One Step Closer(8)

“Now, Caleb, I’m sure—” she began.

Caleb’s head snapped around in her direction again. His overly long hair, getting in his eyes, as he impatiently pushed it off his forehead. “Was I talking to you, bitch?” he yelled, his face was red; the skin on his face felt as if it were on fire, his heart beating so fast it felt like it would fly from his chest.

“You can be sure of nothing; other than I hate your skinny ass! This is my mother’s house! Get the f*ck out!”

“Caleb!” Edison shouted back. “Veronica is my wife! You will treat her with respect! She and—”

It was bad enough that his father hadn’t been present in his son’s life for the two years since Celine had died, but to bring in this… whore. Caleb couldn’t take it. He felt as if his mother was dying all over again, and his father, cold as stone; didn’t give a damn. The pressure inside his chest was debilitating.

His throat had tightened and his eyes welled with angry tears.

“The hell I will!” Caleb’s voice cracked with emotion. “Your wife is in Lakeland Cemetery! You’re dishonoring Mom, Dad! You reduce yourself to this—? This piece of sh—!” He indicated the woman sitting on the sofa, but his father interrupted.

“Enough!” His father bellowed, but after a beat, his demeanor had returned to the cold, dead-like lack of emotion that Caleb was used to. “I understand you’re upset, Caleb. I should have prepared you. But it is what it is, and you have to accept it. It’s good for the business and in everyone’s best interest. I’m your father, and you’ll conduct yourself in the way your family name demands. I don’t have to ask your permission and your mother would want—”

One frustrated tear slipped from Caleb’s eye and he’d quickly wiped it away. Unwilling to show any weakness, he turned his back on his father and Veronica, the helplessness he felt nearly crushing. “Fuck you, both.”

He’d seen Wren for the first time, then, and he’d stopped short, embarrassed to be seen crying. The small, timid girl cowering near the doorway between the drawing room and the foyer, had been dressed all in black, her unnaturally black hair cropped in a short, but shiny bob, and her eyes almost completely hidden by black eyeliner. He’d sniffed and used the back of his hand to wipe at his nose, squared his shoulders and calmed his voice.

“You don’t give a shit about my best interest, just like you didn’t give a shit about what my mother needed! You are not my father!” he shouted and walked from the room, past the gothic-looking girl hovering uncertainly in the doorway.

“Caleb!” His father’s voice boomed behind him, but he’d only lifted both of his hands to flip the double bird from behind.

Not his finest moment, in retrospect. Especially considering Wren was watching everything.

It was a few weeks later, right after he’d gotten his driver’s license with the help of the housekeeper and his father’s friend, that he’d pulled a few grand from the bank account his mother had set up for him before she died and bought a used motorcycle against Edison’s wishes. He spent hours and hours fixing it up. When it was running, he stayed out until all hours, resentful that he had to go home to that God-forsaken house at all.

He blew off all his preppy friends and started hanging out with a different crowd, picking anyone his father would consider the most undesirable, or morally repugnant. He skipped school, stole a few cars, and got arrested twice. If it annoyed Edison Luxon, cost him money, or otherwise disrupted his carefully controlled life, the better Caleb liked it. Payback was a bitch.

Caleb met his best friend at a wrestling match and the rest was history. Caleb was into motorcycles and Dex’s dad owned a local motorcycle shop and they spent a ton of time hanging out there after school. Dex was everything Caleb wasn’t; tattooed, tough, and loyal to his dad. He was a couple years older and had taken Caleb under his wing. He helped him fix up an old beater bike, and introduced him into a regional fight club, which quickly consumed him. Soon Caleb was muscular and strong, and Dex was like the older brother Caleb never had. The fighting helped Caleb deal with all of his personal issues. Somehow beating the shit out of someone helped ease his internal turmoil and gave him an outlet for the hatred and anger that had overtaken his reason.

The money he made when he won was a bonus, but even better, his father abhorred his fighting. Edison’s disapproval spurred Caleb on and he smugly displayed every black eye, cut lip, or set of bruised knuckles just to taunt his father. He never lost a fight and sometimes he imagined the person he was pummeling was Edison. It helped, if only for a few minutes.

When Edison married Veronica, Caleb was well entrenched in his new life and wasn’t home much. He learned in the months following, that Veronica’s thirteen-year-old daughter Wren was a dramatically stark contrast to her mother. Veronica was loud and intrusive, beautiful and aloof, and the girl was quiet, wore dark, shapeless clothing, and always had her eyes completely camouflaged by the overabundance of black eye makeup. She kept entirely to herself, and Caleb thought her name didn’t suit her at all. She looked like a witch, not a beautiful bird.

Wren barely spoke, and hardly ate. He barely knew she was in the house unless Veronica was shrieking at her. His mind had written her off as a freak, and he decided to stay as far away from both of the women as he possibly could. He couldn’t bear his father, he couldn’t bear his new stepmother making changes to the house as if trying to erase his mother’s memory, and he had no tolerance for the quiet girl who haunted the house like a dark ghost.