Wishing Well(81)

In the end, she was right, Vincent hadn’t been the aggressor - he hadn’t been the villain in this tragic fairytale ending. And he hadn’t been wrong to say that it was the too perfect timing that had made it possible for the story to end this way. As if fate herself had danced the streets of the city, the sway of her hips causing soft winds to blow and push all the characters into place.

Too perfect, that bitch we call fate and her timing.

But even in that, Vincent didn’t know all of it. He didn’t understand just how perfect the timing had been. Only Meadow knew, and it was her turn to tell him. It had been her one card - the ace that would send him to death screaming.

Not anymore. Now it was just a pathetically sad fact that if she hadn’t been so angry and afraid, she could have prevented tragedy and senseless death.

“Are you ready to go back? Or did you need another few minutes?”

Swiping at the tears that dotted her cheeks, Meadow glanced up at the grim faced guard by the gate. Standing on the other side, he peered out at her from between the heavy bars, his hands wrapped around one on each side of his body. Her expression must have set off warning signals in his head. “Did he say something to you in there that made you so upset? You don’t have to finish this, you know? You can walk away and let that bastard die all by himself.”

His words made her cry harder. For all of his games, for the tangled webs he’d spun and the joy he took in trapping his prey, Vincent Mercier didn’t deserve to die at all.

It had all been about his brother. About Maurice. The deaths, the accidents, the cages and chains: it had all occurred because one man hadn’t known how to help another. But not because he hadn’t tried.

People would celebrate Vincent’s death tomorrow.

Meadow wouldn’t be one of them.

Slapping away the last tear, Meadow answered, “I’m ready,” while hating the crack in her voice. Standing from the bench seat she would never warm again, she took measured steps toward the imposing gate, winced at the sound of the pneumatic hiss and stepped through to finish an interview she wished had been conducted years before.

Before...

She would have done anything in her power to save him.

Led inside interview room three, she didn’t lift her head, didn’t dare meet Vincent’s eyes until she’d steeled her spine and was ready. What she found when she finally glanced across the table broke her even more. For the first time since they’d started this dance, Vincent looked at her with pity behind his emerald green eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice a soft whisper.

“For what?”

Vincent was too still in his seat, too remorseful and calm. For some strange reason she suddenly missed the arrogance, the humor, the razor-edged wit of the man now looking at her with keen understanding in his expression. “You just heard the details of your sister’s death. That can’t be easy for anyone.”

If only he knew...

Wrapping her arms around her abdomen, she attempted to hold herself together. And with minimal strength in her voice, she said, “You weren’t the villain in this story. I mean...you were...but at the same time, you were not.”

A quick shake of his head, just one soft movement. “No, not in that part, at least. In others?” He shrugged. “Perhaps I was.”

A journalist shouldn’t lose herself this way, not a real one, not the type that is tough as nails, that could set herself aside from the story and look at it from an objective place.

She couldn’t. She’d lost the ability to fight.

“How,” she asked, her throat clogged by emotion, her lungs struggling to take a steady breath. “How did Barron end up in the garden with my sister?”

Seconds passed in silence, Vincent studying her, dissecting her, before breathing out and admitting, “That, I don’t know. From what my attorney told me, the police reviewed the security tapes from the hotel. They saw your sister arrive, they saw Barron come and go, but how those two ended up together is a mystery I fear we’ll never solve. It’s the timing I mentioned.”

I glanced up at him to see him flare his fingers in resignation. “How did the woodcutter show up just in time to save Little Red from the wolf? How do the princes of every fairytale appear at exactly the moment they’re needed? I used to think those stories were comical for the way everything just neatly fell in place. I used to think they were so opposite to reality. But after this story, after countless other tragedies where people were simply in the wrong place at precisely the wrong time, I don’t laugh at fairytales anymore. Even life has its neat and tidy endings that we have no choice but to accept.”

Another short period of time where the only sound in the room was the gentle hum of the air conditioning. Meadow was lost for that moment, at least until Vincent rattled his chains.

“But that’s not all there is to know about this particular ending, is there?”

Lifting her eyes, she found him leaning toward her, closing the distance she so desperately needed.

Meadow needed space from the tragedy, the shattered lives, the secrets and the pain.

Oh, God, the pain...

“I don’t know what you mean,” she answered weakly, her own lies crushing her beneath their pathetic weight.

“Don’t lie,” he answered softly, “not now, not after we’ve reached the end.”