I hop out of the chair and head for the door.
“Where are you going?” Carter appears beside me.
“I’m going to talk to Evelyn.”
I jog down the stairs, the same stairs where Evelyn swears she lost our baby. I think of the baby we lost so long ago, the first one, and thoughts of burying him come fresh to the surface. How could Evelyn lie after the heartache we went through? Is she really that heartless?
Stevie floats in the back of my mind like a television I can’t switch off. If I see her in the building again, I’ll have to fight from holding her, from kissing her one last time.
The hive is all but empty as I speed down the hall. I pass the boardroom where my life changed forever today. The door is open. It’s barren inside—gutted much like my soul. I give a gentle knock on Evelyn’s door before walking in.
She’s hunched over her desk, her hair pulled back in a ponytail as she packs her things. A giant shopping bag sits open, and two boxes lie just beyond that.
“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help?” She says without looking up.
“How’d you know it was me?” I ask, closing the door.
“I always know when you’re around.” She makes her way over and wraps her arms around my back. “We’re going to get through this—just you and me, together. The way it was meant to be from the beginning, the two of us.”
A stale breath expires from my lungs as I pull her hands down and return them to her sides.
“We’re not meant to be, Evelyn. I’m sorry if I led you on.” I stagger over to the sofa and take a seat. Evelyn comes and sits beside me.
“How did you get the blood to soak your pants on command?” I could have started anywhere, but I chose there.
“You asshole.” She slaps me hard, and I catch her wrist.
“I saw the security footage.” I grit it through my teeth. “Stevie didn’t push you.”
“She was screaming at me! I was trying to get away. I must have lost my footing.”
“What did you buy at Costume Mart between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning yesterday?” I stare at her with stock boredom. It’s the exact kind of place they sell theater accessories—fake blood being one of them. Really, I should have sought out Stevie instead of trying to garner proof from this lying witch. I already have all the proof I need. A part of me wanted to give Evelyn a chance to pony up to all the bullshit she’s put me through.
Her face bleeds out all color, and then I know. I know for a fact Stevie has been telling the truth all along.
“How many of our babies have been a lie? The second baby. Was that a lie, too? Tell me the truth, and I will not hate you. I know what you did was out of desperation.” And because she’s sick—but I’m not in the mood to verbalize it.
Evelyn’s hands tremble. Her body shakes like she’s having her own private earthquake. Her breathing becomes erratic like a woman undone. And there I have it. She’s lied to me before. Evelyn didn’t reach in the bag for a new trick. She simply resurrected one that was tried and true. If I didn’t hold the first child, watch as they lowered his casket into the ground I might have doubted him, too.
“I guess that’s my answer.”
“Crawford”—she grabs a hold of my wrist before I can leave—“you are the only man I have ever and will ever love. When you said it was over, I had to find a way to hold on. You have to understand, I did it because I love you.”
“It’s not the first time I heard that today.” Apparently the only women capable of loving me are predators waiting to devour me. Not that I mind Stevie devouring me. I would have gifted her Jinx with a shiny red bow if she asked for it.
“I would have eventually told you the truth.” Evelyn digs her fingernails into my arm. “We could still have everything. I’ll give you a whole army of children.” She hangs onto my sleeve as I get up and head for the door.
“Don’t call me,” I say without regard to whether or not it’s cold blooded after our mixed history. Right about now I don’t give a fuck about her feelings. “And don’t even think of trying to hurt Stevie.”
“You’re still defending her?” She flies across the room like a bat with its wings on fire and seals her body over the door.
“Out of my way.” It’s taking everything in me not to wrap my hands around her neck. As much as Stevie cost me, Evelyn has cost me precious time with Stevie, which, in the end, is everything.
“She’ll never love you like I could. She’ll never give you the kind of support, the attention I would have. She stole your company from beneath you! You’ll look like a fool if you forgive her, and that’s exactly what she and her twisted father want, to make a first class fool out of you. She hates you as much as her father does. He’s controlling her like a puppet. She’s the ultimate revenge against you and your hard-earned success. She’s already cost you everything.”
