“What?” His words are like razor sharp barbed wires being tightly wrapped around my neck.
“She grabbed you and ran out of the house with the intention of getting somewhere else for the night, but she never made it.”
Beth’s fingers tighten around my arm and I can feel the tremor vibrating through her body as she mirrors my devastation. I want him to stop, but it feels as though my tongue has been stapled to the floor of my mouth.
“Your father had decided to chase her, and the car wound up underneath a trailer.”
Beth’s mom’s face is wet as she relives the horrors. With trembling hands, she hands us a scrapbook that I am far too frozen to take. Beth reaches forward and pulls it from her mother’s hold.
“We’d kept clippings from newspapers that spoke of her accident. It was tragic, but it also helped to see what the entire world thought of Eloise. Maybe this will bring you some more closure.”
Beth looks at the closed scrapbook in her lap. She’s a weeping stone statue beside me.
“Beth?”
“I can’t,” she whispers, “I ca-I can’t open it.” Her voice is shaking, and I reach over and hug her the same way her dad just hugged her mom.
“Together?” I ask and she nods.
I open the scrap book and there are newspaper clippings detailing the horrific accident and marveling at the fact that the little boy had survived. In one article, it explains how the mother was found on the passenger side of the vehicle, wrapped protectively around her child.
In another article, eyewitnesses report that there had been a high-speed chase involving the “victim” and another person who was later identified as her husband. An anonymous woman came forward and confessed to having an affair with him and being caught in the act just moments before the tragic accident.
The article that stands out the most bores the headline:
Guardian Angel on earth, as she is in heaven.
“The theory is that she realized what was about to happen and in a split second decided to-”
“Save me,” the words roll off my tongue and fall into my lap with a heavy thud. My father was a fucking monster. “She saved my life.” I can’t stop saying it. I didn’t kill her. My father had lied to me and apparently to himself.
How was he not locked up?
Why didn’t someone do something?
Why didn’t he tell me the fucking truth?
Why did he make me think I was responsible?
Even as I ask myself the question, I already know all the answers. I’m nauseous to my core. I remember my father’s mantra. It’s something he always said. Something he passed on to me. Something I’ve said many times and I’m hit with a new wave of guilt as I stare down at Bethany crying beside me.
The right amount of money in the right hands can do just about anything.
Fucking bastard.
Bethany looks up at me and smiles.
“You were wrong,” she says softly, and she doesn’t need to say anything else.
I can feel ten-year-old me sitting under a table in the corner of the great hall of our house, unable to speak or recall the joys that he once experienced with his mother.
The little boy who was with her before he closed his eyes and who woke up to find her gone forever. My body shakes as tears claw their way out of me.
“It wasn’t my fault.” I hear myself saying, but it’s Mavvy and not me that’s being set free from the lies of a vile old man.
“Why would you think it’s your fault?” Her dad asks, and I finally break.
“You’re okay. We’ve got you.” Her mom says as I struggle to catch a breath. For the first time in my life, I feel like I belong.
For the first time in forever, I know what it feels like to have a family.
For the first time in my life, I don’t feel guilty.
44
“I’m still not convinced,” Christopher says. His face is pointed forward and there’s no mistaking the sweat on his brow. Just as there was no mistaking the way that, only a short moment ago, his heart thundered like it had been hit with Thor’s hammer. It’s such a contrast to a few hours ago when we were sitting in their living room, munching on chips over a game of Uno. An even starker contrast to how at ease he was while we shoveled forkfuls of Lasagna into our mouths.
We’re sitting in my Lamborghini now, having left the ladies inside over a half an hour ago. The moon is high in the sky, further illuminated by the twinkling of faraway stars. It’s much later than either one of us expected this night to carry on for. Not that I’m complaining.
It’s been two weeks since I’ve properly been welcomed into Beth’s family.
Two weeks that I’ve felt like the world really and truly was mine for the taking.
Two weeks of knowing what it feels like to have a family.
I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But, by the look in Christopher’s eyes, it looks like I might need to trade my Lamborghini for it. That was the whole purpose of him taking this trip with me. The car scared him. He wanted me to prove to him that he has nothing to be afraid of. Beth’s mom told him he was being ridiculous. She’s protective of her daughter, but Christopher and Beth, they have a special connection. It’s great to see that not all fathers are like mine. And hopefully, if it should ever come to it, I’ll fall a fucking planet away from my father’s tree when it comes to the kind of parent I’m going to be.
“Oh come on.” I shake my head at him. “You can’t tell me you don’t at least see an inch of the appeal.”
“Not even a little bit,” he deadpans. “But at least it’s pretty?”
I laugh and put on my best serious face. I really am pleading with him, something I never thought I’d ever do in my life. Much less to be okay with it. How times change. “But I’m careful, Christopher. Seriously, I got you here in one piece, didn’t I?”
He places a hand against his chest and sighs loudly. “My heart certainly doesn’t feel like it’s in one piece.” Shifting slightly, he turns so that he’s facing me head on. “What about a Volvo or…Nissan or…you know, something reliable. Something dependable.”
“The Lambo’s not gonna let me down.”
“The Lambo scares the living crap out of me. You and my daughter whizzing through the city in the Lambo…it terrified me before. Now that I’ve been in the Lambo…”
“I’m a really good driver.”
He sighs. “And a really fast driver.”
“I slow it all the way down when she’s here with me.” He raises a brow, challenging me to go back on my lie. “Not initially,” I admit. “But you know Beth. She’s relentless. And kinda strict.”
“You need to slow it all the way down even when she’s not in here with you.”
“Deal,” I say. Much as I like watching the city lights whizz on by, I know the risks of putting foot to pedal. If he cares enough that I don’t rear-end a light post, then I’ll put the dominos in order and make sure it doesn’t happen.
“Fine,” he says. It’s not the answer I was expecting and my eyebrows arch in confusion.
“Fine?”