“Your sister did her own thing. We’ve always known that. It just so happens that we made a couple of stupid mistakes when we were young one night.”
“What was the point of it?” Aunt Bess questions. “Why marry her if you planned from the start to never be with her? To neversupporther?”
“Oh, I’ve supported Janie.” His smirk is slimy. Like a snake that slithers out of water on a hunt. “Just not in the conventional sense.”
I stomp down the accusations threatening to come out of me. The only way he supported her was by feeding her the drugs she was desperate to have. By getting her involved in a deal that Ihad to make better. He’s only ever been selfish with her and has done nothing to help the woman he was legally bound to.
“Listen,” he starts. “If I’m being completely honest, I forgot all about the marriage license.”
Yeah, that’s a crock of shit.
“I don’t believe you,” Aunt Bess accuses. “You chained her down with that all these years without anyone else knowing. I want to know why.”
Stewart sits back without saying a word, steepling his hands at his chin like he’s proud of himself. I don’t like him. Not that I did before, but I really don’t care for the guy now that he’s pitting Aunt Bess and Clyde against one another and calling it mediation.
“Janie didn’t seem to mind. Never brought me divorce papers, so I’d say she was happy with the turnout.”
“You know why she never did.”
She was always too worried about coping with her addiction. Feeding it. Figuring out how to give it what it needed to thrive. A divorce was probably the last thing on her mind.
“Janie’s addiction had nothing to do with me.”
What a fucking liar.
I grit my teeth, my jaw clenching, and sit straighter. Finn knocks his foot against mine. It’s the first time he’s made himself known aside from showing up with his dad, but where does he get off?
“You took advantage of it. Why? You had a son with another woman and have been with her all these years. You’d think you’d eventually want to marryher,” she says, referring to Finn’s mom, and how the hell does she know this much?
I can see how she might know a little bit about him from my mom hanging around him when they were in high school and shortly after she graduated, but that was decades ago. How would Aunt Bess know anything about Clyde’s current situation, about Finn, about Finn’s mother?
“I think this is getting out of hand,” Uncle Thad throws in. Stewart hangs on to every word like the rest of us. This conference room is the stage and we’re just the pathetic chumps being featured in today’s episode of Jerry Springer.
“This is normal for situations like this,” Stewart’s stupid ass says. “Let’s allow them to share the floor.”
Clyde meets Aunt Bess head-on. “If you want to throw all my business out there for everyone to hear, then it’s only right to make it fair, don’t you think?”
“Don’t you dare.” Her warning piques my interest, blowing my assumptions out of the water. She knows something I don’t. Something she hasn’t told me. Something she’skeptfrom me.
I’m like a little kid, watching a dodgeball soar from one team to another. Eventually, someone is going to catch the throw orget pegged in the face. I have the nagging suspicion I’m that someone.
“Afraid your husband and nephew will see that you’re not the perfect person you claim to be?” Clyde taunts.
Uncle Thad clears his throat, his voice taking on an authoritative tone. “That’s enough.”
Clyde’s voice turns threatening, reminding me of the way he spoke to me before Finn broke my finger in that car. “Don’t fucking interrupt me. I came, wanting to be decent, but seeing as how it’s not being offered in return, my patience is done. You want the goddamn truth? Yeah, Janie and I got married. So fucking what? It’s none of your goddamn business how or why or when it happened.”
“It’sallmy business. She was mysister,” Aunt Bess argues.
“My involvement with her has nothing to do with you so butt the fuck out of it. Unless of course you want to hear about all the places I’ve fucked her. Might’ve been hooked on whatever she could get her hands on, but she never protested a good lay.”
Aunt Bess rears back. “You’re a pig.”
“The money she left behind is mine. It always fucking was, whether you like it or not. I’ll be the one leaving with it. Her failure to tell you the shit she was doing isn’t my goddamn problem.”
“Please. Don’t sit there and act like you’re better than you are.”
I glance over at Clyde, my stomach in my throat. This is so fucking bizarre that I barely hear it when he says, “If there’s anyone at this table who has pretended that, it’s you. Tell me, have you ever told the kid who he belongs to? That you’ve spent the last two decades paying me off to stay the hell away from him? Was your cuckold husband over there in on it, too, or was this all your doing, AlmightyBess?”
