Breaking Her (Love is War #2)(90)

"It seems harder this way. The idea of her and the reality . . . are two very different things."

"Yes. Harder indeed. As I've said, it's not what I wanted, but I didn't trust at the time, or even now, that what I wanted was what was best. I was wounded . . . am wounded, and I longed for the easy choice, but the fact is that there wasn't one. So I tried for the best choice, for her, her mother, and her mother I trusted to know what it was."

Gina taught me what angels were, and that maybe, just maybe, Gram was right about prayers, that no matter your sins, sometimes life sends you the answer you need.

Not the answer you want, perhaps, but need is the thing. The thing that matters most, no matter how it hurts.





EPILOGUE





SCARLETT





I dreaded going to visit my grandma, but I didn't put it off. Her time was limited, and I had enough regrets and guilt in my past that I'd learned not to add to it.

Everything had happened very fast. The Durant men had made their move, maneuvered the first chess piece, gone after Adelaide, and the rest of the moves had come fast and vicious.

Adelaide was arrested and charged for the murder of Vivian Durant. No bail was granted. It was a cold, cruel world when all of the Durant influence was suddenly being used against instead of for you. Her trial would be long and complicated, and no matter how it went, her reputation was forever in tatters.

It was going kind of beautifully. More stakes had been nailed into Adelaide's coffin within hours of her arrest. Three of her henchmen had been implicated and instantly turned on her. I ate up each piece of this news with absolute relish. Yum.

At nearly the same time, Glenda turned herself in preemptively, confessing her rehearsed speech. Her spiffy, Durant paid for attorney brought her in and coached her through every word. She was charged and booked.

Even her more expensive than God lawyer was surprised when she was granted bail.

It was for a million dollars, but that was small change in the world of Durant schemes.

All of this made it possible for me to visit her in her new and sumptuously appointed apartment.

She greeted me at the door solemnly and I don't think either of us knew what to do. We'd never hugged, so that didn't seem right, but it felt like we should do something.

We settled for nodding at each other and then she showed me around her new house.

"Nicest place I ever lived," she said. She sounded awful. Old and sick. She looked it too. "They even got a nurse checking in on me, helping me out every day. Never been treated like this before. Don't know what to do with myself, but mostly I just watch TV."

I'd figured as much. The TV was on even while she led me around, as though she never even thought to turn it off. "You should try out a show called Kink and Ink. Pure TV crack," I suggested.

She told me, looking dubious about it, that she would.

She made us tea, something I'd never even seen her drink, and we sat at her cute little dining room table and stared at each other.

"I don't know what to say," I told her. "I'm still not sure why you're doing this for me."

She stared at me, and while she did look awful, her gaze was more lucid than I'd ever seen it. Perhaps it was being terminal, but she seemed more human, more normal than I could ever remember.

"I owe you some words. I ain't good with words, but I'll try to explain myself. Bear with me."

I nodded because she seemed to expect it.

"I've been homely my whole life," she said. "You see me. Homely and awkward. All the pretty girls at school always loved to make fun of me. I was an easy mark. Mean enough but no good at articulating it.

"And then one day, when I was fifteen, the most beautiful boy in town, his name's Verne Hawn, set about seducing me. I fell for him in about a second flat, but two weeks after he got me on my back, I heard the real story. He did it on a dare. He made fifty bucks to sleep with the ugliest girl in school, and I got a broken heart and a baby out of it.

All my life pretty people been tormenting me, and all a' sudden, there I was raising one. She was a sassy little piece, too, always knew she was better than me. Then she runs off soon she can, leaving me with her own pretty baby. And I took it all out on you. It wasn't fair, and the only defense I got is that the horrible things I said to you, the ways I brought you down, in my own twisted way, a lot of it was just my way of trying to guide you, to keep you from being like me."

It didn't make it better. It didn't even make it okay. But it helped. At least now I had an explanation. At least now I knew that the way I'd been treated wasn't all me and my own defectiveness.

"And about that cop." She wasn't done talking. "I didn't know. I just didn't know. But at the very least I should have been the one to protect you. This is my way of making that right. That I didn't do my job."

And still she wasn't done. It was the most I'd ever heard her talk in my entire life.

"I been off the drink for a while now," she continued. "It helps. Well, on some days it helps. I ain't as bad as I was.

"I know what I am. I know what I did to you. I'm an unpleasant, bitter woman. No one understands this more than I do. I was a terrible mother, and my daughter hated me for it. That hate made me cruel, and I took much of it out on you. I didn't mean to, but that's no excuse. You don't want anything to do with me, and I don't blame you for that. I'm doing this because it's the right thing, and for once in my miserable life, I want to do the right thing. Please don't try to take that away from me. And please consider letting it make up for some of the harm I've caused you."