Chapter 6
Claire
Iforce myself to stay quiet while Vaughn storms through his father’s screw shack. He looks in each room with wild fiery eyes. I hear his disgust when he enters their bedroom and the shatter of glass as he throws one of their framed pictures against the far wall. He slams every door behind him as he stalks around. I kind of don’t blame him. It’s exactly what I did just before he barged in here.
He ends his secret-sex-palace tour with a loud squelch of his wet shoes in front of me. “So, where’s my father’s whore?” he says.
I flinch back at the question.
His lips twitch upward. He’s happy he’s getting under my skin. I shake my head and reach down for the box on the floor. “You Montgomerys never change, do you? Always so vulgar and disgusting.” I start to gather all the fallen items and toss them back into the box quickly. I’ll have to come back when he’s gone. He towers over me as I’m crawling on the floor trying to grab what’s left of the person who gave birth to me. I don’t want to be here any longer. I refuse to submit myself to his wrath. There are too many other things I’m dealing with and his tantrum is the least important.
I look up when he shifts his body in my path. The way he’s scowling down at me makes it’s difficult to ever think our families could have once been so close—or me and him for that matter.
I climb to my feet and hug the box to my chest.
Vaughn steps directly in front of me and grabs the box out of my hands, plopping it dramatically on the table. “I asked you a question. Where’s your mother?”
“Dead.”
Vaughn snickers. I guess he doesn’t believe me.
I stand my ground and glare back at him until the skin around his eyes soften.
“Shit… Are you serious?” he asks.
“Someone found her body here two days ago. She’d been dead for a few days.” I point up to the ceiling. “Hanging from a rope on that beam, right there.”
His eyes snap up to the open beam and back to mine. “She hanged herself?”
I watch his lips as he asks, hating myself for noticing how much fuller they were since the last time he’d kissed me. I need to leave,like yesterday.
I push past him and pick up the box once more.
“And you lived here with them? My father, his mistress, and her daughter? A nice cozy little family, huh?”
The question makes heat shoot up from the tip of my toes to the top of my scalp. “No, this is… I… they called me to come and get her stuff. I didn’t know—”
“Yeah, right.” He leans forward. “You and she lived here on my father’s dime, like two kept women. What did you do to keep him paying foryou? I certainly remember all the things you did to keepmyattention.”
I slam the box down on the table. Something else inside sounds like it cracks. “This is the first time I ever stepped foot in this goddamn place, asshole.” I want to shove the box at him; hit him with it. Slap at him with my bare hands. “How heartless of a man must you be to skip right overmy mother killed herselfand accuse me of living here with them? How could you think I would ever be okay with what they did? The thought of them being together all this time tightens around my neck like my own noose.”
He moves closer. His mouth opens to speak, but I don’t give him the chance.
“And you don’t get to bring up anything you and I both didwillingly togetherback then and slut shame me. Ever,” I say through gritted teeth.
“That’s all you’ve got to say on the subject, right? That’s all you have to say after your mother ruined my family? I hope this makes you feel really good, Claire,” he barks, throwing his hands into the air.
“You want to know how I feel? It’s the best fucking feeling in the world, Vaughn. Being able to look at the one person who fucking destroyed me and not feel a goddamn thing,” I screech.
“Whatever. Are you done here? Can you just leave?” He gestures to the front door.
“Gladly.”I hate you. I hate all you arrogant, Montgomerys. I hate you all so much that looking at you I can hardly breathe.I rush toward the door and fumble with the knob and the box until it opens and a blast of frigid air blows back my hair.
I barrel out and onto the small front porch. Vaughn crashes the door closed behind me. I peer over the top of the box and all I see is a thick wall of white.Ah-ha, this must be what a snow squall is—I was hoping it was some sort of a north-eastern snow bird.
I lower the box and try to get a better view. I’m not sure where my car is, there are car-shaped lumps of snow everywhere. Great, this is prefect weather to match my mood. My insides are a rolling mess of emotions. I’m so angry; at the Montgomerys; at my mother, but mixed in with that there’s this bitter sharp sadness that aches in my chest. Over the last ten years my mother wanted nothing to do with me. She locked me away in a school far away from her and left me there. Alone. All along I thought she was heartbroken my father left her, that maybe I reminded her of their marriage and her mistake. But she wasn’t living her life making amends for what she’d done, she never stopped doing what was wrong. She just stopped being my mother. That’s what she chose.
Not surprisingly, the first step I take my feet slip out from underneath me and I’m flat on my back in the cold snow in an instant. The box goes flying. Ice cuts through my clothes and bites at my skin.My coat!I left it inside the cabin. I scramble to my feet and face the front door. A plume of foggy breath appears in front of my face and I can’t make myself walk through it to go back inside. There’s one thing that Vaughn and I both can agree on, I don’t belong inside there, and neither did my mother. Forget the coat. I’ll be fine as soon as I get in the car and get as far away from this place and Vaughn as possible.
