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A woman with long brown hair in her mid-fifties appears at the end of the truck. “Eric, she’s gone. I’m sorry.”
My throat goes dry, the cotton sensation all but choking me, and I try to find the numbers again, the ones I control but I can’t find them. “No. No, that isn’t right.”
“I’m afraid it is. Your mother’s gone, son.”
My mind tunnels through empty space and for the first time in my life, I need to count, I need numbers and math, and there is nothing but white noise. “How?” I hear myself say, but my voice is distant, the world is distant. “How did she die? She was getting treatment.”
“She was in a lot of pain. I’m sad to report that she took her own life. “
“No. No, she was fighting.She was fighting!”
“She was tired. She wanted more for you, too. She left a letter. I called your father and—”
“I don’t have a father. I don’t fucking have a father!” I try to get up, but the EMT holds me down, my head spinning with the damn drug he gave me.
“I want to see the letter,” I whisper.
“At my office,” the woman says.
“Who are you?”
“Evelyn Minor. Your social worker.” She holds out a hand. “Come with me.”
Two hours later, I sit in her dingy office with a scuffed desk and yellow chair, the letter in hand, but no numbers in my head. That drug the EMT gave me makes me dizzy again as I start reading:
My dearest Eric—
I had to do this. I had to do it because I love you with all my heart and soul. I did this for you. It was time for you to get on with your life. It was time for your father to claim you. Make him. Accept him. He can help you make the most of your gifts. He can get you the help you need to control it. Don’t fight him. Don’t lash out at him. Do this for me. Do this so that I know I left you behind better than I brought you into this world. Please, son. I beg of you. I need you to do this. For me. Do this for me.
Before I can read on, the door to the office opens and in walks a man in a blue suit, his brown hair slicked back. I know him. I don’t want to know him. Jeff Kingston, the man my mother claims is my father, ignores the social worker and steps in front of me, towering above me. “Looks like your mother got her way,” he bites out. “You’re with me now. Let’s go.”
“Excuse me,” the social worker says. “But there’s paperwork and—”
“Fuck your paperwork. Sue me if you want to. He’s coming with me.” He motions to me. “Get up. Come with me. Now.”
No words of sorrow or sympathy.
Just a command.
And I have no choice but to follow it. It’s what my mother wanted and she’s gone. She’s dead. She killed herself and any version of me that I knew.
Chapter sixty-one
Harper
Present day…
I’m still standing in the foyer of Eric’s apartment with Savage and Smith at my back preventing my exit from Eric’s apartment. Grayson is in front of me, dismissing my worries about Eric and his father. “I thought you were the level-headed brother Eric values,” I say to Grayson. “He doesn’t plan on killing his father, buthey, if it happens, it happens, is not level-headed.”
“I didn’t say if it happens, it happens,” Grayson replies, his tone cool but his voice is still low.
“You aren’t worried at all. If you are, you hide it well.”
“I know Eric well enough to know that he’ll do the right thing.”
“The right thing? How do you define the right thing when staring into the face of a man who just tried to frame you for the murder of your girlfriend? Call him. Call him now so he’ll answer and let me talk to him.”
“I’m not going to call him,” he says. “He needs to focus. Someone tried to kill you. He could be the next target.”
