“Stop it!” Mead yelled.
“She went on about Mead’s birthmarks. How he tasted.”
“Damn it, shut up!” Mead roared again.
Auntie glared back at him. “Then she told me how she’d screwed with his mind. How she enjoyed every minute.”
“So you killed her,” Trace said, his voice eerily calm.
“I couldn’t let her destroy all I cherished. She mocked me with her perversions.” Auntie gazed off. “Then came the personal attacks. She said I didn’t belong in Sears’ world. That I was trailer trash. I don’t remember grabbing the spade. I do recall that it was still stuck in her chest when she ran. I yanked it out after I caught up with her and stabbed her again. I can’t remember how many times.” She sniffed. “Then I cleaned the spade off afterwards and tossed it in the driveway.”
Mead sobbed fitfully as my heart imploded.
I struggled to my feet, but my legs felt like noodles. “She was…my m-mother.”
“I’m your mother!” Auntie shoved to a stand and her eyes turned wild. “Who raised you? Dried your tears? Rocked you to sleep when you had nightmares? Stayed up when you were sick? Held you when your heart was broken? I’m your mother! That woman just baked you in her foul womb.”
My knees hit the floor.
Trace moved to comfort me, but Auntie had already rounded the desk. The hatred brimming in his eyes was almost palatable as she knelt before me and clutched our hands together. The smell of brandy was pungent on her breath.
“That woman abused you,” she said to me, oblivious to Trace’s fiery stare. “But I-I saved you.”
“Mother was a flawed woman,” I said, grief tearing me apart. “But she did not deserve to die. You let an innocent man go to prison. You allowed everyone to believe….” I jiggled my head to clear it. “That I could do something so vile to my own mother? Just to keep yourself out of jail?”
Auntie squeezed my hands. “You’d already lost a mother. I had a son and a life I adored. I couldn’t give that up.” Her tears dropped along our entwined fingers. “I was born and raised in a damn trailer park. Secondhand clothes. Macaroni and cheese five days a week. Not enough money to pay the bills! Then Jackson introduced me to Sears and everything changed.”
“My God.” I met her tearful eyes. “Uncle defied Grandfather Bradford to marry you, but you never felt the same. That’s why Mother resented you, isn’t it? She knew Uncle married you for love, and you married for money.”
“Make no mistake. Sears got great satisfaction in choosing me. Thumbing his nose at the family.” She gave a bitter laugh. “But he turned into his father anyway. We both did.”
“Admit it,” I said. “You never loved him.”
She looked askance as Trace and Mead listened, their attention trained on her. “What’s passionate love? Does it put food on the table? Does it buy social standing? Or power? Sears has no room to complain. I made him a wonderful home and became the sort of wife a man of his position is expected to have. I did everything by the book and was never an embarrassment. As for love, he could get that from his mistresses.”
“Oh, Auntie.”
“It’s all gone now,” she muttered, looking lost. “Everything I worked for. I don’t understand it.”
“Who the hell are you?” I said, sobbing.
“How could you ask me that?” She wiped at the tears streaming down my face. “Honey, you and I…we have a special connection. You’re the daughter I never had. I thank God for you. Please believe I’ve always loved you as if you were my own.”
“Was it love, or guilt?” I asked.
She blinked. What little color she had left in her cheeks, fled. Mead cried softly while Trace stood in moody silence a few feet from where we knelt.
“Answer me, Auntie. Did guilt drive your ‘love’?” At her tortured expression, I nodded. “All the love you showed me over the years. What was the strategy? Encourage me to succeed, be there whenever I needed you, then marry me off to a successful man, and your conscience is cleared?”
Auntie drew back as if she’d been struck. She got to her feet, her gaze lasered on her son, on me, then to Trace. With a whimper, she stumbled and rounded the desk, flopping down in her chair again.
Then without fanfare, she dragged the drawer open, grabbed the gun and pressed it to her own chest.
Trace yanked me to my feet and shoved me behind him. “Put it down, Miz Bradford.”
“No.” Auntie looked determined. “I need to finish this.”
I lurched to get around Trace, but he held me captive with one arm. “That’s why you fired everyone?” I sputtered. “So you could kill yourself?”
Trace held up a palm. “Ma’am, please. Put it away.”
“Drop it, Mom!” Mead scrambled to his feet.
“Auntie…don’t do this!”
I kept trying to break free, but Trace tightened his hold, almost painfully. “Stay behind me,” was his whispered order, but his attention was locked on my aunt. In a calm voice he said, “You don’t want to do that, Miz Bradford.”
“There’s nothing left.” She was talking to the ceiling. The gun jerked in her hand, made her left breast jiggle. “My children despise me. My husband is gone. It’s over.”
“Stop talking crazy!” Mead barked.
Trace lobbed an incredulous look at him, as if to say ‘you’re not helping,’ then took a careful step forward, still keeping me at his back. “When my parents killed themselves, they left us with a hole that’ll never be filled.”
Hesta spat, “You hate me. Why should I listen to you?”
“You’re right. I can’t stand the sight of you.” His voice softened. “But I lost my folks to suicide and I don’t want Shannon to ever feel that kind of pain. You’ve been a mother to her. Please, if you love your family, you won’t do this.”
I couldn’t stop trembling. In the back of my mind, I could still hear Trace say, ‘Damn near every time I’m near you, I bleed.’ That it might hold true, paralyzed me.
“Told my daddy I hated him,” Trace said. “Took me up to now to realize I love the bastard. Same thing with Shannon. She still loves her mama even after the abuse. Now multiply that love times a thousand. That’s what she feels for you.”
Auntie dropped the gun and sobbed as the men moved in on her. While Mead consoled his mother, Trace seized the weapon.
I nearly collapsed with relief. Only now did I realize what it had cost Trace to speak with such compassion. No doubt he hated Hesta Bradford, but he’d saved her life, talked her down from a figurative ledge—for one reason only. Me.
Trace turned his back to Auntie. The strain was evident in his taut expression. He was trembling as he removed the magazine from the gun and picked the cartridges out. Taking a ragged breath, he tucked the empty casing into his back pocket.
I rose on tiptoe to kiss him, but pulled back. His eyes were distant, if not cold. While he’d put himself between me and a gun, the chasm between us was still there.
“Thank you, Trace,” I said. “For saving her. And me.”
He just nodded stiffly and mouthed, “Call the law.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Waking Sleeping Beauty
TRACE
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I swung my front door open two days later. Before I could even say ‘Hi,’ Shannon breezed past me sporting a gray suede jacket, black leggings, and riding boots. I cocked a brow and eyed the two leather suitcases she’d carried in with her. “What are you doin’?”