn’t care.”
Her trembling intensified and he sensed she was fighting back sobs. He wanted to tell her to let them go. She deserved to weep and cry and rail at the world. “I’m sorry. So damn sorry, Jess.”
She nodded against his chest but said nothing, just held him while she continued to shake.
He had to wonder how long it had been since she had let all this out. Had she ever?
He held her while the surf crashed into the shore and an owl hooted somewhere above them and the moon danced on the waves.
After a long time, her trembling began to ease. He wanted to think he had provided comfort. Given what he had learned about Jess Clayton during her time in Cape Sanctuary, he guessed she had simply won the battle against her emotions.
“So there you have the whole ugly story,” she said, sliding away from him and regaining control. “Our parents died in a murder-suicide when Rachel and I were teenagers.”
Violently.
That was how she had told him their parents died.
He had never dreamed the truth behind that single word would carry so much pain.
“How did you and Rachel end up separated?”
Her heavy sigh was filled with sadness, regret, pain. “After our parents died, we were immediately put into an emergency foster home. It wasn’t the greatest situation. I...acted out.”
“Acted out how?”
“I was in a fight with another girl. She had targeted Rachel, for some reason. She was the tough girl in the group home, the top dog, and I think she mistook Rachel’s sweet nature for weakness and pounced on it. I wasn’t sweet. Or weak.”
“I hope you kicked her ass.”
“Yeah,” she said simply. “I was unhappy and angry and wanted everyone there to know you didn’t mess with either of the Clayton sisters. But she told the staff I attacked her for no reason and they believed her, which meant I had an immediate black mark against me.”
She was quiet, absently petting Cinder, who was being shockingly well-behaved.
“After maybe six months in the group home, a spot opened up here in Cape Sanctuary with the Millers but they could only take one foster kid. Our social worker thought it would be a good fit for Rachel and I knew she needed to get out of the group home. So she came here and I stayed.”
It would have killed Jess to be separated from the sister she loved and adored, the one she had fought to protect.
She had lost everything.
“That must have been hard for you.”
She looked out to the vast darkness of the sea, her features tense in profile. “It worked out for the best, didn’t it? She loved it here. She met Cody, fell in love, worked hard to get good grades. Everything I would have wanted for her.”
“What about you?”
She shrugged and met his gaze. “I survived.”
That told him everything. His heart ached in his chest and he wanted to gather her against him again, to whisper that she was amazing and brave and she had done far more than just survive. She had thrived, under the weight of pain that would have made most people buckle at the knees.