Stone Cold Fox (93)
“She wouldn’t remember anything about th—”
“She sees Giles. He remembers. And she remembers. Little girls remember their feelings. I do, too.”
“Go on.” Mother smirked, mocking me. “Say what you want to say. This is your moment, isn’t it? How long have you been wanting to say all this to me?”
“She was his. And I think you wanted to see if you got one for yourself,” I replied. She wanted her very own daughter. A little plaything that she pushed away and pulled in at will, thinking only of her own feelings, her own sick feelings, and never mine or what she was doing to me. But was that how she loved me? The only way she knew how? She left everyone and everything else but she never left me.
She kept me.
I was hers and she kept me.
She wanted to keep me.
I was always going to be the one who had to leave.
Run away.
I waited for her response, taking a deep breath in the silent moments that passed.
“If that’s what you need to tell yourself, I won’t argue with you,” she said, looking above my head and at the house, refusing to connect with me on any honest level. The window to the past, open briefly, had been shut. It only confirmed my theory. It wasn’t normal love from Mother, but it was something, like I suspected. She had always known exactly where I was, even after I did what I did to her. Watching and waiting. Playing and plotting. And here we were. Finally together again. Mother and daughter.
“We have a lot to discuss about your dilemma with Gale,” Mother said, strolling past me toward the door to the house. “Why don’t we go inside?”
I didn’t protest, because she was right, and I followed her inside my own home. We sat on the stools in the kitchen around the island and I immediately offered her something to drink out of habit.
“I think I’ll make my own drinks around you from now on,” Mother sniped. I held my breath. I knew she’d bring it up, but what did I have to say for myself? It was unforgivable, wasn’t it? “You almost had me. One more pill might have done it. Just one more.” I was quiet and unresponsive, thinking it best to be nonconfrontational. Don’t panic. But around Mother, I was falling back into an old habit, waiting for her to take the lead because I wasn’t yet sure of her plans for me. “Aren’t you going to apologize to your mother?” she hissed.
“But you wouldn’t have let me go,” I uttered quickly, no time for logic to enter my brain, talking back and justifying the unjustifiable. I was going to make myself say all the things I’d been wanting and waiting to say to her. I was about to lose everything anyway. The time was now. “I didn’t have another choice. You didn’t give me another choice.”
“I’d say you had an alternative—”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” I barked at her, admitting defeat. “You won. You bested me, as always. You always beat me, Mother. You win. How? I really need you to tell me, because you got involved with Gale and now look at the mess we’re in together. All so you could get your revenge on me instead of just letting me go. You had to keep me, the whole time, but now she knows all of it. She knows everything because of you. She has us, Mother, don’t you get it? She has us because of what you’ve done to me.”
“No, because you couldn’t finish the job.”
“If you hadn’t orchestrated any of this with Gale and Syl and—”
“Don’t you see that I was trying to help you?” Mother raised her voice and stood up out of her seat, edging closer to me with every word, believing all of it. “You don’t belong with Collin or his awful family, stuck in a palatial prison of your own making. You’ll hate it. Trust me, you will get bored and then you’ll do something completely destructive, which you’ve proven you absolutely cannot handle on your own. You’re better off with me, despite your best efforts. Aren’t you exhausted living this way? Aren’t you tired of pretending to be something you’re not? You must be so tired, bunny.”
“I am Bea Case, Mother.”
“Sure.” She laughed at me. The cruelest sound I knew. It used to make me wilt, but now it lit a fire. Mother had never seen me with the fire of my own so I would show her. Again, if not now, when?
“I am, Mother. And now I’m about to lose everything I’ve worked so hard for because of your foolish actions and trusting the wrong person when you could have just let me go. Why couldn’t you just let me go?”
“Maybe you’ll understand when you become a mother.” She smiled, mocking me again, enjoying my pain and desperation.
“Gale has probably already alerted the police or the FBI or who knows what, some sort of private investi—”
“Oh, please!” Mother guffawed. “Gale’s bound and gagged in her bathroom.”
Mother delivered this news like a comedian delivering a punch line, awaiting my applause, my laughter, my delight.
“See? Mother always has your back. You need a push from me, I suppose. I’m happy to assist, but you’re going to finish the job. You’re my daughter. Always will be. So we can do it together.”
She was correct that I hadn’t been able to finish the job. It only proved I wasn’t like her, right? I wasn’t able to take someone’s life after all. A sweet relief on a cellular level, a new awareness in my bones that I couldn’t actually go through with it. I didn’t take Gale’s or Mother’s. I was not a killer. I never was. But if I couldn’t do it now, then what would this all be for? I didn’t want to lose Bea Case, and it appeared the only way I could keep her was to kill Gale Wallace-Leicester.