No amount of essential oils can fix batshit crazy.
—Nettie’s secret thoughts
Nettie
I was married.
I was practically floating down the hallway to the kitchen when I came to an abrupt stop when I saw the amount of people in the kitchen.
There was Denver and his oldest daughter, Joe. Margery. Sawyer. Ida Bell, Koen. Oh, and my husband.
He had a cup of coffee halfway to his lips, but paused when he saw me come in.
His eyes sparkled as he took in my attire.
“Fancy.” He grinned.
I moved toward him, pressed a kiss to his lips, and stole his coffee.
I took a healthy swallow, groaning at the perfectness of it.
“Do you want your own?” Boone asked as he trailed a hand down my butt.
“No.” I smiled and leaned into him while also resting my hips against the counter next to him. “What’s going on?”
“Came to give you both an update on Felicia,” he said. “She was truthful in what she says. Her mother—whom I met last night—was an old maid of ours. The maid got pregnant—I remember that—and left when she was almost to term. I thought it was understandable seeing as she was having a baby. Never saw her again. Not until last night, when the woman explained everything. Gail had come to her and asked to adopt her child after learning that hers had a heart condition. Maid said no. Obviously like any good mother would do. Then woke up a couple of weeks later in the hospital with no memory of what happened. She was told that she was in an accident and her daughter died. She went along with it at first, but her memories were surfacing a little bit at a time. Then some time about five years ago, she tried a new track for therapy, and they were able to unlock her memories of that day. She’d been taken by a couple of men. Locked to a hospital bed and injected with some drugs. At one point she remembers seeing Gail, then nothing. The next time she remembers waking up she was in the hospital with no baby and a story about a car wreck.”
“What the fuck?”
“Felicia was able to work out some things on her end, too. The gardener tipped her off to looking like his best friend’s wife. Like to the T. So Felicia did some digging and found her mother. They got to talking and found out that Felicia is biologically related to her. That’s when they started looking into Gail and me.”
“Jesus,” I said before taking a swig of my coffee. “And last night? What happened there?”
“Gail found out that Felicia knew. Caught her snooping in her private office. Blackmailing commenced. And Felicia is not pregnant. She’s not naming her baby Julep.” He looked apologetically at us. “She’s sorry for deceiving you. That whole thing was Gail’s idea.” Denver sighed. “Gail told her she should kill your wife, or she’d kill her mother. And that was a credible threat, too. Gail would’ve done it.”
“I called my dad.” Ida Bell paused in her words. “Kurt. I called Kurt.” She looked at Sawyer with a sad smile on her face. “He didn’t answer. He’s totally out of communication with me. He’s done it before, but this time, I think it’s forever. It’s never felt so final before now.”
“What’s the story there?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “Has Gail ever acted like your mother?”
She absently rubbed at the scar on her chest. “No, never. She was just a friend of my dad’s. And to be quite honest, my dad wasn’t really even my dad. He was my caretaker. He always made sure that I had food in the fridge and went to school. But I can’t remember a single time he actually acted like he loved me.”
Sawyer’s jaw ticked as he clenched his teeth together.
“I couldn’t tell you the first thing about Gail,” Ida Bell admitted. “She came over every few weeks to talk with D-Kurt. They always kicked me out of the house when she came over. I wasn’t allowed to be inside at all.”
“What happened if it was the winter?” Koen asked curiously.
“Then I got cold.” She shrugged.
Sensing that Koen was about to lose his shit, I changed the subject.
“What is the point of all this?” I asked after taking another sip and handing it back to Boone. “What’s the end goal?”
He took it back and took his own sip as Sawyer said, “I don’t know. Why fuck with so many people’s lives? Felicia’s mother doesn’t know, either. She says that all that was said was that she wanted a healthy baby.”
“This is all just so insane. I mean, she’s ruined countless lives. She’s made me miserable for years. She stole our baby from us. Which would make sense if she actually cared about Boone at all, but she doesn’t. She colluded with my parents and had her fingers in the church’s pies. She had her finger in another pie with Felicia. Then there’s Ida Bell. Then there’s stealing from your company, Sawyer. What is her endgame here?”
“Maybe there’s not one,” Boone surmised, curling his hand over my hip and pulling me into him before offering me his coffee. “Maybe her entire goal in life is just to make everyone miserable. Steal some money from my dad in case she needs to disappear. But you’re right. She’s done nothing but make me and the rest of my family miserable. You. Everyone she meets, she makes miserable.”
