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The one and only time I’d seen the two together in the same vicinity of one another, it hadn’t lasted long because they’d both immediately gone on the defensive.
“God,” she whispered. “It’s no wonder she hates me. I ruined her childhood, and my parents always chose my side over hers.”
Before I could tell her that her parents had, indeed, been part of the problem, said parents walked in the door.
They didn’t stop to knock. Didn’t stop to greet us. They walked straight in, briefly swept their eyes over a too-still Landry, and focused on their other daughter. The favorite.
“You will not do this,” Lina’s mother ordered. “I didn’t spend eighteen years of my life making sure that you were healthy to have you throw it away now.”
Lina’s eyes narrowed on her mother, not correcting them in their obviously misguided assumptions that she was donating part of her liver to Landry. “You think donating half of my liver to my sister is throwing my life away?”
Lina and Landry’s mother, Vienna, lifted her lip in a silent snarl. Moments later, she turned to her husband with a disgusting scowl on her face. “You fix this. Fix it now, or you’ll be sorry.”
With that, she walked until she was standing just outside the room, leaving Lina sitting beside Landry’s bed, and me standing in between her chair and Landry’s. Lina and Landry’s father, Albert, standing by the door, seconds away from leaving the room as well.
He looked sad…and tired.
“Dad?” Lina whispered. “What’s the problem here? This is Landry. This is my sister. What the hell is going on?”
If Lina hadn’t looked unaffected by the entire debacle, I might have been in a different state of mind and forced Albert from the room just to make sure that Albert didn’t have a chance to change anyone’s mind about helping Landry.
But Lina was so determined to help I didn’t think anything would change her mind.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Albert said, looking at the bed Landry was lying in with a look of defeat on his face. “God, I just can’t.” He took a deep breath and blew it out harshly before beginning to speak. “Landry was a mistake,” Albert whispered. “She’s your half-sister, not your real sister. And despite what we allowed y’all to think, Landry was conceived the all-natural way…only she wasn’t conceived with your mother. She was conceived by me and another woman—your mother’s sister.”
Out of all the things I’d been expecting him to say, that hadn’t been it.
“Senna, your mother’s sister, died a couple years after Landry was born. We didn’t know about it until Landry arrived with a note from Senna. Senna had died from cancer, and her nanny had delivered her to our front porch. About two days before that, you were so goddamn sick…it was a fluke that y’all were matches. Kismet. That’s the only reason that your mother agreed for her to stay.”
And then it all made a sick sort of sense.
Why Landry was hated so much by her mother. Why Landry had been treated like a stepchild. Why Landry had been kept away from her sister.
Why, ultimately, she was treated like she didn’t belong.
“Get out,” I said to them both. “Get out, and don’t come back.”
“You can’t kick me out of my own daughter’s hospital room,” Albert stiffened.
I laughed. “Is she your daughter? Because honestly, to me, it seems like you treated her more as a person that held the key to keeping your wife happy. As long as Landry was useful to have around, she was allowed to stay. The moment she became not useful to you, she was tossed aside, treated as if she wasn’t worth the effort.” I snarled. “Well let me tell you something, mother fucker. Landry’s worth it. You’ve missed out on everything, and you have nobody to blame for it but yourself.”
Albert took a step back at the vehemence in my voice.
Vienna snorted from the hallway through the partially open door and called out. “We’ll go. Come, Lina.”
Lina shook her head. “Not this time, Mom.” She paused. “What did you do with my letters that I wrote to Landry?”
Vienna scowled as she poked her head back in the hospital room. “Put them somewhere that wouldn’t disrupt the system. Now, you either come with me, or everything changes for you. You can find someone else to pay for your medical bills, and someone else to make sure that you’re always safe. If you let that girl in your life, you are no longer my blood.”
I felt like snarling. I was seconds away from beating the shit out of an older woman.
What kind of cop and man did that?
One who was supremely pissed off and wanted the trash out of his wife’s hospital room.
“She can stay with us,” Castiel said, surprising me. “I’ll take care of her.”
