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“I know it’s probably difficult to understand, not having any children of your own.” She shook her head and brought her voice to a whisper. “And thank goodness for that … The thing is, when I gave birth to my boys, I made a promise to God to protect them. To keep them on the right path. Grayson may think he cares for you, but that doesn’t matter. I have to keep him safe. Physically and spiritually.” She turned back toward the counter, grabbing her coffee cup. “I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Things that I can’t take back. But I’ve always done them to protect my boys.
“When Trevor said he saw you two holding hands at the lake that night, I told him he was being silly. That you were just horsing around. ‘Just a silly little game,’ I said.”
Though the room had an overwhelming scent of strawberries and cream thanks to the three thousand wax melts she had burning, all I could smell was gasoline and burnt-out matches.
“Then he said he saw you kissing on Gray.” She set her coffee cup on the counter, the muscles in her jaw flexing. “I excused that away, too. Said that he must have been mistaken—that he’d been too far away from you two to see what was really going on.” She closed her eyes. “Then I heard you two in his room. All the business out there at the lake that night—honey, it wasn’t supposed to get that bad. I didn’t know he was going to do all that stuff with the gas. I’ve asked the Lord’s forgiveness for that, and I’ve been delivered from it. I was just protecting my boy.” She reached forward and took my hand. I tried to jerk it away, but her grip was tight. “He’s my son, and this is his soul we’re talking about. Don’t think that I won’t do everything in my power to see that he’s safe.”
“Essie?”
I turned around, still in shock at Esther’s revelation. Marty was leaning against the door frame, looking just as confused as I felt.
“What do you meanall of that business at the lake?” Marty said.
I could barely process what was happening. The whole time. She’d known the whole time. Even after everything happened, she’d smiled at me. When I’d come to their door while Trevor was at work, asking for Gray, she had smiled at me. Hugged me while I cried. After she’d told me he didn’t want to see me, she’d kissed my damn forehead and everything. And the entire time, she’d known. She’d been an active participant in my unraveling.
“You …” My hands were fisted at my side, trembling—with rage or fear, I wasn’t sure. “You?” I tried to keep my voice low, because she was a lady. She was a lady, and I wasn’t raised to scream at women. I wasn’t raised to fight with them, either, but at that moment I wanted to annihilate her. To pour every ounce of gasoline I could get my hands on over her head. To strike the match and watch her flinch seventy-one times in a row. Instead, I glared at her and called Gray’s name at the top of my lungs.
“Don’t. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t you dare.”
I leaned forward, my fingernails digging into the kitchen island that separated us. “What are you going to do, call Trevor?”
“Essie? What in the world is going on?” Marty said.
Gray walked into the kitchen, still holding Sarah’s hand. I glared down at their intertwined fingers, unable to look away. As I blinked back my rage, Marty’s eyes met mine.
I saw it. The second he realized what Gray meant to me. Who he’d always been to me.
“Jesus Christ,” Marty’s mouth hung open, his eyes wide with revelation.
I glowered at Gray, lowering my eyes to their hands. “Gray,” I choked out. “You promised.”
“What?” He looked like he was in a haze. Like he’d been cast adrift and couldn’t find his way back to land. I knew I’d promised to be there for him, but I was out there in that traumatic tide with him, unable to see the shore. He jerked his hand out of Sarah’s and stared at me, the apology heavy in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t—”
“The lake. What happened at the damn lake?” Marty interrupted.
“Nothing,” Esther said frantically. “I don’t know what on earth’s gotten into him.”
“She knew, Gray. She knew the whole time.”
Gray’s eyes widened, and he rushed over to me. He opened his mouth to speak, only to be cut off when Marty slapped his hand against the table.
“What in the world is going on? Would someone tell me what the hell happened at that lake?”
“She told Trevor,” I said, clinging to Gray. “The lake. It was her idea.”
Esther turned around, making her way toward the sink. She picked up a spotless dinner plate and started washing it by hand. “I have no idea what he’s talking about” Her movements were frantic, like she was trying to hold on to the last means of defense she had. “He’s clearly having a psychotic episode. You know howhis kindhas a way of twisting the truth into something perverse to fit their agenda.”
“Essie, sweetheart, what did you do?” Marty asked. I looked up to see him making his way toward her. “I need you to talk to me.”
She closed her eyes, her hands gripping the counter tightly. “It wasn’t anything serious. It was never anything serious. He wasn’t ever in any danger.”
“Momma? You knew?” Gray let me go, and it felt like I was alone at sea. My tether was gone. He made his way toward her but came to a stop when he was halfway across the kitchen. He turned around and stared at me. “Half-pint?” It was like every muscle in me had gone rogue, and all I could do was stand there trembling, struggling to breathe. His gaze drifted back and forth between his mother and me. It didn’t take him long to make his choice.
Once he’d gotten to me, he placed his hands on the sides of my face, guiding me until I was looking into his eyes. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against mine, and hummed a familiar song to pull me back. The rest of the room faded away, and all I saw was him. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head because I wasn’t anywhere close to okay. My emotions were scattered and frantic, like debris zooming around inside a cyclone.
A set of hands grabbed my shoulders, and I screamed at the shock of their uninvited touch. Marty Collins held me against him, swaying me back and forth as if I were a testy toddler needing to be rocked to sleep. He spun me around, placing his arms on my shoulders, and stared me in the eyes. “Gray?” As he spoke to his son, his eyes never left mine. “Why don’t you go on and walk Sarah out to her car and say goodnight? I think we have some things we need to talk about as a family.”
