AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He probably thinks I’m planning to steal one of the cars.
I don’t want anything from this man.
I cross the garage and enter what turns out to be a stairwell. My father disappears out some door at the top as I start climbing. Once I’m at the door he’d departed, I exit to a foyer and he’s not even there. A plump older woman wearing an apron greets me.
“Hello, Eric,” she says. “I’m Delia, the housekeeper. I’ll show you to your new room.” There is grief in her—sadness for me. She knows about my mother.
“Thank you,” I say tightly, wondering if the rest of the world feels pity for me. I don’t want pity. My mother didn’t accept it when she was sick. She’d be ashamed if I accepted it now.
Delia heads up a winding wood-railed stairwell, but she doesn’t leave me behind like my father. She waits on me. When I join her, she gives me a warm look. “You can do this. I know you can.”
I don’t want to ask what she means. I see it in her eyes. She’s telling me I can survive because I believe she did at one point as well. Survive what, I don’t know, but she survived. I suddenly like this woman and I’m happy to know her.
At the top of the stairs, we turn right and enter a doorway that leads up again. It’s a loft room, a place where I’m here, but not a part of this house. This works for me. I have to be here, but I don’t want to be a part of this house.
“I’m going to get you some clothes,” Delia says as I sit on the plaid-covered bed, with the low part of the ceiling above me. “Are you hungry?”
“No. I’m not.”
“I’ll bring you food anyway.” She turns and leaves, a part of me smiles inside at her stubbornness that reminds me of my mother. I decide right then that my mother sent me Delia. Somehow, someway, from heaven above, my mother is watching me through her. And I believe in heaven, because I can’t mathematically prove it doesn’t exist, and because she believed in it. Right now, I need her to be there, not in the ground, dead and gone.
Once the door shuts, I pull out the note in my pocket and read a line and another and another:No matter how hard it is for you, and I know you, it will be monstrously hard, turn your cheek to the insults and attacks. Don’t let anyone make you fight. That’s not control. Losing your temper because someone else can bait you is weak. You are not weak. Dream big and live big. Use your gifts, don’t let them use you anymore than you let anyone bait you into throwing them away.
Be the man I know you can be.
Not for me.
For you.
I look up and Delia is in the room, and I don’t remember her entering. She’s hugging me and my cheeks are wet, my heart cold. It’s ice that is brittle and breaking.
Chapter seventy-one
Harper
I’ve barely had time to pour a cup of fresh coffee when Blake arrives, bearing gifts. Fresh bagels. He hands them off to me and then motions to Eric. “Let’s chat a minute.”
Perhaps I should be worried about being left in the dark, but I’m starving and so tired that I just don’t have it in me to fight about it. They walk into the living room and I choose an everything bagel, slather it with cream cheese, stuff my face.
I take a bite and my phone beeps where it’s sitting next to me. Apparently, it’s been set-up to alert me to the messages and I literally cringe at the idea of another message from Eric’s father, though I do think it would speak of desperation, which is interesting. I punch in my code and find a message from my mother instead:Your stepfather needs to speak to you. Please call him. I don’t understand what’s going on with you and why you would disrespect Jeff by ignoring him. Eric has been a horrible influence and I’m worried. Please call Jeff and let me know you’ve done so.
I set the phone back down, my teeth grinding together. My jaw tenses. My mother is a puppet to a master, and it’s gone no place good. And if he thinks using her to call me again looks any less desperate, he’s wrong. I take a bite of my bagel, and for the first time in my life, I’m not sure I want to go back to Denver. I’m not even sure I want a place here and a place there. I feel like there is nothing but evil growing in that city, but right here, there is a seed of something special with Eric.
I’m glad I said yes to staying. I’m sad my father’s creation is gone, but I can’t save it, and as Eric said—I’m my father’s legacy. And the best thing I can do right now, is create my own, and that starts by helping us shed the Kingston shackles which brings me to Eric’s father. We have not even talked about me going to see him.
I glance up as Eric walks into the room, followed by Blake. “Why is your father here?”
“To protect what he believes is his,” he says, stopping on the opposite side of the island.
“Your history says that you’ll leave and wash your hands of them. Why come after you now? He even managed to get rid of me. There’s more to it.”
“I believe he’s trying to draw the attention to himself. He’s the distraction.”
“It’s my job to figure out what he’s doing when he thinks we’re looking the other direction.”
“Well then we need to make him think this is working,” I say. “If I go to see him—”
“No,” Eric says firmly. “You will not go to him.” His tone is absolute, a wall I intend to bust through to make him see reason. “If I go to him, he’ll see weakness. He’ll feel empowered and act. I have to do this,” I say. “I’m going to do this.”
