I slapped him on the back as he and the rest of them left, Cody looking at Mable for a hot minute before she, too, decided to go. During everyone’s goodbyes, Mable hung back, looking uncertain.
I waited for the door to close behind Vito before locking it.
When I turned, Mable was staring off into space, looking stricken.
I walked up to her and pulled her into my arms.
“What kind of person does that make me that I participated in Birdee’s torture?”
“Unknowingly,” I pointed out as I folded her impossibly closer. My chin went to her head as I said, “She did the same. Would you blame her?”
She wilted in my arms. “No.”
“I think there’s going to need to be a lot of healing in this family. Your job is to participate. But it’s time that you stopped letting those people walk all over you. You have the ammunition, it’s time to use it.”
“I already spoke with my lawyer friend,” she said quietly. “We’re starting the eviction process tomorrow. Luckily, we only have to give them thirty days’ notice here.”
“Good,” I said. “Let’s go back to bed.”
“You’re staying?” she asked, sounding hopeful.
“Nowhere else I’d rather be right now.”
Nineteen
If he really wanted you, he’d kidnap you.
—Romance book lovers everywhere
Mable
The news hit that I was kicking them from their home of over two decades on a Tuesday.
I was in the middle of running a tree through what we called a “shredder” when I saw my father angrily marching across the yard grounds.
Today we were all working from one central location since we’d harvested what we needed for the next project.
I could see Romeo across the yard using his chainsaw to clean up the ends of the logs, and he was in the groove, unaware of the trouble headed my way.
If he’d known, he’d have stopped what he was doing immediately and head over.
Luckily, the rest of my crew had my back and stopped my father before I could actually use my tracks to run him over.
Which I wanted to, badly.
The last four days had been a nightmare.
The only thing that’d kept me somewhat sane had been Romeo.
Cody, Birdee, Vito, Grace, and I had been in a constant battle to make sense of the lies that Whitney had spun into a web of confusion.
We’d spent the last few weeknights ironing out what we knew. And only one thing was certain at this point, all the hurts and betrayals that we’d felt against each other had been nothing more than Whitney’s machinations.
Sleights that’d been dealt against us by each other were proved to be nothing more than Whitney’s lies.
At this point, we weren’t sure if anything that’d happened to us over the years had been true.
Needless to say, we were all exhausted by the end of the day.
