“Why won’t you believe me? Do you think Prescott loves you?” I reach out to my wife and help her stand. Mom grabs my other arm. “Do you think Akiko actuallycaresabout you?”
I drop my eyes to her white-knuckled grip. The fingers don’t loosen. She glares up at me, her eyes red-rimmed with unshed tears. She should’ve gone into acting. She would’ve won enough Oscars to justify her sheer arrogance and chutzpah.
“Akiko has been more of a mother figure than you could ever be. Without her, I wouldn’t have grown up to be the civilized human being that I am today. Do you think popping babies out of your womb is all that’s required? You have to love and nurture your children, and you haven’t done any of that.”
“Iloveyou. Bryce and Josh too. It’s Prescott who won’t let me be a mother to you. Why is it that you never condemn him for all thathe’sdone wrong? You always hold me to such impossible standards.”
“All you had to do to make me not hate you was not be a criminal. Have you ever considered the possibility that if you hadn’t kidnapped me and left me to die, I might’ve liked you more? Maybe gotten in touch with you, spent holidays with you,whether you were married to Dad or not? Plenty of my friends have divorced parents, but none of them had to go through what I did. All you had to do was be a minimally decent person, and you couldn’t manage that.”
“What I did was all because I love you! To keep our family together! Why can’t you understand that?”
I shake her off. “You don’t love me or the twins. You only love yourself. We’re just accessories that make you look good. You just can’t fathom that we might have different desires and feelings and needs.” I turn to Lareina. “Let’s go, wife.”
She nods and follows me out amid stares from the other diners. Mom continues to hurl words at me, hoping to convince me to change my mind. But none of them stick.
I instruct Lareina’s driver to take the rest of the day off, and I put her in my car and pull away from the restaurant. Only the sound of the engine fills the Maybach for several blocks. I breathe deeply to hold my churning emotions in. Zoe Dunkel has been the worst kind of monster in my life for so long. Looking at her, I realized I’ve worked harder than anybody around me,hadto work harder, just to ensure I’d never be taken advantage of by her again. No more kidnapping, no more manipulation. But facing those still-unhinged eyes somehow froze me in one spot for several moments.
Pathetically weak.Perhaps I’m not as strong as I thought.
“I’m sorry you had to see your mother like that. Are you upset I saw her?” Lareina asks suddenly, interrupting my internal one-way flight to self-loathing. “I didn’t want to see her, but she sort of insisted. And sheismy godmother.” The briskness in her tone says the facts are unfortunate, but she has nothing to hide.
Her almost curt, straightforward explanation soothes my frazzled nerves. If she’d offered up a lot of awkward explanations, I would’ve become suspicious. “Do you know her well?” I ask.
“Hardly at all. And I have no plans to get to know her, regardless of what she claims. She’s never done a thing to check up on me or protect me. But now, all of a sudden, she tells me she can ‘help.’ Except I’m married to you, and I don’t need anybody else’s help anymore. Funny timing, isn’t it? If she’d offered even two weeks ago, I would’ve kissed her feet in gratitude. But now?” A careless shrug. “She missed her chance.”
Relief pours through me. “You don’t like her.”
“I don’t, but it’s not about liking or disliking. It’s about her making me feel used and manipulated. But”—the weight of her gaze strokes my face—“are you okay? I mean…she’s your mother.”
“I’m fine. Our relationship became irreparably damaged when she kidnapped me.”
“I’m sorry.” Lareina reaches out and pats my shoulder. “Did she really plan to…you know, kill you?” Her question is halting.
I have to think about it. “Probably not.”
I flex my hand around the steering wheel and concentrate on breathing steadily. Everything about that time burns my gut, makes me want to scream and shout at the heavens for being unfair. No child asks to be born, but care could be taken to ensure the parents aren’t complete sociopaths.
“Hard to say with her. In case you didn’t notice, she’s not quite right up here.” I tap my temple. Then I remember how Lareina bravely bared herself in front of me and my family, and I want to return some of that. Besides, she’s already heard a big chunk of the past thanks to Mom’s blabbering. “When I was ten, Mom and Dad were going through an ugly divorce. A tragic ending, since they originally loved each other. But things quickly went bad because she didn’t marry Dad only for love, but for connections, power and prestige.” I keep my eyes on the road, not wanting to see my wife’s reaction. It’s a sordid past, and I’ve never shared it with any of my exes or friends. “When sherealized she couldn’t stop Dad from divorcing her, she decided to kidnap us kids—me, Bryce and Josh.”
Lareina gasps, but doesn’t speak, just squeezes my forearm. The muscles relax a little. Only then do I realize I’ve been clenching my hands.
“Thankfully, Bryce and Josh got away. But I didn’t. She tied me up in a cabin in the woods. Tried to feed me drugged food and water, probably to get me to cooperate and say whatever she needed me to say to my dad. But I refused to eat. Finally, she lost patience and force-fed me some drugs and then left. While she was away, the woods started to burn, which then caused fire in the cabin. She never came back.”
“How did you manage to escape?” Lareina’s soft voice trembles with horror.
“A girl pulled me out. If it hadn’t been for her, I would’ve died. Mom clearly doesn’t want to believe that. But then, she always has been selfish and nasty.”
“Butshebelieves that she helped you out.” Lareina lets out a soft breath. “Guess she’s revised the past.”
“Yes. Everything she did was for us—for the family—because she loves us. Loves me. What a joke.” The bag of Wonder Bread was real. I ate it, tasted the slightly stale and chewy slice. Drank Queen’s clean water. Had conversations with her that kept me sane during the days I had no idea when—or evenif—I’d ever be free again.
“She won’t give up easily. She wants to be part of your life again.”
“My ass.” Mom just wants to use me and my brothers to push Harvey out of the mob. She cares about us as much as it benefits her, and not an iota more. “I have her eyes, but that’s about all there is to our relationship.”
Lareina lets out a laugh. “You don’t have her eyes.”
“Of course I do. Everyone can see it.”
