“No!” She raised her voice—the same tone she’d admonished him with when he was a kid. “That is the truth. I put their addresses in there because I needed to remember them. That’s all.”
But the dots didn’t connect. He pressed on. “Were you meeting them to plan the murder of my father?”
“I told you, I didn’t do it,” she said in a whispered shout. “I told you I didn’t kill him. Are you ever going to believe me?”
“I know you didn’t pull the trigger, Mom. Everyone knows that,” he said, exasperated, as he scrubbed his hand over his chin. “But you’ve told me other things that have turned out not to be true. So I want to know this—were T.J. Nelson and Kenny Nelson working with Stefano? Were they his accomplices?”
She said nothing.
“Were you? Were you working with these men?”
She gripped the edge of the table, her eyes like glassy pools of desperation. “I didn’t do it. I told you I didn’t do it.”
“Were you involved?” he continued, a dog with a bone, not willing to relent. “Like the cops say you were. Like the state of Nevada says you were.”
“I didn’t do it.”
Wear her down. Just fucking wear her down. “Did you hire Jerry Stefano to kill my father? Did you? Did you hire him and plan it with those three guys? Did you go to their houses and plan the crime down to every last detail with the broker, and the shooter, and the goddamn getaway driver? Did you kill him for his life insurance money like they put you in Stella McLaren for?” he asked, his voice rising with each question.
He ran his hands through his hair, tugging hard on it because he was at the end of his rope, but he couldn’t let go. “Don’t you understand what this has done to me? I don’t trust people. I don’t believe people. I don’t get close to people. Because of this. Because of what happened,” he said, trying a new approach. Go for the heart. Try to pierce that damn organ in her. “But Mom, I finally met someone. Okay? I finally met a woman and, my God, I am in love with her, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” He softened momentarily as he thought of his sweet, sexy Sophie. He’d come so far with her, she’d shown him so much, and she’d opened so many possibilities in his life and helped him feel wonderful, amazing, incredible things. He hated the prospect of sling-shotting back to who he was before—closed off, shut down, and obsessed.
“I need some clarity, for once. I need it so I can have a normal life with the woman I love. Don’t you want that for me? Don’t you want me to be happy? Because I do, Mom. I want it so damn badly that I’m here, asking you to just tell me the truth.”
He waited. Seconds passed, spooling into minutes as Dora sat like a statue. Finally she broke her frozen stance, uncrossing her arms, and jerking her head away.
He threw up his hands. This was a lost cause. He was getting nowhere. Sophie was right. He’d have to find the answers in himself, because he wasn’t getting them from his mother. He pushed back in his chair and stood up to leave. He bent his head to his mom, and kissed her forehead. “I love you, Mom, but I need to go,” he whispered.
She grabbed his wrists, her bony fingers circling them. Her hands were papery and rough. “Do you love her?” she asked.
“Yes. So much.”
She exhaled. Deeply. It sounded like relief. “I’m happy for you, baby.”
“Me, too.”
“All I want is for you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” She gripped his hands tighter. “They told me they’d hurt you all.” Her voice was just a thread. “They told me they’d come after my babies if I said a word.”
He blinked. Holy shit. She was talking. He leaned closer, resting his chin on her head. “Said a word about what, Mom?” he asked, anticipation weaving a dangerous path through his blood.
“I tried to stop it.”
“Did you start it?”
A nod. He felt the barest hint of a nod of her head against his. Holy shit. “I’m telling you this now because I love you. Because you said you need this to be happy. And all I’ve ever wanted is for my babies to be happy. But they made me go through with it, Ry. And that’s why I did it. I did it for all of you,” she said, and then the words rained down. “Please don’t stop seeing me; please don’t stop coming. I went through with it because I had no choice. They told me they’d hurt you if I didn’t go through with it.”
Like a wrecking ball to his gut, her admission walloped him. He stumbled and gripped the wall behind him. His head was swimming. It was a roiling sea. Eighteen fucking years were compressed into this moment. Her words echoed across the vast cavern of time, clanging through the days, the months, and the pages on the calendar, stabbing him with a million cuts. His own omissions. His own secrets. Most of all, his foolish hope that his mother wasn’t a murderer.
“You had him murdered?” The question tasted like dirt.
“I had to keep you safe.”
“Why did he have to die to keep us safe? He didn’t have to die.” But even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew there was no point to them. The decision had been made eighteen years ago—whether for drugs, for money, for her lover, or from fear. He might not ever know why she did it. All he knew now was she did.
“I love you and your sister and your brothers so much and I do, I still do. I swear I love you so much. I love you, baby. I love you, Ryan.” She began weeping, a deep, dark keening sound like a bruised, battered thing heaving itself onto the shore, defeated.
Like Ryan.
He’d travelled here hoping for an answer, but never expecting to get one.
Instead, he’d received her confession.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
His legs were lead. His head was concrete. His heart had mutinied. It was somewhere lost in time. It was listening to Johnny Cash with his father before his dad’s friends came over. It was watching the end of the pirate show. It was wandering up and down the Strip without him.
He made a beeline for the exit, pushing past Clara and the other correctional officers, putting blinders on to avoid the rest of the visiting families. The second he left the facility, the door falling shut behind him, he crumpled on the hot stone steps. He didn’t care one lick that you could fry an egg on them.
Let him burn. Let him feel. Let the pain erase the foolishness, the shame, the utter shock.
He dropped his forehead into his hand, replaying his mother’s last words. Wishing he could go back and redo them, erase them, rewrite them.
Make them make sense.
Not that this—his life visiting a women’s correctional center each month—would ever make much sense. He shut his eyes, but all he saw was the blood in the driveway. All he heard were the screams when she found the body.
Were those fake too? Had she practiced them? Did she go to some abandoned house somewhere to rehearse her reaction to finding her husband shot dead?
His stomach seized, and he coughed—a dry, hacking bark.
Then, he flinched.
A hand was on his back, rubbing the space between his shoulder blades. He lifted his head to see Clara. “Rough visit?” she asked gently, kneeling next to him.
“Yeah,” he muttered.
She nodded sagely. As if she’d seen it all. “That happens sometimes. Can I get you a Coke from the vending machine? Or a Diet Coke?”
He shook his head then realized his throat was parched. “Coke would actually be great.”
Two minutes later, she returned with two cold sodas. With a weary sigh, she settled in next to him on the steps, handed him a can and cracked open hers, taking a hearty gulp.
He did the same, narrowing his focus to the coldness of the beverage and the bubbles in the drink. “She did it,” he said heavily as he turned the can around in his hand.
Clara patted his knee. “They all did it, Ryan. That’s why they’re here.”