“You’ve cost me my sanity, Evelyn. You cost me two imaginary children”—I grip her by the shoulders and press her against the door—“both of whom I grieved! Because I have a heart, Evelyn, that’s why I loved the children I thought we were bringing into this world. And because you don’t, you manufactured them.” I move her abruptly to the side and make my way out of there.
I race home, hardly aware of how I end up cockeyed in the driveway. I empty out the whiskey and sulk on the porch. Miles of avocado trees swing gently with the breeze as if trying to comfort me, as if saying you’ve still got us.
I sling the empty brown bottle over the porch and hear it crash onto the paver stones below. Jinx hops up in my lap, and I give him a quick rub behind the ears.
“She’s gone, buddy. And she took every damn thing with her.”
My phone vibrates, and I fish it out of my pocket. It’s Stevie.
Meet me tonight at six. 1263 W. Shepherd St., Encino. Come hungry.
A quiet laugh bounces through me.
I’ll always be hungry for Stevie. But right now she feels like another version of Evelyn that’s made her way into my heart.
I should nip this in the bud and walk away from both of them forever. Losing Evelyn is a given—losing Stevie makes me want to chop off my own balls and live as a eunuch.
I stare down at the phone.
It’s time to sober up in more ways than one.
13
Centripetal Force
Stevie
The olive tree that’s planted dead center of my grandmother’s front yard is dotted with its wrinkled, necrotic fruit. When Claire and I were little, my grandmother would bake the olives, and the house smelled of something sweet and fantastic—a scent that I’ve yet to encounter again. We ate warm olives by the pounds and spit the seeds at each other, laughing at our purple teeth.
My mother’s car is parked out front, staunch and defiant as if to say nothing has changed. You’re still mine to do with as I please. I make a face at the silver Toyota. It’s the one material treasure she refused to surrender on her soul-searching journey. She was required to hand over all of her physical belongings to her boyfriend’s cult before moving into the glorified teepee staked in his parent’s backyard.
“Here we go.” I walk up the porch and give the tree-lined street one last sweep. I knew when I invited Ford, the odds were slim to none. Evilyn most likely has her arms and legs coiled around him, tethering him like a vine of poison ivy. She did say she was the hungriest. If she used my own baby to steer him away from me, then she could certainly use the fact I plucked his company from his hand. That would be too easy, after all I did the grunt work for her and hardened his heart to stone.
My hand hedges just shy of the doorbell as a car speeds down the street. I spin around, full of hope, only to see a bright orange city bus whiz by.
Who am I kidding? Ford won’t have dinner with me tonight or any other night. We’re over. My I love you came far too late. It probably sounded a lot like I hate you. Under the circumstances I’m sure it did.
I give a gentle knock
over the door as another car whirs down the street. Only this time the motor dies, and a few seconds later, a car alarm chirps.
The door swings open just as Ford materializes beside me. My chest fills with a mad rush of adrenaline, and I take in a breath at his physical beauty. Ford is a powerhouse in so many ways—his heart-stopping glory is one of the best. I take in his dark hair, those pale sky-eyes, and my heart soars straight through the stratosphere.
“You came,” I whisper.
My grandmother opens the screen, never taking her eyes off Ford. “My, my—who is this?”
A croaking sound escapes my throat.
“I’m Ford.” He squints a genuine grin and shakes her hand. “Stevie’s friend from work.”
“Stevie?” My mother’s voice resonates from inside. Her smooth, dark hair is shorter than I remember. I haven’t seen her in so long. Bangs are cut hard across her forehead. The back is cut so blunt, her head looks like a pyramid. Her lips are painted a bright red, and her pale face is powdered into submission like that of a kabuki doll. “My God, come here.” She reels me in and wraps her arms around me, warm and loving, two things I’ve never felt from her before. Either absence really does make the heart grow fonder, or she’s forgotten who I am entirely. I take in the scent of her hair, rosewater and fresh summer days. Her flesh is still soft and cool the way I remember.
We take our seats at the dining room table as my grandmother pulls out a pot roast large enough to feed a small village. A large salad doused with too much dressing and a platter of baked potatoes are laid out before us. I grimace when I spot the red meat, but for my grandmother I’d eat an acre of dead bovine carcasses. It’s funny how there are some people in the world you would walk around the block for a thousand times and others you wouldn’t even cross the street for.
My mother eyes me from the side as Ford answers a few bland questions that she lobs at the two of us. She’s already fallen in love with him, I can tell. And who could blame her? He’s everything in one solid package of testosterone. Only I could figure out how to masterfully ruin what we had. It takes a talent.
“So, Stevie”—my mother smears a smile that says it’s coming, I’ve sharpened my blade, and I’m about to swing—“what brings you here this fine L.A. evening? Will there be a wedding soon?” Her eyes slit to Ford’s like a threat as if marrying her daughter would be the highest offense, and, sadly, he might agree.
“No wedding.” I give a nervous smile to Ford before straightening in my seat. “I paid a great price to be here tonight.” My eyes fall over my grandmother with her short, neat bob, her cheeks highlighted a bright shade of pink as if she were permanently embarrassed. “Dad ate Ford’s company this morning.”
My grandmother gasps, but my mother laughs as if it were the most hilarious joke—lewd and crude to the bone just the way she likes it.
“He is a bastard.” My mother flicks a finger in the air before taking another bite of her food. “He’s always been one, Stevie. You just needed the scales to fall from your eyes, that’s all.”
The scales. I ponder this a moment. I think I’ve always known what my father— what my mother—is capable of. I think somewhere along the way I got caught in a tangle of wires that led to their hearts and fried on the spot—only I was too busy trying to hack my way into their affection to notice the charred scent. I was burned long ago, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to recover.
“First, he stole a night club from him,” I say it mostly for Ford’s benefit, after all, that’s what tonight is really about. “He copied it like a blueprint. Lincoln says he had nothing to do with it, neither did my sisters.”
“Oh?” My mother crosses her arms, done with her meal and ready to enjoy the show. Her face lights up with a muted grin as if I were relaying the most delicious gossip. “Did you do it yourself, Stevie? You have a habit of doing things for strange reasons. I can see you ripping meaningful things from people’s lives strictly for the amusement of it. You must be proud.” She looks to Ford. “You might think she would do it for the attention, but she’s a strange fish—always content to stir the pot and not take any of the credit. Her psychological makeup is very complex.”
“I get that from you.” My body spikes with heat. I should have known she’d slit my throat as soon as we sat down. I had all but handed her the knife. “And no”—I turn to Ford—“it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t my siblings,” I continue. “Then someone stole precious software and claimed it as their own—Jeneration Jinx. Same thing, not one of us gave this information away.”
“And the takeover?” My mother is playing along. She’s facilitating, handing me the rope just before she kicks out the chair.
God, why did I come here?
“He was going to do it anyway.” I can feel Ford stiffen beside me. “He asked if I approved, and so I gave him the go-ahead.” I whisper that last part because, much to my mother’s bold declaration, I am in no way proud.
My mother narrows her dark eyes and looks from me to Ford.
“Why are you sitting next to this woman?” Her voice is curt and firm.
I answer before he can. “Because I had his best interest at heart.” I roll right over my mother’s treason. “I love him, and I am the only one on the planet who can and will return to him what’s rightfully his.”
My mother’s eyes narrow thin as razors. Her debatable efforts have just been bested.
“So, my darling”—she tilts into me, a dull smile tightens on her lips—“you finally see that people do things to protect the ones they love in the most deplorable ways.”
And here she is, Claire. I wondered how long before my mother laid her corpse out on the table. She had my sister cremated before I could ever see my own body lifeless in a casket. It was me she was trying to spare. It was me she wanted to protect and as a thank you I baptized her with my sister’s ashes.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I do.”
My grandmother tosses her hands in the air. “What does any of this have to do with tonight? What am I missing here?”
My mother bares the gap between her teeth like a trophy. “I’m wondering the same thing.”
“My father didn’t do any of this for me. He didn’t open his heart in exchange for the keys to Ford’s kingdom. He did it all for a woman named Lana Rule.” As soon as her name leaves my lips, my mother turns pale and stiff as a pillar of salt.
I glance to Ford, and his eyes widen at the fact I’ve struck a nerve.
“Who is she?” I demand, but my mother doesn’t answer. Her mouth falls open, and not a sound comes out.
She looks to Ford. “What’s your last name?”
“Cannon.” Ford doesn’t miss a beat.
My mother closes her eyes.
“Shit,” I seethe. “He said you’d have the answer. Who was she in relation to my father?”
Then it begins, the slow unearthing of my father’s sordid love affairs.
“I almost had him,” she hisses it out in a whisper. “I pulled him from Daphne, almost freed him from her clutches, and I would have, had she not come along.”
“I remember.” My grandmother lets out a groan. “She was always coming around—redhead with long, bony arms. But that wasn’t her name.” She holds a finger in the air. “It was an alias.” She looks to Ford and gives a brief nod. “Her name was Alana Cannon.”
“What?” Ford scoots his chair back abruptly as if he’s about to bolt.
“Who is she?” I clasp at his sleeve. “Your aunt? Your sister?”
“My mother.”
The room falls silent.
“You’re Crawford.” My mother’s voice is parched and scratchy. She looks unnerved, so close to unhinging it frightens me.
“Tell us everything you know,” I say to her. “You owe me—us—that much.”
Turns out Crawford’s mother and mine were hot over the same man, my father.
“She was separated from your stepfather,” my mother’s eyes are lit like lanterns—“and ver
y much after the love of my life. Under no circumstances was I going to let that happen. My girls were newborns, they needed a father—they needed him.”
“What happened to her?” Ford’s voice is hard, unapologetically harsh.
“She left the country or so the story goes.” My mother’s expression dims. “Your stepfather remarried.”
“Do you know where she might be?” Ford pinches his lips as if restraining himself. I’m sure he’d like to throttle the answer out of my mother right about now.
The muscles tighten around her eyes. She knows. Oh, God. I shake my head. She is guilty as sin. I want to say it, to shout it, but my lips press tight.
She shakes her head. “Hans blamed your stepfather for making her disappear. He vowed to destroy him.”
“And instead he’s turned his sights on me. The child of the woman he claimed to love.” A wry smile breaks out over his face, and he closes his eyes a moment.
It doesn’t make sense.
My heart breaks for Ford—for his mother for ever getting involved with my twisted family tree.
My mother starts in on clearing the dishes from the table, and my grandmother joins her.
“I made too much,” Grandma complains. “I save all my yogurt containers. I’ll fill them up with salad and potatoes for you. I’ll pack the meat in an old pie tin. I never throw those things away. The two of you can have a romantic dinner tomorrow night. A picnic maybe.”
They disappear in the kitchen, and Ford stands.
“I’d better go.” His eyes latch over mine filled with sorrow for his mother, a bite of anguish for all we thought we were.
I walk him to the door. My mother managed to rinse the patina of greatness, off herself with one swipe of her tongue. She and Ford’s mom were enemies. She hated her. She was glad she vanished from the face of the earth. Anybody could see that, including poor Ford.
“How about that picnic?” I bite down over my lip, so desperate for him to stay in my life. If he leaves, he’ll take everything that’s good in me out that door with him. I’ll die without his love. I feel just as silly and desperate as my mother.